“All right, your mama’s in there walking a hole in my carpet because you won’t talk to her. Now, it has been a million years and a lifetime ago since I was in middle school, but I remember the feel of it. Those days stick to you like mud. Talking about it is the only way you’re gonna come clean again.”

I look into my mug. She says she gets it, but Mema is a force of nature. I’m not strong like that. How am I supposed to make her understand?

“I promise, Ellie. You talk to me and I’ll take as much of it away as I can and we’ll leave it behind us. You hear me?”

I look at her. Her small, round eyes are as blue as the early morning. She pulls me in so my head’s up against her shoulder and her braid hangs down between us. I want to tug on it like I used to when I was little. Talking’s not going to make it better, though. I want a time machine. But I tell her anyway.

Eight hours earlier…

Coralee’s next to me in the van. We actually see the bus stop at the entrance to Royal Oaks right as we turn off Alcoa onto the main road, and I make Mom wait until it’s out of sight before we pick up Bert. The last thing we need is to be the handicapped van that tails the bus to school.

Bert’s sitting on his front steps. His trailer is bigger than ours and Coralee’s put together, and it has a porch that wraps all the way around. I guess this is the rich end of the road. He gets up and, I kid you not, throws a man purse over his shoulder.

“Nice purse,” Coralee says when we make him get in the front seat.

“It’s a satchel, as you can see from the flap by which it closes. Purses traditionally have a zip or clasp. Morning, Ms. Cowan.”

He would have been right at home on the short bus. We kept to ourselves and did our thing and just assumed from day one that we were all up there on the weirdness scale. But here, oh man. What does a place like Eufaula do with a Bert? Or, more to the point, what does a Bert do with a place like this?

“Bert’s parents just moved into Royal Oaks in the fall, same time as me,” Coralee says, leaning forward so the glitter from the heart on her sweatshirt sparkles. “Right, Bert?”

“That is correct.” If it’s not a purse, he sure hugs it like one.

“Bert has twelve brothers and sisters. The twins just graduated high school last year.”

“Lucky number thirteen,” I say.

“Thirteen is conventionally unlucky,” he says, and that’s the end of the small talk.