i.

Erin Gilbert is pretty much sick of other kids. She's had enough—enough of the way they treat her, enough of their mean comments, enough of being shoved into lockers and splattered with white paint and tripped in the hallway and on the playground. She's had enough of their cold laughter, their cold looks, their cold hearts. She's had enough.

She tells her mom and dad this, and they tell Dr. Lisa, and Dr. Lisa sits across from Erin in the brown room and asks why? Always why?

Erin always gives the same answer. She kicks her heels against the scratchy fabric at the base of the couch and says, "I don't know."

(She does know, of course, but she never says).

The ghost stops coming every night, but nothing else stops. Erin still stays awake most of the night in terror. The kids still bully her, call her Ghost Girl, call her crazy.

Summer is a relief. Summer is an eternity away from school. She spends her days at the public library, where she never sees another kid from her grade. She barely sees any kids at all, any age, and the ones she does see only come to pick out books and leave again. None of them stay like she does, tucked into a quiet corner on the other side of the 500s. Far away from the children's section with its beanbag chairs and primary-coloured foam floor.

Nobody bothers her there.

Until one day, mid summer, when it's too warm to be outside and too warm to be inside, at least in her house. The library has industrial air conditioners, so it's nice and cool.

She's reading a thick book on algebra and trying to see how many of the equations she can get right when a girl rounds the corner and comes down into her aisle. She's small, really small, with golden hair too dirty and messy to be like a princess's. She's wearing purple overalls with dirt and paint all over them, and a fuzzy orange sweater that she must be very warm in. She's wearing black and yellow gumboots even though they haven't had rain in ages. She's got a peace sign button pinned to the strap of her overalls, and a patchwork bag slung over her shoulder that hangs so low that it scrapes the carpet. She's got glasses, but the glass is yellow and they're so big that they're barely hanging on her nose.

The girl smiles when she sees Erin, big and wide so Erin can see the missing teeth on the bottom.

"Hiya!"

Erin shrinks back from the girl's enthusiasm. She doesn't trust other kids, not one bit. She knows how to deal with them, though.

"Whaddya want?" she says in her toughest voice.

The girl keeps smiling. "I'm looking for a book on how to build a tape recorder."

Why would she want to do that?

"That's Technology and Applied Science, the 600s. This is the 500s."

"What's that?" The girl looks at the shelf beside her.

"Natural Science."

"You sure know your stuff. Are you going to be a librarian when you grow up?"

Erin shakes her head. "I'm going to be a scientist."

"Cool! Me too. Maybe. I dunno. I like building things. Whatcha reading?"

Erin looks down at her book. "It's math. You wouldn't understand it."

"Oh." The girls drops her bag on the floor, like maybe she's planning on staying a while. "How old are you?"

"Nine," Erin says proudly. She just had her birthday. She didn't have a birthday party because she knew nobody would come to it, but her parents made her a cake. Vanilla, her favourite, with rainbow sprinkles.

"I'm turning eight in September," the girl says, equally as proud.

Eight? She's so small, though. Maybe she's lying.

"Well," Erin says, "I need to get back to my math."

The girl picks up her bag again. "Right. And I need to go find my book."

She stands there for a few more seconds. Erin buries her nose in her book and prays that the girl leaves her alone.

"I'm Jillian," the girl says. "What's your name?"

"Stacy," Erin says. She doesn't know why. She's always liked the thought of being a Stacy. She bets Stacy wouldn't have a ghost haunt her. Stacy would be popular and have friends.

The girl, Jillian, smiles again. "Nice to meet you, Stacy. See ya around?"

"Sure," Erin mutters.

Jillian gives a weird little salute and marches out of the aisle, leaving Erin to return to her calculations in peace and forget all about her.

September approaches, and Erin tells her parents that she doesn't want to go back to school. They tell Dr. Lisa, and Dr. Lisa asks why? like she always does, and Erin says she doesn't know.

Her dad says, "Suck it up," and so Erin has to go back to school, where all she can do is hope that all the other kids forgot about her over the summer.

Her class list says she has some of the worst kids in her fourth-grade class, like Greg Christopher and Chris Turner, who she likes to smoosh together into one super-mean boy named Chris Christopher. She doesn't bother reading the rest of the list. It's not like she has any friends to look for.

Basically, she's looking forward to going back to school as much as she's looking forward to her next dentist appointment.

