After a few minutes, I realized I was walking faster, and I wasn’t sure why. I felt like I wanted something, like I was walking toward something, but I wasn’t sure what that might be. For a few blocks, I tried to see who had the best political yard sign. “Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere” was in first place, but then on one street, every single house had a “Black Lives Matter” sign, so that block won.

Finally, I got sweaty enough to turn home, but when I strolled back down Woodland, Miss Sandy glanced up from her flower bed and gave me a suspicious look, kind of following me with her eyes. I couldn’t figure out what that meant at first, and then it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t recognize me. Was I tall enough now to be mistaken for an up-to-no-good teenager? Was that possible? I waved at Miss Sandy, but she didn’t wave back, just turned her white head down to stare at her irises as she weeded.

My mom often complained about the up-to-no-good teenagers in the neighborhood, who always seemed to be skating or wandering around at dusk. And I thought that was funny, because as normal as my mom was now, if you looked at pictures of her from college, you could see that she and her friends had been totally up-to-no-good teenagers themselves. All the boys in those pictures had long hair and tattoos, and all the girls had piercings and colorful streaks in their hair. But whenever I’d accused her of being a troublemaker herself, Mom claimed that’s how she knew what sort of trouble teenagers got into.

What I needed was a dog. Nobody looked at you funny if you walked around aimlessly with a dog on a leash. Maybe I’d start a dog-walking business. Dad would love that. And then I’d have something to write about in August, if any of my teachers demanded to know What I Did over Summer Vacation. That would be handy, since I wore a lot of pajamas and occasionally wandered aimlessly in actual pants probably wasn’t going to cut it.

Maybe it was because of Miss Sandy’s suspicious look that I decided to take the long way home that day. Maybe I did it because I was thinking wandering thoughts, and so my feet were feeling wandery. Maybe because some crazy sort of magic led me there. But whatever the reason, I turned left off Woodland onto Mercer and headed for Red’s Farm.