“Are too,” Helen said. “You are a developing frontal lobe. Which is why sometimes you are seduced by cheap thrills such as makeup, perfume, and chocolate chips.” She used tongs to lift the deer skull dripping from the pot. She set it to dry on a stack of old newspapers by the sink.

“Karen’s going to be pissed,” I said over Perley’s head. “She’ll say we were stupid to even let that girl in the door.”

“Why tell Karen?” Helen said. “Save her the worry. It’s just that asshole principal trying to scare us. He’s still mad about those fruit trees.”

Perley made his voice small so that only I could hear. “Was that true?” he asked. “Do you need a break? Do you need some help?”

“No,” I said. “Yes. I do need help. I need your help not telling Mama K about the chocolate-chip pancakes, and I need your help not telling Mama K about the nice girl,” I said. “It will only worry her, and like you said, Perley, like you said, what’s the point of everyone freaking out?”

Lord knows how I let him off my lap, how I pushed myself off the sofa to make pancakes. Lord knows how I could wade through the deer guts, the bucket, the brain, to lift the skillet and scrape the last cup or two of flour. Lord knows how I could do it, but I stumbled forward in my rubber boots to try. I added muddy prints to the blackened floor. I reached for the secret stash of chocolate chips. I uncapped the vanilla. And then I knew.

“She didn’t smell like any of those things,” I said. “She smelled like Outside.”

“Holy fuck,” Helen said, in immediate recognition. She’d been to the mall just like I had. Just like I had she’d cut through to the feed store at least once a month, tracking mud past the perfume counter. We never bought anything, of course, it was just our shortcut to the duck pellets. But we’d seen the advertisements, hay bales appetizing as sponge cake, glittering streams, oak trees with not one leaf out of place. We’d dodged the free samples they sprayed at you, the new line of perfume that was supposed to make you smell fresh and untamed.

She tried to comfort me, upbeat until the last. “Don’t let it get to you,” she said. “It’s just some stupid perfume. They sold it, she bought it. So what?” She handed me the skillet, but I took it without feeling its weight.

The intake girl had bought the new perfume, the perfume called Outside, whereas my sorry ass lived outside, the outside that smelled like diesel oil and sawdust, smelled like rendered guts and compost, smelled like the shit pile. So then I knew for sure that the nice intake girl would be back. I knew that she would win.

KAREN