Océane was new in their class. She had been held back from the year before, so she was bigger than the other kids, and snottier. “Elodie”—that’s the girl Rat shares a desk with—“says your hair’s crawling with lice.”

Elodie, whom Rat had thought was her friend, refused to meet her eyes. Rat was genuinely puzzled. Every year, there were periodic waves of head lice. You didn’t exactly regard it as a gift from Santa, but there’d never been a stigma to it, either.

“I don’t have lice, you fat bitch,” she retorted. “Go look at your own greasy head.” And she’d shoved Océane in the chest, with both hands, hard. It takes a certain amount of force to make a fat girl topple.

It was just Rat’s luck that Marie-Jo, who was sitting with the other teachers in the sun, had witnessed only this last part of the exchange. Which meant that it was Rat, and Rat alone, who got detention.

Rat can’t decide which makes her more furious, the injustice of the one-sided punishment or Elodie’s telling mean lies about her. Already in her head, she’s telling her mother, “I’m never going back to school again. That’s that, and you can’t make me.”

As she comes around the corner of the drive, Rat sees that Vanessa’s van is gone. She bursts into the house. Nobody home. No note on the table. To Rat, skilled at scouting the signals of human presence, there’s no sign that somebody’s just nipped down to the corner for a pint of milk and is coming back soon. The stove is cold; the kitchen table clean. She almost wants to cry from disappointment, so instead she kicks the wall hard, practices her swear words. Then she makes herself a tartine, and goes around to see Laurent, who’s in his workshop.

It’s already dark when Rat hears the rumble of the van’s engine. She rushes out into the courtyard to meet Vanessa. The need to unload her grievances, to press herself tight against her mother’s skinny body and be comforted, is as urgent as a bursting bladder.

Her mother opens the van door.

“Mama!” cries Rat.

Vanessa looks grim. “Help me unload the groceries” is all she says.

It’s only then that Rat sees Morgan, who is sitting in his child seat in the back. Morgan doesn’t even look up to acknowledge she’s there. Rat reaches past him to grab one of the shopping bags. “Why can’t Morgan do something to help, for once?” she wonders aloud.

Back in the house, she watches her mother put away a six-pack of long-life milk, packets of frozen lasagna.

“Did you remember to get me some more Coco Pops?” she asks, reproachfully.

Vanessa doesn’t answer. She rips opens a container of fish fingers, lights the stove, turns on the grill.