I hear the car pull out of the driveway in the middle of the afternoon. Mom didn’t even tell me where she’s going, which is pretty unusual, but I guess it’s that kind of day. Meanwhile, I’ve been lying like a lump in the front room for hours, half watching TV.

I still have three books I’m supposed to read before school starts. That’s tomorrow, so that’s pretty much not going to happen, but I figure I can power through one of them. I’m not going to get anything done lying on this couch, so I grab the thinnest book and head for the living room.

I sit in the chair closest to JR’s spot, and he raises his head. I ask him where Mom went, but he’s not saying.

“You’re only fifty percent hers, you know,” I say. “If you round down, that’s zero.”

He drops his head again, and I go back to my book. It’s Hiroshima by John Hersey. I figured that was a metaphor, but, nope, it is actually about Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it. I wonder if I made the wrong choice for a while, but it really is a short book and by then I’m already on page forty. I’m a pretty fast reader.

On page sixty-three, JR comes over and sits next to my chair. I don’t know if he’s leaving his spot or just expanding its edges a little. I reach down and sort of ruffle-scratch the fur between his ears. It’s not something I would’ve tried even a few days ago, but I figure he didn’t come over here to bite me and it turns out I’m right.

If someone were to walk by the living room window right now, well, 1) it would freak me out. They’d have to be standing in the backyard to be looking in. But 2) they’d just think they were looking at a normal kid and a normal dog. I’m doing my homework, and he’s curled up next to my chair.

The rest of us are freaking out about the lawsuit, but JR doesn’t really know what’s going on, and I’m sort of hoping he never has to. Mom has been gone for a few hours now, and I let myself think — at least I let part of me think — that she’ll take care of this. Maybe she’s taking care of it right now, talking with Greg or whatever, just like she’s always taken care of things for us.

By the time she gets back, JR is asleep and I’ve had enough of gruesome radiation burns and skin falling off and am ready for dinner. And sure enough, she comes back with a few bags of food and no explanation, as if buying forty bucks’ worth of groceries took three and a half hours. This isn’t one of those no-news-is-good-news situations, though. I figure if she’s not telling me something, it’s something I don’t want to know. Plus, I’m hungry.

I head back to the front room after dinner, and when I walk past the clock, I realize I’ve got twelve hours until school starts up again. Between the people I’m not talking to, the ones who aren’t talking to me, and the ones I haven’t seen since the last time we were all there, tomorrow is going to be a total train wreck. I sit down on the couch, and the two books I didn’t read are just looking at me. They’re trying to blame me for passing them over, but I know it’s their fault. Try being 160 pages, I want to tell them. Try being about nuclear destruction. Then we’ll talk.

I watch some TV, but the books keep staring. This time they have a point. It’s highly unlikely that I’m going to be tested on episode three of the Seven Ages of Rock. I reach over and pick up Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, but the thing is thick as a brick.

There’s a knock on the side door, the one closest to where I am. I wait to make sure I’m not just hearing things. Whoever it is knocks again: one, two, three times. In case there was any doubt left, JR starts barking and I hear him heading down the hall. I get to the door a few steps before him and shield him off with my legs as I crack open the door. I am not at all prepared for who it is.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

It’s Janie. I can see her boxy little hybrid parked at the very end of the driveway, the back wheels practically in the road. Those things are quiet.

“I didn’t, uh,” I start. “I didn’t expect.”

It’s not a full sentence, but it’s close enough.

“You never do,” she says. “But I thought, you know, you’ve humiliated yourself enough at this point.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s probably true.”

JR is working his way around, trying to stick his head out the open door, and I have to sort of hip-check him to keep his nose pinned against the door frame. He’s built like a bulldozer and crazy strong.

“That your new dog?” she says, lifting her head up and to the side to get a better look.

“Nah,” I say. “I have no idea who this is.” I give him another little hip check and try to figure out how I’m going to let Janie in.

“I hear he bit Mars’s arm off,” she says.

“He should’ve.”