Ivy hauled four outfits out of her closet in the morning and spread them across her bed. She considered each in turn: a denim jumper, a plaid skirt with pleats, a polka-dotted dirndl, and the elegant dress of fluttery dark blue material that she’d fallen in love with at the thrift shop last fall.

Finally she pulled that one over her head. She was going to follow Ms. Mackenzie’s advice. She was going to amaze herself. She was not going to be beaten and she was not going to look beaten. She was going to look as good as possible. And as old as possible. She’d be in character—in the character of an eighteen-year-old, say, who was in charge of her own life.

When the dress’s last glittery rhinestone button was done up, Ivy pulled on a pair of black tights and laced up her granny boots and clumped down the hall.

She studied herself in the bathroom mirror. She thought she looked older than usual, but if she used her mom’s eye makeup, she would look older yet.

She did this, then added a swipe of lipstick and made kissy lips at herself. Next she put on a hat she’d found abandoned at a farmers’ market. It was made of navy-blue straw with a narrow brim and had a white satin ribbon around the band. She adjusted it, then nodded at herself and ran to the living room for her book bag.

• • •

Ms. Mackenzie stared when Ivy came through the door. “Wow,” she said. Ivy’s heart fell. Then she said, “You look lovely, Ivy, but you do have to take your hat off in class,” so Ivy did.

Tate came in and thunked Go Math! on her desk. She looked Ivy up and down and whistled. “Holy cats. You look like a million bucks.”

Ivy’s face flushed; she tugged on her braid. Then she remembered what she’d decided in her room. She lifted her nose and pooched her lips at Tate. She fluttered her eyelashes too, but they got stuck in the mascara, which maybe she’d put on too thick.

Tate laughed. “So what’s the outfit for, anyway?”

“Nothing, really. Just to do it. Just to be—different.”

“Different.” Tate tapped her bottom teeth with her thumbnail. “I like it.”

Ivy felt a rush of affection for her. “Also, I thought, maybe—it’d be like making a character. Did you ever think about that? How you don’t always have to just be you? You can, sort of, make somebody up and be them.”

Tate squinted at her worriedly.

“Like in a movie, I mean,” Ivy clarified, and Tate’s eyes brightened.

“I love movies,” Ivy confessed. She pulled some books out of her bag to hide how shy she felt. “I want to be a director someday.” She glanced back up at Tate and saw that her eyes had widened.

“That. Is. So. Cool.”

Ivy blushed. “Thanks.”

“If you ever really do it, call me, okay? I would love to help make a movie.”

Ivy couldn’t suppress the grin that took over her face.

• • •

That afternoon, when Ivy rounded the corner on her way home from school, the police cars were parked in the driveway again. Her steps slowed but she didn’t stop moving forward.

The doors of the second police car opened as she approached, and Ivy made a face. They seemed to already have a routine, the three of them. Her mom had a routine too. She stood on the steps with her feet planted and her arms crossed, scowling.

“What’s going on now?” Ivy asked the policeman in the driver’s seat.

“There’s been an allegation that your mom may have been involved in removing merchandise from the QuickMarket.”

“But she works at the QuickMarket.”

The officer sighed, so softly Ivy almost couldn’t hear him.

“What merchandise?” Ivy thought of the sack of flashlight batteries her mom had given her last week, and the popcorn. Also the half case of jam and the little pudding packets that had shown up in the kitchen one day.

The officer eased a blank expression over his face. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

Really, Ivy didn’t need him to say. If it was proof they were looking for, they’d find some right by her bed. She hadn’t used any of the batteries at first when her mom handed them to her, she was still too angry about her notebook. But then, when her flashlight batteries died, she’d gone ahead and opened the packages. Despite everything, it had made her feel good that her mom remembered her like this, that she knew about her flashlight and had brought home something Ivy wanted and needed, and so much of it. She’d actually taken it as a sign that maybe life with her mom could get better. It never occurred to her the batteries might be stolen.

Her mom saw her and stretched her arm out. It was an order: You come here.

Ivy met her mother’s gaze and asked with her eyes, Did you do this?

Her mother beckoned again. After half a second, Ivy turned and headed back down the walk.

“Hey, hold on—” the policeman called.

Ivy didn’t.

“Ivy! Get back here. Now,” her mom yelled.

Ivy walked steadily onward.

She felt like one of Mom Evers’s sewing pins trying to peel itself away from a big powerful magnet. (Ms. Mackenzie had brought magnets and pins in for their science section last week.) Her legs were as heavy as bags of cement. She’d helped Dad Evers with the addition’s foundation before she moved, so she knew exactly how heavy that was: crazy heavy, much heavier than it seemed like one not-very-large sack of mortar could possibly be. Her feet were almost impossible to lift.

She did it, though. She put one foot in front of the other until she was halfway down the block. She risked a look over her shoulder then, but none of the policemen had followed her. Probably they had bigger fish to fry than one doomed girl. She turned the corner and kept walking.