Perri Kahn-the thin girl from the kickball game, the one who had curtsied-and Kat Hartigan had a calm, quiet way about them, as if they were visiting the third grade from some far more desirable place. They were not the prettiest or most fashionable girls. They were not mean or bossy, although Perri’s words were often sharp, shooting down the dumber kids with sharp one-liners. (Lifted from television, Josie would come to find out, but that was allowed. It was okay to copy a television program, as long as you thought of it first. Copying the copier was what was unforgivable.) Kat, who wore her blond hair in fat pigtails, was super nice to everyone and therefore forgiven for her consistent A’s, about which she was borderline apologetic. “Hey,” she said to everyone, even Josie, and it made Josie happy in a way that she could never have explained, getting her own personal “Hey” from Kat Hartigan.

Finally, the week after Halloween, a wonderful thing happened. Strep throat made its way through Meeker Creek Elementary, and Perri was out of school for an entire week. Well, it wasn’t wonderful that Perri was sick. But her absence gave Josie a chance to slide into the empty seat opposite Kat during lunch, something that no one else had thought to do.

“Hey,” Kat said, and Josie thought she detected a note of happy surprise in Kat’s usual greeting, as if she had been nervous about being alone.

“Hey.” Josie, who had fantasized about a day when Kat Hartigan might want to talk to her, realized she had not planned on anything to say next. “Do you always wear your hair in braids?”

Kat touched one of her fat plaits, so blond it was almost white. “My mom says I have to wear it this way if I want to keep it long. Otherwise it’s too much trouble, and she says I’ll have to get it all cut off.”

“My mom made the barber give me this cut because my hair’s so curly, but I’m going to grow it back out. It’s already grown two inches since school started.” Josie was sure of this, for she pulled a lock from her forehead every night and measured it with the purple ruler from her pencil case.

“I wish I had curly hair.”

“It tangles even worse than straight hair. Even with cream rinse, it tangles.”

Another silence fell, but it was more companionable, filled with chewing and discreet inspection of each other’s lunches. Kat had Lunchables, which were new at the time and the height of coolness. Josie had a turkey sandwich topped with a special kind of homemade relish. Her father and mother took their lunches to work, and they were firm believers that thrift should be balanced with small indulgences. So Josie’s sandwich was fresh-roasted turkey on bakery bread from Graul’s, her dessert a collection of iced petit fours. Without being asked, Josie pushed two toward Kat, who seemed delighted by this tribute, yet not particularly surprised.

“Where did you live? Before here?”

“ Baltimore. In the city.”

“That’s where my dad grew up, but I’ve always lived in Glendale.”

“Cool,” Josie said, hoping it was the right thing to say. It must have been, because Kat then asked, “Do you want to come over to my house?”

“I have a sitter. My mom works. And I have gymnastics on Tuesdays, down at Gerstung.” Gerstung was a serious gym, the kind whose students sometimes went on to the Olympics, and Josie’s mom always said she should aim high.

“I have horseback riding lessons on Wednesdays. What about Thursday? If you asked, could you come over on Thursday?”

Josie and Kat, raised in an era where the simplest afterschool playdate required planning and permission, both understood the negotiation that had to be completed before Josie could visit Kat’s home. Josie’s mom would have to call Kat’s mom, to make sure that Kat really could bring a friend home from school and that Kat’s mom or some other adult would be there. Josie’s mom would pick her up on her way home from work, while the sitter stayed with Josie’s new baby brother, Matt. The two mothers worked this out by telephone that very evening.

Josie, who watched worriedly as this conversation took place, saw a strange look pass over her mom’s face during the call.

“You didn’t tell me,” she said after hanging up, “that Kat was Katarina Hartigan.”

“Yes I did, I absolutely did, I told you that her full name was Katarina but everyone calls her Kat.” Josie was frantic at the idea that such a trivial matter could deny her this afterschool date.

“Don’t get so upset, Josie. I just meant…she’s a Hartigan. Her grandfather started Glendale. He built our house.”

“Really?” Josie had a vision of Kat and her family in hard hats, pushing wheelbarrows, smoothing concrete between layers of bricks as if icing a multitiered cake. In Josie’s mind the Hartigans were all blond and quite small, just like her-helpful, puttering elves from a fairy tale. She imagined Kat on a ladder, hammering up shutters.

Given that the Hartigans owned Glendale, at least in Josie’s mind, she assumed their house would be the biggest and grandest, nicer than even the best houses her parents had inspected before moving here. But the house to which Mrs. Hartigan drove them on Thursday afternoon was old and strange, a lumpy stone structure that looked like a place you’d go on a field trip. The house was odd inside, too, with tiny rooms, low ceilings, rough plaster walls, and wooden floorboards that creaked underfoot. The kitchen, into which they entered from a side door-the Hartigans had no garage, just a circular driveway-was the only room of any size, and it felt crowded, for it was trying to fill the role of three rooms-kitchen, dining room, den.

Yet the things inside the Hartigan house were notable-a huge television set, a refrigerator with glass doors, a bright red stove.

“Aga,” Mrs. Hartigan said when she saw Josie staring at it, and Josie nodded as if she understood. Mrs. Hartigan had white-blond hair like Kat’s, only she wore it loose, almost to the middle of her back. She dressed in what Josie thought of as a Gypsy-ish way-a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and a gauzy, almost transparent skirt worn over velvet leggings. She gave the girls a snack-cranberry juice and Fruit Roll-Ups-and sent them to the family room to amuse themselves. Here, unlike the other homes in Glendale, the family room was not off the kitchen but in a separate room on the second floor. Kat had plenty of toys that were new to Josie, including a small chest of dress-up clothes.

The girls arrayed themselves in Mrs. Hartigan’s cast-off dresses and shoes.

“What should we be?” Kat asked Josie.

“Be?”

“Perri usually makes up a story.”

“Oh.” Josie was not very good at making things up, but Kat seemed so sure she could that she felt obligated to try. “We could be…lion tamers.”

“We’re lion tamers?” Kat indicated her dress, a long peach-colored gown that she said her mother had worn in a wedding.

“Lady lion tamers. And models.”

Josie thought Kat would laugh at this unlikely idea, but she seemed delighted. “We’re modeling clothes when a lion gets loose, and they call us to come get it.”

“But we don’t use whips. We…we talk to the lions and ask them what they want. And they say they want pizza.”

“I love pizza,” Kat said. “Do you go to Fortunato’s?”

Josie shook her head. “No, my mom and dad make their own, from scratch. But we get Domino’s sometimes.”

“Fortunato’s is in the city. My dad orders the pizzas half baked and brings them home and puts them in the oven to finish them, and it’s like having delivery, only it’s really hot. No one delivers out here. No one good. We have them every Friday night. Do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow night?”

Josie did but knew that this, too, would have to be negotiated. Her mother was reluctant at first, saying it wasn’t polite to wear out one’s welcome. But her father saw how much she wanted to return and agreed to come home early, if Mrs. Patel would run over and pick Josie up when the playdate was over. Yet when Mrs. Patel came to collect Josie Friday night, she didn’t hurry Josie out to the car but stayed for the glass of wine that Mr. and Mrs. Hartigan offered, oohing and ahing over the Hartigans’ house.