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head during recess, she had made the mistake of telling her dad, who called the school, who talked to the girls, and this made things even worse, because now she was a “narc” and a “snitch bitch” in addition to being Sasquatch.
    “Yeah,” Eva said.
    “You can tell me. You can tell me anything. You come to me first, not Randy.”
    Ah, that’s what this was about. It was as much an anti-Randy message as a pro-Dad message, even if her dad did somehow believe he could actually protect her from that horrible world that started where their driveway stopped.
    “I will,” Eva said.
    “OK,” Jarl said. He suddenly looked sad and bewildered, like an elephant that had been fired from the circus and was wandering down the side of the highway with nowhere to go. The thought occurred to Eva that if her dad confronted those boys face-to-face, they’d make fun of her weak, fat, kindhearted father as brutally as they made fun of her, and she needed to protect her dad from that; his ego was already so fragile.
    “Everything’s better, Dad. I promise.”
    “Happy day before your birthday,” he said, and smiled at her as he closed her bedroom door. “I love ya, you know. We love you.”
    “Yeah, I know that,” Eva said in reply.
    They did, she knew that. Eva knew that Jarl’s big brother Lars had died of a heart attack a few months after she was born, and it probably made them both paranoid about losing another family member. Eva didn’t remember Lars, because obviously she wouldn’t, but apparently he was a super nice guy who really helped out Fiona and Jarl a ton when they were just starting out. And he’d been a chef, which was awesome. It was incredible knowing she’d actually been related to one. Her other uncle on that side also used to run a bakery way up in Duluth, but he sold it about six years ago, and they never saw him anyway. But Lars Thorvald, everyone said, was a legend in the kitchen.
    Her parents, on the other hand, worked about as far away from a kitchen as you could get. Until a couple years ago, Fiona was an independent sales consultant for Madison May Cosmetics, but lately had been temping because she said she wanted to work in an office environment, and it seemed like a good way to try out different ones. Jarl, meanwhile, had been at the same mailroom job at Pioneer Seeds for three yearsnow, a record. They each worked hard and barely seemed to spend any money on stuff just for themselves, and noticing the kind of stuff that the parents of other kids bought, and hers didn’t—snowmobiles, camping trips, cruise ship vacations—Eva wondered if they ever would. What happened to all of the money her parents earned, Eva wasn’t sure. Maybe it was true; maybe it was, as her mom said, all just going to the house and car payments and barely keeping them afloat, and that was why the dryer was loud and the deck wasn’t going to be repainted anytime soon and why there was no handle on the toilet and you had to reach inside the back part to flush it. Fiona said they were one emergency from everything falling apart. But it didn’t feel like it to Eva. Their home felt safe. She could have a pepper garden in her closet and take buses around the city alone and sneak time with Randy if she was careful. And when things did go bad, like they often did at school, she could decide for herself how to respond. Sure, maybe the churro bites were Randy’s idea, but it was up to her to execute it. And she would.
     • • • 
    After she was sure that her parents were asleep, Eva got up and sat at the vanity in her room with the box of churro bites and the pint jar of crushed peppers. She remembered Aracely saying that half a teaspoon spread over an entire meal was still too much for 80 percent of full-grown Iowan adults who ordered the chimole dish; it sent them coughing and gasping to the bathroom or downing whole glasses of milk after two bites. Half a teaspoon over maybe two pounds of food. She thought about