Jesse Aarons, “Jess,” wakes up early to the sound of his dad’s pickup truck leaving for work. He jumps out of bed to go running before the late summer air gets too hot. At Jess’s school, the younger grades race during recess because their school is short on athletic equipment. Winning a race last year gave Jess a taste of victory, and he is determined to return to school as the fastest runner. Jess imagines how proud his seven-year-old sister, May Belle, will be. He hopes that winning the race will make his father “so proud he’d forget about how tired he was” from his work (5). At breakfast, his older sisters Brenda and Ellie evade their chores and persuade their mother to let them go shopping for school supplies. While she concedes to the girls, Jess’s mother tells him to “get your lazy self off that bench” (9) and finish his chores. While Jess works in the bean patch, May Belle points out that a new family is moving into the old Perkins’ house, the run-down farmhouse next door.