SINCE MERET REFUSES to go back to STEM camp, I find a new summer program. This one isn’t just science-oriented, but takes a Renaissance approach to gifted-and-talented education, marrying technology and the classics and Latin and phys ed. Meret is cautiously excited about the idea, about beginning fresh. We picked out an outfit last night, a top whose color turned her eyes an otherworldly blue.

At the end of the day I drive to the school where the program is housed and wait near the front entrance. When I see her exit the building, I wave. The girl she is walking with says something and smiles. Meret is a mirror, reflecting that same smile back at her. Okay, I think, letting out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. So far, so good.

“How did it go?” I ask, as she slides into the passenger seat.

Meret’s hair covers her face as she ducks away from me. “Fine.”

“How are the other kids?”

She shrugs. “They’re okay. I sat with three girls who’ll be in the same high school as me this fall.”

“That’s great.” I wonder if the girl she walked out with is one of them. “Any interesting teachers?”

Meret glances away, and I realize that her chin is trembling.

“Hey,” I say, touching her arm. “What’s going on?”

The tears start. “Nothing. It’s stupid. Everyone’s nice. Everyone’s really nice.” She wipes her cheeks. “Everything was good, you know? Like, I thought I looked decent. And no one was saying anything terrible about me. But it turns out they didn’t have to. I sat at lunch with people, but I didn’t actually eat, because none of them did. Someone was talking about a kid who has alopecia and how terrible it would be to look like that, and I laughed. I laughed because I was so glad it wasn’t me they were ragging on. Even though they’re awful, I’d rather be like them than like me.”

“Meret—”

“Then I had gym. Today we just got a tour of the locker room from Ms. Thibodeau—the tennis coach. She showed us the showers and the lockers and then she looked over at me and said there’s a changing room, too, with a curtain, if you don’t want everyone looking. I thought she was saying I need to be hidden. But—”

I am barely aware of getting out of the parked car, but I do. I jog behind the school to the tennis courts, where a woman in a track suit is carrying a wire basket filled with bright yellow balls. “Excuse me,” I say, boiling. “Are you Ms. Thibodeau?”

She turns, smiling. “Yes, hi.”

“I’m Meret Edelstein’s mother.”

“Meret,” she repeats, as if she is shuffling a deck in her mind. I can see when she remembers my daughter.

“She told me what you said to her today during gym class.”

The coach looks puzzled. “That she should try out for tennis?”

“Mom.” Behind me, I hear Meret’s mortified voice. “She did ask me to join the tennis team. I didn’t get a chance to finish.”

The coach puts down the bucket of balls. “I started playing in ninth grade,” she explains. She takes out her phone and scrolls through photos until she holds one up to me. There is a younger, chubbier version of the woman with a bad haircut, a racket balanced in one hand. “I wasn’t fast or strong but I was really good at videogames. That’s the same kind of hand-eye coordination you get when you work in a science lab, like Meret has.” She looks at Meret. “I hope you’re still thinking about it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Meret says. She grasps my arm and yanks, hard. “We, um, have to go.”

I stare at the coach, then thank her for looking out for my child. We walk back to the front of the school. Just before we reach the car, Meret wraps her arms around me—in full view of other students.

“I’m sorry. I thought—”

“I know what you thought,” Meret says, smiling a little. “It was lit.”

We get into the car and I turn over the ignition. “So she wasn’t saying that about the changing room to be mean.”

“No. She’s pretty awesome, actually. She’s the first person who ever thought I’d be good at something with my body instead of my brain. Everyone else thinks I’m lazy because I’m fat.”

“You have fat. You aren’t fat. You have fingernails, too, but you aren’t fingernails.”

Meret looks at me from the corner of her eye. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever admitted that I’m…” She corrects herself. “That I have fat.”

Talking about this, instead of dancing around it, feels right. “There isn’t only one type of body. Anyone who makes you feel that way is only trying to make themselves feel better by finding someone to pick on.”

“Yeah, but when you stand up, people listen. When I stand up, people notice my size. I’m literally the elephant in the room.” She shrugs. “It’s so weird. They can’t not see me. But also, I’m invisible. I can walk down a hallway and see everyone looking away.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

She looks surprised. “For ambushing Coach Thibodeau?”

