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supposed to do, wear super-thick socks? Spike my hair?
    “I’m sorry, honey,” Mum said, rubbing my back. After a minute she added, “I really think we should start doing this every two or three months.”
    “No way,” I said stubbornly.
    “Jonathan, it’s not worth getting upset over.”
    I looked at her like she was crazy and she pulled me into a tight hug. I let her do it because sometimes you have to let Mums give you a squeeze. (And because I liked it.)
    “You’re way taller than you were last year,” she whispered.
    “So’s the front lawn,” I muttered.
    Sometimes I hoped the growing I’d been missing out on would catch up with me all at once. I dreamed I’d wake up one morning and when I rolled out of bed, the floor would look like it was an escalator ride away. Even better, I’d be able to reach the kitchen cupboards without that stupid wooden stool.
    Sure, I knew that if I grew a bunch overnight I’d beawkward and uncoordinated, with zero control over my limbs. But if that magical miracle happened, believe me, I would figure out a way to adapt. If I had my turbo growth spurt, I’d tower over the kids at the bus stop and Mr. Su, who taught grade six P.E. and coached boys’ basketball, would be following me down the hallway during lunch hour, begging me to try out. Or maybe he’d skip the tryouts and automatically put me in as a starter because he was so awestruck by my mutant,
Guinness Book of World Records
height.
    Of course, it goes without saying that I didn’t want to grow so I could play basketball.
    After all, hockey was my life.
    I could forget everything else when I was on the ice. Just like that morning, when I was out of breath, sweaty and feeling awesome. When I played, I was totally happy. It didn’t matter if we were running drills or beating the Lewis Lions (we always won by a landslide), or if there were only a couple of mums in the stands, sipping coffee and talking to each other instead of watching us practise. I could pretend I was at Rogers Arena, wearing a Canucks jersey and skating my tail off to win the Stanley Cup.
    “Let me guess,” