Tommy shrugged. People did stick up for him. Nobody stuck up for Dennis. Teachers always liked him; they never liked Dennis. Tommy’s dad was cool. And maybe Dennis’s dad hit him. Maybe Dennis had a right to be jealous, but that didn’t give him the right to beat people up.

“Dennis doesn’t know anything,” he said.

Miss Navarre left it at that. She looked to Wendy. “That was pretty creepy yesterday with the finger. Did you have trouble sleeping last night?”

“A little,” Wendy admitted.

“How about you, Tommy? Are you sleeping at night?”

Adults were obsessed with sleeping, he had decided. Like, if everybody slept more the world would be a better place or something. His mother was crazy about him getting enough sleep. She gave him allergy medicine to make him sleep. Sometimes he swallowed it, sometimes he didn’t.

“I’m fine,” he said.

He wanted to get out of this chair, out of this room, and go be a normal kid. He didn’t want all this attention and all these questions. He wished his dad had picked him up from school Tuesday and he never would have fallen on that dead lady. But his dad played golf on Tuesday afternoons, and his mother was busy.

“Okay,” Miss Navarre said. “Wendy, why don’t you go back to class? I have a couple of things to talk to Tommy about.”

Tommy felt like a big rock dropped into his stomach. Him alone in a room with Miss Navarre. Oh, brother.

Wendy left. Tommy’s eyes went everywhere but to Miss Navarre.

“Tommy, look at me and tell me the truth now. You feel well enough to be in school?”

He looked straight at her and tried not to blink. “Yes, ma’am.”

“No running around at lunch and no gym class today. And if you don’t feel well, you tell me right away.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your mom is really upset about what happened.”

“I know,” Tommy said. “She was yelling last night. She was yelling this morning. Sometimes I think her eyes are gonna pop out of her head when she yells like that.”

“Does she do that a lot at home?”

Tommy shrugged. “It depends.”

“Does she yell at you like that?”

He shrugged again and looked down. “Sometimes. When I do something wrong, or mess up the schedule.”

He thought his mom was really mad at him this week on account of him finding that body, and him getting beat up, and her having to change her schedule to come to school where she always felt like she had to scream at people.

“I wish none of it ever happened,” he said, and to his horror, he felt like he might cry.

Miss Navarre came around the table and squatted down beside him, her pretty flowered skirt floating into a puddle around her feet. She looked up into his face like she was searching for something.