I’D HAD SUCH A crappy day. I failed a pop quiz in science. And Lauren had left me no choice but to spread the rumor about her bra-stuffing, but then somehow she tried to make it so it was my fault, and she wouldn’t even talk to me when the bell rang. Plus she got Lindsay, Amira, and Yoko to not talk to me, either.

Maybe these seem like lousy excuses for not letting Stewart in when he knocked, but I don’t know, I guess I also thought I should teach him a valuable lesson, which is “Don’t forget your key.” I didn’t notice it was raining. Honest-to-God-hope-to-die-stick-a-beetle-in-my-eye.

And when I went into his room, it wasn’t to snoop or anything, like, who cares what the little dweeb has in his room. I just wanted to check up on Shopping Cart or whatever his name is, and maybe pet him a little bit. You know, just a cuddle to cheer me up.

But once I was in there, I couldn’t help seeing a bunch of stuff. I mean, it was all right in front of my eyes. First thing I saw were the photos. There must have been ten of them, hung in a row along one wall. Some were of him and his mom, others were of his mom and dad, and a few were of all three of them.

I’ll admit I was totally one hundred percent shocked that his mom was pretty. She had a cute little pixie haircut and a nice figure. In all the photos, she had a really lovely smile, and you could tell by the look on her face that she thought Stewart was, like, a god or something. I heard one of my mom’s friends say once that biology kicks in and clouds a mother’s judgment, and obviously that was what happened in this case; she couldn’t see that Stewart was one fugly child.

Anyway, it was kind of spooky looking at all those pictures of a dead person, so I started searching for Shopping Cart. I finally found him hiding under the bed. It was the first time I’d seen him up close. You know how they say dog owners start to look like their dogs? Well, I think Stewart looks a bit like his cat. They are both highly unattractive, and the cat has weird ears, just like Stewart. But I didn’t want to give the cat a complex or anything, so I reached out to pet him anyway, and you know what happened? The stupid beast scratched me!

That made me feel really sad for some reason. Maybe because it had happened right after Lauren and my other friends ignored me, but it made me feel like everyone was against me, human and animal. And then that made me start to wonder if maybe I was a teeny bit responsible, like maybe I’d gone too far telling people about Lauren’s bra, because sometimes I do things that feel right and justified in the moment but that hours later don’t feel so right after all. And I was just thinking I should text her an apology when I glimpsed something through the window that made me freeze in my tracks.

It was Stewart, sitting on the couch in the laneway house.

Having tea.

With my dad.