Like criminals on the run or a family whisked away by witness protection, the Langsoms had moved from 16 Olcott Place in the dead of night. Maybe they packed up all their possessions into brown cardboard boxes during the days and scheduled the movers to come long after dark. As the neighborhood slept, the movers skulked up and down the porch steps—somehow hauling out four generations of furniture and the wardrobes and belongings of a family of five without a loud grunt of exertion or the heart-stopping rattle of good china. Maybe Dr. Langsom slipped the driver a fifty-dollar bill and asked him to wait until he turned the corner before flicking on his headlights. They might have dressed in all black, the Langsoms and the movers, so that they looked like a band of night prowlers. They might have worn ski masks to camouflage themselves more thoroughly in the darkness.

Whatever they did, none of us saw it.

We found out they’d left from the mailman, who wondered aloud when the new folks would be moving in. “Been on this route for forty years,” he told my dad. “Strange to see that house in particular change hands.”

We didn’t know then who would be moving in, just that the house had been listed low, according to Aunt Jillian, and it sold fast. There wasn’t an open house or anything—my mom had planned to go just to look around. By the time the realtor came by to hammer a sign into the lawn, it already read SOLD.

“Why do they need a sign, then?” I’d asked Aunt Jillian. We were walking my dog, Toby. Or rather, I was walking Toby and Aunt Jillian was capitalizing on the excuse to take a closer look at the Harrington’s sign.

“It’s a feather in his cap. Although a property that well maintained, priced to move, you’d have to be half-dead to botch that sale.” She jabbed her finger at the sign. Ned McGovern’s cheesy mug grinned at us from the swinging, wooden panel.

“Smug idiot,” Aunt Jillian muttered. With the sign slightly moving, it looked like Ned was winking.

“You still hang out with him?” I asked Aunt Jillian, without being entirely sure she would answer. They had dated a little when he’d separated from his wife. It hadn’t gone well.

“Ned McGovern? You remember that whole episode?” she asked. I looked straight at her in response. “Yeah, I guess that one would be hard to forget, huh? No. And that’s okay.” She turned away from the sign and tugged at Toby’s leash in my hand. “Let’s walk to the park.”

I glanced sideways at Aunt Jillian. “You okay?”

She sighed. “Yeah. That was a hard time. But you know, Olivia, we were both adults, making adult decisions. I knew what I was getting into. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into it. But I did.”

“He’s still married?” I knew he’d gotten back together with his wife. We sometimes saw them at church, sitting third row, with two little boys who drove toy cars all over Ned’s shoulders.

“Yep. And I switched agencies. So we don’t see each other. We don’t talk. If Ned McGovern wrecks anything now, it sure won’t be because of me.” She looked at the house then. “And anyway—that place has a history, and part of me feels relieved that I don’t have to deal with it. The less you tell the new owners, the better. That’s always true.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

But she just shook her head and walked away.

That day I kept turning it over in my mind—the strange way that friendships sometimes work. I passed the four houses that stood between our home and the Langsom house. Which was no longer the Langsom house. Where my mom’s best friend growing up recently lived, except that by the time she lived at that address, they were no longer best friends. I thought of the way I had felt so close to Kaia Gillespie in the second grade, how people pronounced our names LivandKai so frequently together it became its own name, to which we both answered. And we were still friends, but the rhythm of Brooke and Kaia sounded much more familiar lately. And that summer I’d hardly spoken to Allie Hodges, even though I used to go up with the Hodges to their lake house every Labor Day weekend, for years.

That’s the ebb and flow I was thinking about when I followed Aunt Jillian up the street. My friendship with Janie Donahue did not ebb and flow and lap softly like lake water against the shore.

With Janie, friendship was more like the ocean, sometimes with crashing waves and an unexpected undertow.

Here is a comprehensive list of facts I learned about Janie Donahue in the last week of July and the first week of our friendship:

Her real-life laugh sounded like a fake laugh; she actually said, “Ha-ha-ha-ha.”

She used to be pigeon-toed when she was little, and still had to wear specially molded inserts in her shoes, which meant she did not wear open-toed shoes, even flip-flops in the summertime.

Even though the pigeon-toed thing gave me pause, because people who walk like that tend to run faster than average, Janie didn’t run cross-country, or even track. She wouldn’t compete with me for a spot on the team. Her sister, Lucy, was the runner. Janie was into diving.

She could not remember a sequence of numbers to save her life, so we decided early on that we’d share a locker at school and I would remember the combo for both of us.

