Me and Peaches cooking. Arguing over math, too, and the cheat sheet she tried to give me recently. “But I ain’t ask you for it.”

“Well —” She puts sticks of butter in the pot, stirring. “I was helping you out anyhow.”

I stop rolling out dough. “You thinking I’m stupid, too? Everybody thinking that, huh?” I rush across the kitchen, pulling open the drawer. Poor Grades Take Down Star Wrestler, the newspaper article say. “It’s not right. Schools should keep a kid’s private stuff private.”

Peaches look at me for a long time. Before she say anything, I’m telling her, “I fail on my own. Pass that way, too.” I open the window. Tear up the article, let the wind have it.

We both go back to work. Sweating like we in the oven baking with those apple pies. We cooking for the lady up the block. She got book club today. Twenty chicken potpies. Six apple pies. Plus lemon berry ice cream. Everything from scratch, even the ice cream.

Pressing out the dough, I think about Adonis. He shoulda said yes, I’ll help you read better. Two days passed already. Why ain’t he say nothing?

Peaches walking over, blowing a spoon filled with veggies and chicken. I open my mouth, wide. “A little more pepper, this much salt.” I show her with my fingers. I take the top off the pot. Watch the chicken pushing past the peas, the carrots sitting on top the string beans while I think about that article. They used to write good things about me.

Getting back to the table, Peaches start up with school again.

She and me never talked about her cheating. Not the first time. Not the second time after she tried to pass me that paper. Then she did it again yesterday. Like I didn’t already show her that’s not something I do. “Do you want to pass ninth grade?” She rolling a piece of dough in her hand, eating it. “You getting further and further behind.” If I just catch up on a few tests, she saying, I’ll feel better about myself.

I yank open the cabinet. “So cheat. That’s what you want me to do?”

I got some nerve acting high and mighty, she saying, when I’m practically flunking school. I wanna know how she can cheat and talk about wanting to be the twelfth-grade valedictorian when the time come. Three times don’t make her a cheat. She telling me that without laughing at herself.

I’m at the cabinet, pushing boxes and cans around, looking for vanilla and lemon extract for these pies. That’s when I see it written on a can. Big and red. All the letters capitalized. Evaporated. It’s how I feel. Invisible, almost gone.

Running upstairs, holding on to the can, I open my jar. Spelling the word out in pearl-gray crayon. I stuff the paper in the jar and put the lid back on.

Peaches calling me. I’m Google searching, looking for a definition for evaporate. Vanish. Fade, one site says. I like those. “No, this the one I like.” I mix my definition with theirs, like grits and butter. Evaporate is … when all the moisture in you or something else is dried out and nothing’s left behind but the solid stuff. Everything else done vanished.

“Autumn! I can’t make pies!”

My mother calling me now, right along with Peaches, like I been up here forever.

Walking downstairs, I’m thinking. This how I been feeling — like my body is here but the inside of me is fading. Evaporated. Sucked away. Gone, like wrestling.

“Dad!” My father’s got a spoon dipping in the pot, sampling our food.

“You gonna get that restaurant, I do believe.” Kissing my cheek, he reminds me I gotta save some of the money I make for the books I threw away. They wasn’t free to the libraries that bought ’em. So I have to pay ’em back.

Mom’s behind him, mentioning Miss Baker. She called late last night. I skipped her class all week and would be on punishment, but the book club asked us to cook three months ago. We can’t let ’em down. And what else my parents gonna take away from me? Cooking?

Miss Pattie walking into the kitchen, dressed in all red, talking about school. She got this idea. She will work with me on my reading. “Four hours every Saturday. That’ll do it.”

We arguing, ’cause my parents like what she saying. Peaches and me yelling ’cause that’s our cooking day. Plus I’m thinking Miss Pattie gonna give me eczema like she gave Peaches, bugging me about school all the time.

When Peaches’s father walks in using a cane, everybody gets quiet. If wrinkles was wings, he could fly to Paris, I think. “Peaches.” He walks over to her. “Studying time.” Looking at his watch, he say they need to leave.

Miss Pattie got to remind him that we cooking. “Running a business.” Then she whispers, “He getting old.”

She take him back to the living room and then comes in reminding the two of us. “Study. Do well in school. A girl needs that.”

I wonder sometimes, with all her talk, if Miss Pattie don’t feel like she evaporating, too.