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yet.” She paused and swallowed hard. “You go ahead. Maybe it’s just for you.”
    “But you’re the one who needs to get out of here,” Miri argued.
    “It’s okay. It’ll do, knowing that there’s magic for real.”
    Miri stood holding the little glass. “I want to go, but I don’t want to leave you here,” she said helplessly.
    Molly smiled, trying to look as if she didn’t care. “Just go ahead, will you?”
    So Miri did. But nothing changed. She lowered the lens from her eye and handed it to Molly. “Try it.” Without a word, Molly did, but it was useless. Her hand dropped to her side. They stared at each other; two eleven-year-old girls in the middle of a faded room in a big house on a country road in the year 1935.
    • • •
    Molly very kindly lent her a handkerchief. And then a second one, when the first got too soggy to be useful. She patted Miri’s back, too, while she cried. But she didn’t say anything dumb like It’s not that bad or There’s a silver lining to every cloud. Miri was grateful. She was stuck in 1935, and she would probably never see her mom and dad again, and nobody would believe her if she tried to explain what had happened, and she just had to cry. Every time she was about to stop, she would think something like “I’ll never get to wear my purple boots again,” and then she would start sobbing all over again. When she was finally all cried out and her skin was tight with dried tears, she rolled onto her back and looked at the familiar, peculiarly shaped ceiling. Molly, draped over the bed, was looking at the ceiling, too.
    Miri tried to remember what she had learned in fifth-grade history. 1935. What was going on in 1935? Was it flappers and the Charleston? No, that’s the twenties, she thought. Uh-oh. The Depression. The thirties were the Great Depression. “Great!” she moaned.
    Molly looked at her with interest. It was the first non-sobbing noise she had made in a long time. “What?”
    “1935! Right in the middle of the Great Depression! I have to get stuck in the Depression! Sheesh!”
    “I never heard anybody call it ‘great’ before,” said Molly.
    “Great like big, not like terrific.”
    “Oh.”
    “Is everybody out of work? Are you poor and hungry?”
    Molly laughed. “I’m hungry, but that’s ’cause it’s almost suppertime. I guess we’re poor, but we’re not as poor as some. Not like the Okies anyway. Flo’s got a string of farms up and down the river.”
    But now Miri was remembering more. “Oh my God!”
    Molly looked shocked. “You took the Lord’s name in vain!”
    “Sorry. I just remembered something.”
    “What?”
    “There’s a big war coming.”
    “What? When?” Molly yelped.
    “In a few years. Right when we grow up,” said Miri dismally.
    “Between us and the Yankees again?” asked Molly.
    “What? Oh. No. No, it doesn’t happen here. It’s mostly over in Germany and England and Japan, I think. But it’s really big. What a bummer.”
    “What a what?”
    “A bummer—a problem,” explained Miri.
    “I’m sorry I called you up from the future,” apologized Molly.
    “Oh, that’s okay,” said Miri. “I got to meet you, at least.”
    There was a silence. Miri lifted her feet in the air and looked at her sandals. She didn’t even have any socks on, she observed. Trapped in 1935 without any socks. Mom wouldn’t be happy about that. Oops. Don’t think about Mom.
    Molly, who was still holding the glass lens, dropped it over her right eye and squinted her eyebrow over it as if it were a monocle. “You know,” she said.
    After a second, Miri looked over to the bed. “You know what?”
    “This glass,” said Molly slowly. There was another silence.
    “ What? ” said Miri. “What about it?”
    “It’s mine.”
    Miri sat up. “What do you mean?”
    Molly remained draped over the bed, squinting through the glass. “It’s mine. It’s from my glasses.”
    “You don’t have glasses,” said Miri.
    “Yes I