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the market, where we studied the treats for a long time before picking out what we wanted: often a powdered-sugar doughnut. Then we would walk along the highway eating. It was sad to think all that was over, but I guessed a house would be worth it.
    "Good night, Katie," she said.
    "Good night."

    During the autumn the sultry air made us tired but not too tired. If it was too hot, we took a nap before supper. Then Lynn would read to me. Since she was a genius, she could read anything, even Encyclopaedia Britannica. We had the "P" volume from Encyclopaedia Britannica that somebody had left behind in our house in Iowa when we moved in. We planned to read it all the way through. Our other favorite book was Silas Marner. We were quite capitalistic and liked the idea of Silas keeping all that gold underneath the floorboards.
    Whenever Lynn was late from school, I would cry. Mrs. Kanagawa would tell my mother whenever I cried. My mother said I was a crybaby, but Lynn said I was actually happy because it was my nature to be so, just like it was Lynn's nature to be a genius. It was also Lynn's nature to be a little bossy. Mrs. Kanagawa told me that.
    Lynn didn't seem to be making many friends at school. So she spent a lot of time with me. That was the way I passed the first year in Georgia: waiting all day for Lynn to come home and then playing with Lynn until bedtime. When summer came again, we played all day and all night until bed.
    By the time I was six and ready to start school, my accent had already become very Southern. I no longer called my sister "Lynn," I called her "Lee-uhn." I was kind of a celebrity in my neighborhood, the little Japanese girl who said "you all" instead of "you," and "You don't sah-eee" instead of "Really?" Sometimes people would pay me a few pennies to talk to them. My sister encouraged this enterprise, and soon we were rich.
    We kept the money in a moldy hole in the tile under the bathtub. Once a month we would count it.
    The day before I started first grade, Lynn sat me down for a talk. She gave me talks only when something very, very serious was happening. She always told me the truth and didn't treat me like a baby. It was she and not my parents who'd first told me we were leaving Iowa.
    We sat cross-legged on the floor in our room and held hands and closed our eyes while she chanted, "Mind meld, mind meld, mind meld." That was our friendship chant.
    She gazed at me solemnly. "No matter what happens, someday when we're each married, we'll own houses down the block from each other. We'll live by the sea in California."
    That sounded okay with me. "If y'all are going to live by the sea, I will too," I said. I had never seen the California sea, but I imagined it was very pretty. She leaned forward then, and I knew she was going to get to the point of this talk.
    "Have you noticed that sometimes people won't say hello to Mom when we're out shopping?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "Well, some of the kids at school may not say hello to you, either."
    "You mean because they don't know me?"
    "No, I mean because they don't want to know you."
    "Why wouldn't they want to know me?" Who wouldn't want to know me? This was a new idea for me. Our father had always thought we were quite amazing, and Lynn, of course, had always thought I was perfect, so I thought of myself as rather amazing and maybe even perfect.
    "Because, there's only thirty-one Japanese people in the whole town, and there's more than four thousand people in the town, and four thousand divided by thirty-one is ... a lot more of them than of us. Do you understand?"
    "No."
    Lynn's face darkened. That was kind of unusual. "Haven't you noticed that Mom and Dad's only friends are Japanese?"
    "I guess so."
    "That's because the rest of the people are ignoring them. They think we're like doormats—or ants or something!" Now she was really angry.
    "Ants?"
    She suddenly reached out and hugged me to her. "You tell me if anybody treats you like that, and I'll take care of