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him a few moments to be able to say my name. I wondered if his physical problems had gotten worse in my absence.
    It was already evening, and Joan and Dad were making a big production about how tired they werefrom the travel and stress of picking me up at the airport. And how much I was supposed to appreciate the glorious reunion dinner and us all being together again.
    Shakes and I arranged to meet the next day. He’d call Chris and Kevin. If the weather was good, we’d bike to the park. If not, we would meet at Shakes’s house and figure out what to do.
    In my mind, I was already there. I was polite and pleasant and kept my elbows off the table. I heard, as if from a great distance, Joan yakking on and on about the success she was having with a woman who’d been bingeing and purging for years. I could tell myself that Joan talking about some puking woman while she expected us to eat was funny, because, in my mind, I’d already gone to a place where I would see my friends, and things would be funny, for real.
    I couldn’t wait for the next day. I was so happy and eager to see them. The good feeling lasted for one night.
    Because the next day was when I found out how different everything was and how quickly people can change.

CHAPTER SIX
    I woke up to a chilly, drumming rain. No chance of that group bike ride to the park.
    Joan dropped me off at Shakes’s house on her way to the office, where she was going to snoop around in the private souls of the poor, miserable losers who paid her to hear them spill out all their secrets.
    Of course, this was before everyone decided that it would be good for me to see Doctor Atwood. This wasbefore I became one of those people, paying someone who didn’t want to listen to what I didn’t want to say.
    My real mom had been a close friend of Marian, Shakes’s mom. My mother had no problem babysitting a kid with a mild disability. Later, Shakes told me that, all during that time, he was having seizures. But he never had them around us, so I never saw them. I guess his mom must have warned my mom, and my mom must have said she could handle it just so long as Marian told her what to do if something happened.
    I could hardly imagine what Joan would do if a kid had a seizure. Probably scream and call 911 and flirt with the ambulance guys. Whereas Geoff would just wait and do nothing and then accuse the poor kid of faking a seizure just to divert attention from the person everyone should have been paying attention to—namely, Geoff.
    Marian knew she could leave Shakes with Mom. So when we were little, Shakes and I got to hang out even more than we otherwise would have.
    The only problem with Marian was that you had to stay on your toes, because you couldn’t call Shakes Shakes around her. She’d say, “His name is Edward.” Otherwise,I’d always liked her. But I liked her even more when Joan dropped me off at her house, and Marian couldn’t have been chillier to her.
    Marian said, “Doctor Marbury,” and barely opened the front door. I wondered if that was because she was still loyal to Mom, or if Shakes had told her what I’d said about Joan always saying things like, “This dress would look so pretty on you, Maisie, if you shed that extra poundage.”
    Joan had never tried to make friends with Marian. Shakes’s house was my territory. It belonged to him and me, and Chris, and Kevin. Joan had never shadowed it with her evil presence.
    Marian pulled me inside the house and shut the door even as Joan was blabbing on about what time she would pick me up. Then Marian squeezed me until I pretend-coughed, and we laughed.
    She held me at arm’s length and said, “Oh, Maisie! We missed you so much! It feels like you’ve been gone for a hundred years. My God, look at you. Look how you’ve grown. You kids are getting so big. Pretty soon, you won’t be kids anymore.”
    I wished she hadn’t said that.
    “We’re really still kids,” I said.
    “I don’t think so, honey.”