She studies me, then A Clockwork Orange, and exhales. “Try, Clara. That’s all a smart girl like you has to do. If I’d brought home grades like yours, think I’d be hanging around here? Hell no. I’d be in Paris or someplace, getting waited on.” Paris is the dream, so far away and impossible that she can imagine anything there, any kind of life. She gives my hair the side-eye, maybe waiting for it to leap like a tarantula. It was supposed to be a pastel rainbow: the picture on the dye kit showed a sexy, up-for-anything girl with a sleek bob of teal, pink, and baby blue. I wanted to be that girl. Self-reinvention in six easy steps. I bought it on the sly with the birthday money my grandma mailed me, lightened and dyed on the second-to-last day before we left our old apartment. If Ma’s hurt that I did it while she was at work, fumbling with instructions and bottles and alligator clips, she hasn’t let on. “How’d your new look go over?”

“Does Christmas Barf mean anything to you?” She snorts, ducks her head to her knees, and laughs down at her toes. I can’t help laughing, too, even though it won’t be funny the next time I run into the hoodies. “Right. Mock me. Maybe tomorrow you can come to school and pants me in the cafeteria.”

Dad’s coming up the walk from the parking lot to the back stoop now, carrying his lunch cooler. His boots are heavy, steel-toed, his jeans coated in pale dust, the powdered remains of walls and foundations. Maybe asbestos. You never know what’s lurking inside these paper mills that have been standing for fifty, sixty years. It’s a long day, driving a forklift, shifting scrap. He shoots a finger-gun at me, and I flop against the railing, hand to my shoulder, a game so old I could play my part in my sleep. He blows invisible smoke from his fingertip. “Deadeye.”

“Just a flesh wound.”

Ma smiles as he kisses her head. Then he flips the curler, saying, “This is nice.”

“Oh God.” She pulls it out, hurriedly fluffing her bangs. Ma’s got great hair, thick, black, and shiny, her Italian heritage showing through; if I took after her, I’d never even look at a box of dye. Pre−Christmas Barf, mine was a dead-mouse shade of brown, same as Dad’s, which is probably why he keeps it buzzed short. So, this is me—pale-ish, medium-ish, a face that never launched any ships. But I’m good at bullshitting an English theme. And I make a bitchin’ ham and cheese on moldy rye.

Ma runs inside, comes out heaving her big purse over her shoulder, every zipper jangling with rings and pulls. “Wish me luck.”