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moved down another step. It was June, late June, a heat wave, and after one in the morning. If there was a good reason for my parents to be making a fire in the family room, I was having trouble coming up with it. I turned to look at Allison, to signal her to be very quiet, and, slightly off balance, knocked with my left shoulder into an etching they’d recently bought by some old Dutch artist who wasn’t Rembrandt, but almost.
    Allison and I both froze.
    Mom and Dad stopped moving behind the wall. “What was that?” my mother whispered, and her normally absolute voice sounded trembly.
    Allison tugged my T-shirt at the shoulder, pulling me urgently upstairs.
    “I’ll see,” Dad said. His footsteps started toward us.
    I couldn’t move.
    Allison tugged again. Her face was intense and urging: Come! Hurry! Now! I couldn’t remember how to make my muscles obey my brain.
    If I stayed they’d find me there; they’d know I knew. It would all be out in the open. How awful. But…honesty, I thought. The best policy. Oh, great. Clichés, just the weapon I needed.
    Something clicked in my nervous system. I dashed up behind Allison and didn’t look back. At the top of the stairs we split—she went left, to her room; I went right to mine. I dove feet-first into my bed and slid quickly down under the blankets, between the cool three-hundred-thread-count organic white cotton sheets. I snuggled my head down into the well of my still-dented pillow and pretended to sleep, sure my telltale heart would give me away if my father had followed us up the stairs.
    The next thing I knew, the sun was coming through my window.
    I brushed my teeth carefully, concentrating on my morning routine, washing, moisturizing, smoothing my ponytail, choosing soft white socks and my camp shirt.
    In the kitchen, watching our moody toaster work on a whole-wheat English muffin for us to share, Mom teased me about having passed out so early because I was worn out from anticipation of being responsible for so many kids.
    I fake-smiled, like a twitch, and agreed, “Yes, it is definitely exhausting.”
    Not wanting to meet her eyes, I watched the toaster, too. Mom sighed. Together we saw our English-muffin-to-share suddenly ignite inside our crazy toaster. As Mom tried to douse the flames, I tried not to breathe in the scent of burning.

5
    T ODAY WAS THE FIRST DAY with campers.
    I was having trouble concentrating. I don’t think I was a great role model. Jelly glanced over at me, concerned, a couple of times, but mostly she laughed more than usual, cracking up at everything Adriana said. They were having a lot of fun.
    The two of them led our campers right into the pool, and together they all splashed around like a bunch of happy ducks. Only one sullen camper refused to go in, and since I was in no mood to be a happy duck myself, I made a big deal of being willing to sit with him. His name was Ramon, and he was one of the littlest of our campers. He sat still and silent on the bench, his bright towel draped over his narrow shoulders, so serious and thoughtful, his tangled black hair obscuring his dark eyes.
    My first few attempts at conversation went nowhere. Ididn’t honestly care. I leaned back against the chain-link fence and was trying not to think about my white room or my mother burning papers when Ramon announced, “I have no gills.”
    “True,” I said, without opening my eyes.
    “So I can’t breathe the oxygen from the water.”
    “You don’t have to,” I mumbled. “You can breathe air, because you’ll just float.”
    “How do you know?” he demanded.
    “You’re buoyant,” I mumbled. I was so not up to being a role model right then.
    “Not very,” Ramon said sadly, and hunched over more. “I’m bad at throwing and I don’t care about cars and I am not rough-and-tumble at all.”
    “So?”
    “That’s what boys are supposed to be!”
    “Not boyish,” I said quietly. “Buoyant.”
    He looked interested, and skeptical. I