“Well, maybe,” I admit. “But mostly for not letting you talk about this with me. I figured if I did, it was like I was admitting that I agreed with you about how you look.” I glance up. “And for the record I do not.”

“Noted,” Meret says.

“It doesn’t matter how perfect I think you are, if you don’t.” I hesitate. “Are you going to start playing tennis?”

“Do you think I’d lose weight?”

“I couldn’t care less,” I say. “And that shouldn’t be the reason why you do it. Our bodies are just what hold us together, you know. They’re not who we really are. Everyone leaves them behind, eventually.”

“Yeah, but I’d rather die skinny,” Meret replies.

I roll my eyes. “Trust me. People who are thin aren’t happier.”

“Well, you’d know,” Meret says. “When I was little, I used to think I was switched at birth.”

“When I was little,” I tell her, “people used to ask my mother if she ever fed me. I cut the tags out of my jean jacket so no one would know I was a 00. Literally, less than nothing.”

“I don’t think I was even a 00 when I was born.”

“You were.” I smile at her, and pull away from the curb. “I was there.”

* * *

—

BRIAN SENDS ME a text just before 5:00 P.M. I hear the ping on my phone, wondering what’s going to make him late for dinner this time; forcing myself to not assume the worst.

Thinking of you, so I thought I’d tell you.

When he comes home, he brings me flowers: peonies and roses.

The smell takes me back to the perfume on his clothes, to Gita. But he looks so proud of himself, as if he’s slayed dragons and reached through thickets to bring this to me.

Even though I’ve eaten, I sit at the table while he does. I put the bouquet in a vase. I tell him it’s beautiful.

* * *

—

THAT NIGHT, WHEN Brian goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, I roll to his side of the bed to turn out the light and accidentally upset the book he is reading.

With a groan, I lever myself down so that I can grab the spine. It’s some god-awful tome about the mathematics of uncertainty. But when I pick it up, a piece of paper tucked inside it flutters to the floor.

It is a printout from a women’s magazine. In the photo, a woman leans back in the circle of a man’s arms, laughing. Then I notice the headline: 19 Ways to Tell Your S.O. You Care!

My heart squeezes as I try to imagine Brian searching for an article like this. I glance down at the bullet points: 1. Don’t talk, listen! 2. Say thank you. 3. A few blooms brighten anyone’s day. 4. Text when you’re thinking of them. 5. Hold hands…

Next to the first four items are methodical little check marks.

With a smile, I slip the article back into the book and set it on his dresser. I reach for my phone and text him.

I can hear the ding in the bathroom; a moment later, he comes out in a towel, holding up the screen.

Hi.

“Hi,” he says.

“I missed you,” I tell him.

“I was twenty feet away.”

I grab the edge of the towel and pull. “Too far,” I say.

* * *

—

MY BROTHER GETS a day off maybe once a month, so when he asks to meet me for lunch, I immediately say yes. I pack chicken salad sandwiches and meet him in the Public Garden—his only requirement was that we eat somewhere outside. We sit underneath the arms of a gnarled tree, watching the ducks at the water’s edge. “Are ducks the ones that mate for life?” Kieran asks.

“Pretty sure that’s geese,” I tell him.

He nods at a mallard. “You go, buddy.”

“Speaking of which. Are you dating anyone?”

Kieran rolls his eyes. “You could just ease into it.”

“Then I wouldn’t be your big sister.”

“I spend a lot of time with my right hand—” he says.

“Ew.” I grimace.

“—doing surgery,” he finishes, grinning.

“I’m scarred. You could have put that a different way.”

“Then I wouldn’t be your little brother.”

“What happened to Adam?” This was his last boyfriend, a nurse.

“He decided to date someone less stressed out about his job. An air traffic controller.” When I laugh, he shakes his head. “Hand to God.”

“Right hand?”

Kieran throws a potato chip at me. “Moving on. How’s Meret doing?”

“She’s thinking about playing tennis and she’s loving science.”

“So much better than the way I remember fifteen.”