10

—

When Nicola called Lindsay later that day, Lindsay said she wouldn’t go back.

“We have to,” Nicola explained. “That wasn’t enough of a good deed. June Bug didn’t even do her tricks.”

“That one old man spoke. He hadn’t spoken for three months, Jorie said.”

“June Bug stole someone’s turkey on Christmas Day. Do you realize that?”

Nicola thought she heard Lindsay gasp.

As Nicola was telling Lindsay this, June Bug was curled in a ball on her pillow in the corner of the kitchen, snoring lightly.

“We could put on a show,” Nicola said.

Lindsay asked if Nicola had done any of the homework Ms. Phibbs had assigned.

“Some,” Nicola said.

“Ten pages of math. I haven’t done any. And the wildlife PowerPoint project? Mine’s on squirrels. I haven’t even started.”

“The thing is, I’m not allowed to go alone. My mom said.”

Silence.

“Never mind.” Nicola hung up.

Just then Jared came into the kitchen and stood with his back to Nicola, propping open the fridge door and letting out the cold while he glugged straight from the milk carton. He’d been told so many times not to do either of these things that Nicola didn’t bother repeating it.

Homework.

She snapped to and made a dash for the door, but Jared was too fast. He slammed the fridge and blocked her way so he could get to the computer first.

“Mom!” Nicola screeched.

“I’m putting Jackson to bed,” she called from upstairs.

Nicola stomped to the den and stood behind Jared. JWC, JWC, JWC was scribbled in Sharpie up to his elbows. His fingers pounded the keys.

Winged creatures were dropping from the top of the screen. Jared, jaw set, teeth gritted, let loose a barrage of flaming missiles. He tapped and rolled the mouse.

“What do you want?” he eventually grunted.

“I have to work on my PowerPoint!”

One of the winged creatures burst into flame. It plunged from the top of the screen to the bottom while Jared tapped to dodge the satellites and asteroids and space junk floating by.

“You’re so annoying.”

“I’m going to stay right here until you get off.”

“You’re going to watch Inferno 2?” he said. “It’s really violent.”

“If it’s really violent, you shouldn’t play it,” Nicola said.

She leaned over his shoulder. Jared left off tapping for a second so he could jab her with his elbow. Something exploded in the middle of the screen, between the upper rings of circles and the lower.

“Now look what you did!”

“What did I do?” Nicola asked.

“I’m trying to guide all my Principalities into the Second Circle! Now I lost one. He gets demoted to an Archangel! Can you get out?”

“What are those circles at the top?”

“The orders of angels.”

“And the bottom circles?”

“The circles of hell.”

“What’s the point?”

“To make every angel fall to the bottom.”

Now his left hand came to life and began hammering the keyboard at the same time his right clicked the mouse.

“Why are you doing that?” Nicola asked.

“What?”

“Hitting that key over and over?”

“It’s an Extraterrestrial Bombardment! I’m deleting them. See them? See them swarming in? Die!” Jared yelled, blasting away. “Die!”

Mina poked her head in the door. “What is it, Nicola?”

Just then Nicola got an idea. She swung around.

“Lindsay can’t go with me to Shady Oaks tomorrow. Can Jared take me instead?”

* * *

Jared wasn’t happy. Not at all. But Mina and Terence said there would be consequences if he didn’t take his little sister to the retirement home. The consequences were unbearable: no computer for the rest of the ­holidays.

“It’s not like I really want to go, either,” Nicola told him on the march over in the cold. “It’s the awfullest sad place I’ve ever been. But that’s the point, right? For June Bug to make it better.”

Jared pulled his iPod from his pocket and thumbed the volume louder.

Once Jorie had let them in, Jared threw himself in a plastic chair by the nursing station and pulled his toque low over his eyes. Tinny rap music seeped out through the wool.

