her father asks from the doorway to the bedroom. Sarah shrugs. “I guess. It’s not like I’m doing much.” She puts down her vampire novel, which she has reread for the tenth time. Outside, they haul and stack dead limbs that her father has cut and sawed by hand. “Do you miss regular school?” her father asks. She shrugs angrily. “You probably met at least some nice kids there,” he says, taking one end of a heavy limb; together, they swing it onto the pile. “Sort of,” she mumbles. “Any boys?” her father teases. “The main reason I liked school was for the toilets and hot running water,” she says sharply. Her father keeps working in silence. “I mean,” Sarah continues, “how are we going to, like, bathe when it’s winter?” “Bathe? I thought you’d never ask!” Miles says as he comes around the side of the sawmill. He’s totally sweaty but as happy as a clam. “In the river, I suppose,” Sarah says. “Cut a hole in the ice. Jump in. Well, forget that.”