Janie hated the Beatles, and when I asked, “Who hates the Beatles?” it turned out she had this theory that a person either loves the Rolling Stones or the Beatles and whichever is the case reveals his or her whole personality.

That theory was probably her dad’s, but she claimed it as her own.

I used to think I liked the Beatles fine, but sitting up in Janie’s freshly painted and still empty room, with the milk crates that held her father’s record collection between us, and listening to Mick Jagger’s gravelly voice singing, “She’s my little rock and roll,” I stopped being so sure.

“I mean, okay,” I told her. “But I still don’t hate the Beatles. I don’t see how anyone hates the Beatles.” Throughout most of elementary school, our vacation bible school chorus had sung “Let it Be.” No anthem of youth or anything, but a perfectly fine sentiment for a song.

“But it doesn’t make you move in your seat,” Janie pointed out. “Who would you rather dance to?”

“Well, you wouldn’t sing this song at vacation bible school, that’s for sure.”

We abandoned records to unpack the rest of her stuff. Between us, we maneuvered a rolled-up rug to the center of the room and unfurled it. Janie was apparently really into chevron. “You think you’ll try to stay in touch with anyone?” I asked. But what I meant was Is there space for me? Janie FaceTimed a lot with her old friends. Her phone would chime with texts. Back then, in the first weeks, she’d read them to herself so it felt like I existed on only one strand of her social life. She was also living another version, one that didn’t include me.

“It feels like I’m in orbit,” she told me. “You know, like in space? It’s self-centered and everything, but it’s hard to believe life is still going on like normal without me there. Like someone else will use the locker I would have used and after a week or two, it won’t even seem strange that I’m not at lunch. Everything will just seal up again. Without FaceTime, it would feel even weirder—like when we left home, home evaporated.”

“Would that be better or worse?” I asked. As I opened boxes, I handed over piles of clothes and Janie filled her closet with them. Janie’s closet was worth moving to a new state for. It had built-in drawers and a small ladder that led up to the attic.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe easier.” She shut one drawer, then another, and looked past me at the shambles of bedding and boxes in the room. “My dad says I have four years here and that I need to make the most of them.”

The Donahues talked a lot about college and the future and potential. I figured that out in the first few days, when Mrs. Donahue asked me about my courses and if most kids in Glennon Heights took the ACT or the SAT, which I didn’t know because I am not some kind of prodigy like Lucy apparently is. Janie generally assumed the twins would be headed back to Massachusetts when it was time to go away to school. “At least Lucy will. She’ll apply early to Smith.”

“Will Ben apply there too?”

Janie snorted with laughter. “He wishes. Smith is all girls and that’s probably why Lucy’s so set on it—he can’t follow her there. He might take a year off first anyway.”

Ben still had not said a single word to me, even though I’d spent most of my waking hours at the house since the Donahues had first moved in. Occasionally, we’d see him in the kitchen and he’d grunt, but I honestly couldn’t tell if he was making a minimal effort to acknowledge us or if they were accidental noises. I couldn’t imagine Ben taking a gap year and volunteering in Honduras or building houses for Habitat for Humanity. At that point, I could not picture him interacting with other people at all.

“What will he do?” I asked.

“He’ll probably be on parole or something.” Janie shrugged and laughed.

“I plan to go to college in your new closet.”

“It’s dope, right?”

“Are you kidding? It’s entirely possible that we can climb that ladder and find ourselves in a magical realm.”

“I’m thinking that once I get done with my room, I’ll start taking over the attic before Lucy and Ben even realize it’s open space.” The attic extended the full length of the house. It was hot and creaky, but the beamed ceilings made it look like the inside of a Viking ship.

“I can basically run cross-country up there.”

Janie grinned. “I’ll ask to install a pool for Christmas.”

I knew she was joking, but it was the kind of joke that pried open a window to talk about a topic I’d studiously avoided since the coffee shop debacle. I didn’t know how Janie would take it, so instead of wading in, I just dove.

“Can I ask you a question? What does your dad do?”

“You mean, are we rich?”

“It’s a really nice house.”

“It’s my mom’s dream house.” Janie looked around. “Maybe she’s having a midlife crisis or something, but she found the listing online and just went crazy. She had to have it.”

I tried to wrap my head around uprooting a whole family, making the kids switch schools, and moving to a new state after finding a house online. It was a beautiful house, but still. “Wait—are you serious? Aren’t you so angry?”

