Except that she wouldn’t. She knew exactly what she’d look like: a spindly, flat-chested thirteen-year-old in a dowdy dress that revealed her scrawny thighs and made her knees look like doorknobs. A girl who was supposed to be standing on the cusp of womanhood, but clearly wasn’t. She was pretty sure she was the only girl in her grade who hadn’t started her period or sprouted boobs yet.

She returned to the empty kitchen, which smelled of coffee and cigarette smoke, and flopped into a chair and opened The Call of the Wild.

Mama didn’t come out of her room for an hour.

Leni hardly recognized her. She had teased and sprayed her blond hair back into a tiny bun; she wore a fitted, buttoned-up, belted avocado-green dress that covered her from throat to wrists to knees. And nylons. And old-lady shoes. “Holy cow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mama said, lighting up a cigarette. “I look like a PTA bake-sale organizer.” The blue cream eye shadow she wore had a little sparkle in it. She’d glued her false eyelashes on with a slightly unsteady hand and her eyeliner was thicker than usual. “Are those your only shoes?”

Leni looked down at the spatula-shaped Earth Shoes that lifted her toes the slightest bit above her heels. She had begged and begged for these shoes after Joanne Berkowitz got a pair and everyone in class oohed and aahed. “I have my red tennis shoes, but the laces broke yesterday.”

“Okay. Whatever. Let’s go.”

Leni followed her mother out of the house. They both climbed into the ripped-up red seats of their dented, primer-painted Mustang. The trunk was kept shut by bright yellow bungee cords.

Mama flipped down the visor and checked her makeup in the mirror. (Leni was convinced that the key wouldn’t turn in the ignition if her mother didn’t check her reflection and light up a cigarette.) She applied fresh lipstick, rolled her lips, and used the triangle tip of her cuff to wipe an invisible imperfection away. When she was finally satisfied, she flipped the visor back up and started the engine. The radio came on, blaring “Midnight at the Oasis.”

“Did you know there are a hundred ways to die in Alaska?” Leni asked. “You can fall down a mountainside, or through thin ice. You can freeze or starve. You can even be eaten.”

“Your father should not have given you that book.” Mama popped a tape into the player and Carole King’s voice took over. I feel the earth move …

Mama started singing and Leni joined in. For a beautiful few minutes, they were doing something ordinary, driving down I-5 toward downtown Seattle, Mama changing lanes whenever a car appeared in front of her, a cigarette captured between two fingers of the hand on the steering wheel.