“Oh! I mean, not because your toes are ugly, you just . . . you should put some polish on them! Sierra has some really cute decals she’d share. Look!” She shows me her toes, which are painted bright orange. There are little sun decals on her two big toes.

“Fun,” I say lamely.

“Hey, Rachel, how’s your summer going so far?” It’s Cybil Jackson. We’ve never been good friends, but she seems nice.

“Oh, hi. It’s OK. How’s yours?”

When she talks to me, she looks me right in the eye. It makes me feel funny.

“I have to work for my dad at the pharmacy, which stinks. But other than that it’s OK.” She wiggles her toes in the sand. I notice she doesn’t have any nail polish on, either. She catches me looking. “I hate nail polish,” she whispers just to me.

“You guys want to go in the water?” Sam asks.

“Definitely,” Cybil says.

They both pop up and walk toward the shoreline. Evan, Will, Tony, and a bunch of other boys join them. Will and Tony hold hands when they race into the water. I think they must be the longest-dating couple in our grade.

“You coming, Rach?” Sam asks.

“Be right there,” I say.

I wait until they’re all far out near the line before I slowly take off my T-shirt and shorts and run in as quickly as possible before anyone can see that I’m wearing the same lame bathing suit from the party.

Sierra and Ivy swim over to me and splash until I dip my head under. We play Clueless for a while, then Ivy says she’s hungry, so I tell her to go get our crackers out of the backpack.

“Your little sister is so cute,” Sierra says.

Cybil swims over to join us. “She’s gotten so much older! Remember in kindergarten when she was a baby and your dad brought her in every day for that unit on infant development? That was so fun.”

“I forgot all about that!” I say.

“The other kindergarten class was so jealous,” Sam says, swimming around our circle.

Cybil keeps smiling at me, like she just discovered who I was or something. It’s kind of weird.

“But she would only let you hold her. If anyone else tried to, she’d start screaming bloody murder,” Cybil says.

“I can’t believe you remember that,” I tell her.

Cybil nods. “And Mrs. Crowley wanted Ivy to be an honorary member of kindergarten.”

The memories all come to me now: our kindergarten class sitting in a circle on the floor, Ivy lying in a swaddled bundle in the center, cooing and trying to wriggle free. We weighed her once a week and kept track of each milestone, like sucking her thumb and smiling and a bunch of other stuff I don’t really remember.