Jorie in yellow, and Glenda in pink, were getting the day’s meals organized, receiving a shipment of boxes at the back door, loading them onto a trolley. Nicola took June Bug around to the patients in the lounge and got her to Wave and Shake a Paw, without much response. Mr. Milton was nowhere to be seen.

Afterward, she stopped Jorie in the hall and asked about putting on a proper show for everyone.

“This isn’t the best time, sweetie.”

“Can we visit Mr. Fitzpatrick then? We’ve never met him.”

“Look in on Mr. Milton,” Jorie told her.

Nervously, Nicola went to his room. She tapped on his door.

“Go on in,” Jorie called. “He’s having a quiet day.”

Mr. Milton’s room didn’t smell of flowers like the hallway, but of something old and abandoned. That something was Mr. Milton in the bed. Loud and menacing the day before, he was dozing now, though his eyes opened briefly when Nicola and June Bug came in.

“Hello, Mr. Milton. It’s us. Nicola and June Bug.”

Here, too, there were no pictures or knickknacks. The hospital bed and a small wheeled table were the only furniture.

June Bug leapt up on the bed and wagged. Mr. Milton’s eyelids fluttered.

Then Glenda came in, her ponytail swinging. She carried a small cardboard box, a glass of water and pills in a tiny paper cup, all of which she set on the wheeled table.

“Lunch time! Wakey, wakey.”

She opened the cardboard box. Two circles of bun enclosed a dry puck of meat. Celery wilted on the side. Nicola hated celery. Still, she had to hold June Bug’s leash tight because the dog was already straining for the hamburger. Disgusting as it was, it was still People Food.

“Sorry, Mr. Milton,” Glenda said. “It’s the same as yesterday.”

“They have the same lunch every day?” Nicola asked.

“Practically. Now and then a cheese sandwich shows up. And get this. They fly it in from Colorado. Jorie said they used to have a kitchen here, but supposedly this is cheaper. Some of them just won’t eat.”

Mr. Milton’s groggy eyes opened and shifted to the cardboard lunch box. He closed them again as if he’d seen something too awful to contemplate. Glenda helped him swallow the four pills.

“That’s the way, Mr. Milton,” she told him. “Good job.”

“What are the pills for?” Nicola asked.

“Don’t ask me. I’m not a doctor.” Glenda pushed the table so that the hamburger box was in front of him, then left.

As soon as she was gone, Mr. Milton’s blue eyes opened and stared straight into Nicola’s. She could tell he was trying very hard to keep them open. His mouth drooped lower.

“Mr. Milton?” Nicola asked, pushing aside the table so she could sit on the edge of the bed beside June Bug. “Would you like something different to eat?”

She opened June Bug’s treat container and shook some treats into her hand.

“I know people don’t usually eat dog treats, but really? Organic dog pepperoni is actually better than people pepperoni. It’s the same thing, but not so spicy. I love it. Look.”

Nicola ate a piece. Mr. Milton watched her chew. So did June Bug, who whimpered for her to share.

“Yum,” Nicola said. “But if you don’t want to eat it, I understand. You still have your own lunch.”

A tear rolled down one of his rough cheeks.

“Don’t cry, Mr. Milton. I’m sorry. I won’t make you eat dog treats. I probably insulted you. I didn’t mean to.”

There wasn’t even a box of tissues in the room. Nicola had to brush away his tears with the end of her braid. His head moved slightly. It could have been a tremor, except that his mouth opened crookedly.

“You want one?”

She took a piece and slipped it between his dry lips. He chewed in slow motion, swallowed, opened his mouth again.

“See? It’s really good!”

Nicola fed him another piece. Then she fed one to June Bug, who was Waving her paw like she was conducting an orchestra. Mr. Milton swallowed and his lips seemed to form a word. She leaned in closer.

“Entertain,” it sounded like.

When he’d eaten all the treats in the container, he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Nicola picked up June Bug and tiptoed out of the room.

At the nursing station, Jared sprang up from his chair. “Finally!”