Jillian Holtzmann has never cared a whole lot about other kids. She's made the odd friend here and there in her nearly-eight years of life, but she doesn't care much when they get scared of her or call her weird. She likes being alone. She's never met anyone who's as smart as she is, so she gets bored talking to other kids her age.

She gets bored in school too, like really bored. Her second-grade teacher notices how bored she always gets in class, how it takes her like five minutes to do all her work, and tells her mom and Principal Vickers, and they decide that she should skip right ahead to the fourth grade this year. She sits in his office with her feet swinging while he says to her mom that normally there's concern about letting a student skip a grade because it might be hard on them to lose their friends, but Jillian doesn't have any friends so she'll be okay. She agrees with him.

She's put into Mrs. Albertson's class, and she reads through all the names on her class list and memorizes them, which is easy peasy because she only has to look at something once to remember it forever (Dr. Hirata once told her that it's called a 'photographic memory,' and now every time she does it she makes a little camera click in her brain, just for fun). She doesn't know any of the names, but that's not surprising. They're all a whole year older than her.

On the first day of school, her mom drives her in their red '82 Chevy C10 (Jillian loves that truck a lot, and can tell you about everything from the engine to the grills to the little hula dancer duct-taped to the dashboard, who she's named Marge).

Jillian grabs her bag from down by her feet.

"Have a good first day, baby," her mom says, stretching across the seat to kiss her cheek. "Raise the perfect amount of hell, okay?"

"Just enough to keep things interesting," Jillian confirms with a bob of her head. Just like her mom always told her.

Her mom smiles fondly and ruffles her already-messy hair. "Go get 'em."

Jillian opens the door of the truck and clambers out with her bag, then slams it shut behind her. You gotta give it a good shove, or it won't close properly. She gives her mom a salute and watches her drive off to her job at the Kellogg's factory. She operates the machine that fills the bags with cereal. It's really cool—one time Jillian got to go and learn about how it worked. Plus, she got free cereal. Win-win.

She finds Mrs. Albertson's classroom easily and walks in to find it buzzing with activity as all the kids catch up with each other after a summer apart.

"Welcome, Jillian!" Mrs. Albertson says. They met last week to talk about her 'transition' into the fourth grade.

She points Jillian in the direction of her assigned desk. All the desks are arranged in little clusters of four. There's a girl sitting at her cluster already. Jillian comes up behind her and sees the small paper nameplate that shows she's in the desk beside the girl. She pulls out her chair and drops her bag on the floor.

"Hi! I'm Jill—" She breaks off as the girl beside her turns her head and she sees her face for the first time. "Oh! Stacy?"

There was no Stacy on her class list. Did she just get transferred in? This is exciting—she didn't expect to know anyone. Not that she really knows Stacy, but at least she's met her.

"Uh…I…" Stacy splutters.

Then Jillian notices the nameplate on her desk. Erin.

Erin Gilbert, Jillian recalls from the list. She scrunches her face in confusion. "Wait…I thought you were someone else. Sorry. Do you have a twin named Stacy?" she asks hopefully.

Stacy—no, Erin…whoever she is, her face turns very red. "No. I, um…my name's not Stacy. It's Erin."

"Well, I got that," Jillian says. "I'm sorry."

"No, I mean, I lied. I told you I was Stacy. That was me."

"Oh." That makes Jillian even more confused. "Why?"

"I thought Stacy was cool," Erin says, her face now the colour of the tomato plants on Jillian's balcony.

"Oh," Jillian says again. "That's okay. Erin seems cool, too."

Erin bites her lip. "What are you doing here? I thought you were eight?"

"Still seven for another week, technically. I get to skip the third grade," she says proudly.

"Wow," Erin says. "You must be really smart."

Jillian shrugs her shoulders to her ears. "I am."

Dr. Hirata made her do a lot of tests to find out how smart she is, where she did everything from solve long lists of equations to copy patterns using cubes. He wouldn't tell her what her score was, but he told her mom, and her mom cried and bought her a brand new set of tools which were so shiny that Jillian was scared to use them. She might have thought that this was a sign that she did badly and she felt bad for her, but she overheard her mom on the phone later say the word 'genius,' so Jillian supposes she couldn't have done that badly.

A boy comes and sits across from them and sneers at Erin. "Great. I have to look at Ghost Girl all day?" He turns to examine Jillian. "Who are you?"

She smiles. "Jillian Holtzmann."

