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When Lila was nine, she chopped off all of her hair with nail scissors and let it stick up in tufts as if it were wild grass in a meadow.
“It isn’t your fault we’re getting a divorce,” her mother told her.
The day after, Lila and her mother drove down to Carney, even though it wasn’t summer yet. Lila sat at the kitchen table of her grandmother’s house, drawing black swirls on her hand with a Sharpie. The whorls went up her arm, curling in on themselves.
“Your father is very selfish,” her mother said, drinking her third cup of coffee. After each sip, she set the cup back down on the saucer with a clink. “Always out somewhere with someone. And the women! He never understood what it takes to be married—no less to have a daughter.”
“Mmmmm-hmmm,” Lila said. She was used to making encouraging noises. If she didn’t, her mother would get upset.
“He expects me to be like his mother was—never complaining, working my fingers to the bone in the kitchen, never asking any questions. But that’s just what he saw of his mother—what she showed him! How does he know what happened behind closed doors? Or how miserable she was—just look at the lines on her face! I used to walk the runways of Milan! I order takeout!”
The back door opened and Lila’s grandmother walked in with a grocery bag in each arm. She set them down on the counter. “I could hear you all the way to the driveway, Irina. Tell me your troubles; leave her out of it. What’s the best cure for heartbreak?”
“His heart,” Lila said distractedly. She got to a tricky part by her elbow and wasn’t sure if she could bend her arm quite as far as she needed to draw the snaking circles just right.
Her mother gasped. “What did you say?”
Lila’s grandmother smiled and ruffled Lila’s shorn head with a gloved hand. “I was thinking of a big chocolate cake with chocolate icing and that’s just what I am going to bake.”
“Do you like my tattoos, Babchi?” Lila asked, holding out her arm.
“No she does not,” her mother said, voice rising with irritation. “And you are going to have to scrub yourself raw to get them off. With that hair—you just look ridiculous. Did you draw on your gloves, too? Give me those!”
Lila took off her gloves and set them down in a crumpled pile. Her tattoos didn’t look right anymore. They stopped abruptly at her wrist.
“She looks like a child,” Lila’s grandmother said. “Lila, why don’t you go play and leave us old folks to talk?”
Lila obediently set down the black pen and went outside. It was only when she got there that she realized she didn’t have her gloves on—they were back on the kitchen table. But she didn’t want to go inside again, and the air was cool on the skin of her palms.
She walked around town, kicking a squashed tin can and catching a toad near the stump of a tree. It had golden eyes and smelled like rich, wet earth, and she could hardly believe her luck when her fingers closed around it like the bars of a cage. She liked the way it wriggled in her hand.
She walked over to Mr. Singer’s house. The screen door was open, but she didn’t hear anyone inside. She tapped at the metal with her foot.
“Cassel?” she called. “I caught something.” Even though she and Cassel didn’t see each other during the rest of the year, every summer they were instantly best friends again. But the beginning was always like an indrawn breath, with both of them not sure when they were allowed to let it out.
No one answered. She waited a few more minutes and then walked to the side yard. Mr. Singer—Cassel’s grandfather—was raking in the back. He looked older than she remembered, his hair grayer. Lila tried to wave, but her hands were full with the toad.
He walked over. “Lila Zacharov? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Yeah,” she said, braced for him to tell her how bad it looked. “My hair’s different.”
“The boys aren’t here yet—won’t be down for a couple weeks.”
“Oh,” she said, pain stinging the backs of her eyes. She remembered that it wasn’t summer, but she forgot Cassel wasn’t just always there, waiting for her.
Mr. Singer pointed to her hands. “What’s that you’ve got?”
She bent to let go of the toad, smiling with sudden pride. “I never caught one before by myself.”
Mr. Singer grinned. “He’s a real handsome fellow.”
For a moment, the toad stayed very still in the grass, then exploded into motion, hopping toward the hedges in three flashes of brown and green.
Mr. Singer laughed. “Fast, too. When the boys come down, they’ll be real impressed. I’ll tell ’em.”
“Yeah?” she asked hopefully.
“No doubt.” He gave her a considering look. “I like what you’ve done. Short hair’s good for the summer. Keeps you cool. Maybe you want to get some clippers and even it out, though.”