Jorie was in the lounge, helping the patients eat their lunch. She came and buzzed Nicola and Jared out.

Jared bolted ahead, but Nicola stopped to ask, “Could we put on a show tomorrow?”

Jorie said, “I’m not working tomorrow. Pierre is.”

“Okay. I’ll ask him.”

By the time Nicola and June Bug stepped outside, Jared was already at the end of the walk.

“Wait!” she called, but he couldn’t hear her with his earbuds in.

She and June Bug caught up and Nicola yanked out one of his wires, which made him even more furious.

“Are you coming back with me tomorrow?”

“Are you nuts? That place stinks. I’m going home to take a shower. Ten showers.”

“You need ten showers,” she said.

In the next block, he slowed enough to shout over his shoulder. “If I missed a phone call because I had to sit for an hour in that stinking place, I’m going to kill you and that dog!”

Nicola felt sorry for him then. Julie Walters-Chen was never going to call him. Even Jared must have known that. And Nicola remembered what her mother had said during the Embarrassing Talk about What Your Older Brother Is Going Through and Why He Is So Mean. She’d said to try — please, please try — not to be mean back.

“Thank you for coming,” Nicola called. “It makes me really sad to go there, too. But I have to.”

Jared grunted and walked on, all hunched and pimply, with the toque pulled low. The one earbud swung freely behind his back. Nicola fell in step beside him with June Bug trotting along in front.

“I hope Grammy and Grampy don’t end up in a place like that. I hope they’ll come and live with us instead.”

“They will,” Jared said.

“What?” Nicola said.

“End up in a place like that. And so will Mom and Dad. And so will you. We’ll all end up like that. We’ll all end up in hell.”

When Jared said that, even though she knew he didn’t mean it, Nicola shuddered. Hormones made him say it. That’s what Mina had told her during the Talk.

Nicola didn’t plan on ever having Hormones.

* * *

While Nicola was making herself a sandwich for lunch, Lindsay dropped by.

“Too late,” Nicola told her when she answered the door. “My brother came with me.”

Behind her glasses, Lindsay’s eyes showed relief, then hope. Hope that Nicola would invite her in, which Nicola pretty much had to since Lindsay wasn’t budging from the porch.

They went to the kitchen.

“Are you going to Shady Oaks every single day?” Lindsay asked.

Nicola nodded. “Until the holidays are over.”

She brought her sandwich to the table. The second the two girls sat, June Bug dashed over and sprang up on a chair, too. She made a cat noise.

“Do you want lunch, June Bug?”

Nicola stood up. June Bug placed her front paws on the table and leaned closer to the unguarded sandwich. Nicola caught her just in time, scolding June Bug until she laid back her ears and sat properly on the chair again.

Lindsay watched all this, then said, “I have a very sensitive nose.” She pointed to her nose, the perch for her pink glasses. “I gag when I smell bad things. Even when I see things that look like they might smell bad. I could never get a dog because there’s no way I could pick up the poo.”

At the counter, Nicola thickly buttered a piece of bread. She shook some kibble from June Bug’s bowl onto the bread. The butter made the kibbles stick.

“You get used to poop. And when it’s your dog, it’s not so bad. June Bug’s poops are cute. Here, June Bug.”

Nicola set the sandwich in front of her dog. June Bug lunged for it.

“It’s because my mom’s a florist,” Lindsay said. “I’m used to nice-smelling things. Also? People suffering? I can’t stand it. Or mean things, like what Glenda did to my bouquet. Yesterday, I had to sleep in my Feel Better Box.”

“What’s a Feel Better Box?” Nicola asked.

“Come to my place and I’ll show you.”

Nicola wasn’t visiting a bride-and-flowers girl’s house if she wasn’t going to help save June Bug.

“I have homework,” she said.

“We could do it together.”

Lindsay sat there twisting her hands until June Bug burped and leapt off the chair. Lindsay couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try one more time.”