His leg was shaking with nervous energy and he was glancing around her room. On the back of his neck she noticed the swelling of a mosquito bite and touched her finger to it.

“You’ve been bitten?”

“Savaged. Got so much of my blood we’re now officially related.”

She laughed.

The door opened and her dad entered. She snatched her hand away.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re doing a presentation on Samuel Adams tomorrow.”

“Well, there’s a table out in the dining room.”

“We’re fine here,” she said.

“Is this homework music?”

“Dad.”

“What have you got on your face? We’re spending a fortune on treatment for your zits and you’re covering your face with that junk?”

“Dad, get out of my room.”

He squatted down in front of them. Keeping his eyes on her, he put out his clenched hand.

“All I ask of you is two things.” He uncurled his forefinger. “That you’re not related to the bastard.” Now his second finger. “And that his mother isn’t a damn monkey.”

“We can go into the other room,” Raj said, pulling himself up.

“Well, that’s real big of you.” Her dad stood also. “You know what, sonny, I have a special room for you.”

He put his arm around Raj and almost lifted him off the floor as he frog-marched him through the house and out the front door. Nora followed, screaming at her dad to stop.

“There you go.” Her dad shoved Raj toward the porch steps. “Enjoy.” Preventing Nora from following, he stepped back into the house and held the door closed behind him.

“I hate you,” Nora said.

Her dad wasn’t looking at her face. “I told you to use Band-Aids,” he said.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Nora ran back to her room.

Annie was sitting on Evy’s four-poster bed, waiting for her to get back from the bathroom. Frank should have been here to take her home an hour ago. Where was he? She had enjoyed the movie but found Evy exhausting. Evy used to have such an amazing imagination, when they were younger, but now she seemed interested in nothing but boys and clothes. Annie loved Mr. B’s house, though, a plantation-style mansion ten miles out of town on forty acres. Downstairs, Evy’s sisters, Lucy, Clare, and Greta, were smoking and playing canasta with their mom. While Mrs. B was an averagely attractive and petite woman, nothing of her had made it through to her first three daughters. All had inherited Bennet’s lifeless eyes, lipless mouth, and lantern jaw. They were graceless girls with burly bodies and deep, harsh voices. Annie thought they almost looked like men dressed as women. They were much older than Evy—in their late twenties—and never seemed to leave home except to go shopping or visit relatives in Kansas City.