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won’t drive.”
    â€œHow do you know what to cook?” J.T. asked, apparently still stuck on the fact that Kate was preparing entire meals now.
    Kate raised her eyebrows. “Grandma and I wrote up dinners on index cards. Every meal has a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. The cards are in a rubber band on top of the bread box, if you want to see.”
    J.T. frowned and rubbed his chin.
    â€œDon’t tell Mom I’m not eating meat, okay?” Kate pleaded. “Don’t tell Grandma either.”
    â€œI won’t,” he said, hesitating. “Look, Miss Hatcher’s coming any minute. I need to be out front.”
    On the porch steps, they sat side by side, staring down the long driveway. The sun felt good on Kate’s face. They had shareda secret. They could talk now, she thought. The hopeful feeling was coming back.
    â€œAre you looking forward to school?” Kate asked gingerly.
    Her brother shrugged. “I’m glad I’m not at Cliffside anymore,” he said. “But I don’t know about school.”
    Most kids hadn’t seen J.T. in more than a year, and while everyone knew he’d been sent to a juvenile detention center, Kate hoped no one would hold what he did against him or say mean things, especially since J.T. had been bullied in middle school. A boy named Curtis Jenkins used to call him Chicken Man. Curtis had stuffed chicken feathers into J.T.’s locker and once accused him out loud of stinking up the classroom by not cleaning the chicken manure out of his shoes (only he didn’t call it manure).
    â€œGuess I worry about it,” he added.
    Kate nodded softly in agreement. “Me too.” She didn’t have much faith that the anti-bullying campaign in middle school had sunk in deep enough to carry over into high school. It was a nice effort, for sure. A “Words that Hurt” program took up an entire afternoon with students acting out roles on the stage in the auditorium. The students designed T-shirts and crafted posters. Kate and Jess made one together: D ON ’ T STAND BY — STAND UP! But Kate felt flat about the anti-bullying stuff now. She suspected that for a lot of kids it was all a halfhearted gesture, like the fire drill or the canned food they brought in at Thanksgiving. Just something you had to do at school that day.
    She shifted her position on the steps to face her brother. “You should try out for marching band,” she said brightly.
    â€œWhy?” J.T. asked.
    â€œBecause you play the trumpet!”
    When J.T. didn’t respond, Kate tried again. “Band camp’s in August, and maybe you’d get to know a few kids before school started.”
    Pressing the tips of his long fingers together, J.T. looked down. “I don’t ever want to touch that trumpet again.”
    Kate just stared at him like,
what in
the heck does that
mean?
She didn’t get it.
    But J.T. got up and walked off across the yard, because Miss Hatcher had just turned up the driveway.
    It wasn’t going to be easy, Kate was realizing. And while she didn’t want to admit it so soon, she knew her brother was different now. You couldn’t talk about Cliffside with him. And you couldn’t mention Brady and Digger. Both of which Kate could understand. But the trumpet? Why would J.T. not play it anymore and refuse to join the marching band? It just didn’t make sense.
    *
    By noon, Miss Hatcher had left, and Uncle Ray had finished the mowing and turned off the tractor. In the quiet that followed, Tucker stretched out, his dog tags clinking on the wooden porch floor, while Kate lay on the porch swing, pushing herself back and forth with one foot. An open book lay on her chest, but her eyes were closed as she wondered if Jess had found her bathing suit and whether she and her mother also got lunch at the mall. Maybe even sweet potato fries in the food court. Jess and Kate always got a batch and split