It was a Monday afternoon and the place was dead. Two sports announcers were doing a pregame baseball show on a TV mounted in a corner up above the bar. There was an older couple in a booth sharing a plate of chicken wings, a pile of chewed-up, sucked-on bones between them. Two young guys in Red Sox jerseys played pool in the back room. One of them looked up at her, puzzled. A man with really bad posture sat nursing a beer at the bar, his body curled in a funny question mark shape.

Olive walked up to the bar, passing the question mark man, who gave off a raw onion smell. “Do I know you?” the question mark man asked.

“No, sir,” Olive said. “I don’t think so.” She moved down to the other end of the bar.

“Aren’t you a little young to be out drinking?” the woman behind the bar said. She wore a tank top and had a blue apron tied around her waist. Her hair was dry, frizzy, and dyed red, with blond roots showing.

Olive stood as tall as she could and placed two hands on the polished wooden bar top, between two cardboard coasters with beer logos on them.

“You’re Sylvia, right? I’m Olive. Lori Kissner’s daughter.”

Sylvia squinted at Olive. “Sure, yeah. You look like your mom, anyone ever tell you that?”

Olive shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess.” Actually, more than sometimes—at Quality Market, where Mama worked, all the cashiers teased her, called her Lori Junior. And Amanda, the woman who cut her and Mama’s hair—she said, “You’re the spitting image of your mother, you know it? You haven’t grown into it all the way yet, but you will. Then Lord have mercy on the boys!”

She didn’t think she looked much like Mama at all. Sure, they both had dark hair and eyes, but Olive was skinny and bony, with arms and legs that felt too long for her body; Mama was all perfect curves and grace. One time, Mama sat Olive down at her dressing table, put some of her makeup on her—a little blush, some bronzy eye shadow, mascara, wine-colored lipstick that tasted like wax. “Don’t you look all grown up?” Mama had said, and Olive had been startled, because when she looked in the mirror, she saw a strange version of Mama looking back; a Mama imposter, that’s what she’d become. She couldn’t wait to take the makeup off and go back to being plain old Olive.

Now Sylvia studied Olive while she polished a pint glass. “Last time I saw you, you were a whole lot shorter. You’ve shot up like some kind of weed. How old are you now?”

“Fourteen,” Olive said.

“Fourteen,” Sylvia said wistfully. “Where does the time go?”

Olive didn’t know what to say. She stared down at the shiny bar top.