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"Is that what you’re doing by digging up the backyard? Reacting? Dad would never have done that to the backyard"

"No, he wouldn’t have," I said after a moment "And I wouldn’t have when he was still alive"

"So you’re saying you’re a different person now," Colin said, satisfied with his deduction

"I think the fundamentals stay the same, but parts ofup the backyard?"

"The part that wants to build soful"

"That’s the heart," Mykia said "You had a heartshift"

"I had a heartbreak," I admitted

The table went silent

"I want to know," Glynnis said quietly

I s "What?"

"I want to knohat the other kind of change is The kind that isn’t slow"

Tears burned at my eyes, hot and quick "It’s the kind that pulls you by the hair The unexpected jolt It’s e cell by cell, cushioning the bloith time It ss you’d rather leave under a rock"

I paused, embarrassed Why had I said that? I was happy with my life, but the life I had before required Jesse toin the small world we’d created for ourselves It worked for us But what happened when "us" becaan to flow Trey’s eyes filled, too

"That kind of change is the kind that’s fucking unfair," he said "It’s the sucker punch"

"And the only thing you can do when that happens," I added, reaching out to touch his arh the pain"

"But it’s hard to breathe sometimes," Glynnis said "It’s so hard to breathe"

Mykia set her fork down "Do you ever see, when people are hyperventilating on TV, so to breathe into?"

Glynnis nodded

"You have to find your paper bag when you feel like you can’t get the air in," Mykia said She had an air of authority that had both boys hanging on her every word

"Is that what ?"

"Well," Mykia said, resu her dinner, "you are s week, three days after it was official on the calendar, summer danced its way across the farh up in the sky, hot enough to warot little green ones," I said to Mykia

"What?" She tilted her head back to take in the sun, and a carrot fell out of her hair

"My to up all over" I couldn’t keep the joy froarden, and to ly overnight