"What's with the glasses, Jillian? You trying to look cool? You just look like a bug. A creepy, scaly bug with big bug-eyes. Reptilian Jillian, that's what you should be called."

She tilts her head. "Bugs aren't reptiles."

"Whatever, weirdo nerd. Are you even in the right classroom? What are you, five?"

Jillian's had enough of this. "At least I'm smarter than a five-year-old, unlike you."

"Shut up, Reptilian Jillian. Where'd you find this kid, Ghost Girl? Did you have to steal someone out of kindergarten to be your friend because nobody else would? Did she see a ghost, too? A ghost bug?"

Jillian leans forward on her desk and rests her chin on her fists. "Ghost bugs sound cool. There'd be so many of them, considering how quickly bugs die." She looks at Erin. "Did you really see a ghost?"

Erin doesn't answer her, but crosses her arms. "Leave us alone, Chris."

Soon, another boy joins their cluster of desks and the school day officially begins, and the entire incident is temporarily pushed from Jillian's mind.

Recess can't come fast enough. It's only been a few hours, and Erin is already sick of this year. Not only is it obvious that nobody's forgotten about the Ghost Girl thing, but Mrs. Albertson just had to put half of Chris Christopher in her desk group.

As soon as they're dismissed for recess, she grabs the muffin her mom packed her and beelines across the field towards her Spot, tucked in the corner where the fences meet and there's enough overhanging trees that she's almost invisible.

"Erin!"

She looks over her shoulder to see Jillian running towards her in a lopsided way with her arms waving everywhere, causing heads to turn after her. Why won't she leave Erin alone? Doesn't she realize yet that Erin doesn't want to be friends? Not with her, and not with anyone.

She keeps walking, but Jillian catches up with her anyway. She's panting like a dog. "Boy, you walk fast."

"What do you want?"

"Can I play with you?"

"I don't play at recess," Erin says. "I sit quietly and read and eat my snack."

"Okay, can I do that with you?"

"Don't you have friends your own age?" Erin says meanly.

"Nope," Jillian says cheerfully.

Erin doesn't care enough to fight, so she doesn't say anything else, hoping Jillian will take the hint that she's not welcome and leave.

She doesn't.

Erin sits down in her Spot, peels the plastic wrap off her muffin, and cracks open her book. Jillian grabs the chain-link fence, lacing her fingers through the holes, and stares into the small forest on the other side.

"Wonder what's in there?"

"Trees," Erin says, finding her place in her book easily and picking up where she left off.

"Bears, probably."

"There's no bears in there." Erin flips the page.

Jillian releases the fence and plunks herself down in the grass next to Erin. "Why are you so mean?"

Erin doesn't say anything. Flips another page.

"I'm just trying to be nice," Jillian continues. "Seems like I'm one of the only people who is. So why are you being mean to me?"

Erin slams her book shut. "Listen. I know you're only trying to get in on the joke so you can fit in with everyone else. I'm not going to tell you, okay? Go figure it out from someone else."

Jillian frowns. "What joke? If you mean the 'Ghost Girl' thing, I don't care. I get picked on, too. I just thought you might want a friend."

"I don't need friends."

"Neither do I. But you don't need enemies either, and it seems like you've got a lot of those already." Jillian rips out a handful of grass and throws it.

Maybe she's telling the truth.

"You can stay," Erin says finally.

"Cool," Jillian says. "Whatcha reading today? More math?"

"It's Jane Austen."

"Never heard of her."

"Most kids haven't," Erin says, feeling pleased with herself that she has.

"Is it good?"

"It's okay."

Truthfully, she doesn't understand a lot of what's happening in the book and finds it a little boring, but she likes learning new words and that's why she's reading it. It's one of the books that her grandmother got her for her last birthday.

"I don't like reading much. Unless it's telling me how to do something."

"Like build a tape recorder?"

Jillian gives her another toothy grin. "Exactly. I don't even read those kinda books that much. I like figuring stuff out myself. I only look for directions when I'm really stuck."

"So you were really stuck on the tape recorder?"

Jillian sighs sadly. "Yeah. It only plays songs backwards. No matter what I do, I can't get it to work properly." She perks up. "On the bright side, I get to listen to songs backwards, which not many people get to do."

Erin stares at her for a few moments. "You're weird."

"I know," Jillian says proudly. "Aren't you?"

"No," Erin says defensively.

"Don't worry," Jillian says. "It's not a bad thing."

"Pretty sure it is," Erin mutters.

