“It’s great that you kept this old farmhouse the way that it is,” she told Mr. Hartigan. “It’s a gem.”

Mr. Hartigan, a dark-haired man with glasses, ducked his head and nodded. “It’s the original Meeker homestead, goes back to the early eighteenth century, maybe the late seventeenth.”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “I can’t believe I married into Hartigan Builders and I have to live in this relic.”

“What’s a relic?” Josie asked Kat.

“Something old,” Kat said. “Old but nice.”

“Something old,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “Dale’s family moved out here when the boys were in high school, and he’s still sentimental about it, even though the family only lived here a few months before taking over one of the model homes.”

Josie wasn’t sure what “sentimental” was, but Mrs. Hartigan made it sound like a very bad thing indeed.

“It’s a historic landmark,” Mr. Hartigan said. “Where do you live, Mrs.-”

“Susie,” Josie’s mother supplied when she realized he was fumbling for her name. “We’re in Glendale Meadows.”

“That was my father’s first development. I love those houses-they’re so simple and efficient.”

“And tacky,” Mrs. Hartigan said. “Oh, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean-It’s just that Thornton ’s early stuff seems a little dated to me. All that redwood and rectangles. Very seventies.”

“We keep telling ourselves they’ll be historic landmarks by the time our children are grown,” Mrs. Patel said, laughing. “But we were willing to live in a mobile home if that’s what it took to get into this school district.”

“Glendale Meadows is what Glendale was supposed to be,” Mr. Hartigan said. “Affordable, energy-smart houses for middle-class families. The original vision for Glendale included apartments and even Section 8 housing. But my father’s partners cared only for maximizing profits. They talked a good game, but once they got the public water and sewers, they abandoned the idea of mixed-income housing.”

“Honey, your dad did the right thing. I mean, it was all very utopian and sweet, but people leave the city to get away from poor people. You don’t want to live next door to people with cars up on blocks and old appliances in the backyard. The farmers out here are bad enough.”

“Can we take our dessert to the family room?” Kat asked, and her parents nodded. The girls carried their bowls of ice cream to the television set, leaving the adults with their wine and boring conversation.

“This tastes funny,” Josie said, forgetting that it wasn’t good manners for a guest to comment on food.

“Oh, it’s low-fat, sugar-free,” Kat said. “My mom says I need to watch what I eat.”

Perri’s strep was so bad that she stayed out of school another week. Later Josie would come to learn that Perri never got sick the way other people did, the two-or three-day kind of way. Her colds bloomed into pneumonia, her sprained ankles ended up being borderline fractures. So Kat was Josie’s for another week. They ate lunch together every day and were given permission to make another playdate, even though the Patels had not yet been able to reciprocate, as Josie’s mom kept insisting they must.

Seth and Chip noticed that the two girls were spending time together and decided to taunt them. They would sing to the girls, during lunch and recess:

Other students picked it up and sang along. It took all Josie’s concentration not to break down in tears. It wasn’t so bad, being called short. Certainly she had heard much worse-monkey-face, for example. Her real fear was that Kat would stop doing things with her, rather than risk hearing that song over and over. But Kat merely shook her head and laughed. “I’m not fat,” she said. “Just big-boned, my mom says.” She told Seth to stop. And the strange thing was-he did. Josie was beginning to realize that everyone craved Kat’s approval. Was it because her grandfather had built all their houses? Because she got straight A’s? But none of this was enough to explain the effect that Kat had on people.

Perri came back to school in mid-November. Pale, even thinner than before, she had dark shadows beneath her blue eyes that made her look angry and pretty at the same time. Perri was not pink-and-white beautiful like Kat, but there was something about her face, the eyes in particular, that made people want to look at her. Josie thought she resembled an old-fashioned girl, perhaps someone from Puritan times, which they were studying just then in preparation for Thanksgiving. The first day Perri was back, Josie waited nervously in the cafeteria to see if Kat would drop her now, if Perri would insist on a return to their closed-off twosome, but Perri accepted Kat’s decision that Josie should be their friend.

“Three is an excellent number,” Perri said. “All the best books are about groups of three. Nancy Drew has two friends. And my mom read me these books while I was sick, about three girls in Minnesota in the olden days, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. Betsy wants to be a writer, and she’s kind of the leader, so I guess I’m Betsy.”

“Am I Tacy or Tib?” Kat asked eagerly.

“Tacy, because she has the prettiest hair.” Perri paused. “And because Betsy and Tacy were friends first.”

Perri wasn’t being mean, only accurate, Josie thought. She and Kat had been friends first.

“So Josie is Tib.”

“Yes. Although Tib had blond hair. They were always forming clubs, too. Do you want to start a club?”

“Sure,” Kat said.

“Sure,” Josie echoed.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. They had to go to the playground now, although Perri was excused because of her recent illness. She was allowed to stay inside and read, with a teacher’s supervision. Josie would have been miserable under such circumstances, but Perri was clearly delighted for a chance to skip recess.

“We’ll decide on the club Thursday,” Perri whispered. “At Kat’s house.”

Thursday afternoon was warm and bright, one of November’s lingering surprises, and the three girls left the Hartigans’ farmhouse with a basket of Fruit Roll-Ups and string cheese packed by Kat’s mom. Under the rules they could not cross major streets without a grown-up. This meant they could not go north, toward Old Town Road, the major road that wove through much of Glendale. And the cul-de-sacs that lay to the east and south were of little interest, although one family did have a basketball hoop.

However, there was a wooded area behind the Hartigan farmhouse, and there were no rules forbidding them access to this, although Kat said they were supposed to watch for deer ticks in the summer. With the trees bare, they felt they had to walk as far as possible for privacy, all the way to the creek for which their school had been named. But no one had said they couldn’t cross the creek, Perri pointed out, so they did, jumping from rock to rock. On one flat but mossy stone, Kat slipped a little, so her leg went into the water up to her shin. Kat laughed, but her fall seemed to make Perri nervous, and she took forever to cross. Only Josie crossed quickly and dryly, leaping with her usual fearless grace.

Once across the creek, they found a place where someone had held a campfire a long, long time ago. “Teenagers,” Perri said. “They probably did drugs here.” Kat and Josie nodded solemnly, having heard many stories about teenagers and the strange things they did. Felled trees formed a ring of benches, and Perri took a seat on one of these, indicating that Kat and Josie should do the same.

“It smells funny here,” Josie said. “Like poo.”

“The Snyders’ farm is over there,” Perri said. “Binnie Snyder smells like poo. Haven’t you noticed?”