“Drink, knave!” Perri commanded. “Drink deep from your cup…cake.”

This made Josie laugh so hard that she had to roll on the ground, pine needles gathering in her hair and sticking to the frosting on her face.

“You look like a cat,” Perri howled, and Josie laughed harder, arranging the pine needles so they did, indeed, resemble whiskers.

“I’m Kat,” Kat said, and she scooped up some pine needles, but she couldn’t make whiskers because she still hadn’t smashed her cupcake in her face. Josie’s mother was always saying that Kat was dignified. Josie wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but she thought it had something to do with how Kat was less prone to silliness than Josie and Perri were. Kat was, however, a wonderful audience for their antics, egging them on. Perri tried to say funnier things, while Josie did cartwheels and climbed trees, all for the honor of hearing Kat’s giggle.

“Drink, my lord,” Perri said, her hand closing over Kat’s and pushing the cupcake up toward her face. “Drink the mead of Hammond Springs Middle School, or you’ll have to go to Deer-field.”

Kat hesitated, and Perri did it for her, not only pushing the cake into her face but giving it a little twist. Kat’s eyes opened wide, and she looked for a moment as if she might cry. Instead she laughed, using her fingers to wipe the frosting from her face. Yet it was a softer, more controlled version of her usual laugh, and the girls, in a swift shift of mood not uncommon to them, were suddenly quiet and reflective.

“We get our own lockers in middle school,” Kat said. “With combinations. I’m worried I’m going to forget mine.”

“We could share our combinations,” Perri said. “And then if one of us forgets, we’ll be okay.”

“We might not be in all the same classes,” Kat said. “Or even have the same lunch hour.”

“Oh?” Perri said. “Can’t your dad fix that, too?”

If there was a hint of challenge in Perri’s voice, Kat chose not to hear it. “No,” she said. “I don’t think my dad would worry about that, as long as I’m in Hammond Springs. Deerfield may be new, but Hammond Springs has the proven teachers, my dad says. He says Deerfield was built for newcomers.”

“If Deerfield had been the good school, would your dad have worked it out so Josie and I went there?”

“Sure,” Kat said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But he would have.”

I was a newcomer, Josie thought. What was wrong with being a newcomer? But that was three years ago. Mr. Hartigan must mean the people in the newer developments, the ones that had created the need for Deerfield. Mr. Hartigan hated these places, so much larger and grander than the houses the Hartigan Group had built. Kat’s grandfather had sold the business this year, and Mr. Hartigan had started his own company, renovating old buildings in the city. He was tired of showing people how to live, he told the other adults. He was going to settle for helping them work and shop.

The phone rang late that night, after Josie was in bed but still awake. Her parents didn’t like phone calls after nine, because her father had to get up for work at five-thirty in order to leave the house by six-thirty. His job was on the other side of Baltimore, and he preferred heading out an hour earlier than necessary, when the roads were still relatively empty. He always said he’d rather have a quiet hour at his desk than leave later and battle traffic.

“Josie, sweetie?”

“Hmmm.” She was reading an American Girl book, although she knew she was getting too old for them.

“Which cupcakes did Kat eat today?”

Her mother’s carefully neutral tone told Josie that someone was in trouble. Had they gotten frosting on Kat’s shirt? Mrs. Hartigan was fussy about Kat’s clothes. No, Perri had been precise in her aim, smashing the cupcake into Kat’s face. Maybe Kat wasn’t supposed to eat cupcakes at all. This past year her mother had stopped giving her Lunchables, sending Kat to school with turkey sandwiches and carrot sticks. But Kat remained as round-faced as ever. Perhaps it was because Josie always shared her lunch with her.

“She really didn’t eat any,” Josie said.

“Really? Not even a bite?”

“Well, she might have had a little orange frosting. Why?”

“That was Mrs. Hartigan on the phone. Kat’s allergic to orange flavoring, of all things, and she has a horrible rash on her face and hands. She may have to miss the first day of school.”

Josie felt a flip-flop of panic in her stomach. Her parents were easygoing, but that simply made her more nervous about doing anything wrong. It wasn’t her idea to push the cupcake into Kat’s face. She shouldn’t be blamed.

“I didn’t know Kat had allergies.”

“She had a workup at the beginning of the summer, apparently. Although I have to say…I’ve never heard of an allergy to flavoring. I wonder sometimes if Mrs. Hartigan is a little-” Her mother broke off, as if she had noticed Josie’s sharpening interest. It was always fascinating when adults talked about other adults. They said the meanest things in the nicest ways and then acted so surprised if anyone suggested they didn’t like another adult, as if part of being grown-up was liking everyone, or pretending to.

“The important thing is, Kat’s going to be fine. It’s just a rash. Probably psychosomatic, for all we know. Kat’s a little delicate, isn’t she?”

Josie thought about this. Although Kat wasn’t athletic, she was strong and solid, even brave in her own way. She had let Perri push the cake in her face, knowing she was allergic to the flavoring. When she fell or slipped, she always got back up and kept going, laughing at her own clumsiness. Perri was the one who used her injuries and illnesses to make excuses, who hesitated when she had to do something physical.

Then again, Josie had the feeling that her mother was trying to say something nice about Josie, in a roundabout way-that Josie wasn’t delicate, that she didn’t have allergies, and if she did, she wouldn’t be so silly as to eat something that she knew would make her sick.

“I guess so.”

“Sometimes I think the mothers who don’t work-outside the home-tend to be a little more hysterical about the small things.”

“Mrs. Hartigan is nice. She lets us play with her makeup and fixes us special treats when we’re over there.”

Her mother reached toward Josie as if to smooth hair away from her face, then let her hand hover in space as if awaiting permission. Josie had gotten touchy about her parents’ touchy-feely ways. Finally her mother went ahead and did it anyway, and Josie didn’t protest.

“Do you wish I didn’t work?”

Josie thought about this. The truth-yes!-would make her mother feel bad. But she didn’t want to tell an out-and-out lie either.

“No, but I don’t like having a baby-sitter. I’m going to middle school now. I can look after myself, if not Matt and Timmy. Do we still have to have Marta?”

“Yes, according to the state of Maryland. Want to know something funny? When I was your age-well, just a little older-I was baby-sitting. Taking care of little babies, changing diapers. Diapers with pins, not the sticky tapes. Looking back, I’m just so glad nothing happened to the children in my care. I was completely over my head.”

“If you didn’t work, I could have gone out for travel soccer.”

“Really? You never said anything at the time. I thought you decided you’d rather concentrate on your gymnastics. You can’t do everything. If you took up a team sport, you wouldn’t have any time for Kat and Perri.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We both have to work, your dad and I, if we want to live in a place like Glendale.”

“Yeah,” Josie said again.

“Not to mention having money for extras-like gymnastic lessons and trampolines and day camp.”

“Yeah.”

“Try saying ‘yes’ sometimes, Josie. It’s not that much effort to put the s on the end of it.” But she hugged her, and Josie had a moment of wishing she could be a little kid again, someone who got tucked in every night, really tucked in, with a story and a song, the way her brothers still did. Middle school was so very, very grown-up.