“The driver bumped his way through the door and plopped down Caitlyn’s “luggage.” Caitlyn watched Madame Snowe’s eyes go to it, widening asshe took it in. Caitlyn’s cheeks heated.Her “luggage” was a Vietnam War-era army green duffel bag, bought for a dollar at a garage sale. Cloud-shaped moisture stains mottled itsfaded surface, and jagged stitches of black carpet thread sealed a rip on one end, Caitlyn’s clumsy needlework giving the mended hole the look ofone of Frankenstein’s scars.“Is that all you brought?” Greta asked.Caitlyn nodded, wishing the floor would swallow her.“Very good. You will have no trouble unpacking, and then you can burn your bag, heh?”“Reduce, reuse, recycle!” Caitlyn said with false cheer. “We’re very big on living green in Oregon. Why buy a new suitcase when someone else’sold duffel bag will do?”“We’ll see that it gets … disposed of properly,”

“Hi,” Caitlyn said.“Hello.”“I’m Caitlyn.”Mathilde grinned. “The Wild West girl who rode bareback! Yes, I know. The whole school knows! Can you shoot a gun, too?”Caitlyn’s cheeks heated in embarrassment. “Urg,” she gurgled, “no.”

“Tyson- "Cash? Like...green paper?"Percy- "Yeah."Tyson- "Like the kind in duffel bags?"Percy-"Yeah, but we lost those bags days a-g-g--." "Tyson! How did you--"Tyson- "Thought it was a feed bag for Rainbow. Found it floating in sea, but only paper inside. Sorry.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Caitlyn protested. “I’m sure it keeps you out of trouble.”“Thierry told me I was cold. He wasn’t the first boy to say that, either.”Caitlyn winced. “Ouch.”Amalia turned toward Caitlyn. “I wish I could be more like you.”“Me? Are you kidding? Why?”“You let your emotions show on your face. They’re right on the surface, for all to see.”Caitlyn grimaced. “I thought I’d learned to control that.”“See?” Amalia copied her grimace. “Right on the surface!”“Mmph,” Caitlyn grunted unhappily.“Mmph,” Amalia copied.Caitlyn threw up her hands in defeat, then cast a quick warning look at Amalia. “Don’t you do it!”Amalia chuckled.”

“She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get this stuff home, which is only two blocks away from the grocery store, Jennica throws all of it into plastic bags. There is a husk on her corn, corn that Jennica's store sells in April.. there is a rind on her grapefruit, grapefruit that gets flown in from Florida... but still, Jennica puts the corn and the citrus into plastic bags. Her supposedly organic red peppers, which cost six dollars a pound, come in a foam tray under shrink-wrap, but she puts them in a plastic bag. And then the checkout girl puts all of Jennica's little plastic parcels into two or three more big white plastic bags, and then Jennica walks the two blocks home, where she unpacks all the bags and then trows them in the same trash bin where her corn husks and citrus rinds go.”

“- I was a tired mess. My eyes didn't just have bags - they had five-piece luggage sets.”