Karen’s teddy bear lands on my head.
“Donnie, it’s seven thirty. Get up. I don’t want Mom to come in and yell.”
I open my eyes and sit up, curving my back to stretch out the soreness from sleeping on her floor again. I give a big, gasping yawn, and Karen tries to stick her toes in my mouth from where she lies in her bed. I swat her foot away and stand up, tossing the bear on the bed.
“Have fun at school,” she says. “And I double dog-dare-you to say hello to the twins before they can say it to you.”
She rolls over, snuggles down under the covers, and gives a contented sigh. I drag her blanket off her on my way out of her room.
“Bye,” I say, dropping the blanket and closing the door before her bear can hit me in the head. It gives a soft thud against the closed door, followed by Karen’s laughing and her stomping across the room to get her blanket.
“Come home right after school, okay?” she calls through the door.
In science class I pull out my notebook. It’s still bowed and dog-eared from when I yanked it out from behind my bureau earlier this morning. I have no idea how it got there. I open it up to my notes from yesterday, where I’d written down nine different ways to escape a bear attack. I thought of number ten this morning. It requires freakishly fast reflexes and bull riding experience. I find yesterday’s date, February twenty-first, but instead of my How to Beat a Bear list, there’s another list altogether. I tear through the notebook.
Every page has a date, and under every date is a too-short list. Not enough to feed a hamster. She hid it in my room. Right under my nose. I am going to kill her.
I slam the notebook shut and stand up, knocking my chair over behind me. Mr. Delancey looks up from his steaming beaker, his eyes bugged out behind the safety goggles.
Everyone else twists around in their chairs. I stand there for a moment. I am not invisible, not at all. Sheila and Rodney stare up at me from where they sit in the row in front of mine.
“Donnie?” Sheila says.
I run out of the room, gripping Karen’s food journal in my sweating palm.