Tutoring was one of the best parts of school this year, Kris had to admit that. Even though her tutor was a man — Mr. Mack — he was unthreatening and goofy enough both outside his head and inside it that it was impossible to be scared of him. There were only two other kids in the same session, so he could give them lots of help, and Kris could focus better without a whole class whispering, muttering, and thinking all around her.

Mr. Mack helped her untangle the long multiplication problems and showed her a couple shortcuts that made much more sense when he explained it, instead of Mr. Gregory. As Mr. Mack turned to help Julie, a seventh grader, with diagramming sentences — something Kris didn't understand at all — Kris caught sight of Iola sitting on the hall floor, just outside the door.

"Miss the bus, Iola?" Mr. Mack said.

"No, sir." Iola blushed. "I'm waiting to talk to Kris."

"Which means you did," Mr. Mack said dryly. "Come in and have a seat. You can get your homework done while you wait."

"I'm walking home with Sharon," Kris said shyly, to Iola. "If you want to walk with us, you can call your mom from my house."

Iola slid into the desk closest to the door. "That's okay. Mommy's picking me up so we can go shopping." She didn't pull out any homework books, but Kris caught a glimpse of a white-cover paperback before Iola hid it inside her English textbook — Love Story.

Kris scowled. An adult book, about all the boy-girl stuff. What was it with the other girls and that awful stuff?

Maybe they didn't know what it really meant.

Mama and Papa had ranted about such things, over and over, all about the "sin of Adam and Eve". They'd called her names over it, though Kris'd had no idea what they'd meant. Until Papa…

Wiping at her face, Kris focused on the math text book and the problem she was supposed to be working on, forced herself to breathe slowly and to get her mental shields firmed up. She didn't need to have a meltdown here.

By the time tutoring was over, Kris's head felt stuffed full, and on the verge of one of her sick headaches. Mr. Mack gave her a couple aspirin and let her stay in the classroom until the pain receded enough for her to see straight. He offered to call Mar, but Kris shook her head. Once she was outside, she'd be fine; cold air always helped. By then, Sharon had shown up, eyeing Iola dubiously as Iola stuffed her books back in her pack.

"Those headaches sound awful," Iola said to Kris. "You really see halos around everyone?"

"Uh-huh," Kris said. "Even Joe."

Iola giggled. "Joe with a halo? You should tell Frank."

"I did," Kris rubbed at her eyes; light still hurt, at the moment, "and they decided that made Joe a saint and Joe wrote a letter to the Pope asking to be…um…shot out of a cannon…"

"Canonized," Mr. Mack said, grinning. "It's not that fun. It just means added to the Catholic Church's list of official saints. I'd love to know what Joe said his miracles were."

Kris shook her head again. Papa had ranted against the Catholic Church as being nothing but pagan idolators, but Mar was Catholic, sort of, and she didn't worship idols. While Frank and Joe were Methodist, a lot of their relatives were old-fashioned Irish Catholic, and they definitely didn't act like Papa had claimed Catholics acted.

"Saint Joe," Iola giggled again. "Patron saint of headaches. Both him and Frank!"

"I can definitely see that," Mr. Mack said.

"My dad's a doctor," Sharon said, as Kris shouldered her backpack. "Maybe he can figure out why you get them."

"Something about sugar in my blood." Kris hadn't understood the explanation; it'd been tied in with her mind-Gifts, somehow. "Shimá took me up to Boston about it, but the drugs they want me to use are pretty dangerous. Shimá doesn't want me taking them until I'm older."

"Ergotamine, probably." Mr. Mack put his papers back in his briefcase. "Your mom's right. It's made from a poisonous fungus that grows on wheat. In medieval times, people would eat their Wheaties, then go into convulsions or have hallucinations, and you'll never guess what they blamed for it."

"Um, witches?" Kris said.

Mr. Mack "fired" his finger at her. "You got it. Ignorant people are sadly predictable." He grinned. "My class is crazy enough without a fungus among us."

It was a teacher joke, so it wasn't really funny, but on cue, all three girls groaned as they left the classroom.

"Mommy swears by hot water and a washcloth whenever she has a headache," Iola said to Kris.

"Shimá has me trying ginger and chamomile." Kris rubbed at her forehead again. "It doesn't work too well. I'll try the hot water when I get home."

"I wish we could get hold of some of that fungus," Sharon muttered. "Put it in Angie's lunch. I'd love to see her hallucinate."

"Angie?" Iola sounded startled. "Why?"

Kris looked down. Iola was on the junior cheerleader squad, too, just like Angie. But Iola was Chet's sister, and Chet was Frank and Joe's best friend. Kris didn't want to make her big brothers mad at her.

"She told Tina that she wasn't getting any Secret Santa stuff because she was a retard," Sharon said flatly.

