What We Knew by Barbara Stewart

shoulder.
    Lisa winked. “Maybe she’s talking about the time we read her diary.”
    “‘My hamster died today,’” I quoted from memory. “‘It is the saddest day ever.’”
    When the guy came around and rattled the cage door, Katie wanted off. She crawled over my lap and flew down the ramp and joined my mother on the bench next to the snow cone stand.
    “Is she mad?” I asked. “We were just joking.”
    “That was kind of cruel, making her think that pin is coming loose.”
    It was just like Lisa to turn things around and make me the bad guy. She was the reason her sister was having nightmares. Last night Katie woke the whole house because she thought she heard tapping at the window. But I wasn’t going to let Lisa’s dumb comment ruin my day. Besides, she smacked her head on the cage. Hard. She got off dizzy and queasy.
    My mom went for water and came back with sunscreen. “You’re looking a little red,” she said. Cupping Lisa’s chin, she dabbed her forehead and nose and cheeks. She did Katie’s face, too, and then mine. Her fingers felt good—cool and soft.
    “I think I’m hungry,” Katie said.
    My mom checked her watch. “One more ride and we’ll head over to the pavilion.”
    One more ride took thirty-five minutes. The line for the Raging Rapids snaked past the Alpine Slide, with its heavy metal pounding, lights throbbing, the riders a blur of color. Lisa posted a picture of us with a gorilla in sunglasses on her feed. We had eight likes by the time we reached the dock.
    I don’t know how it happened, but my mom—the one person who didn’t want to get soaked—ended up under the waterfall. Lisa and Katie couldn’t stop laughing. The shock on her face was priceless. Hair plastered to her head. Eye makeup streaking down.
    “You look like a drowned cat!” I shouted over the water slapping against the raft.
    “You’re a real sweetheart!” she shouted back.
    Sluicing through the troughs, the giant rubber doughnut started spinning. My mother cringed at the water sheeting off another fake cliff. “This is ridiculous,” she yelled out. Katie tried steering, but she only made it worse. My mom got swamped again.
    The rest of us survived—our makeup and hair, anyway. But my mom caught her reflection in a shop window and frowned. I dug through my bag for a tissue. “A lot of good that’ll do me,” she said, searching the map for a restroom. “I hope my Prince Charming isn’t roaming the park.”
    Judging from the prizes coming out of the men’s room, it was safe to say my mother wasn’t in danger of meeting the man of her dreams. Ditto for the ones filling their plates under the pavilion. All the guys my mom works with are married or have girlfriends or both. Lisa and Katie got in line while my mom and I made the rounds. A lot of the drivers hadn’t seen me since the company Christmas party. There was the mechanic who always brought horseshoes to the picnic, and the driver with the rockabilly hair and too-strong cologne, and the one with the biker beard who played Santa. I waved to Reese, my driver when I used to take the bus to Troy to visit Jerk Face, and totally snubbed Davis for getting me in trouble with my mother. He’s the reason I’ll never smoke on a bus route again.
    Everybody wanted to know what I was doing all summer. Did I have a job? No. Was my mother teaching me to drive? Yeah, right. No one was stupid enough to ask about my dad, but they all wanted to know where Scott was hiding. I wanted to joke, Not in the closet! But I knew my mom hadn’t told them. She likes to keep her private life private.
    Lunch was a buffet of steam trays loaded with hamburgers, hot dogs, and corn on the cob. We had to wait for the salads to be refilled, but I didn’t mind. I have this thing about mayonnaise. Flies, too. The pavilion was crawling with them. I covered my plate with a plate and plunked down between Katie and Lisa.
    “This is way better than the old picnics,” I whispered. My