“Also it was the first time I’d ever punched a guy, and I’m pretty sure I did it wrong. I swear I’m not violent, but he said your name….”

A rush of warmth spread from my chest; for his hurt hand, for the thought of his defending me.

“Muir.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to come in?”

I tried to see past him into the house. “Your mom awake?”

“She’s on the mountain still.”

The rain was cold and insistent.

“Come inside,” he said.

“Do you have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Can you take me home by eleven?”

He looked at his watch and stepped toward me. “We have an hour and fifty minutes. I’ll get you home early. I promise.” Their porch had no cover, he kissed me and the rain soaked my hair, and we went inside.

I was back at Francine’s by ten fifty-five. Promise kept.

Chapter Sixteen

SCHOOL LET OUT the day before Thanksgiving, and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen with Francine, peeling eight thousand potatoes, russet and sweet, for the next day’s dinner at Kira’s house. Francine used handwritten recipe cards stored in a little metal file box. Rain beat the windows, and Francine was blasting a James Taylor CD. I felt sixty years old, like Francine and I were two old ladies living in our Golden Girls retirement home for active adults. I loved it.

Pies baked and cooled on racks, apple and pumpkin. She had cider in a pot on the stove. We ate salad for lunch, in readiness for the eating marathon.

“I love Thanksgiving,” I said, trimming the crust off yet another pie.

“This is the quietest one I’ve had in years. Yours, too, I bet.”

I nodded.

We cooked and baked all day.

In the evening I took a shower and lay in the big bed doing homework the best I could manage with Terry Johnson sprawled across my open history book when my phone lit up. Kira.

Can you come to Blackbird

Nine-thirty. Blackbird had closed at noon. I put on a sweater and my raincoat and asked Francine if I could go.

“Home by eleven,” she said.

“Eleven,” I repeated.

The rain had stopped but the sky was pitch black. I used Francine’s headlamp and walked fast to town, where Blackbird’s windows were lit up warm and bright, chairs on the tables. I knocked on the glass door and stepped in. Kira, up on a six-foot ladder, turned to me as the bells rang.

“I am a paid artist.”

The huge, long chalkboard behind the register was covered, not with a menu but with a mural of the Puget Sound. My mouth hung open.

It was intricate and beautiful, all color and life and birds and water, ferry boats and whales and, in the center, Mount Rainier’s snowy peak.

“I don’t even know what to— When did you do this?”