Changes Until this year my parents lived four blocks apart in Cincinnati

Until this year I went to Liberty Elementary

Until this year I was average height had clear skin and didn't need glasses to see the blackboard

Everything was easier until this year

Bargains I looked just like Mom— brown eyes straight black hair.
Even my dimples match hers.
But I'm long and lean like Dad, the fifth generation Courtney kid to weave around the apple orchard on this rolling Ohio farm.

The story goes that Mom and Dad couldn't agree on a name (and a lot else, I guess) since they divorced when I was in diapers).

So I got half of Dad's name: Joseph and part of Mom's too: Eleanor.
But no one calls me by my real name: JoEllen.

Mom (and my city friends) call me Ellen, and to Dad (and his family) I've always been Joey.

Now my days— divided between them— are as different as my names.

Best Friends Tamika dreams of living in Milan, designing the latest fashions or modeling them in the pages of Vogue.
She likes the four styles of dance her mom insists she learn, and she holds herself so elegantly, as if a spotlight follows her every move.
Only Annie and I see her silly side: the impersonations she does of our teachers and parents and the way she snorts when she's cracking up

Annie's afraid of everything Lyme disease the speed of the bus the additives in cafeteria food.
She wears her worry in chewed fingernails and eyes that flit around searching out danger.
But she can take down a two-hundred pound man in judo class and wants to open her own dojo someday.

Friday Nights Mom hovers in the doorway as I stuff my backpack with homework and music.
Don't need clothes; there are plenty of worn ones tucked in the painted dresser under the attic eaves at Dad's house.

No sleeping over with Annie and Tamika.
("Try to have fun in Hicktown," they say No long Saturday afternoons spent planning outfits comparing quizzes in teen magazines painting each other's nails the same shade of green.

On the drive to the farm quiet falls like the darkness the closer we get to Dad.

Soon I'll climb out of Mom's crumbless black sedan, and she'll call from the cracked-open window "See you Sunday, Ellen."

I'll walk in the house without knocking and Dad will be standing over the sink, eating one of his odd concoctions— meatball tacos or eggplant pizza.
"I tried to wait for ya, Joey," he'll say between bites.
Then he'll hand me a plate, and my other life will begin.

Hayden My cousin Hayden lives with his parents, my Uncle Tilman and Aunt Shirley, and two collies, Rebel and Kate, on the other side of the apple orchard in a double-wide trailer.

Hayden and I spend weekends exploring the woods trail riding on Old Bess and Brownie or catching sunfish with worms from the garden.
(Can't do this in the city," he says.

Sometimes, as we head down to the pond in the last few minutes of slanting light.
Hayden grabs Papa's old five-string or pluck a harmonica from his pocket to harmonize with the tunes of twilight.
The lightning bugs begin to waltz in the darkening woods, and we stay until the stars slice holes in the night.