3

—

At the picnic table, under the trees empty of birds, Nicola sat drawing. Lindsay Feeler joined her. She didn’t ask if Nicola minded. Maybe she thought that since their desks were side by side, she could sit with her whenever she wanted.

“I like drawing, too,” Lindsay said, pushing up her pink-framed glasses.

She opened a huge case of gel pens — 100, the label read — and spread her drawings around. Nicola couldn’t help seeing them, though she kept her eyes on her own paper.

Lindsay’s drawings were of girls in long white dresses standing against flowery backgrounds. The way Lindsay arranged them on the picnic table made Nicola feel surrounded by the same kind of girls that Mackenzie Stewart now spent every recess and lunch with, trading jewelry and hair thingies on the front steps of the school.

Lindsay Feeler and Nicola Bream drew in silence. Every time Nicola set down her pencil crayon, it rolled off the table and onto the ground. Every time, Lindsay bent to retrieve it, then placed it beside her huge gel pen case so it wouldn’t roll away again.

Finally, Lindsay spoke. “That’s a really cute dog.”

“She’s my dog and she’s in so much trouble,” Nicola said.

“What trouble?”

“It would take me a week to explain. Now they’re talking about getting rid of her. And not only that. I’m afraid she’ll go to hell!”

Nicola felt the sting of tears. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve.

Somehow these two things got mixed together in Nicola’s mind — the fear of losing her dog and her fears for her dog. Because if June Bug was sent away, if she didn’t have Nicola to help her behave, she would become a force of destruction. She really would.

Without Nicola, she’d end up in a time-out for the rest of her life.

Wouldn’t that be the same as hell?

* * *

That night, when Mina came into her room to ask why she was so quiet at dinner, Nicola hid her face in her pillow.

“You must be pretty disappointed not to be in the same class as Mackenzie this year,” Mina said.

“I don’t care.”

“At least you have Ms. Phibbs again.”

Nicola let out a loud, watery sniff.

“Well, please tell me if I can help,” Mina said.

Nicola lifted her face out of the pillow and said goodnight.

After Mina left, Nicola cried herself to sleep.