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Bev’s constant kindness had set her apart from the other city girls that Emmy had met, and it had taken her a good four months to trust its sincerity. Most town kids regarded anyone from outside the city limits as a hick or a hayseed, words that had kept Emmy from pursuing other friendships. Bev was different.
    “Thanks,” Emmy whispered back, slipping into another near doze.
    “Emmaline Nelson,” Mrs. Hagen snapped, rapping the stick against her desk. Emmy stretched her eyes against their droop and stood.
    “Yes, Mrs. Hagen,” she said.
    “Would you care to tell the class the difference between Swiss and Salisbury steaks?” The older woman balled her plump hands into fists and propped them on a tightly girdled roll of doughy midsection.
    Emmy took a deep breath and tried to ignore the girls giggling behind her, or the sharp turn of Bev’s head as she glared at them.
    “Salisbury steaks aren’t actually steak, but cheaper cuts ground up and filled with pork or bread to resemble a steak,” Emmy said. She heard a girl in the back whisper, “She should know,” but ignored the insult. No matter how much the home economics class taught them budgets and sewing, Emmy already knew her skirt was cut from noticeably coarser fabric. She pressed on. “Swiss style is made from the lesser cuts as well, but pounded and scored and then braised with peppers and onions until tender.”
    Mrs. Hagen nodded approval without lowering her nose, and Emmy stopped listening to the lecture. Though they had been living in town for a few months, they were still scraping aspects of their pastoral life off their boots, and it didn’t surprise Emmy that Mrs. Hagen would single her out as an expert in the area of cheap steaks.
    Emmy glanced at Bev, who mouthed the word witch while raising one eyebrow in a delicate arc. After graduation Bev was going to summer in New York with some distant cousins and then fly on to Paris, to live with an uncle for a year and study at a college called the Sorbonne. Bev was the first person Emmy had met who actually had dreams and the means to make them come true already purchased in the shape of a one-way ticket tucked away in her father’s desk. Cooking lessons were simply Bev’s way of marking time until the final day of high school.
    Bev pretended to take a note, then scooted her tablet across the table for Emmy to read.
    Come out with me tonite.
    It’s Monday. Emmy scribbled back. What’s to do?
    Be young, have fun.
    Can’t.
    Bring Birdie, your mom won’t mind.
    She will mind. Emmy wrote, longing to say yes. Though she wasn’t fond of her mother’s severe daily schedule, she didn’t have the nerve to challenge it.
    Movie Saturday?
    Maybe. This she thought she could attempt. Maybe there was a way for her to escape the Saturday evening routine of listening to the radio after a long day of cleaning and mending, baking the bread for the coming week. She could always back out if she failed to convince her parents.
    Pick you up at 5:30.
    Okay.
    Okay?
    Let’s hope.
    *   *   *
    “Dad,” Emmy said the second her father walked through the door. It was Friday night, his most exhausted moment, but also the time at which he was the most agreeable. “I made Swiss steak for dinner. It’s still hot.” Christian Nelson gave his daughter a weak but warm smile. She’d raced home after school and pounded the scant pieces of round she could find into four small slabs of meat. The recipe called for green peppers, but onions and canned tomatoes were all Emmy had—that and the never-ending bounty of potatoes. The steaks had simmered for a full three hours and now were as tender as veal. She and Birdie had eaten egg-salad sandwiches, saving the meat for their father.
    “I’ve had a long day,” he said, and went to the kitchen sink to wash his grime-weathered hands. His sloped posture indicated that she wouldn’t have to prattle about her school or his work. Not that they had lengthy conversations on a