They're quiet for a minute.

"Hey, why do they call you Ghost Girl?"

Erin freezes up.

"Don't worry. I told you—I don't care and I won't call you it. I just wanna know. Did you really see a ghost, or is that just pretend?"

What's Erin got to lose in telling her? The companionship of this little kid who she doesn't want around anyway?

"Yeah, I did," she says quietly.

"Whaaaat?! Cool!"

Cool? That wasn't the answer Erin was expecting. "It wasn't cool. It was scary."

"Didya know who it was?"

Erin nods. "My next door neighbour. She hated me and was super mean, and then when she died she came into my room and screamed and barfed all over me."

"Wicked. Real barf or ghost barf?"

"It looked like blood," Erin says. "But when she disappeared, it went away too."

"That's so awesome," Jillian says. "How many times have you seen her?"

"She came every night for a year," Erin admits, her heart beating faster at the memory.

"Sweeeeet! I mean, scary, definitely, but that's so cool. How many people get to see a ghost, let alone see one for a whole year?"

She's almost talking like she's jealous. "Well, I'd gladly give her to you," Erin says. "It was awful."

Jillian thinks for a few seconds. "So do the other kids not believe you?"

Erin shakes her head. "They think I'm crazy. So do my parents."

"What? Why? Do they not believe in ghosts?"

"Nobody does. Only crazy people."

Jillian shrugs. "I believe in ghosts. And aliens!"

"Well, people will say you're crazy, too."

"That's alright. I don't mind. I don't care what people say about me." She puffs her chest out. "My mom taught me that. She says the most important thing is being proud of who you are."

Erin doesn't think she'll ever be able to do that, but she nods like she agrees. "So you really believe me that I saw a ghost?"

"Of course! Why would you lie about that?"

(For attention, according to Dr. Lisa).

Erin smiles a bit. Jillian is the first person to believe her, or at least say she believes her. She still doesn't fully trust her to not go running off and join the others…but how much trouble could this tiny blonde girl cause, anyway?

From that moment on, the two of them are friends.

To Jillian's jubilance, Erin is smart, too. Really smart. She wasn't kidding when she said she was doing math that Jillian wouldn't understand. Jillian's good at math, but Erin's really good at math and she loves it. Jillian doesn't particularly like math, even though it's easy for her brain to do.

They both finish their work in class very fast, but Mrs. Albertson is good at giving them extra things to do. On the other side of their desk cluster, Chris Turner goes super red every time it happens, like he's a volcano that's going to erupt. He doesn't like that they're smarter than him.

He spreads the nickname he made up, and soon the whole class calls her Reptilian Jillian. She doesn't mind. One day, she draws a little comic about Reptilian Jillian and Ghost Girl, because she thinks they sound like superheroes. In the comic, they defeat a gigantic monster named Chris Christopher who's stomping his way through a big city. Ghost Girl's powers are flying and telekinesis, and Reptilian Jillian can climb up buildings and shoot lasers from her mouth. They're the perfect team.

Erin loves it so much that Jillian copies out the comic so they can both have it. Jillian folds her copy up and hides it under her pillow.

She hasn't told her mom about Erin, and she doesn't quite know why. She kinda likes being weird and friendless. She's Jillian Holtzmann who doesn't need friends, and that's the way it's always been.

Not that she doesn't like being Erin's friend. It's just that her friendship with Erin is kind of special, and she likes that nobody knows about it. Even the kids at school don't take them seriously.

So, they only ever spend time together at school and never go to each others' houses for playdates. Not that they play, ever. They usually talk about ghosts or science or ghost science. They talk about how they can't wait to get out of elementary school so they can learn about even more things. Even with Mrs. Albertson giving them as much extra work as she can, they're both still bored in class.

Now, though, Jillian doesn't mind. At least they're bored together.

Fourth grade is a lot better than Erin thought it would be. To her surprise, Jillian is becoming her best friend. They spend every recess and lunch together, talking about science and math. She knew Jillian had to be smart in order to skip the third grade, but she didn't know Jillian was this smart. She knows a lot of things that Erin doesn't know, and she remembers everything. She'll be able to perfectly remember something Erin said to her months ago.

She doesn't tell her mom and dad or Dr. Lisa about Jillian, because she doesn't want them to think that the only person willing to be her friend is a girl who doesn't have any other friends. She also knows that her mom and dad would want to meet Jillian, and she's a little embarrassed by her. She's so weird, and she dresses like a ragamuffin, as her mom would say, and the worst part is that she believes in ghosts. Her mom and dad and Dr. Lisa would probably say that she was a bad friend to have. They wouldn't like her.

