24

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Later that night it started snowing. Heavy, feathery clumps. It was still snowing the next morning, Saturday, when Nicola walked June Bug to Feeler’s Flowers. Over the old snow, dingy with salt and grit and stained with dog pee, a thick white carpet had settled. In front of Feeler’s Flowers, under the shelter of the awning, the fresh petals Irene had scattered looked even prettier against this pure new snow.

“Is this June Bug?” Irene called as they came in. “My first dog customer!”

Whenever June Bug found herself in a new place, she had to race around and explore it, sniffing everything in super-snorkel mode.

In the middle of the shop, a reverse sneeze gripped her. Ork ork ork, she wheezed. Irene buckled over laughing.

Finally, Nicola managed to distract June Bug with a treat. She made her Sit and Wave and Roll Over.

“She’s the cutest dog I’ve ever seen!” Irene said.

A man in a striped toque with snow stuck in his beard walked by with a golden Lab. The Lab stopped at the door as though he could read the DOGS WELCOMEsign. The man came inside and the two dogs sniffed each other’s bottoms to say hello.

“My second dog customer!” Irene said.

“What’s your dog’s name?” Nicola asked the man.

“Buster.”

Irene gave Buster a treat, and June Bug, too. Then the man bought some flowers. “Just because,” he said.

“Come back on Valentine’s Day, Buster,” Nicola said.

After Buster and his owner left, Irene asked how Nicola was feeling.

“Sad,” Nicola said. “I was hoping Lindsay would be here.”

“She’s at home. She won’t come out of her box.”

“I’ll go see her,” Nicola said.

“Thank you so much,” Irene told Nicola. Then she told June Bug, “Sorry, June Bug, it’s a no-pets building.”

“I’ll take her home first.”

“Leave her here,” Irene said, even though the little dog was lapping water from a flower bucket on the floor.

“Are you sure?” Nicola asked.

“She’s already bringing in customers!”

* * *

At the Sheldon Arms Apartments, Nicola met Ignacio shoveling the walk in his big earflapped hat.

“Ah, winter,” he told her. “It can put a good janitor to the test. The pipes freezing, the furnace going out. But these little joys, like being the first to walk on freshly fallen snow? They make it all worthwhile. How is June Bug?”

“Good. I left her with Lindsay’s mom. She said this was a no-pets building.”

Ignacio nodded. “I wish it wasn’t, but the owner makes the rules, not me.”

“The retirement home I’ve been visiting with Lindsay and June Bug has a lot of rules. I wonder if Mr. Devon made them or if he’s just doing what he’s supposed to, like you?”

Ignacio shrugged and continued shoveling.

Nicola stamped her boots on the mat in the lobby, then went up the stairs to Lindsay’s apartment. The door was locked. Nicola rang and rang and finally Lindsay, in her pajamas, her glasses all smeary, opened up.

“I slept in my box again and I still don’t feel better!”

Nicola kicked off her boots. “I got a sign last night.”

“What?” Lindsay asked.

“At New Year’s we do this special thing in my family.” Nicola pulled off her mitts. When she stuffed them in her coat pockets, she dislodged June Bug’s treat container. It landed on the floor and the lid popped off. Little heart-shaped salmon treats scattered across the hall.

“Oh,” Nicola said, blinking down. “I think we just got another sign.”

Lindsay squinted at the treats.

“I thought they glowed to remind us to use our heads,” Nicola said. “But that’s completely wrong.”

Lindsay pushed up her glasses. “They want us to eat dog treats?”

“The shape of them.”

Lindsay looked again and broke into a smile. “They want us to use our hearts.”

* * *

Everything made sense then. It was as obvious as the perfect line down the middle of June Bug’s half-black, half-white face. June Bug was a good little dog who sometimes did bad things.

They were sitting together on Lindsay’s bed.

“Like my dad,” she said. “My mom says he’s a good man who did something bad.”

Then Lindsay crawled into her Feel Better Box and started tearing down the pictures. Glossy magazine brides, Lindsay’s own bride drawings, the magazine pictures of happy things — they flew out the end of the box.

Lindsay asked Nicola to pass her the 100 gel pens that were on her desk. Nicola crawled inside with them. She didn’t feel claustrophobic at all.

Good and bad, Lindsay wrote on the wall of the box.

“Love and hate,” Nicola said, and Lindsay wrote it down in a different color gel pen. “Life and death.”

Tears welled up in Lindsay’s eyes, but she wrote it.

“The world is full of opposites,” she said.

“We don’t like the bad side. Or the hate side. Or the dead side,” Nicola said. “But it’s there.”

“We can stay on the good side if we want,” Lindsay said. “If we use our hearts.”

* * *

On Monday, the most amazing thing happened. Ms. Phibbs brought in a scale and set it up on her desk. Everyone was supposed to guess what combinations of different-sized weights would make the scale balance.

“Lindsay!” Nicola shrieked across the room, for which she had to stay in at recess.

At lunch, the girls couldn’t get a seat together in the crowded lunchroom. It was so noisy they wouldn’t have been able to talk anyway. They ate their sandwiches separately. Then, as they were leaving, Margo Tamm leapt up from her seat and shoulder-checked Lindsay.

“Look at me! I’m an angel!” She flapped her hands.

Nicola felt like kicking Margo, but Lindsay looked at her with pity.

“I wish you were happier,” Lindsay said.

Margo turned red and Lindsay and Nicola walked out together.

They paused to put on their coats in the entranceway, under the picture of the queen. The kindergarten leaf frieze drooped above it, still covering the school motto.

Nicola looked at the gray-haired queen hanging crookedly. She remembered the kids falling off the playground equipment last fall.

“The world’s out of balance,” she said.

It had tilted.

With the playground cordoned off, there was nothing to do at recess and lunch. Everyone was bored. Bored, they fought more often.

That day, Gavin Heinrichs chased everyone around, trying to make someone lick the spoon from his lunch that he’d chilled to freezing in a snow bank.

Lindsay and Nicola screamed when he came at them. They ran back into the school and hid in an alcove, but they weren’t really safe from Gavin. The school wasn’t safe anymore. Or fair, or kind. Ever since Mrs. Dicky fell off the chair last fall, everyone had forgotten the motto. The replacement principal didn’t seem to know it, or how to run a school. He didn’t know to send the kids in shifts to the lunchroom, or to organize lunch-time activities.

“Remember Paradise Lost?” Nicola asked Lindsay. “How the fallen angels tried to mess people up to get back at the good angels?”

Lindsay stared at Nicola. “Is Gavin a bad angel?”

“No. We don’t need fallen angels. We do the messing all by ourselves.”