They sat on the floor, making horse noises, which Lynnette could do almost as well as Junie. Once, when Lynnette got excited, Junie took one of the special circus-theme napkins and dabbed up a little of the saliva that was starting to trickle down Lynnette’s chin.

Watching his sister—the tender way she took Lynnette’s hand and led her out to the barn—Nate had never felt more love for her.

“I’m just showing Lynnette my pony,” Junie called out to her mother as the girls made their way through the mud in their party shoes, holding hands.

When they came back in the house, they sat down at the kitchen table, put on their little clown-style party hats, and had cake and ice cream. Lynnette sang “Happy Birthday,” and Junie did too.

That evening, after Lynnette had gone home, their mother put her arms around Junie and held her for a long time. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Junie told her.

Their mother went to bed then, even earlier than usual. Junie folded up the wrapping paper from Lynnette’s gift and carried it up to her room to save in her craft box.

When she came back downstairs, Nate had started wrapping the cake in aluminum foil. Junie stopped him.

“I was thinking,” she said. “We don’t really need to save the rest. It’s never as fun the day after.”

Nate dumped the nearly untouched tent cake in the garbage. Then, like a hummingbird to flowers, his sister moved through the dark rooms of their house, pricking the balloons, one by one, till you would never have known there’d been a party at all.

Eighteen

“IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER,” NAOMI TOLD Nate at lunch on Monday, “you’re not the only one whose family has problems. My father found the chapter on evolution and Charles Darwin in our science book, and now he’s taking me out of class until we’re finished with that unit.”

Nate didn’t understand at first.

“It’s in the Bible, silly,” she explained. “God made the earth in seven days. Any other idea—like the possibility that we might have come from apes and that for a few million years there might have been dinosaurs walking around— amounts to blasphemy.”

“What did you say when he told you?” Nate asked.

“I knew he’d check up on it sooner or later. I’m just hoping nothing’s going to get in the way of me being in the science fair with you.”

“It’s kind of amazing he lets you come over to my house, when you think about it.”

“He says it’s Christian charity to befriend people who’ve fallen on hard times. They want me to invite your family over for dinner, in fact. Trying for converts, I bet you.”