Rose waited for Teddy under the red “C” of Chandelier’s Grill. The way she stood, hugging her purse to her chest and looking down at her boots every few seconds, she could have been mistaken for a nervous woman, perhaps waiting for a first date or meeting a married man she intended to sleep with after a cocktail and an avocado salad. Every few minutes she’d turn to read the menu posted in the front window, changing her face as she scrolled through the appetizers, smiling at the soups, frowning at the salads, raising an eyebrow at the main dishes, nodding at the vegetarian selection, so the woman inside waiting to seat customers wouldn’t think she was staring in at her. Teddy had suggested Chandelier’s Grill after their conversation on the phone last week when Rose admitted she’d been frequenting a drive-thru taco shop that was located between the two condos she owned. She’d laughed and told him it was convenient and cheap, two C's she loved. That’s when Teddy gave her directions to Chandelier’s and told her this was another “C” she could get used to.

Carolyn’s new dining room table had arrived two days before her mother asked to sleep over. A medium-sized, cherry wood, bar-style table she’d been visiting at Floyd’s Furniture for over three months. The display had begun to show the wear of prospective buyers trying out the chairs, the scrapes along the top caused by the scooting of the basket containing wooden grapes and pears, and even the slight cracks in the corners facing the store’s carpeted walkway. But Carolyn knew she’d be more careful when she owned it herself (certainly more than the young couple she’d seen with the peanut butter-faced toddler or the bearded man who’d sat alone pretending to deal out a deck of cards to imaginary players), because this would be her first big purchase since the divorce.

Suzanne sat next to Lance as he read aloud the fast food restaurants down the freeway. Jack-n-the-Box, McDonald's, Burger King. He'd told her he wasn't hungry, that it was just a game he used to play with his mother in the car. "I'll pay $800.00, but don't let me go over that, okay?" He'd seen the ad for the truck in a newspaper left on the table at Woodrow's the week before. They'd shared a grilled cheese sandwich and crinkle-cut fries while laughing at how many used red Mazda Protégé's were for sale. It was Suzanne who noticed the truck in the paper, the title: All The Ice Cream You Want, not really. Lance stopped laughing and reread the ad to himself. He'd asked her if she thought it was carpeted. "If it's got that green grass stuff, I'm in," he said. "The windows remind me of buses. And that grass crap feels like plastic," said Suzanne. But Lance smiled and pretended to turn the steering wheel around with a knob on it. "That'd be the clincher. One of those knobs like a door handle on the wheel. Get us where we're going, huh?" Suzanne clenched her teeth, "Open doors for us, right?" She squeezed his knee, pressing his leg down causing the car to speed up. "Open something I hope," Lance said, rolling down his window to spit a sunflower seed out.

Vera stood in the principal’s office along the windowless wall wondering who’d ratted her and Emily out. Mr. Harris’s mouth moved in short twists while his tone remained high-pitched and similar to his voice during the assembly the day before when he’d announced that a student had “crapped” all over a toilet seat in the girl’s bathroom. Vera pushed one of her elbows into the light switch turning the lights off and then on again. She hadn’t held much of an opinion of her school’s principal until he’d mistaken chewed up pumpkin pie for poop.

Now she hated him.

Mr. Harris blinked and moved his mouse back and forth over a stack of blue detention slips on his desk. They’d pulled the trees out at the grade school on Saturday, right after peeing down the slide, but they hadn’t seen anyone on the playground or in the surrounding fields who would have told on them. Mr. Harris brushed the tops of his cabbage-shaped shoulders as he continued to ask Vera why she’d decided to destroy innocent trees and all Vera could picture was Emily sitting at the top of the slide with her pants halfway down, shouting, “Is it coming down straight? Is it making a puddle?”