Back at home, Ezra sunbathes by his family’s pool. His mother asks how school went, to which Ezra answers, “Fine” (39). When she pushes for more, he thinks about sharing the humiliations of the day and his encounter with the new girl but says nothing and goes up to his room to hang out with Cooper, his beloved eight-year-old standard black poodle. Ezra’s mood plummets as he sits with Cooper and listens to depressing Bob Dylan songs, realizing that he may never be able to go for runs with Cooper anymore. His sadness deepens as he thinks about his first day back at school—about the hollow feeling he experienced hanging out with his old friends.

Ezra lives in a huge, bland house with his mother and father. His mother is kind, involved, and health-conscious, cooking healthy but tasteless meals. Ezra describes his father as a “buddy-buddy corporate lawyer […] booming laugh, always smells like Listerine, played tennis once, plays golf now. You know the type” (42). Ezra gets enjoyment from watching his father’s irritation at the many “wrong number” calls he gets on his office line, because the sequence of numbers that play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a phone’s keypad matches his father’s number (42).