At home Ivy’s mom sat on the couch flipping through a magazine. It was her day off, but even so Ivy was surprised to see her up. She’d spent most of her free time in bed since they moved here.

Her mom was wearing her Hot S--t T-shirt with her favorite jeans. Her right leg was jiggling like it was going somewhere even if the rest of her stayed put. She looked up when Ivy came in. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“How was school?”

Ivy’s eyes widened. “Okay.”

Her mom smacked the magazine shut. “Want to go for a drive?”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“I wouldn’t have said so if I didn’t.”

Ivy picked her bag up again—her notebook and pencils were in it and she didn’t like to go anywhere without them—and followed her mother to the car.

They roared out of their neighborhood in the Mustang. Her mother drove swiftly toward the north side of town and Ivy wondered where they were going. To one of the parks on the river, maybe. She hoped so. But then her mother crossed the bridge and got on the highway south to Poughkeepsie and Ivy’s heart tightened.

“Cute town,” her mom said flatly as they drove through a little village with narrow streets.

“Yeah.” A fancy coffee shop, an antique store, and a gelato place slid by.

They stopped at a light, and her mom turned the radio up so loud the car almost shook. She gave the gas pedal a quick hard shove and made the engine roar, and the people waiting at the crosswalk turned to look. She roared away when the light turned green. “Give ’em a dose of the real world. Which this is not, believe me.”

“Mmm,” Ivy said. It was the real world. Ivy could’ve reached out and touched every bit of it: the gold-plate letters of ANTIQUE SHOPPE, the curved backs of the wrought-iron chairs in the gelato place, the silky fabric of the dress a woman on the corner wore, the springy fur of her tiny dog.

Ivy was glad when they left the town behind, but nervous again when they reached the north side of Poughkeepsie. Her heart shriveled as they approached George’s neighborhood.

“Mom?”

Her mom downshifted.

“What are you doing?”

Her mom eased the car into the turn for George’s street. “Lindsey called from work. She said George came in with some brunette. Like he was trying to flaunt her in my face, only I wasn’t there.”

“Mom—”

“It’s only been a few weeks, it really steams me.”

Ivy clutched the door handle. She wished she had the courage to suggest to her mom that she find a safe place to go inside her head instead of coming here.

• • •

“Whoops!” her mom said when she clipped George’s mailbox two minutes later. The mailbox tilted backward but didn’t fall all the way over. “Guess I got a little too close.” She hit the gas and sped away. Ivy glanced around, but as far as she could tell, there was no one to have seen. She sank down in her seat anyway.

She only inched up when they’d crossed the Hudson again and her mom pulled into a restaurant parking lot. She flicked off the ignition and the key ring clacked. It was a string of translucent beads in different colors that spelled out T-R-A-C-Y. “I don’t feel like cooking.”

Ivy unclipped her seat belt. She wondered if it was coincidence that they’d pulled into the Really Fine Diner. She loved the Really Fine, of course. She’d come here with the Everses so much that she knew most of the waitresses by name—Zoe, Olympia, Margot, and Susan. But she’d never been here with her mother. Ivy glanced at her. She was riffling through her purse for a piece of Nicorette. She fished one up and began chewing it like a starved person. “Ready?”

Ivy nodded. Her stomach was churning.

• • •

Zoe led them across the room and they passed Ms. Mackenzie at a table crowded with people. Ms. Mackenzie leaned toward a man with large ears and pointed at him with her fork. She was having the Greek salad, Ivy noticed with a spark of pleasure. Ms. Mackenzie grinned when she saw Ivy. “Hey! I know you!”

“Hello,” Ivy said shyly. Suddenly, she felt happier. Ms. Mackenzie tapped her plate with the fork she’d been pointing at the big-eared man. “The best Greek salad in town.”

“I know. It’s my favorite too.”

At the table, Ivy studied her menu even though she always got either a cheeseburger or a Greek salad, and then Zoe came and took their order. Five minutes later, her mom’s face had turned dark. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “This is taking too long.”

“I’ll bet it comes soon, though. It’s usually pretty fast here.”

“Is that so? Your precious Everses bring you here, is that it? Take you out to eat all the time like it’s nothing?”

Ivy took a sip of tea instead of pointing out that the Everses sold their produce here.

The food came a minute later. Ivy poked an olive onto her fork and ate it in two bites, then mashed a chunk of feta onto a few spinach leaves and munched that down. She looped a circle of onion and a banana pepper onto her fork next and speared another olive. She wished her mom would start eating too.

Finally her mom took a bite of chicken strip. She put it down. Ivy looked at her through lowered lashes and kept eating. Grammy would’ve told her she was eating too fast, if she’d been there.

When Zoe came by and asked how everything was, Ivy said good at the same time as her mom said terrible. “The fries are burnt, they’re inedible, and the chicken strips are no good, they don’t taste right, they’re spoiled or something. Plus they’re cold. It’s ridiculous.”

Zoe’s face went slack with surprise. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t think that’s possible. Those fries are not burnt, and as far as the chicken, I’ve been serving it all afternoon and no one else has complained. And they can’t be cold, either, I watched the cook pull them out of the fryer.”

“Bull,” Ivy’s mother said fiercely.

Ivy dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate and an olive rolled onto the table. Her mom whipped her head around and stared at her like she’d done an unimaginably bad thing. Fortunately—or not so fortunately, depending on how you looked at it—she was too mad at Zoe to concentrate on Ivy for long. She said a lot of things; her words were like a swarm of hornets. The bottom line was, she wanted to leave without paying for her meal or Ivy’s, even though Ivy’s Greek salad—which Zoe had been nice enough to add extra banana peppers and olives to without Ivy even asking—was perfect.

“I can’t do that,” Zoe said. “But how about I give you your meal and a dessert, and everyone can part ways with no hard feelings?”

“Not good enough.”

Ivy shot Zoe an agonized look and Zoe gave her a quick grim smile before she turned her attention back to Ivy’s mom. “I’m sorry you feel this way, ma’am, but I’m not comping both meals. I’ll get my manager—”

Ivy’s mother picked up Ivy’s notebook, the artist’s book Grammy’d given her for her birthday that said Universal Wire-Bound Sketchbook on the front cover sticker, and hurled it at the wall.

The pages flared open. Zoe hopped sideways. Ivy didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She bolted for the exit. She stumbled on something as she rushed past Ms. Mackenzie’s table, but yanked her foot free and kept moving.

She tried not to look at anyone. Maybe that little-kid fantasy that anyone you didn’t see couldn’t see you would work. But to her horror, just before she got through the dining room, she saw the boy from the theater in Rosendale. He was at a table with an older couple, his parents or grandparents probably. He looked right at her and Ivy could tell he recognized her.

Her cheeks flamed. She hurtled out the door.