At break, Eleni skipped over to the window where Anastasia was tying her hair back and said excitedly, “Yay! You’re coming today!” Then she turned to me, beckoned with her hand, and said, “Lexie, come.”

I hauled myself up from the chair, slouched over, and stood beside them but kept looking out the window. It was a dull, fuzzy day, and the sky looked like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag. By the side of the road, a grumpy-looking lady in a red coat was waiting with a plastic bag over her hand next to a small, hairy dog that was doing number twos. It wasn’t the best view in the world, I was thinking, when Eleni poked me and said, “You’re coming to my house as well this afternoon. After we’ve finished doing the story. OK? We’re all going to be friends.”

Anastasia’s mouth twisted into something that was supposed to be a smile, but I knew it wasn’t. Or maybe it was. Maybe she was actually really nice and I had it all wrong. But then she blinked slow and hard as if her eyes hurt to look at me and turned her shoulder so she was half facing the other way. “Yeah, come, but we might finish late,” she said. “We’ll be having so much fun that we won’t be able to concentrate on the story.”

Eleni laughed and said, “Lexie can join in. And then we’ll watch TV and eat popcorn.”

Anastasia flashed a toothy smile and twisted Eleni’s friendship bracelet around on her wrist.

I tried to smile back but my mouth wasn’t happy about it, and it jerked like I had toothache. Not that either of them noticed. I turned back to the window and continued looking at the woman scooping up the dog poop. Because even though it wasn’t a very nice sight, it was still better than looking at Anastasia.

On Sundays after Greek school, we eat lunch at Yiayia and Pappou’s house. Every Sunday. Without fail. Other kids I know go to birthday parties, do sports, or go shopping on Sundays. For us, that’s not an option. We go to my grandparents’ house to eat. All of us. Every week. If someone didn’t come, they’d get massively offended, and it would be the biggest deal ever. You just didn’t miss it and that was that.

Yiayia and Pappou’s house looked like the inside of a church, with crucifixes on the walls and icons of Jesus and the Virgin Maria everywhere. There was a special room for entertaining called a saloni, with quilts over the furniture to keep it clean and hundreds of framed photos of Yiayia and Pappou’s children graduating and getting married and of their grandchildren smiling with no teeth. We weren’t allowed to sit there, and we were only allowed to eat at the kitchen table, which had a lace cloth on it like a big doily and a bowl of fruit in the middle that got taken off when we sat down to eat. Which was every time we walked in the door.

Sunday lunch was something special, though. They used their best china and glasses, and the house smelled amazing, even from outside. We always started with avgolemono (egg-and-lemon-flavored chicken soup), then chips and crumbed chicken, fasolia (beans and potatoes in tomato sauce), lamb (in different ways every week), and sometimes fish and dolmades (stuffed vine leaves), too. Afterward, we had fruit, Yiayia’s amazing cinnamon cake, and koulourakia (braided shortbreads). If you visited Yiayia and didn’t eat, she’d go on and on about it forever. The food was delicious, anyway—why would you not eat? You’d just better be hungry when you turned up, because there was lots of it.

Sunday lunch is one of three billion Greek traditions you inherit when you’re born and have to continue in your own house for all eternity, or your life is just not worth living. Mom was getting more into traditions by then, too, for some reason. Maybe because she was getting old. Don’t tell her I said that or she’ll kill me, because she keeps saying forty-four isn’t old. But it kind of is if you start putting lacy tablecloths under plastic wipeable covers.

“Why have you started putting one of these on our table at home?” I asked her when I saw the one at Yiayia’s house. We’d just finished eating, and I was writing out some new words for cousin in my notebook.

Kallie-gator: a cousin who pinches you hard at Greek school to get her revenge.

Traitorella: a cousin who spends too much time with another girl who isn’t her twin.

Things like that.

“It’s traditional,” Mom said. “Traditions are important.”

Dad looked at the tablecloth and then at me. “What, like putting a giant doily on the table? And cutting a piece of a baby’s hair off to protect it from evil?” he straddled a chair and put his coffee on the giant doily.

Mom crossed her arms. “What’s wrong with that?”

Dad burst out laughing. I could have told him that was a bad move. “How can cutting a small piece of hair off protect you from—”

“Not everything is logical,” Mom snapped, and she took Dad’s coffee away and washed the cup, even though he hadn’t finished drinking it.

Dad opened his eyes as wide as he could and made a face at me.

I grinned, but Mom was right. Plenty of things weren’t logical. Like how Yiayia has blue glass eyeballs hanging around her house and garden and has cacti at the front door to ward off the evil eye. She does a little tut-tut like she’s spitting if someone pays her a compliment, and if she sees shoes upside down with the soles showing, she says skorda (garlic) under her breath. Then she spits a couple of times and turns the shoes up the right way. And that’s not even all of it.

According to Yiayia, if it’s traditional, you do it. Even if it makes no sense.

Six decades from now, when I’m a world-famous dictionary writer, I’ll make up a hundred words for tradition, including stupid ones that no one understands.

But then again, maybe I’ll just leave out the word tradition completely.

Especially after what happened next.