“We had to move anyway.” I waited for the rest of the explanation, but it didn’t come. Instead, after a few beats of silence, Janie said, “But no, we’re not rich. My dad’s a consultant, so he can work from anywhere, really. And my mom’s a nurse. I mean, I don’t think we’re hurting, but back in our old house, Lucy and I had to share a room. Now she gets a turret and I have that closet.”

“But that doesn’t just happen, right? Maybe they won the lottery. They just don’t want to tell you in case it ruins your work ethic.” I didn’t want to believe Janie would lie but she wasn’t making a whole lot of sense either. So maybe she was just wrong. Maybe it was Janie who was so trusting, believing her parents despite any logical explanation to the contrary. “Did somebody you know die recently?” I asked her. “Maybe it’s an inheritance? Maybe your mom was caring for a really wealthy patient, who had no family of her own—”

“Seriously, all anyone seems to care about around here is money.” Which was the last thing I wanted Janie to think, of course. I’d just gotten wrapped up in the mystery. Taking a step back, seeing it from her side, I felt instantly sorry.

“We don’t— It really doesn’t matter to anyone. I just wondered and figured it was better to ask.”

Janie looked away and bit her lip and for a second it seemed like she had something else to tell me. Then she nodded. “It is better. I’d rather you ask. But if other people are wondering, Olivia, there’s no story. It’s my mom’s dream house. She does a lot for us. We weren’t going to stand between her and something that would make her so happy. At least I wouldn’t anyway.”

Because I didn’t want to annoy her with more questions, I didn’t ask Janie who would stand between her mom and 16 Olcott. None of it made a whole lot of sense, but it wasn’t mine to make sense of. I tried to find a way back to the easy jokes we’d been sharing a few minutes before.

“So does that mean there’s no budget for an attic pool?”

Janie looked grateful then, and lobbed a chevron throw pillow in my general direction. “Hey, I have four more years to get my room just right. Let’s get out of here. There has to be a town pool or something, right? Can we go on our own? Or do we have to invite the catty coffee shop crew?”

I felt relieved that we’d escaped the tension I created by nosing around the Donahues’ personal business. How could I have insisted we call Brooke and Kaia after that? Or anyone else who I couldn’t guarantee would steer clear of the wrong questions? It was like I was some kind of ambassador between Janie Donahue and the gossiping forces of our small town.

Janie changed into a no-nonsense Speedo and a pair of denim cutoffs and strapped a pair of goggles onto her head. Kaia would have asked her, “That’s what you’re wearing?” so I stopped the question at my lips. We detoured at my house on the way so I could change. “Hurry—I can already smell the chlorine,” Janie insisted, so I took the steps two at a time and left her out on the front stoop. I chose a bikini and threw on a clean pair of running shorts, but tucked a silk sarong in my backpack along with sunscreen and two bottles of water.

I came banging out of the front door to find Janie staring at her own new home. “Jeez, it’s really enormous, isn’t it?”

I nodded toward my house. “In comparison.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she rushed to say. “When we pulled up in the car the other day, for once we all went silent at the same time. My mom and dad had done a walk-through but it was the first time Lucy, Ben, and I had seen it.” She shrugged like she was attempting to shake off a spell. “I live there now.”

“Yeah, you do, you snob.” She snapped her towel at me and we laughed halfway to the pool, riding our bikes with our towels around our necks. “No locks?” Janie asked when I guided her to the bike rack.

“No locks.”

“I feel like Ben might end up stealing a lot of bikes,” she joked. Or at least I thought she was joking.

I signed us in with the lifeguard and scanned the pool and the chaises for anyone we might know. Or rather, anyone I might know. In the back corner, close to the snack stand, Natalie Kaye and Nicole Brody hovered over their phones together. I recognized a few sophomores and juniors and saw a lot of younger kids—sixth and seventh graders, and a cabal of their moms holding court in front of the cabanas. And then there were a few couples, maybe home from college, stretched out and sunbathing.

My mom called the pool “one of the jewels of Glennon Heights” and it shone that way in the bright sun. My dad referred to it as “our obscene taxes at work” and maybe it was that too, but in the summertime it functioned as a social hub of our town just like the coffee shop and Tewksbury Park. It didn’t matter if you went to vacation bible school or Hebrew school or CCD, you still had a family pass to the pool. Everyone gathered there, like we were cave people circling around the water hole.

I stood by an empty chaise, shimmied out of my shorts, and tied the sarong around my waist in one quick moment. Janie noticed and nodded her approval. “That’s really pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“But we are going to swim, right? You do swim?”

“Not like I run.”