Iola stopped. "Angie said that? But she's nice."

"That's what Tina said." Kris scuffed her boot on the floor. Angie? Nice? But Iola sounded as if she believed it. "She told me so in Special Ed."

"Tina must've misunderstood," Iola said.

"Yeah, right," Kris muttered. She really didn't want to start trouble. Not here. Not now. Not over this.

"Tina's just slow," Sharon said, with a glare at Kris. "There's nothing wrong with her hearing."

"I didn't mean that," Iola said. "It's just that she's not all there, everyone knows that. You can't really believe what the poor thing says, that's what Mommy says."

Kris raised her head. No one had ever believed her, either. Until Mar.

"Uh-huh," Sharon said, with heat. "That just means Angie can get away with it, because no one will believe Tina."

"Oh, come on," Iola said.

"Angie's mean," Kris said, the words spilling from her before she could stop them. "Unless you think spraying rotten milk all over someone's locker is nice."

"That was just a joke. All the new kids got hazed. Everyone does it. Chet got baby powder all over his last year."

"None of your crowd got hazed," Sharon said. "And you're just as new as the rest of us."

"I got F's that day because all my homework got soaked," Kris said. "And Shimá had to pay for three textbooks. That's a joke?" She'd never understand these people, never!

"I'm sure Angie wouldn't have done that if she knew your homework was still there," Iola said. "Most of us take it home with us."

"And telling Tina to her face that she's a retard and not getting any Santa stuff is nice, too?"

"Kris, you're over-reacting," Iola said. "It's not like Tina really knows what the Secret Santa's all about. People like her don't feel things like we do."

Tears were threatening to spill again. Kris blinked rapidly, somehow swallowed them down. She wasn't going to cry, she wasn't, not here, not in the hallway, not in front of Iola and Sharon, she wasn't!

"I think Tina understands a lot more than you think she does," Sharon said, scowling.

"Look, you're really getting angry over nothing," Iola said, turning her back on Sharon to face Kris. "I just wanted to ask about Joe, that's all."

This was the girl who said she was doing a cake to make up for what had happened last year. Chet's sister. Someone who'd called her 'the greatest'. But right now, Kris didn't feel so great. "Joe didn't think the milk was a joke. And he got angry over Tina, too. You wouldn't tell him he was over-reacting."

"That's different," Iola said, reddening.

I only got Kris Mountainhawk, she's weird, let's ignore her…

Kris swallowed, hard. "No. It's the same. The only difference is that it's Joe, not me. Or Tina."

"Look, are you going to help me with Joe or not?"

Kris said nothing for a few minutes, as they walked out the front doors. Snow was falling thick and hard, and the janitors hadn't gotten around to salting the walks yet; the stairs were slick and icy, and Kris took extra care going down them. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned her face up, let the flakes fall on her face, their cool touch helping her calm down.

This was about Joe, after all, not Tina. Just give Iola her ideas, so Joe could have something special from the whole Secret Santa nonsense. That was the important thing. "He really likes Christmas Rose," Kris muttered. "The flower. It was his mom's favorite. But he said he's not good with plants."

Now Sharon was scowling at her.

Iola smiled, dimpling again. "That's easy. I'll ask Mrs. Cohen about it. She can get anybody to grow stuff. She even helped Chet grow mint for his science project!"

Mint was almost impossible to kill anyway, but Kris kept her mouth shut.

"Joe was teasing her about wanting to learn magic," Sharon said slowly. "Something about getting back at her for the envelope." She cocked her head at Kris. "I didn't know you knew magic."

"Joe always says that," Kris said. She really didn't want to go into that. "He's still trying to get flash paper to work without setting off the fire alarm."

"Oh, that gives me a great idea!" Iola said. "I should've thought of that. Frank said something about that to Chet. There's Mommy —" The Mortons' station wagon had pulled in front of the school.

"Just don't get him any more Old Spice," Kris said.

Iola halted. "Huh?"

"Old Spice. He really hates it." Joe had griped about his Uncle Jack enough; Kris understood completely. She couldn't stand the stuff, either, because of Papa.

Iola looked confused; behind her, Sharon was shaking her head. "Um, okay, sure," Iola said. "Whatever you say. See you tomorrow!" She scrambled up the hill to the car.

"That was kind of rude." Sharon was still scowling, as they started walking again. The sidewalks had been shoveled, but the way the snow was coming down, it wouldn't make any difference. "I mean, you shouldn't insult people's gifts like that. Even if they are cheerleaders."

Kris looked down, her face hot. She hadn't meant it like that; she'd just been trying to let Iola know. "But Joe really does hate it."

Sharon said nothing, looking at her from time to time as they walked. Then, "You were going to let her get away with the whole Tina thing. You wouldn't have said anything if I hadn't." Sharon sounded angry.

