The grass looks so much greener in the morning, she thinks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her closed fists. She’s standing on the upper porch of the log cabin-style building that’s perched so close to the edge of the lake it looks, from certain angles if you’re driving past, like it’s about to tip slowly over and sink gracefully into the reedy marsh.

She wipes half-heartedly at an apple with the tail end of her t-shirt: a white short-sleeved cotton shirt with TOWSON LACROSSE emblazoned across the front in bumblebee yellow. The shirt is one of her most prized pieces of clothing right now because, after three years of constant wearing and washing, it’s reached a nearly threadbare texture that makes it fall loosely, like silk, against her shoulders. The only other shirts she has that are this thin—holes threatening to rip in the most worn areas under the armpits and near the top seams—are her mom’s: a Boston Marathon finisher t-shirt from the 70s, an old green shirt from the Burpee Seed catalog that reads “Because a Rind is a Terrible Thing to Waste,” and a faded marine blue Lacoste polo with a white collar.