It was difficult to explain the sensation that had come over Sherri during the barre class—it was a feeling of helplessness, of haplessness, such as she hadn’t experienced in a very long time, not since she’d been forced to play volleyball in high school gym class. (“Look where you want the ball to go, Sherri!” the gym teacher had cried again and again. “Not where you’re afraid it’s going!”) Sherri had never, ever gotten the hang of volleyball. Nor badminton. Really, anything with a net. And now, apparently, anything with a barre as well. In her old life, of course, she’d been curvier. And if she got too curvy, there was good old-fashioned dieting. A home gym, although Bobby used that more than Sherri.

It was some time later that she fully felt the sting of her failure and her exclusion. She had stopped in to pick up Katie’s summer reading book at the lovely little bookstore on State Street. She peeked in the window of the coffee shop next door and saw the whole group, bent over their lattes and cappuccinos, talking earnestly. Her cheeks burned, and she ducked her head, turning away from the window.

She thought she’d navigated the most difficult experiences of her life already, before she and Katie had arrived here. Now, with her legs about to give out on her, looking at these women whose daughters controlled the incoming sixth grade, she wondered if her biggest challenges might still be coming.

There had been talk of a lunch table. Katie had to get a seat at that lunch table.

She turned around and almost ran into another woman, the woman who had been kind to her at the restaurant. She combed her mind for the name.

“Rebecca,” said the woman. “Morgan’s mom? We met briefly at the beach, and then at dinner.” Rebecca’s eyes flicked toward the coffee shop and back to Sherri. Instantly Sherri understood. Either by her own choice or the choice of others, she hadn’t been included either.

“Hey, Morgan and I are planning on going to the beach today. Are you free? You and your daughter should come.”

Rebecca offered to pick up Sherri and Katie, explaining that she already had a parking pass to get onto the reservation and it would be silly for Sherri to pay the parking fee. Sherri didn’t know what “the reservation” was until they arrived; apparently it was a state-owned beach with a campground and miles of parking for which you could use the special pass. Nothing to do with Indians, as Sherri had initially thought. Oh, she had so much to learn.