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and eye shadow, with little baskets slung over their arms. Cleo and I hurried right by them, trying to hold in our chuckles, but neither one of them tried to spray us with anything. How they could just see that we weren’t the typical Saks Fifth Avenue − shopper types, I didn’t know.
    We rode up the escalator to the Young Miss department on the second floor. Cleo was right. There were displays of shorts and sandals and summer dresses and hats. And way in the back were rows and rows of coats with big signs saying 25% OFF, so crammed together they held themselves up off the floor without hangers.
    Cleo picked through the coats like a clothing expert, which of course she was. She could tell right away what would fit or not fit, what was a maybe and what was out of the question.
    “Oh my God, no. You’d look like one of those poofy ice skaters in that thing,” she said, when I held up a short, pinkish jacket trimmed with white fur around the sleeves and the hood.
    And Cleo knew what was me and what wasn’t. Which was more than I had ever figured out before.
    No. No. Maybe. No. Maybe. Definitely no.
    I was getting hot and tired of trying on coats. Back to the first maybe. It was a simple black-and-red winter parka that was cinched just a little at the waist to give it shape. The saleslady came bustling over.
    “This is the one,” Cleo said to the woman and then turned to me. “Right?”
    “Yup,” I said.
    “Come over here and I’ll ring you up,” the saleslady said with an irritated look on her face. She, too, must have been able to tell we weren’t the big Saks Fifth Avenue − shopper types. She was ready to make the sale and move on.
    The woman’s voice trailed away as she whisked the coat over to the cash register. “You and your daughter have made an excellent choice,” she said.
    These words lingered in the air, as if waiting to be noticed. Cleo laid her credit card on the counter with a snapping sound. Then she looked right at me and smiled.
    “Yes,” she said. “We have.”

Chapter 9
    My brand-new coat was hanging in the hall closet, waiting for Monday to be worn to school. And I was waiting; a too-long, boring weekend. I knew Taylor wasn’t going to be around, not even to talk with on the phone. She had left Friday to go visit her dad in New York City (and that was a long-distance call). Cleo left just after our shopping trip for a clothing show somewhere in Connecticut. It was just going to be me and my dad and my brother all weekend.
    And my dad was spending practically the whole weekend out in his studio painting. It seemed that lately, like for the last several months, like for as long as Cleo’s been around, Dad’s been painting a lot. And whistling a lot. My dad whistles really well when he’s in a good mood.
    I watched TV mostly, although we don’t have cable out here, something to do with the wet ground and the closeness of the river, and my dad is too cheap to buy one of those satellite things. So we have an antenna, and no one I talk to even knows what an antenna is.
    Sunday my brother and I were on the two couches in the living room. I was lying down. Ian was sitting up with his guitar. Ian, of course, had the remote control. He never lets me even touch the controller when he’s watching something. Ian had on some science-fiction movie, and he was practicing scales during commercials.
    “Do you have to do that?” I said. I turned my head to him, but other than that I didn’t move my body at all. My feet stuck up into my view of the movie, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t even paying attention.
    “It’s a commercial,” he answered. His fingers were lifting and pressing down all over the neck of his guitar, so fast they couldn’t possibly know what they were doing. His other hand seemed barely to move over the hole in the center, but notes were coming out, like millions of beads forever dropping on the floor.
    “It’s not a commercial now,” I complained.
    “You’re not