“Meaning?”

I smiled. “Not fast.”

Janie stepped out of her shorts and kicked them over to the chaise. “I swim really fast.” And then she sprang from the deep end and dove in, cutting neatly into the surface of the water.

She didn’t come up for air until she reached the far end of the pool. I hadn’t realized how muscular she was, but as her arms cut rhythmically through the water, she became the sort of athlete I wished I could transform myself into: deliberate and powerful and absolutely in control.

She strode to the diving board purposefully, with her brow set in concentration, her gaze fixed at some point at the end of the board. She took four or five unwavering steps across, executed a quick two-part hop, then bounced off the board in spectacular fashion.

I had never seen someone dive like that in real life. She sprang up; her body coiled and she tucked her thighs into her arms, making a tight rotation in the air before slicing into the water.

The upperclassmen who had been lounging poolside sat up as Janie arrowed through the water in a blur of tan limbs and black Speedo. One senior boy even sauntered over to stand next to me and watch from the edge. He was tall and lanky with longer reddish hair tucked behind his ears. I recognized him, but didn’t know his name. “Is that your friend?” he asked.

By that time, I’d ceased to breathe and was concentrating on Janie so I didn’t have to look up at his face. Janie’s legs kicked underwater while I managed to look at his feet. They had freckles and fine red hair sprouted from the tops of his toes.

“She go to Glennon Heights?”

“She does now.”

“Nice.” As if she heard him underwater, Janie headed straight for us. She broke through the surface and reached for the tiled edge, stretching her arms and shaking her wet hair out of her eyes. Lanky ginger nodded down at her; I could see his shadow moving on the stucco.

“Yeah?” Janie asked, as if he had made a whole statement I had somehow missed.

The lifeguard’s whistle shrilly interjected. “No diving,” he intoned.

Janie swung around and looked up. “There’s a diving board.”

“No diving like that.”

Lanky ginger rolled his eyes. “Calm down, officer.” His lips curved into the tiniest of smiles and he told Janie, “See you around.” Then he headed back to his friends. I noticed how openly Janie watched him go.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. A senior. Can we talk about that amazing thing you just did?”

“He must swim.”

“I mean, I guess. You know you basically have a superpower.”

“Should we go over?”

“No, we should not. They’re seniors. All of them.”

“Yeah, exactly. They’re Ben and Lucy’s age, not so much older than us.”

I just looked down and shook my head. Janie could have gone over to them, no problem. They would have congratulated and complimented, and she would have pretended that she didn’t how extraordinary she was, falling through the air like that. I would have stood there counting down the seconds until I could skulk away.

But Janie didn’t press. “Okay. Are you going to swim?”

I laughed. “Those are my choices?”

That night we shut the pool down. I even stopped checking to see who was looking at us and just enjoyed slipping back and forth between the warm water and the cooler air. Janie snuck in dives any time the lifeguard looked the other way. Each time people craned their necks to see her and once a mom at the shallow end of the pool even clapped. Every so often, we took breaks to lean our backs against the side of the pool and talk.

“I feel like me again,” she confessed, kicking her legs in front of her. “It helps to know that I can move to a whole other state but this”—she nodded at the pool—“will still feel like home.”

“We can come back tomorrow.”

“First thing in the morning?” Janie asked hopefully.

“It opens at eight, but that’s really early. That’s twelve hours.” My fingers might still be pruned in twelve hours.

“Usually, I dive before school—every day.”

“How about this? We get up early and run here and then you can swim.”

“We can both swim, and by the end of the summer we will be the most ripped girls in the freshman class. We’ll be iron women.”

I laughed at the idea of Janie and I strutting through the high school, intimidating upperclassmen with our well-defined calves. “I hope we have classes together. If we’re in the same homeroom, that means we’ll share gym and lunch too.”

The lifeguard blew his whistle and called out, “Closing in five minutes!” But he said it with an inflection of respect in his voice. He’d noticed Janie too.

“Thanks.” Janie nodded at him and boosted herself out in one strong motion. I climbed the ladder like the normal, unbionic woman I am. “I have to get my parents to get a membership here too. What’s the school pool like?”

I toweled off my hair and bit my lip, trying to remember. We’d taken a tour during orientation last May. “It’s got water …”

“Boards?”

I shook my head.

My legs ached as we cycled home. I rode ahead and pointed out the houses of our classmates as we whizzed by. The sun was setting so we rode under a canopy of pink clouds. I remember thinking how lovely our town looked, how Janie couldn’t possibly feel homesick on a night like this.

