I hear her mother yelling in the house, telling Ella she needs to come clean up the dishes. My mom says I’m too young to help with the dishes, even though my dad says I should be helping out more.

Ella keeps wiping her eyes with her hand as her mom yells from inside the house and I wonder if she’s hiding from her mom. Finally, the yelling stops and Ella dares to look at me.

I hold up one of the juice boxes, offering it to her, hoping she’ll come over to my house for once. “Do you want one?”

She looks at me for a really long time and then she slowly walks toward me. She pauses at the grass, looking like she’s scared to come closer, so I reach my arm over the fence. She stares at the juice box, then runs up and takes it.

“Thank you, Micha,” she says quietly, stepping back as she pokes the straw into the juice box.

“You’re welcome,” I tell her, as she starts slurping on the straw.

I feel bad for her. I don’t think her parents take care of her because she always seems really thirsty and hungry every time I offer her a snack. I’ve tried to get her to come over and play a few times, but she always says she can’t.

“Micha, get in here,” my dad calls out from the garage and he sounds really mad. “I need your help.”

Ella instantly steps back, her eyes widening. “Bye, Micha.”

“You should come over,” I call out and hold my toy car through the hole in the fence. “This is my favorite one, but I’ll let you play with it.”

She eyes the car and then glances back at her house. “I think my mom might get mad at me if I do.”

“You can just come over for a little bit,” I suggest. “Then when your mom comes out looking for you, you can climb back over the fence. Besides it’s really fun watching my dad work on the car.”

She glances back and forth between the house and the car in my hand and finally she hurries back toward her house. I think she’s going back inside, but instead she grabs a plastic box that looks like the thing I keep all of my toy cars in. She drags it over to the fence and steps up on it. She takes a gulp of her juice box and then she hands it to me and I step back as she climbs over the fence. She falls down on her knees as she lands and cuts one of her knees a little.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.