Helping Junie get ready for school this morning, Nate had found a little stash of photographs—three snapshots she must’ve taken out of the family album and hidden in her sock drawer. One showed their dad as a very young man, skinny as a beanpole in his baseball uniform. In another, taken at a fair someplace, their dad and mom were standing behind cardboard cutouts of a cowboy and a cowgirl, with just their faces showing through holes. They were grinning at each other. The last picture showed Dad, Mom, and Nate in front of the Mercury when it was new. Mom was holding a baby—Junie—wrapped in a blanket. Dad stood beside her, with one hand on the hood of the car and his other arm draped proudly around her shoulder.

Nate had studied the pictures carefully. He knew, to look at the last one, that his parents had been in love then—as clearly as he knew that they weren’t anymore. He figured it made his sister feel better, knowing things had been different once, so he’d put the pictures back in Junie’s drawer.

Studying his little sister now, as she sat curled in her spot on the couch—her eyes locked on the happy-looking family on the TV screen, her forehead with its worried frown—Nate tried to think of something that might cheer her.

“Hey, J,” he said. “Suppose we could get Uncle Harold or Aunt Sal to take us into town Friday night, you and me. Maybe we could go bowling.”

Junie’s face brightened. The bowling alley was pretty run-down—four lanes, with a pinsetter that broke so often, you never knew if you’d get to finish your turn. But if she couldn’t be on a horse, bowling was her next favorite thing.

“How ’bout we get Naomi to come too?” she said. Junie liked Naomi, who didn’t ignore her the way most older kids did.

“I guess I could ask her,” Nate said. “She probably can’t come, though.”

•  •  •

Surprisingly, Naomi said yes, and Uncle Harold said he’d pick them up and drop them at the lanes, then bring them all home afterward. “My treat,” he told Nate, giving him a five-dollar bill.

Junie wore orange corduroy pedal pushers to the bowling alley and her cowgirl vest with a flowered shirt underneath. “Don’t you wish we could get to wear these in real life?” she said, lacing up her multi-colored bowling shoes.

“Actually, no,” Nate said, tying his.

But Naomi, on the bench between them, thought that would be great too. This was her first time bowling, she told them. “I always wanted to go. But my family never does this kind of stuff.”

“Don’t worry,” Junie said. “I’ll show you the ropes.”