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other girls donned their leather chaps and sequined cowboy hats and joined with the boys in barrel racing and roping competitions, but the misfits just watched. Because the school had scored so poorly the year before in the state’s mandated testing, school excused rodeo practice was only twice a week and then only one class was skipped. The schedule was juggled around so classes would be skipped evenly. Serious participants were expected to practice after school and on weekends depending on their events.
    With the exception of shooting, cooking, quilting, and horseshoes, new additions all, the students practiced for the upcoming tournament at the indoor city arena, where the rodeo would be held. David, Russell, and Tanner Nelson, another of the bad boys, were taken by Mr. Blake to the gun range east of town. The others got their own rides. Eleanor very much wanted to join, them but couldn’t figure an unobtrusive way to do so. Instead, she watched the girls rope horned posts and dart around steel barrels from the highest bleacher and listened for the gunshots that told her David was nearby.
    Early in October, Eleanor was at school when Mr. Blake brought the shooters back. They were late and the buses had gone already. Russell and Tanner trotted away together toward the truck stop. From her view inside the building, she saw Mr. Blake offer to drive David home, but he waved him off and headed north. Eleanor collected her bag and followed him.
    She fell into the familiar muscle memory of silent pursuit. She padded softly behind David, keeping to shadows and running parallel when she could. She stopped and listened and watched, and kept a perfect distance, though she had to force herself not to close when she could.
    David did not live far from school. Just a mile or so to the north, he disappeared into a trailer park which was the cheapest rental housing in town. She smelled dogs and pigeons, rabbits and cats. She stopped behind a dumpster across from the street and glanced down the gravel road and saw where David disappeared into an aluminum mobile home.
    She waited for traffic to pass, got up, and loped across the street. She went behind the trailer homes, between them and a white plastic fence that kept the winds from filling the place with tumbleweeds and allowed the owners to up the rent for aesthetic reasons.
    When Eleanor reached the trailer, she stopped to listen. The next trailer had a blaring television spewing an angry talk show. The neighbor on the other side was quiet and dark.
    Eleanor was too short to look in the windows. The trailer was raised on blocks and a cedar porch extended in front of the door. Wires reached from a pole by the fence to the trailer’s corner and an ancient metal television antennae stuck up at the other end. A full-size propane tank rested on a pad behind the trailer with black hoses connecting it to the house. Eleanor squeezed behind it and listened.
    â€œWhat’s for dinner?” she heard David say.
    â€œHow about a pizza,” a woman replied.
    â€œFrozen or take out?”
    â€œFrozen,” said the woman.
    â€œAh,” said David.
    â€œYes,” said a little voice. “Pizza!”
    It was a girl. A little girl. Five or six years old.
    â€œIt’s easy, and I have to go,” the woman said.
    â€œWhere you going?” asked David.
    â€œI got a job,” the woman said proudly. “I’m starting at the grocery tonight. I’ll be in the back for a week, but then I’ll be a checker. It’s easy work and steady.”
    â€œThat’s cool, Mom,” said David.
    â€œBring home cookies,” said the youngster.
    Eleanor placed the voice then and remembered David’s mother from before. In startling half-forgotten detail, Eleanor recalled her height and weight, teeth, eyes, and hands, the part in her hair, the lilt in her speech when she called David in from play. Her voice had changed, grown weaker, tttwearier, but