“Uh, Ma?” Shana interjected. “Is there music coming out of that cornflakes box?”

L

eah wiped a dust bunny off her forehead, then lay her face back down on the cool floor. Gingerly, she inched her arm forward, grasping blindly until she felt a familiar smooth coolness. Got it!

Triumphantly, she inched her hand back, slowly, slowly, the precious treasure in her grasp.

“I fouuuuund it!” she called. “The shoe was under the couch, exactly like I told you it probably was!”

“I checked there a million times!” Shana limped toward her, dramatic as ever, dragging her unshod foot behind her.

“Well, maybe if you just put your shoes where they belonged, we wouldn’t need to search the whole house every morning,” Leah muttered.

“I did! I put it in the shoe rack! Is it my fault if the kids in this family always—”

“I did not!” Miri said. “No one touches your dumb shoes!”

Miri, Leah noted, was wearing two shoes, but her hair looked as though she had shoved her ponytail into the rotors of an oscillating fan. She reached out to try to smooth her pony, then reconsidered. “Miri, go brush your hair!”

“I want to! But is it my fault if Shana always loses my brush?”

“I do not! Maybe if you didn’t—”

“We do not have time for this right now,” Leah forced out. “The bus will be here in fifteen minutes, and I am not driving you for the third time in a week.”

“Can we have waffles?” Shana perked up.

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Mendy came clattering down the stairs. “Ma! I forgot to study for math, Miss Perler is going to kill me, can you write me a note that I couldn’t study because I was helping you clean the kitchen?”

Leah looked from the counters, still bearing smudges of tomato sauce and fragments of dried spaghetti, to the full sink. “Mendy,” she started, “I reminded you last night that—”

“Are we having waffles? The Shenkmans always have waffles!”

“We are not,” Leah gritted her teeth, “having waffles. On a school morning. After everyone overslept and lost their shoes and brushes and—”

“I’m staaaarving!”

“How can I even do math when there’s never anything normal to eat in this house?”