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I’m fourteen and I can get your
groceries, your mail, or your hardware supplies, or walk your dog. Dependable and inexpensive! Call Clara at 543-4245.
At the last minute, she found a copy of her mother’s résumé on the desk, so she added,
References upon request.
    Clara liked the way her advertisement looked, and carefully made fifteen more, enough to give to all the elderly people on her route. Then she thought of Amos MacKenzie and had another idea. The MacKenzies were on her route, too. It had always been her favorite part, in fact—approaching the MacKenzie house and throwing something toward Amos’s front door. So maybe she would give them an advertisement, too, and add a note to Amos.
    She opened a book that translated the tiny pictures that stood for letters in the Egyptian alphabet. She found the Egyptian symbols for Amos’s name, and she drew them precisely at the very top of one of her advertisements: a forearm, then an owl, a quail chick, and a folded cloth.
Amos
, it spelled, but what it looked like was a pair of birds about to be caught and served for dinner. After looking at the symbols for a while, she decided to write the letters of his name underneath, and before it,
Hi!
She folded the paper, slid it into its immaculate envelope, and wrote his name on the outside. She slipped the flyers under the rubber bands when she folded her papers in the late afternoon, and she put the letter with Amos’s name on it in the paper she would save for last.
    It wasn’t quite dark when she went outside with Ham sniffing and pulling on one hand and the canvas vest full of papers thudding against her chest. The canvas apron tended to push her bra sideways and up. She’d never expected a bra to pinch. She had assumed it would be like a shirt or underwear—something you never noticed you were wearing. And she hated to wear white shirts now because the bra was so distinct underneath, reminding everyone, she felt, how little she needed it.
    Carrying the paper for Amos MacKenzie made her walk faster. The whole evening seemed prettier and more mysterious, as though the lights in the windows were the lamps of happy people who were about to do exciting things. It was only much later that night, when she was lying on the couch near her mother and half listening to the TV and the low sounds of her father’s voice coming through the phone, that Clara began to wonder if she’d done the right thing. And, lightning quick, she knew she hadn’t. She’d done something stupid. Childish and stupid. She imagined people—especially Amos—dropping the expensive white paper into trash cans all through the neighborhood. He’d probably been totally repulsed by her runny nose. Her crooked runny nose.
    â€œSo you’re coming home tomorrow for sure?” her mother said into the air above the telephone. She was doing a crossword puzzle, so she was using the speakerphone, which Clara knew her father disliked. He said he felt like he was doing a radio show.
    From what seemed a great distance, her father said, “The flight’s supposed to arrive at three-fifteen.”
    â€œI’ll still be at work then,” her mother said in her flat, distracted voice.
    â€œThat’s fine,” her father said, and because his voice was so thin as it came through the phone, Clara couldn’t decide whether he really thought it was fine or not. “What time do you get off work?” he asked.
    â€œSix or so,” her mother said, filling in a long vertical word in her puzzle.
    â€œPerfect. Maybe Clara and I will cook something,” her father said. “We could have some Thai food ready when you get home.”
    Thai food was her mother’s favorite, something Clara always dreaded because she preferred plain rice with butter. But it seemed a very bad sign when her mother, putting down her pencil to pick up the receiver and cut off the speakerphone, said, “No,