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“You know,” I said, leaning back onto the damp 

grass. The sky was cloudless. “I think you’re just 

imagining things, Katie. There’s nothing wrong with 

my house.”

“I didn’t say something was wrong with it.” Katie pulled 

out handfuls of grass and sprinkled them across my feet. 

“I just think something’s missing, that’s all. I can’t figure it 

out for some reason.”

We thought about it together, sitting at the curb across the street, 

and compared the identical windows, brick-faced chimneys, and 

nest-ridden roofs of the neighbors’ homes and mine. There was 

not much to discuss except for the occasional patch of weeds and 

garden statues. They stared at us with their empty, stony sockets.

As we talked, a small bird flew past our shoulders and 

into a nearby mailbox, then fell into an adjacent 

trashcan. It didn’t fly out again. We kept still, willing it 

out of the garbage with our eyes. When that didn’t 

happen, we held a moment of silence.

Katie broke it first. “By the way, I’m moving next week.”

“What?”

“I’m moving in with another family. The Richardsons don’t 

want me anymore.”

I didn’t know what to say. All the words were stuck between 

the backs of my teeth. I bit down hard, trying to loosen 

them. My braces cut into my scarred lips.

Finally, quietly: “Again? Already?”

Katie nodded and lowered her head. “I’m used to leaving.”

I nodded as well, pretending to understand. I tried to imagine the 

worst thing that had ever happened to me, but I could only think 

of my gerbil’s recent death. It was mostly my older brother’s gerbil, 

which he won at his middle school carnival. He didn’t really care, 

though. He was the one who forgot to feed it for an entire week, 

after all.

Katie could tell I was trying too hard and threw more 

grass at me. We started laughing, desperate to take our 

minds off the inevitable. Our hands ripped the earth 

apart as we attacked each other with handfuls of mowed 

lawn.

We decided not to do anything about the bird. It was 

probably dead already, anyway.

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