When we reached Janie’s house, we walked our bikes around back and found her whole family on the patio. “Olivia!” Janie’s mom called out my name as if I were the guest of honor at a party. Mrs. Donahue sat on a white wooden glider, beside Lucy. The two of them were shucking a pile of corn that sat between them. “You are right on time. We were just settling down for a late supper. Gavin, this is Olivia Danvers, from a few doors down.”

I hadn’t officially met Mr. Donahue before. Every time I’d seen him at the house, he’d had his cell phone pressed to his ear. Usually, he was gesticulating wildly with the other hand.

“Hello there, Olivia. Thanks for making Jane feel so welcome.” He smiled broadly. “You want a burger? We’ll put some more on.” He nodded to Ben, who stood over the grill.

I expected Ben to glower, but he just smiled like any other teenage boy. And because he was a teenage boy and I was tragically socially inept, I found it impossible to make eye contact. Instead I murmured, “I like burgers.”

“We were at the pool. It was heaven.” Janie sat down and sighed dramatically. “And we’re starving. Right, Liv? Aren’t you starving?” Maybe she hadn’t heard me. Or maybe she was throwing me a lifeline—a chance to participate in the conversation like an actual well-adjusted member of society.

“Yes,” I managed. “I’m really hungry.” And then, since that bit was so successful: “We swam a lot.”

“Where did you all go?” Lucy sounded almost envious.

Janie stretched her arms. “There’s a town pool.”

“Cedar Ridge. Anyone can join. You can use our guest passes,” I offered. “If you want to check it out.”

“It’s not bad. And Liv is gonna take me to school to see about meeting the swim coach.” She turned to me. “Maybe tomorrow?”

Mrs. Donahue gathered the corn husks into a small metal trash can. “Liv is very kind to act as our concierge but we can all go to the high school together. I want to make sure your transcripts have arrived.”

“We can introduce ourselves to the college counselors.” Lucy looked eager.

“Not me.” Ben piled the burgers on a plate. But before I’d figured out how to respond, he turned and flashed a killer smile. “No offense, Livvie. Just not ready to even consider school yet.”

“No, I get it,” I said. And I must have blushed. No one called me Livvie. For a second, I imagined that Janie’s older brother had bestowed a nickname on me. Then I reminded myself that he’d probably just gotten my name wrong.

“Yeah, we get it.” Lucy rolled her eyes at me. “You are far too cool to care about anything.”

“Lucy, enough please,” Mrs. Donahue warned. “Janie, Olivia—go wash up and bring the salads in from the kitchen.”

When we stepped back outside, my hands smelled like honeysuckle soap, the sun had set completely, and someone had lit candles around the deck. We set down the bowls on the table and Ben and Lucy scooted over to make room for us to pull over another chair. My stomach, a living creature I’d basically abandoned since breakfast, almost leapt at the sight of the cheeseburgers piled high in the center of the table.

“It looks delicious, thank you,” I said.

“We’re not a praying-at-the-table kind of family—” Ben, Lucy, and Janie smirked at each other and I got the sense that Mr. Donahue always gave this same speech when guests joined them for supper.

“But we practice gratitude,” said Mrs. Donahue.

“That’s right. We like to speak about something we feel thankful for before eating. Ben—do you want to start us off?”

Ben cleared his throat dramatically. He sounded grown-up, like an actual man. “I’m really thankful that we finally have Wi-Fi.”

“Very profound,” Lucy said. “But I agree with you. Thank you, Comcast.” And then quickly, before her mom had a chance to get annoyed, she added, “Thank you for new challenges.” There was an edge to her voice, so I wasn’t sure if she was being a little sarcastic.

“I am grateful for my spirited, adaptable, and generous children,” Mrs. Donahue announced. “And for Olivia.”

“Me too.” Janie smiled at me. “I am grateful for Olivia.”

“Wonderful.” Mr. Donahue smiled grandly around the table. “And I am thankful for my beautiful wife. And her potato salad.” The Donahue kids groaned and Janie told me, “He always says the same thing. About his wife.”

Ben said, “We don’t always have potato salad.”

Janie pointed out, “Liv didn’t go yet.” All the hands that had just reached out for the food on the table hung momentarily in midair. Janie turned to me. “You go,” she urged.

“I’m grateful for our neighborhood.” It didn’t come out right. “And for you, for joining it.” That was closer to what I meant. Had I been totally honest, had it been acceptable for me to speak completely sincerely in that moment, I might have said, “Thank you for allowing me to feel like I belong.” That’s how I felt so I just smiled and looked around the table and hoped that at least Janie understood that.

