She sighed. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. That loan your dad took out is way past due, and I can’t pay it.”

“If only I could ride Bucky,” said Junie. “I could get a paper route and deliver the newspaper on horseback. We could even do an act and enter the rodeo and win a prize.”

“That pony is good for nothing,” their mother said wearily.

“I’m training him,” Junie said. “You wait and see. I’m getting him calmed down to where I can ride him. He just needs to get used to life around here a little more. It was just so hard where he was living before.”

“Before he got to Easy Street,” Mom said with a sad little laugh.

“Bucky loves our family,” Junie told her. “He’s going to be like a regular, normal pony before you know it. All he needs is a little more love.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you, Junie, but it doesn’t usually work that way with an animal that’s experienced a lot of abuse.”

“Anyway,” said Junie, “I don’t even care if I can ride him. I just love him, is all.”

“Love’s all very well,” Mom said, “but it doesn’t pay the bills.” She picked up the laundry basket and headed out to the line to bring in the clothes, leaving Nate’s question about money for supplies unanswered. It was just one more thing he’d have to figure out on his own.

In science, Nate let Naomi be the one to give Mrs. Unger the rundown on their cloud chamber. As she talked, he could see Pauline Calhoun and her friend Jennifer imitating the excited little gestures Naomi made and how she twisted her hair. Pauline jingled her bracelet and flashed Larry a look. He grinned.

After Naomi was finished, Mrs. Unger told the class they could spend the period working on their projects. Nate watched Larry and Travis lean toward each other at their side-by-side desks, laughing and talking. Already, in the space of a few days, it looked like Travis had totally taken over the role of Larry’s best friend.

Naomi pulled up her chair next to Nate’s and started looking for a pencil. She dumped the contents of one of her book bags on his desk: a dried-up Magic Marker, a hairbrush, a sock, a headband, a half-eaten candy bar. A leather notebook with a rubber band around it fell out, and a piece of paper with what looked to be a poem scribbled down. “It’s a song by Bob Dylan I heard on the radio,” she explained. “’Mr. Tambourine Man.’ Some people might think it doesn’t make any sense, but to me, it’s the most perfect song I ever heard.”