It’s raining today, real rain, but I don’t care. I kind of like it, the drops cool on my face, my T-shirt wet on my skin. I take Swamp Road again, going farther until I reach a clear-cut. A few spindly birch and maples, tufts of leaves at the top, dead spruce boughs strewn everywhere. No place left for a robin to build a nest.

Just before I woke up I was dreaming about Tully. She was stirring yellow paint over the fire pit in her backyard, her hair as bright as the flames. Then she smiled at me the way she smiles at Cassie, nothing held back. The dream moved to her ankles. Censor the rest.

Three and a half months ago. Recess on a damp day in April. Five girls are circling Tully in the schoolyard.

“Rolf Langille’s not your real father.”

“Who’s your real father, Tully?”

“Why didn’t he marry your mother?”

“Didn’t want to, did he? Because then he’d have you for a kid.”

“Like, who’d want you?”

“When are going to quit riding that stupid bike and behave like a girl?”

Tully’s face is red. “Rolf Langille is my real father.”

“Bastard on a bicycle, that’s you.” They giggle.

Tully says, loud enough that everyone in the schoolyard can hear, “Rolf adopted me in December, Langille is my last name, and if behaving like a girl means being like you, I’d rather drive my bike off the wharf.”

One of the girls sticks her face into Tully’s. “Bitch,” she says.

The chorus starts up again. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“I wouldn’t put that T-shirt on my worst enemy.”

“No wonder the boys don’t want anything to do with you.”

Tully spits the f-word at them and marches away. She always looks taller than she is because she holds herself so straight. When it comes to spite, girls win hands down.

*

I DON’T know who her biological father is, or why she didn’t keep his name. I should have asked her while I had her trapped on the roof. Even then, I’m almost sure she wouldn’t have told me.

I turn around. The clear-cut’s starting to get to me.

I walk the hill on #539 past MacTaggart’s, then slow-jog to our road. Glenn’s just leaving his place wearing a rain jacket, Igor on the leash. The dog looks mournful. I bet half an hour with Caramel would cheer him up.

Glenn hears me coming. Warily he looks back at the house, where the VW is parked askew in the driveway.

I stop, panting. He braces himself. Igor skulks in the ditch. “Glenn,” I say, between breaths, “I won’t be bullying you again. You or Igor.”