Her hair was heavy on her neck even though she had tied it back with a ribbon. The street was deserted; almost everyone was taking a Sunday-afternoon nap or had gone to the local pool. She wanted to go swimming too, but she knew better than to ask. Her mother and Matt had been drinking all day, and they'd begun to quarrel. She hated it when they fought, especially in summer, when the windows were open. All the kids would stop playing and listen. Today's fight had been really loud. Her mother had screamed bad words at Matt until he hit her again. Now they were both asleep, sprawled on the bed with no cover on them, the empty glasses on the floor beside them. She wished her sister, Leila, didn't work every Saturday and Sunday. Before she took the Sunday job, Leila used to call it their day, and she'd taken Elizabeth around with her. Most of the nineteen-year-old girls like Leila were hanging around with boys, but Leila never did. She was going to go to New York to be an actress, not get stuck in Lumber Creek, Kentucky. "The trouble with these hick towns, Sparrow, is that everybody marries right out of high school and ends up with whiny little kids and Pablum all over their cheerleader sweaters. That won't be me."

Elizabeth liked to hear Leila talk about how it would be when she was a star, but it was scary too. She couldn't imagine living in this house with Mama and Matt without Leila.

It was too hot to play. Quietly she stood up and smoothed her T-shirt under the waistband of her shorts. She was a thin child with long legs and a spray of freckles across her nose. Her eyes were wide-set and mature-"Queen Solemn Face" Leila called her. Leila was always making up names for people-sometimes funny names; sometimes, if she didn't like the people, pretty mean ones.

If anything, the inside of the house was hotter than the porch. The glaring four-o'clock sun shone through the dingy windows, onto the couch with its sagging springs and the stuffing that was beginning to come out at the seams, and the linoleum floor, so old that you couldn't even tell what color it had been, cracked and buckled under the sink.