Free Meeting Miss 405 by Lois Peterson Page A

finger in the glass and roll the ice cubes around. I ignore Dad, who I know is watching me.
    â€œDelicious,” he says. When he takes another big mouthful, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down.
    â€œSo, how will we get on, you and I?” asks Miss Stella.
    I shrug.
Beats me
, is what I want to say.
This wasn’t MY idea
.
    When I shrug again, Miss Stella rolls her eyes. Just like my friend Parveen does when one of her brothers does something stupid.
    Miss Stella does it so quickly, maybe I imagined it.

CHAPTER 3
Counting Stars
    At bedtime, Dad rolls me in my sheet like a mummy. I like it this way since we learned about Egyptians at the museum.
    I shut my eyes and take my arms out of the bedroll and lay them down along my body. I try to imagine my spirit moving into the next world.
    â€œAll I ask is that you cooperate,” says Dad. I ignore him.
    â€œWhen school ends we can make other arrangements,” he says.
    I’m not saying anything.
    â€œWe will visit your mother in a couple of weeks and figure things out then.”
    My eyes pop open without my wanting them to. “Will she be better in two weeks?”
    Dad picks up one of my hands and flaps it between his two big ones like a piece of pizza dough. “I hope so, Tansy. Meanwhile, you know your grandpa will take care of her.”
    â€œI could have stayed at Grandpa’s too. I like it there.”
    â€œI know you do. And you have been a little trouper. But you need to be here for school.”
    â€œIt will be over soon.”
    â€œSoon enough,” he says in a voice that means the end of the conversation. He lets my hand drop back onto the bed. “We will make our summer plans in a week or so. Meanwhile, you have sports day to look forward to.” He gets up and picks my Harry Potter book from the shelf beside my bed. “And it will take you the rest of the school year to read this. Better put in some time now.”
    He bends down and touches my face, then kisses me. His breath smells of Roy Bus tea, which wasn’t tea at all. You won’t catch me drinking that red stuff.
    â€œI want a butterfly kiss,” I tell him. Butterfly kisses are really for little kids. But Dad rests his face against mine and brushes my cheek with his eyelashes.
    Then I do it to him.
    When he has gone, I stare at the stars on my ceiling and wonder which ones Mom is looking at on the Sunshine Coast.
    We took Mom over to Grandpa’s on the ferry yesterday. Every night when we’re visiting him, we sit down by the dock in gray splintery chairs with our hands resting on the flat armrests. As we count stars, I smell the smoke from Grandpa’s cigarette and listen to the water
shush shushing
against the beach.
    Last night before we came home, Dad and Grandpa talked baseball and stuff while it got dark and inky out on the water. I listened to Mom crying as we both stared up at the stars shining like glitter in the sky.
    I sat with my hand touching Mom’s. Suddenly one of her fingers crept onto mine, stroking them over and over and over while she cried.
    Dad says her depression makes Mom cry all the time. It is an invisible disease that feels even worse than when my hamster died and I thought I would miss him forever. Depression is more than being sad, Dad says. And it is not catching and is not my fault.
    But sometimes I wish she would just get over it. Then I feel really bad.
    For now, my grandpa will take care of Mom while Dad and I take care of business at home. Grandpa says that she can sit in the chair on the beach and look at the water and the stars. He says he will give her three square meals a day, and she won’t have to lift a finger.
    He told us that every night after he has put Mom to bed, he will call to let us know how she’s doing. So now I try and stay awake by counting the stars on my ceiling, waiting for the phone to ring.

CHAPTER 4
The Nut-Free Zone
    Next morning I ask Dad what Grandpa said when he