“Yep. Totally. See you later,” Zadie said and watched her sister disappear into a swarm of laughing teenagers. She could feel a clot of envy forming in her chest. It wasn’t that she wanted Finn’s life, exactly; it was that Finn appeared happy in a way that Zadie herself hadn’t been in a very long time. Finn had a family who threw her parties and friends who wrote songs for her. Even people who didn’t know her gave her cards and fancy perfume.

Zadie had Finn. Or at least she used to.

She needed fresh air. Zadie stepped out onto the deck, which was possibly even more crowded than the room she had just come from. She counted five extra-large coolers, all of which were also doubling as seating. “Excuse me,” she said as she reached down to open one of them. The man sitting on it sighed to make sure she knew she had inconvenienced him before standing up. To get back at him, Zadie took her sweet time before finally digging a flavored seltzer water out of the ice.

She cracked open her can and surveyed the grounds, looking for a place where she could be alone for a few minutes. Behind the petting zoo, she spotted a tractor-trailer filled with hay and made her way toward it. Zadie pulled herself up onto one of the hay bales that was covered with an unzipped sleeping bag. Maybe it was the pregnancy or maybe it was just the stress of being an introvert in a house full of strangers, but she suddenly felt exhausted. She lay flat on her back and closed her eyes, feeling the warm sunlight on the backs of her eyelids.

Zadie must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes, the trailer was moving. She sat up groggily and realized she was not the only passenger. Two parents and their three young children sat across from her, along with a small posse of moody-looking teenagers who must have boarded the hayride for the irony of it but were probably secretly enjoying themselves.

“Ah. You’re awake!” said the person sitting next to her. Zadie turned and saw that it was Daniel, Finn’s older foster brother as well as a guy who kept a ukulele in his car just in case of “emergencies.” Zadie hadn’t asked him what he meant by this, because she was afraid he’d say something corny like, “Funmergencies!” To be fair, Daniel was a kindergarten teacher, so he probably had more use for a ukulele than most. He was clearly on the hayride by himself, which Zadie found kind of odd but not that surprising. Daniel didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who cared much about what other people thought of him.

“Welcome to the party, or should I say part-hay.”