The counselor wasn’t a wolf pack he was just a guy with a soft voice and a pancake face all smooth and golden. He asked me some questions about making friends and leaving the classroom without permission, and about the tablet and about not completing my Specials. I try to complete my Specials, I said. I like to look at them on the tablet but it’s like I can’t really see them. It’s like I look at the screen and my eyes start to blur does that ever happen to you?

No, Perley, that doesn’t happen to me, he said. It sounds distressing. Which was a word I loved, like being shipwrecked, like the lullaby Mama K and Mama L used to sing, so I was like, Distressing. Yes. Totally distressing.

Then the counselor asked, Are there other times that you are distressed? and I wanted to help him so I said, Sometimes I can’t sleep. The pancake counselor said, Because you are worried about a snake biting you? I stayed quiet, but my scar spoke up. The counselor asked, Is that why you can’t sleep? So I just said, Can I have a pancake? I could tell it wasn’t what he wanted me to say, I mean he probably wasn’t even thinking about his own face and how much like a pancake it was, but he smiled again and he asked me, Are pancakes your favorite food? I said, Mama K says I’m not allowed to have a pancake or any cake. I am allowed to have pemmican arranged in the shape of a cake. But sometimes Mama L makes me pancakes when no one’s home and Grandma Barlow makes us pancakes whenever we want, me and Altemonte. The pancake counselor said, I’m sorry to say I don’t have any pancakes, but you may certainly have pancakes later.

So it was a successful distraction and I didn’t have to tell the pancake counselor why I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t have to tell him that lately I almost started to fly out of my body, I almost sent myself out like the special power that Savah of the Sun Folk has because I missed my Mama L so bad, and I missed Mama K, too, and the Mean Aunt and Rudy, and I didn’t want to tell the pancake counselor that, because I touched my scar and it told me, Use your tricks. Dazzle him.