“Get up,” said Ida Nee to the girl in the pink dress.

“She fainted,” said the other baton-twirling student, a girl named Beverly Tapinski, whose father was a cop.

Raymie knew the girl’s name and what her father did because Beverly had made an announcement at the beginning of the lesson. She had stared straight ahead, not looking at anybody in particular, and said, “My name is Beverly Tapinski and my father is a cop, so I don’t think that you should mess with me.”

Raymie, for one, had no intention of messing with her.

“I’ve seen a lot of people faint,” said Beverly now. “That’s what happens when you’re the daughter of a cop. You see everything. You see it all.”

“Shut up, Tapinski,” said Ida Nee.

The sun was very high in the sky.

It hadn’t moved.

It seemed like someone had stuck it up there and then walked away and left it.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Raymie. “I betrayed you.”

Beverly Tapinski knelt down and put her hands on either side of the fainting girl’s face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Ida Nee.

The pine trees above them swayed back and forth. The lake, Lake Clara — where someone named Clara Wingtip had managed to drown herself a hundred years ago — gleamed and glittered.

The lake looked hungry.

Maybe it was hoping for another Clara Wingtip.

Raymie felt a wave of despair.

There wasn’t time for people fainting. She had to learn how to twirl a baton and she had to learn fast, because if she learned how to twirl a baton, then she stood a good chance of becoming Little Miss Central Florida Tire.

And if she became Little Miss Central Florida Tire, her father would see her picture in the paper and come home.

That was Raymie’s plan.