“I’m not eating bacon anymore,” I say.

My mom rolls her eyes at me and tests the pasta.

“Grab the colander, would you, Rach? This is done.”

Dinner is kind of quiet as we all think about poor Lucy’s fate. My dad tries to bring up something new to talk about, but we keep circling back to raising animals. Ivy seems like she’s on the verge of tears. I’m glad tonight’s meal is meatless.

After dinner I offer to play a board game with Ivy. She picks Monopoly because it takes the longest. She has the worst strategy and always loses and gets upset, so tonight I decide not to buy any property until she gets a set and can put houses on something. My parents usually offer to play with us, but tonight they retreat into the dining room and talk quietly while they drink wine. Every so often one of them raises their voice and the other makes a hushing sound, then they get quiet again. I put some music on to drown out their voices, and Ivy and I sing along as we play. When Ivy finally wins, she insists that the Rolling Stones are her good-luck charm because that’s what was playing when she finally made me go bankrupt. She spreads all her property on the floor and lies down on top of it singing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” at the top of her lungs while she rolls around in the money.

“Take my picture!” she insists. “I want you to send it to Micah!”

Micah is the kind of person who does not believe in letting little kids win or cheat. He’s made Ivy cry a million times over games, but they always make up.

I find my phone to take a picture and send it. We wait for Micah to reply, watching as the screen says Delivered, then Read.” But Micah still doesn’t send a message back. It’s one thing to be a jerk to me, but it’s another to ignore Ivy. He knows how excited Ivy must be about winning for the first time. Maybe he knows I let her win and doesn’t think it should count.

Sometimes Micah really drives me crazy.

“Why won’t he reply?” Ivy asks.

I shrug. “Who knows,” I say. “Maybe you should call him.”

“Really? Can I?”

She runs over to the house phone and asks me for his number.

She does a little victory dance, bumping her hips from side to side, while she waits for Micah to answer the phone.

“Hi, Mr. Sasaki. It’s Ivy. Is Micah home?”

There’s a pause. I bet Micah purposefully didn’t answer it when he saw our number.

“Micah! Did you get Rachel’s text? I finally won Monopoly!” She starts doing another victory dance. “No, she didn’t let me win!” She stops dancing. “No.” She looks over at me suspiciously. “No, she didn’t.”