Muncie and I stayed an arm’s length apart, tromping through the crowded streets. We clomped inside stores, walked around sale tables, then headed out into the cold again.

Near lunchtime Muncie motioned me inside a coffee shop. We stood in the doorway a moment while our eyes adjusted to the dim light of the restaurant.

Muncie and I took the first available table and sat down opposite each other.

“She’s a little thing,” the waitress said. She meant Muncie. The waitress flipped her pad open. “Is she one of those, what do ya call ’em?”

“Dwarves?” Muncie suggested.

Still the waitress spoke only to me. “She could work this time of year as Santa’s little helper. Maybe she is Santa’s little helper. On a coffee break.”

She laughed at her own joke.

I sat there, embarrassed for Muncie. Why did people treat her that way—as if she had no feelings, as if she weren’t even there?

“Can you tell me where the bathroom is?” Muncie asked.

Instead of answering, the waitress pinched Muncie’s cheek through the mask and told me how cute she was. “The bathroom’s around that corner,” she told me. “Right next to the kitchen.”

My heart hammered against my ribs.

Muncie’s pale eyes sparked with anger, her eyebrows shot up above the top of her glasses. She stared for a moment at the waitress, then got up and walked toward the bathroom.

I should have defended her. Why didn’t I stand up for her?

Muncie returned, calm. She’d already let the whole thing with the waitress go.

“Did you see this?” I asked. There was a notice on each table: ALL FOOD AND WATER SERVED IN THIS RESTAURANT IS RADIATION FREE.

I almost said how Ezra would like that. But I caught myself.

While we sipped cocoa and ate sandwiches, Dan Taylor and three other boys from our eighth-grade class burst through the restaurant door.

Muncie wrinkled her nose under her mask.

“There goes the neighborhood,” she said, loud enough for the boys to hear.

Dan tipped his fedora and smiled.

They bantered with us, waiting for a table to open. The one beside ours cleared first.

Muncie ate as fast as she did everything else. Once finished, she grabbed a packet of sweetener from a bowl on the table. Muncie launched the packet at me like a paper football, using her index finger as the kicker. Muncie and her crummy aim, each time she flicked the packet it went a little wilder. On the fifth try the packet soared over my head and landed on the floor beside the boys’ table.

Dan leaned over and picked up the sweetener packet. Tearing it open, he poured the powder into his water glass. He stirred the mixture, took a swallow. “Ahhh,” he said, smacking his lips together.

All the boys snatched sweetener packets and copied Dan.

“Does this mean you’re all sweet on me?” Muncie asked.

Except for Dan, all the boys pushed their water glasses away.

But Dan Taylor held his hat on his head with one hand and leaned forward in his chair with an exaggerated bow, first to Muncie, then to me.