So Erin keeps Jillian to herself.

As summer approaches, she starts to wonder what's going to happen when they're not in school. Will she not see Jillian again until September? What if they don't get put in the same class next year? Jillian's presence has been the only thing that got her through all the mean things kids have said to her this year. She makes it seem like being Ghost Girl is a good thing.

Jillian is the one who asks, finally.

"You think we'll see each other during summer?"

They're in their Spot. Jillian is practicing cartwheels across the grass while Erin watches. She does a running start and plants her hands, and her feet barely get off the ground.

"I dunno," Erin says.

"Do you wanna?" Jillian goes again, and this attempt is more like a somersault than a cartwheel.

"Yeah," Erin says.

"Cool. Me too."

They both know that they aren't going to invite each other to their houses. Erin taps her fingers on her knees. "Maybe we can meet up at the library?"

That's where she spends her summers anyway, so it won't be suspicious.

Jillian lands her next cartwheel face first, then rolls so she's sitting. "Yeah!"

On their last day of school, Erin is cleaning out her desk when Jillian sets something on it. Erin hesitantly picks it up. It's a button with a little lizard on it. She looks up in confusion.

Jillian holds up a button with a small ghost on it. "So we can remember each other over the summer if we don't see each other much."

Erin smiles and attaches the pin to her bookbag. Jillian puts her ghost one on her patchwork bag, where she has a growing collection of buttons, including the peace sign one that she was wearing on her overalls the first time they met.

"Thanks, RJ," Erin says.

Jillian flashes a full grin. "You're welcome, GG."

When Erin's mom and dad ask her where she got the pin, she lies and says she won it in trivia game at school.

Over the summer, she goes to the public library every single day in the hopes that she'll see Jillian. It takes days and days before she finally shows up, dragging her patchwork bag behind her.

Erin sits up straighter immediately. "Where have you been?"

Jillian shrugs. "Sorry."

She never answers the question. For the rest of the summer, her appearances are scattered and unpredictable. Erin still goes every day. She doesn't want to miss her.

Despite being surrounded by knowledge, they don't talk about school stuff much. Instead, they learn everything about each other. They discover that both Jillian's mom and Erin's dad work at the Kellogg's factory, but in different sections.

"What about your dad?" Erin asks.

"I don't have a dad," Jillian says.

"Everyone has a dad."

"That's not true," Jillian says. "I don't."

"In order to make a baby—"

"I don't have a dad," Jillian says firmly. "It's just me and my mom. Always has been, and always will be. It's the two of us forever."

"Okay," Erin says.

Two things happen in Jillian's ninth year of life. The first thing is that her and Erin aren't put into the same fifth grade class. The second thing is that her mom falls in love.

The man's name is Mark, and he's very nice. He brings her mom flowers and Jillian brand-new electronics to take apart. That's how Jillian knows he has a lot of money—he'll bring her a Walkman still in its box and tell her to go to town on it.

She's never had much brand-new. It's all second-hand. Most of the things she owns are things she built or fixed from parts she found in a dumpster. She likes it that way. It's never bothered her that she doesn't have new stuff. She knows her mom works very hard at the factory to feed them, and she would never ask for more.

But Mark, Mark has a lot of money. And he buys Jillian a lot of things, probably to get her to like him.

He doesn't have to work very hard. He's very nice, and he makes her mom smile at nothing and sing in the shower.

She tells Erin about Mark. Even though they're not in the same fifth grade class, they still spend every single recess and lunch together.

"Maybe you'll have a dad after all," Erin says.

Jillian doesn't stop thinking about that for a long time.

In April, Mark takes her out for dinner, just the two of them.

"Jillian, I want to ask your mom to marry me. Is that okay with you?"

Jillian looks up from her crayon doodle of a rocket-powered skateboard. It might be babyish, but she draws all her best ideas in crayon.

"Marry you?" she repeats.

"Yes. I would be your stepdad."

Mark would be part of her family. She likes him, she really does, but she freezes up at that. "But…but it's just me and my mom. It's the two of us forever." That's what her mom always told her. She says it was the first thing she ever said to Jillian, while she was holding her in her arms in the hospital. Just the two of us forever, baby.

