40

Temperatures were rising, and Sarabeth called Miranda, suggested a walk around Lake Merritt. They went on a Sunday, passed picnicking families and couples on Rollerblades, and a pack of teenagers who were perched on a pair of bike racks: talking loud, chiding one another, laughing. Sarabeth imagined a time in the future when Lauren would look her up, and the two of them would have dinner and talk first about the present, and then about the recent past, and only toward the end about this year. I thought about you, Lauren might say, I wondered what happened to you, and Sarabeth would say, I thought about you, too.

Because she did. She thought about Lauren much younger and also Lauren now, about the things inside her that had caused her to do what she’d done. Sarabeth wondered what those things had been, what they’d felt like, sounded like. How much they’d been like the things inside Lorelei.

The song was quieter. It was hardly there. It was so familiar, she would tell Lauren. I was sure I knew it. I was always trying to hear the words.

Don’t worry about the words, she imagined Lauren saying. You don’t want to hear the words.

Another day, she set about washing the outsides of her windows. The sky was a soft, hazy blue, and it was so warm she stripped down to the camisole she wore under her sweater. It was satisfying to stand on a ladder in the sun, satisfying to give her house a little elbow grease. Windex hooked to her belt loop, she moved from window to window, until at last she arrived at the big front one.

The red tablecloth looked pretty bad from out here, and as she sprayed she thought she should get a real curtain. She wiped the running Windex and then rubbed the glass in circles, imagining something sheer, something that would let in some light. The window was a little wider than her arm span, and she found that she couldn’t quite reach to the far side. She considered repositioning the ladder but instead stepped to the window ledge, where she found her balance and sprayed again.

“You’re kind of like Spider-Man,” said a voice.

She turned, and there was Pilar, standing in the middle of her family’s backyard, wearing too-small flowered bike shorts and a tank top.

“I guess I am,” Sarabeth said.

“I’m not allowed to see that movie,” Pilar said, taking a step closer. “My sister isn’t, either.”

“If you’re not allowed to see it, then how do you know what he’s like?”

“I snuck.”

“You snuck into the movie?”

“I snuck watching the preview. Dummy.”

“Oh,” Sarabeth said. “Got it.” She hesitated for a moment and then turned back to the window. She wiped it, sprayed again, wiped again. She hooked the Windex back in her belt loop, stepped onto the ladder, climbed down.

“Fighting is worse than kissing,” Pilar said from very nearby. “In movies.”

“Goodness, you’re very quiet,” Sarabeth said. Pilar had moved—as stealthily as the Indian whose headdress she’d worn on Thanksgiving—and was now just a few feet away.

Pilar shook her head. “No, I’m not. My teacher says I’m too loud.”

“Oh. That’s not very nice.”

“Well, my mom says I have to cooperate or I’ll get a consequence.”

Sarabeth looked Pilar over. She wore orange plastic sandals and glittery purple nail polish, and a dirty Band-Aid flapped from her knee. This was the first time Sarabeth had seen her up close since Thanksgiving, and she thought Pilar was not as fetching as she had been. She was growing and leaving her cuteness behind.

They stood there looking at each other. Sarabeth considered taking the ladder back to her shed, but she wasn’t sure how to walk away. “Would you like to come in?” she said.

“Do you have any cookies?”

“I may.” She led the way up the porch steps and into the house. In the kitchen she opened a cabinet. “I have some digestive biscuits,” she said. “Do you like those?”

Pilar stared up at the shelf. “What are they?”

Sarabeth handed Pilar the package. “They’re pretty tasty, actually.”

“Are they good for you?”

“I think so. I think they’re high in fiber.”

Pilar handed them back. “My dad eats cereal like that. To help him poop.”

“Ah.”

“Do you have any lemonade?”

“You know, I don’t. I have tangerine-grapefruit juice, though.”

“That’s OK. Look, I lost a tooth.” Pilar thrust her jaw forward and pulled down her lower lip, revealing a tiny space right in front.

“Very cool,” Sarabeth said. “Did the tooth fairy come?”

“She gave me a dollar.”

“Wow. She’s gotten a lot nicer since I was a kid.”

“Were you fast on teeth?”

Sarabeth didn’t understand this. “Fast on teeth?”

“I’m slow on them. My sister is superfast. When she was my age she’d lost five teeth already.”

“Oh,” Sarabeth said. “I see.”

“I’m fast on height. I grew three inches since my last birthday. My sister only grew one.” Pilar looked at Sarabeth. “What are you fast on?”

“Me?” Sarabeth said. “Grown-ups can be pretty slow, actually.”

“So can kids. My brother is very slow on table manners.”

“He’ll get there.”

“That’s what my mom says. My dad says, ‘Isaac! Use your fork!’” For this last, she nearly shouted. “My dad thinks you’re pretty,” she added.

“You know,” Sarabeth said, “you might not want to tell people what other people think about them.”

“It’s OK,” Pilar said. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There’s really no such thing as pretty.”

Sarabeth smiled. Pilar was still fetching—but in a different, more complicated way. When you didn’t see people for a while, you could see the changes in them more clearly.

“I have to go now,” Pilar said. “But I could come back over sometime, when you have other cookies.”

“I’d like that,” Sarabeth said, and she walked Pilar to the front door and then watched as she trotted home. When the Heidts’ patio door was closed again, she went down the porch steps and circled her house, admiring her cleaned windows. She liked the way bits of branches and sky were reflected in the glass. It was quite cool in the shade now. She remembered springtime in her own childhood, when the nights were so much cooler than the days, and the house in the late afternoon was chilly and dark. She pictured Pilar inside her house, shivering in her bike shorts and tank top but refusing to change.