"She didn't care," Kris muttered, still staring at the sidewalk. Her head was hurting again. "You heard her. And if I got her mad, she would've told Angie, and Angie would've done more bad stuff to Tina."

"Or you, you mean."

Abruptly the day plummeted straight to miserable. Kris stopped. "So? I'm sick of people doing bad stuff to me. I hate them laughing at me behind my back and calling me names and playing dirty tricks. I hate being an ugly little dummy."

"That doesn't mean you suck up to them!"

"I wasn't!" Kris's voice had risen. "I give up. I try to do something good, and all I get is more people hating me. Frank and Joe are the only people who don't and all I want is to do something nice for them and…and…"

Sharon was staring, her eyes wide.

Kris couldn't take it anymore. She started running down the street, towards home. She'd tried, she'd really tried, and she couldn't even do friends right.

"Kris! Wait!"

Kris ignored it, kept running…until her feet hit a patch of ice and skidded out from under her. She slammed into the sidewalk, the air knocked from her lungs, and she lay there, wheezing and fighting to breathe.

Somewhere behind her, peals of laughter burst out.

It was just too much. Somehow she got one lungful of air, then two, and Kris struggled to her elbows, still wheezing. Everything hurt; her entire chest felt bruised, her head pounded, her ankle burned. Now her coat was ripped, her pants torn…then she saw her backpack, and moaned, tears starting for real. The seam had split, and the new math book, the one Shimá had paid for, had fallen out, right into the snow and mud.

"Oh my gosh." Footsteps came up; Sharon squatted down by her. "Here." Sharon helped her up, then picked the math book up, brushed it off. Her face was red, tear-streaked, but she glared up, somewhere behind Kris. "Idjits. They wouldn't be laughing if it was them."

"Leave me alone!" Kris snatched the math book from Sharon's hands; hot tears blinded her. "You're just like them. You're just being nice so you can turn around and be mean later! Just like them!"

"I thought you were just like them," Sharon said, "but you're not, are you?"

Kris only grabbed at the abused backpack, shoved the math book back inside. Right now she just wanted to get home.

"What didn't they believe you about?"

That pulled Kris up short. "Huh?"

"Back there." Another of those weird, uncomfortable stares. "When Iola said that about Tina. That's what you were thinking."

Kris flushed. She still didn't have very good control over her shields, especially when she was upset, but she wasn't about to tell Sharon about her original parents. "Nothing," Kris muttered, and grabbed her pack up. Her chest still hurt, her ankle was sore, and her knees were bleeding where her pants had torn, but she should be able to manage…then Kris stopped.

Sharon still watched her.

Thinking about it, Sharon had told Iola about Joe and the envelope, and Kris hadn't thought Sharon was anywhere around after math class. "If you're reading me," Kris snapped, "then you really are like them, because you're just using me to make yourself feel important." With that, she started walking — limping, anyway. Her ankle just barely bore her weight. Between that and her pounding head, all she wanted to do was get home.

Footsteps behind her. Sharon caught up, then slowed to match Kris's pace. "Usually people just call me a weirdo."

"You're not. You're just as much a bully as…as Angie is!"

Sharon reddened. "Like I can help it. You were awfully loud."

"So shield!"

Silence.

Sharon wiped at her face. "Everyone else says I'm lying when I say this stuff. You…you're getting mad because I'm not doing it right, and I had no idea I was doing it wrong."

"Well, you are." But then Kris's brain caught up and what they'd been talking about finally got past the sore chest and burning ankle and hurting head and ripped pants and ruined textbook — Kris turned to stare at Sharon. "Um…you do it, too?"

Wide-eyed, Sharon nodded.

And Sharon had said she saw ghosts. She'd known about Abby. She'd believed Kris's story about the elves and fairies…

"I usually can't…um…read you," Sharon said, reddening again. Then the words tumbled out. "There's something that feels like I'm hitting a wall when I try. Joe's kinda the same way, a little, but his isn't like yours. It's like someone's slapping my hands away."

Joe…?Kris opened her mouth, shut it. No way. Joe and Frank were too everything-has-to-make-sense; they didn't think any of that stuff was real. Other words spilled out instead. "Do your mom and dad know?"

Well, that was probably the stupidest thing she could've said. Look what'd happened with her original parents.

Sharon shrugged. "Mom says I'm making it up." She looked down, scuffed at an ice patch. "I heard her and Dad yelling. Dad said something about…psycho…no…schizo…schizophrenia. Crazy."

Mouth dry, Kris swallowed. Too much to deal with right now.

"When you opened Tina's locker," Sharon said, "you did something, then, too. But I thought it was just the magic trick Joe was talking about." Sharon cocked her head. "You know magic stuff, too?"

Kris shook her head. "Not like that. C'mon. We're gonna talk to Shimá."