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true self creep out. So that was another thing that Mom and Dad had in common. Both of them seemed to have a weakness for bad actors.
    Meanwhile, Dad and Joan seemed to have some kind of weird intuition for when Geoff had just had a major tantrum. That’s usually when the phone would ring, and it would be Dad or Joan, or both of them on separate extensions, calling to see how I was doing.
    “Fine,” I’d say.
    Then Joan would say she heard something in my voice that she didn’t like. If my dad wasn’t already on the phone, she’d put him on. He was supposed to tell me: If I wanted to come back and stay with them, I had only to say the word.
    The word ? What she really meant was words . I knewwhich words Joan wanted to hear. Joan, I mean Mom, I’ve finally come to my senses and realized you’re a better mother than my real mom ever was . Joan was competing with my mother just like Dad was competing with Geoff. I couldn’t help wondering: What were they competing for ?
    Another thing I wondered was: What if I’d “said the word” right before Christmas, when they and Josh Darling went to the Bahamas for the holidays, and never told me, let alone asked if I wanted to come along? What word, exactly, would I have said. Help ? Would that have done it? I guess I must not have said the right word, because I didn’t go back to Pennsylvania even once during that whole school year I lived in Wisconsin. Dad and Joan always had something important to do during my school vacations.
    One night, after dinner, Mom had gone to a board meeting at the library, where she worked. I was watching Top Chef .
    Geoff came home from teaching. He walked into the living room and sat down in the chair. He kept shooting me filthy looks because I guessed he thought I was supposed to jump up and offer him the couch. And I probably should have, but I didn’t want to.
    Geoff said, “Hand me the remote, will you, Maisie?” I very politely asked Geoff if he’d mind waiting until the end of the show, so I could see who won. I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I’d learned my lesson from being around Joan. I’d never get satisfaction.
    Geoff said, “Actually, I do mind.” Then he did a surprising thing, by which I mean a thing that surprised even me, and by then I was so used to Geoff, I was rarely surprised by the childish stuff he did.
    Geoff stood up and came over to me and grabbed the remote from my hand. I was so shocked, I held on to it, so that for while we were sort of wrestling for the remote, like kids. Except that Geoff wasn’t a kid. He was stronger. He got it. He won.
    I stood up and watched him victoriously—triumphantly!—switch from channel to channel. Click click. Are you getting this, Maisie?
    He said, very fake-calm, as if we hadn’t just practically had a physical fight, “We pay a fortune for a hundred channels of cable, and there’s nothing to watch. We should probably cancel.”
    When Mom came home, I followed her to her room and told her that I wanted to move back and live withDad. I was careful to say Dad and not Dad and Joan . The school year was just ending, so it was pretty convenient. Mom cried, and made a big show of being sad and hurt, and I guess she really was. But in the end, she did the same thing that Dad did. They both seemed relieved that I was giving them a break in which to try and make their repulsive, brainwashed second marriages work out.
    That was how I moved back home in June, as soon as school in Wisconsin ended. Or maybe I should say: that was when I moved back to Pennsylvania, the place that I thought of as home—that is, when I’d been in Wisconsin.
    The first thing I did after I said hello to Dad and Joan and Josh Darling was go to my room and call Shakes and arrange for him and me and Kevin and Chris to get together. It made me feel better to be talking to Shakes as I looked around my old room and saw how much Joan had “straightened up.” Shakes was so glad to hear from me, it took