“Rachel and Ivy, get down here!” my mom yells up the stairs.

I pull on my old shorts and a T-shirt and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, but Ivy is already inside. I bang on the door, even though that’ll probably make her stay in extra long.

“Mom’s calling us!” I urge through the door. “Get moving!”

She finally opens the door and shines her clean teeth at me. “All yours, sucker!” she says.

I step in and get accosted by the smell of her poop. “You are so gross!” I scream. I hold my breath, grab my toothbrush, and run downstairs to use the other bathroom.

“Can we please get going?” my mom says when I finish brushing my teeth.

I glare at Ivy again. “So gross,” I say again. “You’re eight years old, not five.”

“Everyone poops,” she says. “Even eight-year-olds.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” my mom says. “Now, let’s go.”

We follow her outside and down the driveway. Even from across the street, we can hear the new neighbors still giving orders to the movers, who roll furniture out of a massive moving truck. We weave through the parked trucks up the newly paved driveway. It smells like burning tar in the hot morning sun. Everything over here smells new.

“Hello?” my mom calls, stepping toward the neighbors.

The wife turns around. She looks like she’s in her sixties or so. She’s so tan that the creases in the wrinkles in her face look like someone made them with a dark-brown pen. Like she’s spent so much time in the sun, her skin has turned to leather.

“We’re your new neighbors from across the street,” my mom says to the lady. “These are my kids, Rachel and Ivy. I’m Lydia Gartner.”

The lady smiles, and her face lines deepen and darken even more. “Well, hello!” she says, all friendly. “It’s so nice to meet you!”

“We baked you a pie,” my mom says, holding it out. “Peaches aren’t quite in season yet, so I hope you like strawberry rhubarb.”

“So thoughtful of you.” The lady takes the pie and smells it. “My name’s Greer. Greer Townsend. My husband over there is Bev. Bev, honey, come meet our new neighbors!”

Bev seems like a strange name for a man. I wonder what it’s short for. He has the same kind of tanned and wrinkly leather face as Greer. He’s wearing bright-green shorts that have little white boats embroidered on them, and a matching white polo shirt. He looks like a guy you might see playing golf on TV. Greer has on a similar outfit, only a skirt, not shorts. It’s pink, and I think it’s a tennis skirt, the kind with shorts underneath.