“How’d you know what I was saying anyway?” he asked.

“I can lip read.”

“What? You got some kind of superpower or what?” he said impatiently.

“Well, if you call being deaf a superpower, then yup.”

Marty’s irritation melted into regret.

“Oh,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” she asked. “That I’m deaf? Or that you have the social skills of a baked bean?”

Marty laughed out loud. She smiled, then she looked at him more sternly.

“You shouldn’t let them talk to you like that, you know.”

Marty shrugged.

Marty had noticed her before. She was in the same year, just a different class, so they didn’t come across each other very often. She was kind of one of those looks-like-everyone-else people. Brown hair. A few freckles. Not big. Not small. Not tall. Not short. Kind of in-the-middle normalness. The only thing extraordinary about her, which he’d never noticed until now, was a hearing aid in her ear and a button-shaped thingy in her hair.

“And you shouldn’t stare either,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Oh, no. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were; you’re a terrible liar. Gosh, you really are a disaster, aren’t you?”

She was still smiling at him. He went back to being annoyed at her.

“Anyway, listen, I’ve got to go,” he said, turning his bike around. He usually felt like his head was too big for his narrow shoulders and that his clothes were two sizes too big for him and that his hair, which he cut himself in the bathroom mirror, was wonky, but standing in front of her was making all of this worse. “I’ll see you later,” he said as he turned away.

“Maybe,” she said. “Enjoy yourself at the allotments.”

“Hang on, how do you know about…?” he turned back to ask, but she was already walking away.

The stink reached Marty half a mile away from the allotments. His cheeks flushed, and he knew instantly what was up. Every year around this time, Grandad would swing by the back of the fishmongers on the Old Barley Road and pick up a bucket of the stinkiest, smelliest, disgustingest fish innards and bones and heads that he could. The more putrid and stomach-churningly puke-festy, the better. He’d smile and carry this bucket of gloop all the way back through town waving a cheery “Good morning” to everyone as he walked by and then giggle as he heard them gagging behind him. Then, when he had arrived at the allotments, he’d splatter it liberally about so that it released a stench that made the birds in the nearby trees faint, making all the neighbors turn green and call him names.

“Where’ve you been, Marty boy? You’re late! You’re late! Come and look, come and look!”

Marty pushed the gate open.

“Yeah. I think I can guess what you’ve been doing, Grandad.”