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for me to play along.
    “He must be,” he said, as I tiptoed over to the bench, starting to sit down gently on the bench’s edge. But just as I made my final move—my face right on top of his, my chest above his chest—Berringer sat up a little too quickly, banging into me. Forehead first.
    “Ow!” I said.
    “Ow yourself,” he said, rubbing his head, laughing. His smile was so big now, it took up his entire face.
    Somehow, he had saved his cereal.
    This was when he first really looked up at me, his smile gone. “Emmy,” he said, holding his hand to his chest, the one that had just been on his forehead. “Wow.”
    I touched my face, wondering if there was ketchup there, grape Popsicle stain. Josh certainly wouldn’t have noticed and told me. “What? Do I have something?” I asked.
    He sat back, moving farther from me, pulling his knees toward him. “Not at all. You just . . . you look so different.”
    I felt that in my chest. That he meant it. It had been years since we’d seen each other—since before I’d ended up in Rhode Island. I knew I looked different than I had then. I had slimmed down a little, and I let my hair grow out, learning slowly to leave it alone, letting it curl up the way it wanted. I was tanner, too, not quite so breakable-looking. I couldn’t help it—I started to blush. But before I could say thank you, he interrupted me.
    “You really look your age,” he said.
    “I really look my age? ”
    “Yeah,” he said, touching the lines around my eyes gingerly. Then, as if remembering something, he turned and looked at Josh. “Josh, if your little sister’s looking so ancient, how old does that make us?”
    I slapped his hand away. “Thanks, Berringer,” I said. “That’s so nice of you to say.”
    Josh started to laugh. He was sitting on the ground across from us, leaning against the window. I looked over at him and then back at Berringer, who was also laughing now, his ear-to-ear smile back in full effect.
    “Whatever,” I said, standing up.
    “Emmy, c’mon,” Josh said. “He’s just kidding around with you. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
    “Honestly,” Berringer said. “You look good. You know you do. I barely recognized you.”
    I guess this was supposed to be nicer. “I really don’t care, Berringer,” I said, even though I did, a little. He must have known it too. I’d had a huge crush on Berringer most of the time that I was growing up, right through my last year of junior high, right until he headed off to college. I remember trying to keep my mouth closed when I saw him, covering my braces, as if they were the problem. I tried to dress the way the older girls dressed. I kept my hair down. I used to daydream that he’d come home from school and see how different I was. Decide I was old enough. Now, I wasn’t even sure he was.
    I made my way to the front door, opening it quickly.
    “So what’s this I hear about a tackle shop?” he called out, stopping me. “You like fishing now?”
    Instead of answering, I looked down at Josh, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. I wanted to say that I wasn’t only working at a tackle shop, but who knew what my brother had told him? If Josh had mentioned that I was working on a documentary, which I seriously doubted, I was certain he didn’t explain anything real about it, anything positive, like what I was hoping to learn about the wives, like what I was trying to accomplish. I wasn’t about to get into that all now, especially considering that I hadn’t yet. Learned anything. Accomplished anything.
    I turned back to Berringer. “You know,” I said, “this is not an ideal moment to make fun of me.”
    “I’m not making fun of you,” he said seriously. “I’m curious to hear what you’re up to.”
    I stayed fast in my position in the front doorway anyway. “Well, could you be curious a little later, please? I need to go inside and check on my mom.”
    “You might want to wait on that,” he said.
    “What are