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school.”
    1530 is military-speak for three thirty p.m. “But—” I began.
    He ignored me. “You can stay and help your aunt and me when we’re done with tutoring, then Danny can pick you up on his way home from practice.”
    â€œBut—” I tried again.
    â€œWe’re about to start inventory, and we could use an extra pair of hands,” he continued. He glanced down at his own left hand, which was awkwardly gripping his fork, and frowned briefly. “I’d enlist your brothers, but they’ll be too busy to help right now, what with wrestling season starting.”
    The table fell silent as he jabbed his fork into a bite of lasagna. Hatcher and I exchanged a glance. Wrestling was a sore topic these days. Before Black Monday, Dad had always helped coach Hatcher and Danny when he was home, but now—well, now he could barely even say the word.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œNo buts, young lady. That’s an order.”
    Lieutenant Colonel Lovejoy is big on orders, too.
    â€œWhat about swim team tryouts?” I burst out, unableto contain myself any longer. I did remember to add “sir,” though. Lola and Gramps had checked for me, and the tryouts were scheduled for the end of the month.
    â€œYou bring your grade up, then we’ll talk swim team,” my father replied coolly. “Until then, young lady, this is a done deal.”

CHAPTER 5
    Good-bye sunshine, hello snow , I thought glumly the following morning, staring out the window of our minivan as we pulled out of the driveway. It’s not a very long walk to school from where Gramps and Lola live, but Mom had offered to drop us off on the way to her first class because of the storm.
    Heaps and heaps of the white stuff had fallen overnight, at least a foot of it, and it was still coming down. Just to torture myself, I’d checked the weather in Austin this morning: sixty-two degrees and sunny. It was practically summer there. The thermometer outside Gramps and Lola’s kitchen window, meanwhile? A frigid seventeen degrees.
    If we were thinking maybe school would be canceled, though, we were wrong. My father snorted when Hatcher brought it up at the breakfast table.
    â€œA snow day in Pumpkin Falls? Don’t get your hopes up,”he’d told us. “A little precipitation never stops anything here in the Granite State.”
    A little? Staring out at the yard, which was barely visible, I caught a flash of red by the bird feeder as a male cardinal swooped down from a nearby tree. Cardinals are already on my life list, of course—they’re a really common bird—but they’re still one of my favorites. I just love those bright red feathers, especially this time of year.
    â€œHow about cold, then?” Hatcher clearly wasn’t going to give up. He’d tapped the newspaper lying on the table in front of Dad. Half the front page of the Pumpkin Falls Patriot-Bugle was devoted to a picture of the town’s famous waterfall, along with a headline that screamed FALLS FREEZE FOR FIRST TIME IN A CENTURY! I couldn’t believe this was what passed for news here. A frozen waterfall? Seriously?
    â€œNope, cold won’t do it either,” Dad had replied calmly. “Better get your jackets on.”
    A snow day would have been really nice. I wasn’t feeling ready to face a new school again. After our move to Austin, I’d thought I was finally done with that.
    The snow crunched beneath the minivan’s tires as Mom turned off Maple onto Hill Street and headed down toward town. Tourists call Pumpkin Falls picturesque because of the waterfall and the covered bridge and the old-fashioned bandstand on the village green—village white, this morning—that anchors the center of town. They flock here like migratinggeese every fall to tour the college campus, famous for its cluster of white clapboard buildings, and to take pictures of the steeple on the church,