SICK TWO DAYS in a row will get questions asked. I’ve got a good lunch packed: sandwiches bursting with spinach, cheese and tomato; fresh fruit, even some yogurt in a little reusable container with a spoon. I’m a well-looked-after kid. My hair’s washed and brushed. My shoes are clean. My breath’s minty fresh. I sit at the kitchen table, Splints’s head in my lap, packed schoolbag at my feet, until the clock shows eight forty-five. As the second hand ticks up to the twelve, I stand and shove Splints gently toward the back door. I don’t have to show him twice: he’s been miserable locked inside and I need him to do some chasing. I can’t have another night awake to the scratching and scrabbling from out there. I’m done with sharp-toothed dreams and I want them gone. I fill his water bowl and shut the back door. Three hundred forty-two steps to school; I should be there by 8:50, allowing for time to wait at the crossing. I stop my foot just in time; it lands awkwardly off the doormat. I stand half inside, half on the porch, my legs straddling the mat. The broken eggs are gone; in their place is a green bag.

I step over it and look inside. An egg carton.

I look across at Lettie’s house. The porch is empty.

I lift the carton out of the bag and give it a sniff, remembering the piles of egg cartons in her house. It smells okay. I check the date on it: the use-by’s two weeks away.

I put it gently back into the green bag and look across at her empty porch again. I can’t take them with me. I place them inside the front door, shut it quietly and head for school.

I don’t think about what they might mean.

SCHOOL’S A RELIEF. We have art today. The usual art teacher’s sick but Ms. Pham says it’d be a shame to miss it, so she takes us into the art room and gets all the paints and brushes out. Paint what you like, she says. Just do something that feels good to you.

I use lots of yellows, oranges and browns. Light and warm in the center and dark at the edges. I paint how I felt sitting on the couch, Splinter next to me, reading Oscar’s book, TV on silent and the lamps making the room a warm color.

“That’s nice, Rae. What do you call that?”

I stare at its center. “A mirage.”

I LENGTHEN MY strides on the way home. Big deliberate steps that jar on landing. It takes 123 of them to get to our gate.

I’m watching my feet, so his voice catches me off guard.

“What are you pretending to be?”

I glance at his face. “Nothing.”

“I thought maybe you were being a selfish giant or something.”