"Jillian, I love your mom a lot. I love you, too. I don't want to infringe on the special bond you have. That's the last thing I want."

Jillian licks her lips. "Okay. You can marry her."

Erin hears all about Jillian's mom and Mark. Apparently, they're having a wedding in the summer. Erin's never been to a wedding. She asks Jillian if she's going to be the flower girl, and she just laughs so hard her apple juice comes out of her nose.

The fifth grade is pretty miserable without Jillian in her class. Luckily, she only got half of Chris Christopher in her class, Greg Christopher. Jillian has Chris Turner in her class. They swap stories of all the mean things they say.

Neither of their teachers are as awesome as Mrs. Albertson was. Erin's teacher, Mr. Murphy, doesn't believe in letting kids work ahead. He says if she finishes her work, she's to sit at her desk quietly.

Jillian's teacher, Mr. O'Neal, doesn't like when kids are smarter than him, which isn't good because as far as Erin knows, Jillian is smarter than most of the teachers at the school. One day, she waits for Jillian at their Spot all lunch, and she never shows up. The next day at recess, she finds out that Jillian spent all lunch in the principal's office for talking back to Mr. O'Neal.

Jillian kicks the ground when she tells the story. "His answer was wrong. All I did was correct him, but he didn't believe me."

Erin bites her lip. She knows better than to correct teachers when they're wrong, but Jillian doesn't care about anything like that. She likes to cause trouble.

"Don't worry. Soon we'll be at middle school, and I bet all the teachers there'll appreciate you," Erin says.

Middle school. The promised land. Based on the location of their elementary school, half their grade won't be attending the same middle school as Erin and Jillian. They've already checked and double checked that they're both going to be at the same one. Most of the kids who are mean to them, including Chris Christopher, are going to be at the other one. Hopefully there will be enough new kids from the other elementary schools that the whole 'Ghost Girl and Reptilian Jillian' thing dies out.

The school year draws to a close, and they make plans to meet up at the library again like they did last summer. Jillian says she'll probably be busy with her mom's wedding, but she'll try to come as much as she can.

They say goodbye on the last day, and then Erin doesn't see Jillian for a month. It's into August before she finally shows up at the library. Erin's still been coming every day, just in case.

She drops her book on the floor and leaps out of her chair when she sees her. "RJ!"

Jillian beams, but she looks a little sad, too. "GG."

"Where have you been?"

"Ummm…well, my mom got married, you know."

"Right, of course. How was it?"

"Nice," Jillian says.

"So Mark is your stepdad now?"

"Yep."

Usually Jillian is more talkative than this. Erin feels like something is wrong, like there's something she's not telling her.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yep," Jillian says again. "Whatcha reading?"

Erin looks down at her dropped book. She stoops to pick it up and make sure the pages aren't bent. "It's about atoms. Did you know that everything in the entire world is made up of atoms? They're like tiny little microscopic things that build everything. Like Lego blocks, but you can't see them."

"Cool," Jillian says. "What are they made of? Cheese?"

Erin laughs. "Even smaller particles. Protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons are positive and the electrons are negative, so they're attracted to each other. And they're made up of even smaller parts."

"Neato. What happens if you disassemble them? Can you put them back together in a different way?"

"It's not that easy. They're really small."

"That sounds like a challenge," Jillian says. "I think you can pull anything apart and put it back together if you have the right tools."

They keep on discussing that, Jillian squeezing onto the chair beside Erin so they can read the book together, and Erin forgets all about how weird Jillian was being when she first arrived.

Well, weirder than usual.

They meet up a few more times during the rest of the summer, and each time Jillian seems a little quieter. Erin wonders if she's just upset about her mom getting married.

Before Erin knows it, it's her first day of middle school. She's a little scared about finding Jillian in such a big school. They even have lockers to hold their stuff, which is a big step up. The older kids look like teenagers. They're so tall.

All day, she searches for a mess of blonde hair, a patchwork bag. Jillian isn't in her class or in her electives. She's nowhere to be found in the locker bay. At lunch, Erin circles the building and the playground twice, even roams the entire field. By the time the bell rings, she hasn't even had time to eat her lunch.

She stays hopeful. Maybe they've just been going in circles this whole time, never quite crossing paths at the right moment.

She looks the second day, too.

And the third.

And the whole first week.

By the second week, she's stopped. She finds a new Spot on the field and waits there.

By the third week, she's given up. Jillian's not here. She's not coming.

She takes the lizard pin off her bag.