“Hey, Lucy,” Janie said. “Liv runs cross-country.”

“Mom said that. I run too. What’s your best time?”

“I don’t know yet.” I felt stupid admitting it. “I haven’t run a full course.”

“She’s only going to be a freshman,” Ben explained.

“I know that,” Lucy said, and then asked him, “do you know that?”

“Lucy—” There went Mrs. Donahue again, with the warning bells ringing in her voice.

Lucy took a visible breath as if to remind herself to stay calm. “I might actually not run.” Hands passing plates around the table paused. “I’m still thinking about it. I just really need to focus on academics. Once my schedule’s finalized, then I can figure out the rest.”

“Running helps keep you disciplined,” Mr. Donahue said.

Mrs. Donahue rushed in to finish his thought. “There’s plenty of time. We’re all still settling in. We’ll see what the guidance counselor has to say and go from there.”

I wanted the Donahues to go back to talking about gratitude and potato salad. I wanted to have answers about something, to speak with authority. So I said, “They might already have sent your schedules.” I looked around at Janie, Ben, and Lucy. “At least an early version. They sent mine to the house. It came last week.”

Lucy set down her fork. “Did something come from school?” She looked at her mother first and then her father. “Did you check?”

Mr. Donahue coughed. “You know I’ve just been piling mail on that little marble table in the front hall. I don’t think I saw anything from the school. A lot from the township—bills probably. I’m going to go through them all tomorrow.”

“Well, Gav, school stuff would come from the township.” Mrs. Donahue spoke slowly, pointing out what she clearly felt was obvious. “Thank you, Olivia. We’ll look out for that.”

“It would just be preliminary.” I hadn’t meant to stress Lucy out further.

Lucy stood up, pushing her chair out from behind her, and flounced inside. Almost a full minute later, we heard a shriek. “They’re here, I think. These are them.”

“The suspense—I die,” Ben muttered.

Lucy came barreling back onto the deck, clutching a thick packet of envelopes, catalogs, and advertisements in her hands. “They’re addressed to us, Dad,” she said, dumping the rest of the pile in the center of the table. “I don’t know why you would have thought they were bills.” She handed Ben a thick envelope with a typed address. “Unless you’re already racking up fines.” He shrugged, took the envelope, and set it next to his plate.

Janie grabbed her schedule and immediately tore into it. “Do you remember yours?” she asked me frantically.

“Sort of.” I looked up, trying to picture the printed grid in my mind. We looked at Janie’s together. “I think we have history together. And gym. That’s good because then we’ll have the same lunch and homeroom.” I looked closer. “I have Ms. Montrose for geometry too—she’s great. She gives a lot of extra help. Even if we’re not in the same class, we can do the homework together.”

I looked up to make sure I hadn’t broken a Donahue honor code or something with that suggestion. Mr. and Mrs. Donahue were just staring across the table at Lucy, who was barely breathing. Mrs. Donahue spoke up. “Well, Lucy? What do you think?”

The silence stretched on and the only sound I heard was Ben chewing. Lucy looked up at her parents. “It happens to be ideal.” She stamped the last word on the sentence like a gold star of approval and beamed at the rest of us sitting at the table. “They’ve placed me in Differential Math, which is actually a step beyond the AP curriculum. I am completely up for that challenge. I’ve got AP Econ and AP Physics and then Honors Latin and a Shakespeare elective to round that out. It looks like they accepted my art credits so I have room if I want to add AP Comp Sci.”

“Or you could take an art class for fun,” Mrs. Donahue suggested. “Or sign up for a study hall to ease your homework load a bit.”

Lucy continued as if Mrs. Donahue hadn’t spoken. “Liv, do you know any of these teachers? Have you heard of them?” She slid the schedule to me and reached for Ben’s. “Don’t you care?” He said nothing but reached for a second cheeseburger.

Lucy sighed dramatically. She sliced open Ben’s envelope with her immaculately manicured fingernail. “We have Latin together. But that’s good news, because you’re better in Latin.”

“What is this?” Janie had been sorting out the rest of the mail, and now she held up a white, square envelope, addressed in careful block lettering and without a stamp or postmark marring its pristine blankness. She flipped it to me. Before passing it back, I noticed it felt heavy and formal, like a wedding invitation.

Only one line of black ink marched across the letter.

The Residents of 16 Olcott Place.

Janie was the one who opened it.