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right.”
    “And can we get a little color, puh-lease?” Logan asked, more animated than he’d been. “It looks so much like a hospital in here that I almost grabbed a scalpel and removed Maya’s spleen today.”
    I laughed. “Logan, do the kids at school appreciate your sense of humor?”
    “Oh yeah, totally, Mom,” Logan said, dripping with sarcasm. “When they jump on you and start punching, it’s their special little way of saying we love your sense of humor.”
    Oblivious to our conversation, our counterparts erupted in laughter. “No way!” Jason bellowed. “No way she’s going to eat that! I don’t care how much money they give her, that girl is not gonna put maggots in her mouth.”
    “I am so barfing!” Maya screamed. “If she eats bugs I am going to completely vomit my whole dinner out on the floor.”
    Logan rolled his eyes. Under his breath, he muttered, “And she’s the popular one.”
    ™˜
    The following evening it was time for Michelle’s monthly Bunco game. There was something intimidating about walking into a group of women who all knew each other. Being the new kid on the block may have been easy for Maya, but I feared my fate would be similar to Logan’s. Grown women don’t throw punches, though. They’re much worse.
    I felt a bit guilty leaving Logan that evening since he was sick and stayed home from school that day. He did seem much better by the afternoon, and Jason assured me he would take good care of our son while I played dice with the Utopian housewives. I thought about bailing out at the last minute, but Bunco required a group divisible by four players.
    “Play nice with the ladies,” Jason teased as he walked me to the garage. It was easy for him to be flippant about forging friendships when his job provided a built-in fraternity. In the two weeks we had lived in Los Corderos, Jason had been invited to join the department bowling team, went to poker night at Jim’s house and spoke at a City Council meeting. Not that testifying about public funding for fire prevention was some big social brouhaha, but it gave him exposure to interesting people who were passionate about issues and public affairs. I was invited to the dice game only because Wendy McFarlane’s mother broke her hip.
    When I entered Michelle’s house, it was like a tsunami of color coordination. I was nearly knocked off my feet by the wave of hunter green and wheat that started in the family room and built in intensity through the hallway and foyer. The dark wood trim and almond plush carpet gave the home the feel of an overpriced men’s clothing store. As I made my way into the family room, I noticed that the wallpaper on the lower half of the family room walls was the same paisley pattern as the window valences. It was also the very same paisley pattern that our next door neighbor used. Our neighbor went one step further and used the pattern to cover her side tables and make a puffy frame for her family portrait. It made me wonder if there was a secret Utopia fabric warehouse where this stuff was sold by the mile. Then I remembered where I saw the pattern. It was in the swatch book that Maya and Logan brought down from the bedroom on our first day in Utopia. It was called “Crazy for Paisley,” which prompted the kids to come up with silly names for the others, like “Just Ducky” for the mallard print and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Marble!” for the faux finish.
    “I’m so glad you made it,” Michelle said warmly, instantly filling me with guilt for my unkind thoughts about her décor. I was going to stop being such a judgmental bitch. So what if not everyone had the same taste as me? Wasn’t my whole beef with Utopia that it was more homogenized than whole milk?
    “Thanks for inviting me,” I said. Michelle wore an oversized white cotton button-down shirt tied in a knot at the bottom. Her pants were soft denim Capris that looked both comfortable and pulled-together. I suddenly felt like