One evening when the Marinns had planned to go out and leave their daughters with a babysitter, Alice cried and screamed until they canceled their dinner reservation and stayed home to appease her. They had pizza delivered, and they ate it at the kitchen table, both of them still dressed in their nice clothes. Her mother’s jewelry sparkled and scattered glints of reflected light across the ceiling.

Alice took a piece of pizza and wandered to the living room to watch cartoons on television. Lucy picked up her own plate and headed to the living room.

“Lucy,” her mother said, “don’t leave the table until you’re finished eating.”

“But Alice’s eating in the living room.”

“She’s too little to know better.”

Surprisingly, Lucy’s father joined the conversation. “She’s only two years younger than Lucy. And as I recall, Lucy was never allowed to wander around during dinner.”

“Alice still hasn’t gained back the weight she lost from the meningitis,” her mother said sharply. “Lucy, come back to the table.”

The unfairness of it clamped around Lucy’s throat like a vise. She carried her plate back to the table as slowly as possible, wondering if her father would intervene on her behalf. But he had given a shake of his head and had fallen silent again.

“Delicious,” Lucy’s mother said brightly, biting into her pizza as if were a rare delicacy. “I was actually in the mood for this. I didn’t feel like going out. So nice to be cozy at home.”

Lucy’s father didn’t reply. Methodically he finished his pizza, took his empty plate to the sink, and went in search of the phone.

* * *

“My teacher said to give this to you,” Lucy said, extending a piece of paper to her mother.

“Not now, Lucy. I’m cooking.” Cherise Marinn chopped celery on the cutting board, the knife neatly dividing stalks into little U shapes. As Lucy waited patiently, her mother glanced at her and sighed. “Tell me what it is, sweetheart.”

“Instructions for the second-grade science fair. We have three weeks to do it.”

Reaching the end of the celery stalk, Lucy’s mother set the knife down and reached for the paper. Her fine brows knit together as she read it. “This looks like a time-consuming project. Are all the students required to participate?”

Lucy nodded.

Her mother shook her head. “I wish these teachers knew how much time they’re asking parents to spend on these activities.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Mommy. I’m supposed to do the work.”

“Someone’s going to have to take you to the crafts store to get the trifold board and the other supplies. Not to mention supervising your experiments and helping you practice for the oral presentation.”

Lucy’s father entered the kitchen, looking weary, as usual, after a long day. Phillip Marinn was so busy teaching astronomy at the University of Washington and working as a NASA consultant on the side, that he often seemed to be visiting their home rather than actually living in it. On the evenings when he made it back in time for dinner, he ended up talking with colleagues on the phone while his wife and two daughters ate without him. The names of the girls’ friends and teachers and soccer coaches, the minutiae of their schedules, were foreign to him. Which was why Lucy was so surprised by her mother’s next words.

“Lucy needs you to help with her science project. I just volunteered to be a room mother for Alice’s kindergarten class. I have too much to do.” She handed him the piece of paper, and went to scrape the chopped celery into a pot of soup on the stove.

“Good God.” He scanned the information with a distracted frown. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You’ll have to make time,” her mother said.

“What if I ask one of my students to help her?” he suggested. “I could set it up as an extra-credit activity.”

A frown pleated her mother’s face, her soft mouth tightening at the corners. “Phillip. The idea of pawning off your child on a college student—”

“It was a joke,” he said hastily, although Lucy wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“Then you’ll agree to do this with Lucy?”

“I don’t appear to have a choice.”

“It’ll be a bonding experience for you two.”

He gave Lucy a resigned glance. “Do we need a bonding experience?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Very well. Have you decided what kind of experiment you want to do?”

“It’s going to be a report,” Lucy said. “About glass.”

“What about doing a space-themed project? We could make a model of the solar system, or describe how stars are formed—”

“No, Daddy. It has to be about glass.”

“Why?”

“It just does.” Lucy had become fascinated by glass. Every morning at breakfast she marveled at the light-gifted material that formed her juice cup. How perfectly it contained bright fluids, how easily it transmitted heat, coldness, vibration.

