Guilt settles in my stomach as I think about the letter I wrote Kiera. Not even my worst enemy deserves a letter like that.

After school, Mrs. Young must see the worry on my face, because when everyone is getting their stuff together to walk out to the pickup lines, she says, “Sweet Pea, hang back for a minute if you don’t mind.”

Oscar looks over at me, and I just shrug. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Once the room has cleared, Mrs. Young sits down at the desk beside me, tucking her black dress with multicolored beetles underneath her. Today she wears a light-pink lipstick, with her hair twisted into a sloppy bun and secured with two paintbrushes.

“How’s it going?” she asks, like it’s not at all weird that she asked me to stay after school.

“Am I in trouble?” I ask. “Is this about my research project?”

She shakes her head. “You’re not in trouble, but you do need to let me know who your project is on and soon. That’s not why I asked you to stay, though. I just wanted to check in with you. I know we talked a few months ago, but you seemed a little off today.”

Mrs. Young was one of the first people to know that Mom and Dad were getting a divorce. They told her because they wanted her to know what was going on in case I wasn’t myself.

“I’m okay.”

“Everything okay at home?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“You know,” she says, “you’ve got a lot of big changes going on right now. It’s okay if you need to readjust a little bit. No one expects you to just act like everything is fine.”

“Thanks,” I say, trying to release the knot of tension gathered in my forehead.

“But that’s not all that’s bothering you today, is it?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“Anything I can help with?”

I take a breath. “I think I’ve made a big mistake, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You know, the best part about mistakes is there’s nowhere to go but up. You can either learn from them or if you’re really lucky, you might even be able to fix them.”

“Too bad life isn’t written in pencil,” I say.

She laughs at that. “That’d be a seriously giant number-two pencil.”

Chapter Seventeen

A Girl on a Mission

I speed walk to the bus and pray for it to drive as fast as it can so I can get home. Life might not be written in pencil, but maybe Mrs. Young is right. Maybe some mistakes can be fixed.

The minute the bus hits my stop, I’m running out the door and down the street.

Oscar, who is supposed to be hanging out at my house after school, jogs behind me. “Hey! Wait for me! You still haven’t told me why Mrs. Young made you stay after school!”