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By Root 716 0

HAD GOT USED TO HIS feet peeling. He decided there must be a lot of layers of skin on the bottoms of everyone’s feet, because a layer of his came off every day and it didn’t hurt. It didn’t seem to matter, and he did not mention it to his mother again. Seven layers, eight, ten. The layers must be growing at the same rate at which they are peeling, he reasoned. He monitored the other new thing about his body: the ache in his abdomen. It was like the pulled muscle he once got doing sit-ups in gym, only this was deeper inside and did not hurt as much. He figured he would let this go away on its own along with the peeling, which was the more interesting condition of the two in his mind, so long as his feet did not bleed.

Wally had not come to see Wayne since Treadway destroyed her music. Wayne missed her like crazy and wanted to show her his diagrams of Thomas Telford’s bridge and tell her about his peeling feet. But he did not have the guts to go and get her or tell her he was sorry for what his father had done. He felt it was his fault, and he did not know how to make her forgive him.

By the time school started, Wally Michelin had turned into a stranger to Wayne. She was taller and skinnier. No one but Wayne seemed to remember that from grades one to six she had been strong, brave, and independent. It was as if she were an awkward new girl. She did not possess one article of clothing from the catalogue, and she kept her hair in two ponytails with elastic bands. By the first day of grade seven Donna Palliser was the undisputed queen of the class, and no one remembered the time before Donna, when everyone had loved Wally.

Donna Palliser’s parties had grown more numerous and elaborate each year. At her Hallowe’en party her mother had decorated the house with bats and cobwebs. Donna had come to the door to greet each guest with a plate of shortbread cookies shaped like severed thumbs and fingers with red icing. There was a haunted house on the mantel, with diabolical laughter coming out of it. Donna had Remembrance Day parties, Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve parties, Valentine’s Day parties, Easter parties, and Summer Holiday Eve parties, and if there was a lull between these she had sleepovers for selected girls and pizza parties for both girls and boys. Throughout grades five and six she had these parties and had not invited Wally Michelin, the Groves twins, or Gracie Watts, who continued to wear the same wool sweater every day, and Wayne had not told his father about the parties so had managed to avoid them. But in grade seven Donna Palliser changed her definition of a party, and her new tactics entrapped him.

For the first party of grade seven, which Donna called her Junior High Fete, Donna invited those she usually left out. Wayne saw Donna hand an invitation to Wally Michelin at recess, and he hoped she would not go. Anyone could see Donna had something planned for the unpopular people. He vowed not to go, and threw his invitation in the cafeteria garbage. Gracie Watts saw him do it and came over.

“Donna Palliser told Tweedledum and Tweedledee you’re trying to decide which one of them you want to go out with.” Wally Michelin and Wayne were the only students who did not call the Groves twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

“I’m not going.”

“She told them you want to French kiss both of them and then decide.”

“Fat chance.”

“Donna will tell everyone that proves you’re a fairy.”

“I’m not kissing the twins.”

“French kissing. You should say you can’t pick either of them because you want to go with Wally Michelin.”

“I don’t want to go with anyone.”

“But everyone knows you want to go out with her.”

Wayne felt sick. He loved Wally Michelin the way he loved constellations, or leaves, or king eider ducks.

“Wally Michelin is going to the party. Everyone is. And you have to go with someone or you’ll have to French kiss Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” Gracie took an Oh Henry bar out of her lunch bag, started biting the peanuts off it, and left him beside the garbage can.

Donna Palliser’s mother had laid out a cut-glass bowl