“This is going to be so cool,” Naomi told Nate as they sat together on the bus heading home after school. In the seat behind her, Junie was braiding Naomi’s hair and putting plastic barrettes in it. Another girl—someone like Pauline Calhoun—would never have let Junie do something that made her look funny, but Naomi didn’t mind. “Be my guest,” she’d said the first time Junie asked if she could try out a new hairdo on Naomi. “Anything would be an improvement.”

“I guess you don’t need me to come over for anything today,” Naomi said. She was showing Nate a bunch of cartoons she’d drawn of their teachers, which looked almost as good as what the artists in Mad magazine did.

“You could come over anyway, if you feel like it,” he told her. “Just to hang around. It’s not like I’ve got anything so pressing on my schedule.”

The last few weeks they had been selling off cows, and he missed the old familiar rounds of milking and cleaning out the stalls in the barn. With less livestock to tend, and even less money, his mom had let Rufus go, though he still came by now and then to lend a hand, in exchange for an old engine they’d had out in the shed that Nate’s mom gave him.

“Nothing on my social calendar either,” Naomi said. “Pauline’s having a bunch of girls over to her house tonight to try on makeup and sleep over, but big surprise, I’m not included.”

•  •  •

“Hey, I have the new Beatles album,” Nate told Naomi as they climbed off the bus together. “We could go up to my room and listen to it.” His aunt Sal had bought it for him in Billings last week—Revolver. The record jacket had the most fascinating picture—a line drawing of the four of them, with all kinds of characters and images hidden in their hair and twisting around the sides of the picture. Nate had spent hours studying the drawing while he lay on his bed listening to the lyrics of the songs. Naomi had shown him her own version of the Revolver cover, only instead of the Beatles, it featured members of the eighth grade at Lonetree Junior High.

Poppa said it was a waste of time, listening to a bunch of mop-tops who had nothing better to do than sing about love. But when Nate’s mom had heard the album, she’d stood at the top of the stairs listening for a long time. Junie liked “Good Day Sunshine” and “Yellow Submarine.” “Eleanor Rigby” made Nate think of his father—the part about all the lonely people.

“So which one is your favorite?” he asked Naomi as she sat studying the record jacket. “Mine’s George.”