13

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Normally when anyone swept the kitchen floor, June Bug would race in from wherever she was making trouble to leap on the broom, her great enemy. Sweeping in the Bream household was all about pushing a little dog around on the end of a long stick.

But today when Terence swept the kitchen, June Bug didn’t stir from her corner pillow. So he went ahead and washed the floor, too, which had never even been attempted with June Bug in the house.

Then Jackson set up his electric race-car track on the sparkling kitchen floor and sent his cars screaming around it for an hour not three feet away from June Bug. She didn’t pounce like they were turbo-charged mice and chew their wheels off. On and on she slept, and none of the things that usually excited her — brooms or race cars or even the smell of pizza dough rising in the oven — had any effect.

Nicola lay partly on the pillow with June Bug, watching her dog’s quiet panting. June Bug seemed to be dashing from dream to dream, her white legs twitching. Now and then soft little barks and whimpers escaped her.

“I think she’s sick,” Nicola told her mother. “I think we should take her to the vet.”

Mina examined June Bug. She stroked her velvety ears.

“She’s never slept so long before,” Nicola said.

Mina nodded. “It’s so peaceful around here.”

“What if she dies?” Nicola asked. “What if she dies and goes to hell?”

“There isn’t any hell,” Mina said.

“Are you sure?” Nicola asked.

“Actually, no. But what a funny thing to say. Why hell?”

“Because she’s done so many bad things!”

“She’s not going to die. She’s going to sleep off whatever bug she has. While she’s at it, we’re going to have a lovely New Year’s Eve with no one fighting about the dog.”

Mina was right. The Breams ate do-it-yourself pizza with all the toppings set out. Nicola did herself a cheese and dog pepperoni pizza and left a piece for June Bug, in case she woke up.

She did not.

After pizza, they played rummy. In the middle of the game, Terence snuck away and turned back all the clocks so they could have midnight at ten o’clock, for Jackson’s sake.

As the false midnight neared, they put away the cards and set a bowl of cold water in the center of the table. Each of them took a candle. Terence lit his, then touched the flame to Mina’s wick. She passed the flame to Jared. It traveled all the way around the table until the five candles glowed.

They took turns tipping them over the bowl so the melting wax dribbled into the cold water and hardened into blobs. By these wax blobs, the Breams predicted what the New Year would bring for each of them.

Jackson’s wax blob was flat and round.

Mina said, “Money, Jackson!”

“Pancakes,” he insisted.

Jared’s was a heart. He pumped his fist. “Yes!”

For Terence, a new car. For Mina, less stress at work. Her blob was sort of wedge-shaped, like a piece of cake.

Nicola’s little blob had two wing-like bits sticking out.

“A dove? For peace?” Mina suggested.

“A bird is going to poop on you!” Jackson roared.

At ten o’clock, the Breams counted down the seconds and, cheering, drank a New Year’s toast with sparkling apple juice. Except for Jared, who stayed up to play Inferno 2, they all went to bed.

Nicola tossed and turned, still worrying about June Bug. While she was worrying, she remembered something.

Two summers ago, the Breams drove to Nova ­Scotia to visit Grammy and Grampy. It was a long, long drive. Nicola took Gravol every morning, crushed and stirred into her yoghurt, or she’d get carsick. The Gravol yoghurt made her sleepy.

Almost as sleepy as June Bug today after she licked out the bowls of beige pudding stuff at Shady Oaks.

And Nicola remembered something else. All the pills lined up on the counter at the nursing station. On a bottle of bright blue pills, an orange sticker was fixed.

Warning: May Cause Drowsiness.

It was almost midnight. Nicola got out of bed, dragged her duvet to the kitchen and curled up on the floor with her dog.

“June Bug?” she whispered. “Was there medicine crushed up in that stuff you ate? Wake up. Please.”

June Bug dozed on, looking quite contented, which reassured Nicola.

At any moment the fireworks and pot-banging would start. Nicola went and stood at the living-room window, waiting. The tradition on their street was to welcome the New Year by stepping out on the porch at the exact stroke of midnight with pots and spoons.

But tonight the houses on Nicola’s street looked as asleep as June Bug, the heavy blanket of snow drawn right up to their porches. No Christmas lights, no inside lights.

Oddly, all the icicles were hanging at a slant.

After what felt like a long time, Nicola returned to the kitchen and checked the clock. Ten past midnight. No pot banging. No distant pop and crackle of the fireworks at city hall.

“Happy New Year, June Bug,” she whispered.

At the sound of her voice, June Bug sat up and looked at Nicola with such a funny expression on her face.

“What is it, June Bug? What?”

June Bug lunged for her water bowl and lapped it up. Nicola refilled it, and June Bug drank the second bowl. Her tail twirled like a propeller, winding her up.

Off she shot, tearing through the sleeping house, around and around, hours of pent-up June Bug energy released at once.