Coco snuck between the families in Mr. Bennett’s class and Ms. Goldberg’s class and Mrs. Hedgerow’s class. Everyone stared.

“Are you a dog?” someone asked. “With headgear?”

“Are you an alien?”

“You look gay,” said Devon, the Bell patriarch, who stood with a Radio Flyer and two motherless children.

“What do you mean?” Coco asked.

“Like a gay person? Ever heard of one? They’re actually real. It’s sick.” He chuckled to himself. “See? Every girl here’s wearing a dress. Even the daughters.” He whipped his arm around to indicate the flapping sheets and costume dresses.

“So?”

“You’re wearing stretch pants and a poncho and ears.”

“I’m an ox.” She sounded proud, as though the role were her idea.

“An ox?” one of her ex-children said.

Coco’s ex-children were Peter and Marley. Peter was pale and smelled like the sawdust the janitors threw down when someone was sick on the floor. But Marley was actually popular. Why hadn’t she stepped into the role of matriarch?

Last week, Marley had said Coco was chubby and stupid. That the headgear tubes on her molars poked into her cheeks and made her look part robot. Marley accosted Coco at the water fountain with a mechanical voice: “Ro-bot Co-co is a big fat dumbbell.” Peter orbited Coco in a separate sphere. While Coco tried, and failed, to make friends with whomever she could hook, Peter was satisfied alone. Whenever she talked to him he smiled the wan smile of a beleaguered businessman and nodded.

“It’s just,” Coco said, “I’d rather be an ox.”

She found the Culver family at the end of the row. The Culver patriarch, Alex, stood with the Culver matriarch, Victoria, before a loaded plastic wheelbarrow. They had no children but still preferred Coco as their ox.

“Where are your rations?” Alex asked, indicating the bed of the wheelbarrow, which was filled with baskets. The baskets held naked loaves of supermarket bread, unshucked ears of corn, plastic containers of dry oatmeal. “I expect every member of the Culver family to contribute to our stock.”

“I brought flour,” said Victoria, who wasn’t the smiling type. She wore a dark dress and a bonnet cinched around her face.

“Sorry,” said Coco. “I didn’t know oxen fed their families in colonial times.”

Alex glared and passed her the handles of the wheelbarrow. “I can see we need to break you.”

Mr. Bennett’s class and Ms. Goldberg’s class filed down the trail. The Culver family marched. The wheelbarrow, full as it was of grain, was exceedingly heavy. Coco had to rest the handles on her back and hunch over so she was nearly crawling. Other families, none of whom had oxen, shared the burden of their wagons and wheelbarrows. No one else had rations. Alex swallowed handfuls of oatmeal and hunks of bread as he walked. Coco only hoped he’d keep at it and lighten the load.

Halfway to the woods, the weight of the wheelbarrow increased significantly, and Coco dropped to her knees in the grass.