She was at school for only a couple of months. And then one day she was just gone, off the roster, and nobody told us what happened.

One look at Autumn Leaves and all I can think of is Rita.

Saturday is glitteringly bright with the sun shining off the ice on the grass. Mom didn’t say a word to me last night when she finally came to bed.

I woke up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom but stayed awake and held it until my stomach cramped. I wasn’t about to ask her for help. I tried praying to keep my mind off it. I prayed for Grandpa to be healed and for Mom to settle down and for Coralee to win the beauty pageant and for me to get strong enough to walk better so I won’t need help from anybody ever. I hoped God or Jesus or whoever was listening.

Now I’m mixing up a batch of snowball cookies after lunch because I don’t want to talk to anybody or work on my speech. I’m just licking the spoon, wondering if I could make a piecrust out of this almondy sweetness for the contest in May, when someone knocks on the front door.

“Well, who do we have here?” Grandpa says, and steps back from the door.

I lean back from the kitchen to look down the hallway. You can see just about every room in this place if you lean back a little. For a minute I don’t recognize him. His dark hair’s slicked back and he’s in a suit so white it hurts my eyes. He’s holding a giant bouquet of red roses that match his bow tie.

I roll down the hall slowly, like I’m on my way to the principal’s office. When I get up close, I see a sticker for Food & Co. on the green plastic wrap around the flowers. And then he kind of throws them at me and I have to catch them in my lap, which sends a dust of powdered sugar from my hands in his general direction.

“Bert,” I say, like I’m talking to a tiger that’s gotten loose from the zoo, “what are you doing?” And then I calculate back in my mind to that first visit to school and those posters I have seen on the bulletin boards ever since, and it clicks. It’s the second weekend in February.

“No. Uh-uh.” I brush the flowers off my lap and onto the floor, and then I back out of the doorway. “I am not going to the Valentine’s dance.”

Bert opens his mouth. I hold up my hand like a crossing guard.