Giselle had nothing for little lunch. She sat by herself, picking a juicy sore next to the mole on her leg. She looked for Dan but he was with a group of other boys and all the girls were playing a game together under a tree. In her lunchbox, which she had packed herself, was a sugar-free, gluten-free energy bar which she had taken from the cupboard, together with two stale rice crackers. She was saving these for big lunch. When she left the house to walk up the road to catch the school bus, her mother was still in bed. Giselle had seen a dead person and now she always checked in the mornings to see if her mother was dead. Her mother was not dead, but she was breathing strangely, loudly, croakily.
She wanted to ask Dan if he would go with her looking for magic cupboards around the school. Her teacher was reading them a story about a girl who entered another land through the back of a cupboard. She had already gone into all the cupboards at Jules’s house but all of them had backs. All of them were ordinary places, for clothes, for shoes, old plastic bags, exercise equipment and suitcases. All of them ended.