"I played with boys," I say quietly. "Maybe they will be my friends."
In the front room Father is sitting at the table with the light on and writing in his notebook.
"Did you sleep?" I say.
"Do I look like I need my beauty sleep, Caroline? You better comb your hair now, so they don't see you with that birdnest on your head."
Out the window it's dawn. Father's pointing at the sky like a helicopter might be out there watching but there's nothing I can see in the gray clouds.
"I am trying so hard to figure all these things out," he says. "I want you to know that. I don't want you to think I'm not doing anything about it. There is no place on this farm where we can't be seen except for in this house but then they can watch it and see us come and go so they know when we're in here."
"They can't be watching us all the time," I say.
"In the war they dug tunnels," Father says. "Straight down under the floorboards and then underground, coming up into the air far away where no one was looking."
"That's a long tunnel," I say.
Out the window the horses are biting at each other and shifting around waiting for the sun. They watch me when I practice my running but they don't race along the fence like sometimes they do with cars.
A horse can walk and trot and canter and gallop. These are what are known as gaits.
We are up irrigating when we see the yellow truck coming. It turns in at the farm and instead of turning toward the big house it drives to ours where it stops. The muddy water slips straight around Father's wrists with his hands hidden underwater holding stones to weigh down the plastic dam. I am helping with a slippery piece of sod up on the high bank.
"Those people are taking things out of that truck," I say.
"I guess we better check on what they're doing," he says.
With the wet muddy shovel over his shoulder he leads the way down the slope through the tall grass. I walk in the trail he makes and the grass makes dry slippery sounds around his legs. Next to us the water spills down the slope. It has only reached halfway down seeping in before it slides further, not as fast as us and then it's dry on both sides of us and we're closer, it's easier to see our house. It's hard to walk fast in these black rubber boots.
The yellow truck says RYDER on the side. The man in the open back I have never seen before. He holds a box and wears a baseball cap and blue coveralls.
"Hello," he says.
"This is some kind of misunderstanding," Father says, and then Miss Jean Bauer comes around the side of the truck.
"Caroline!" she says. "You look great. A little muddy, but great."
She looks different without her white coat and in her red boots. Not as old. Her voice is the same. The gray stripe in her hair swoops back.
"It's you," Father says.
"We didn't want to go inside," she says. "But we have all these things for you. Come see. The boxes are some new pots and pans, more clothes. These are all things people sent in, things they wanted to give you when they read about you in the newspaper or heard about you on the radio."
"We don't need any more things," Father says. "Do we have to accept them?"
The first thing I see around the other side is the bicycles shining in the sun. The big one is blue and the smaller one is yellow.
"Go ahead," Miss Jean Bauer says. "You can ride it."
"I don't know how," I say.
"You've never ridden a bike?"
"No."
"Your father will teach you," she says.
"You will?" I say.
Father is stabbing at the ground with the sharp blade of the shovel. He doesn't say anything at first but then leans the shovel against the fence and walks over to the blue bicycle.
"All right," he says. "A little later. I just never had a bicycle with so many gears on it. That's what they are, right?" He smiles halfway like he's made a decision and then picks up a box and carries it into the house.
"Have you been reading the books I gave you for school?" Miss Jean Bauer says.
"Yes," I say.
"Are you happy these days?" she says.
"Yes," I say. "Are you?"
"Mostly," she says. "I'm happy to see you doing so well, Caroline. Adjusting. Wait, look here at these." She bends back the flaps of a box and inside I see gold. The books inside are packed tight. "Encyclopedias. Every single letter," Miss Jean Bauer says.
"But these are World Book," I say. "Mine were Britannica."
"They'll be fine," Father says, passing behind me with another box. "We'll figure it out. Say thank you."
"Thank you," I say.
From the front of the truck Miss Jean Bauer brings a paper bag that holds the things she herself has brought for me. The first thing I can tell the shape of it through the bag. It's Randy's stand with the shining metal piece that fits the hole in his stomach so he doesn't have to lie on his side.