Her father took her to the library and checked out grown-up books about glass and glasswork, because he said the children’s books on the subject weren’t detailed enough. Lucy learned that when a substance was made of molecules that were organized like bricks stacked together, you couldn’t see through it. But when a substance was made out of random disorganized molecules, like water or boiled sugar or glass, light found its way through the spaces between them.

“Tell me, Lucy,” her father asked as they glued a diagram to the trifold board, “is glass a liquid or a solid?”

“It’s a liquid that behaves like a solid.”

“You’re a very smart girl. Do you think you’ll be a scientist like me when you grow up?”

She shook her head.

“What do you want to be?”

“A glass artist.” Lately Lucy had started to dream about making things out of glass. In her sleep she watched light glimmer and refract through candy-colored windows … glass swirling and curving like exotic undersea creatures, birds, flowers.

Her father looked perturbed. “Very few people can actually earn a living as an artist. Only the famous ones make any money.”

“Then I’ll be a famous one,” she said cheerfully, coloring the letters on her trifold board.

On the weekend, her father took her to visit a local glassblowing shop, where a red-bearded man showed her the basics of his craft. Mesmerized, Lucy stood as close as her father would allow. After the glassblower melted sand in a high-temperature furnace, he pushed a long metal rod into the furnace and gathered molten glass in a glowing red lump. The air was filled with the scents of hot metal, sweat, scorched ink, and ash from the wads of wet newspaper the studio used to hand-shape the glass.

With each additional gather of glass, the glassblower enlarged the fiery orange mass, turning it constantly, reheating it frequently. He added an overlay of blue frit, or ceramic powder, onto the post and rolled it on a steel table to distribute the color evenly.

Lucy watched with wide-eyed interest. She wanted to learn everything about this mysterious process, every possible way to cut, fuse, color, and shape glass. Nothing had ever seemed so important or necessary to know.

Before they left the shop, her father bought her a blown-glass ornament that looked like a hot-air balloon, painted with shimmering rainbow stripes. It hung on its own little stand made of brass wire. Lucy would always remember it as the best day of her entire childhood.

* * *

Later in the week, when Lucy came home from soccer practice, early evening had turned the sky dark purple, with an overlay of clouds like the silvery wax bloom on a plum. Stiff-legged in her armor of plastic shin guards encased in tube socks, Lucy went to her room and saw that the lamp on her nightstand had been turned on. Alice was standing there, holding something.

Lucy scowled. Alice had been told more than once that she wasn’t allowed to go into her room without permission. But the fact that Lucy’s room was off-limits seemed to have made it the one place Alice most wanted to be. Lucy had suspected that her sister had sneaked in there before, when she’d discovered that her stuffed animals and dolls weren’t in their usual places.

At Lucy’s wordless exclamation, Alice turned with a start, something dropping from her hands to the floor. The resulting shatter caused them both to jump. A flush of guilt swept over Alice’s small face.

Lucy stared dumbly at the glittering mess on the wood floor. It was the blown-glass ornament that her father had bought for her. “Why are you in here?” she demanded with incredulous rage. “This is my room. That was mine. Get out!”

Alice burst into tears, standing with the broken glass shards around her.

Alerted by the noise, their mother dashed into the room. “Alice!” She rushed forward and plucked her off the floor, away from the glass. “Baby, are you hurt? What happened?”

“Lucy scared me,” Alice sobbed.

“She broke my glass ornament,” Lucy said furiously. “She came into my room without asking and broke it.”

Her mother was holding Alice, smoothing her hair. “The important thing is that no one was hurt.”

“The important thing is that she broke something that was mine!”

Her mother looked exasperated and distressed. “She was just curious. It was an accident, Lucy.”

Lucy glared at her little sister. “I hate you. Don’t ever come in here again, or I’ll knock your head off.”

The threat elicited a fresh storm of tears from Alice, while their mother’s face darkened. “That’s enough, Lucy. I expect you to be nice to your sister, especially after she’s been so sick.”

“She’s not sick anymore,” Lucy said, but the words were lost in the sound of Alice’s vehement sobbing.