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grass.” She unscrewed the next crumbling cookie and licked at the icing. “Dad came home and said”— she made her voice deep and rocked her head from side to side—“ ‘Jesus, Treva, you don’t even teach during the summer and you expect me to cut the damn grass after all day at work,’ and Mom said”— Mel put a squeaky edge on her own contralto —“‘Jesus yourself, I’m not going to have a heart attack to cut the goddamn grass. You want it cut, you cut it.”
    “Were they mad?” Em asked, fascinated.
    “Nah.” Mel slumped down beside her on the cushions and crammed half of the Oreo in her mouth, talking around the black crumbs. “They get tired, and they bitch at each other, and then they say something dumb, and then they do it.”
    Em blinked. “Oh.”
    Mel nodded. “Like Mom says, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll cut the grass, but if I get all hot and sweaty, that’s it, ’cause I’m only getting hot and sweaty once tonight,‘ and Dad says, ’Well, maybe I can cut the grass later; why don’t we talk about it?‘ and Mom says, ’Well, I don’t know, that grass is getting pretty long,‘ and my dad grabs her hand and says, ’Step into my office and we’ll discuss it,‘ and my mom laughs and they go back to their room and do it.” She bit into the second half of her Oreo. “I tried to listen at the door after the grass fight, but Three caught me.”
    Em grinned and relaxed. “What did he say?”
    “He said that listening to stuff like that would stunt my growth and it would be my fault if I grew up to be a dwarf. Then he took me out for ice cream.”
    Em sighed. “I love Three.”
    “He can be your brother, too,” Mel offered. “So what are your mom and dad fighting about?”
    Em put her half-eaten Oreo down. “They’re not. They don’t fight. They don’t even talk.” She thought hard for a minute. “I don’t think they even do it.”
    Mel shook her head. “You don’t know that. They could be really sneaky and wait until you’re asleep. Your mom and dad are grown-ups. Mine are immature.” Her chin went up on the last sentence, and she looked so much like her mother that Em grinned again in spite of her worries. Then Mel, being Mel, went back to the problem at hand. “So if they don’t fight, what’s the problem?”
    “They don’t do anything.” Em thought hard, trying to come up with a reason that would make Mel understand. “Dad bowls a lot and messes with the yard and goes out to work. And Mom works around the house and does her school stuff to get ready for when it starts, and talks to my grandma and your mom, and goes to visit my crazy great-grandma in the nursing home. But they don’t do stuff together.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and frowned at Mel. “I know it doesn’t sound bad, but it is. There’s something wrong. And my mom is really upset today. I don’t know why, but she’s acting really unhappy.”
    Mel sat up. “So they don’t, like, hug each other, and make jokes, and pretend to have fights and then laugh, and stuff like that?”
    Em tried to imagine her parents doing any of those things. It sounded so wonderful, to have parents that laughed, but she couldn’t picture it. Her mom laughed with her and with her aunt Treva, but she couldn’t remember her laughing with her dad. She couldn’t remember her dad laughing at all. “No,” she said. “No, they never do.”
    Mel’s face looked sober. “Maybe they’re getting a divorce.”
    “No!” Em pushed the Oreo package away, sick to her stomach. “No, they aren’t. They don’t fight. Ever. They never fight. They’re not getting a divorce.”
    “You could live here,” Mel offered. “My mom loves you and so does my dad. You could be my sister.”
    “They’re not getting a divorce,” Em said.
    Mel slumped back on the pillows again and stared into space, thinking hard. Em watched, pinning all her hopes on Mel, telling herself that Mel was the idea person in their