“I told you Saturday. And again on Monday,” Michelle says. Alex wiggles his arms into his sleeves and drains his bowl, swallowing the last Corn Pop whole. He wants to get on the school bus before his sister and his momma start fighting again. They are almost always about to start fighting again.

“It’s Thursday. Christ. Can you pick some up at lunch? I’m at the stadium all day.” Momma got a job at the stadium near their house, Salt River Fields at Talking Stick. It was like her job in Oregon: she sold hot dogs and popcorn and soda pop to the green-and-gold Ducks fans, now she sells hot dogs and popcorn and soda pop to the black-and-gold Lions fans, but it’s baseball not football and sunnier here. I get to watch the Lions every day. When she told Alex that, the boy thought Momma was the luckiest lady in the world. The Lions are his favorite team because they are his grandpa’s favorite team because before his grandpa moved to Oregon to marry his grandma, he lived in California and worked on an almond farm and cheered for the Lions, who were baby Lions back then, brand-new. Grandpa is the one who taught Alex to go rawr.

“We’re not supposed to go off campus.” Michelle goes to Chaparral High, but only the seniors can go off campus at lunch and she’s in eleventh grade. “It’s against the rules,” Michelle adds, and takes another big bite of Pop-Tart.

“The store’s right across the street.” Smoke looks ready to come out of Momma’s ears. She says she’s trying to fight with Michelle less, but right now it looks like she wants to fight more. “After school then?”

“I’ll miss the bus, and somebody took my car.” The Grandpa House had a two-car garage with two cars in it, a fancy black one and a not-fancy light-blue one, so Momma used the nice one and Michelle used the other, which wasn’t nice and didn’t always have AC but was fine for driving to school and back. But then, a few weeks ago, Momma came back from a date with Randy and the fancy car looked like a giant had smooshed it up in his fist: the windows were all spiderwebs and cracks and it had lots of dents all over. The next morning it was gone and Momma’s eyes were all red and puffy and she kept saying they almost got caught, what if they’d gotten caught, and Randy, who’d slept over and was eating Corn Pops with them, said, But remember we didn’t. We’re fine.

“I need that car more than you do, and we both know it.” After the fancy car disappeared, Momma took back the old blue car from Michelle.