“What does it say here?” I ask, pointing to a description below a picture of Alicia and her husband, Phil, at Niagara Falls, holding hands and wearing yellow plastic ponchos.

Alicia smiles. “It says ‘the time we got caught in the rain.’”

So Alicia’s a romantic too. “You must miss him a lot.” Phil died a year ago. I only met him a couple of times, back when I’d help out Margot with Friday cocktail hour. Phil had dementia, and he didn’t talk much. He’d sit in his wheelchair in the common room and just smile at people. Alicia never left his side.

“I miss him every day,” she says, tearing up.

Stormy jostles her way between us, green glitter pen tucked behind her ear, and says, “Alicia, you need to jazz up your pages more.” She flicks a sheet of umbrella stickers Alicia’s way.

“No, thank you,” Alicia says stiffly, flicking the page back at Stormy. “You and I have different styles.”

Stormy’s eyes narrow at this.

I quickly go over to the speakers and turn up the volume to lighten the mood. Stormy dances over to me and sings, “Johnny Angel, Johnny Angel. You’re an angel to me.” We put our heads together and chorus, “I dream of him and me and how it’s gonna be . . .”

When Alicia goes to the bathroom, Stormy says, “Ugh, what a bore.”

“I don’t think she’s a bore,” I say.

Stormy points at me with her hot-pink manicured nail. “Don’t you dare go liking her better than me just because you’re both Asian.”

Hanging around a retirement home, I’ve gotten used to the vaguely racist things old people say. At least Stormy doesn’t use the word “Oriental” anymore. “I like you both equally,” I tell her.

“There’s no such thing,” she sniffs. “No one can ever like anyone exactly the same.”

“Don’t you love your kids the same?”

“Of course not.”

“I thought parents didn’t have favorites?”

“Of course they do. My favorite’s my youngest, Kent, because he’s a mama’s boy. He visits with me every Sunday.”

Loyally I say, “Well, I don’t think my parents had favorites.” I say it because it seems like the right thing to say, but is it true? I mean, if somebody put a gun to my head and said I had to choose, who would I say was Daddy’s favorite? Margot, probably. They’re the most alike. She’s genuinely into documentaries and bird-watching, just like him. Kitty’s the baby, which automatically gives her an edge. Where does that leave me, the middle Song girl? Maybe I was Mommy’s favorite. I wish I could know for sure. I’d ask Daddy, but I doubt he’d tell the truth. Margot might.

I’d never be able to pick between Margot and Kitty. But if, say, they were both drowning and I could only throw one a life jacket, it would probably have to be Kitty. Margot would never forgive me otherwise. Kitty’s both of ours to care for.

The thought of ever losing Kitty puts me in a kinder, more contemplative mood, and so that night after she’s asleep, I bake off a tray of snickerdoodles, her favorite cookie. I have bags of cookie dough in the freezer, frozen into perfect cylindrical balls so that when any of us gets a taste for cookies, we can have them in twenty minutes flat. She’ll have a nice surprise when she opens her lunch bag tomorrow.

I let Jamie have a cookie too, even though I know I shouldn’t. But he keeps looking up at me with sorrowful puppy eyes and I can’t resist.

14

“WHAT ARE YOU DAYDREAMING ABOUT?” Peter taps my forehead with his spoon to get my attention. We are at Starbucks doing homework after school.

I dump two raw sugar packets into my plastic cup and stir it all up with my straw. I take a long sip, and sugar granules crunch satisfyingly against my teeth. “I was thinking about how it would be neat if people our age could be in love like it’s the 1950s.” Right away I wish I didn’t say “in love,” because Peter’s never said anything about being in love with me, but it’s too late, the words are already out of my mouth, so I just press on and hope he didn’t catch it. “In the 50s, people just dated, and it was as easy as that. Like one night Burt might take you to a drive-in movie, and the next night Walter might take you to a sock hop or something.”

Bemused, he says, “What the hell is a sock hop?”

“It’s like a dance, like in Grease.” Peter looks back at me blankly. “You’ve never seen Grease? It was on TV last night. Never mind. The point is, back then you weren’t somebody’s girl until you had a pin.”

“A pin?” Peter repeats.

“Yes, a fellow would give a girl his fraternity pin, and it meant they were going steady. But you weren’t official until you had the pin.”

“But I’m not in a fraternity. I don’t even know what a fraternity pin looks like.”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Wait—are you saying you want a pin or you don’t want a pin?”

“I’m not saying it either way. I’m just saying, don’t you think there was something cool in the way it used to be? It’s old-fashioned, but it’s almost . . .” What’s Margot always saying? “Postfeminist.”

“Wait. So do you want to go on dates with other guys?” He doesn’t sound upset, necessarily, just confused.

“No! I just . . . I’m just making an observation. I think it would be cool to bring back casual dating. There’s something sweet about it, don’t you think? My sister told me she wishes she didn’t let things get so heavy with her and Josh. You said yourself how you hated how serious it got with Genevieve. If we break up, I don’t want things to ever get so bad that we can’t be in the same room together. I want to still be friends no matter what.”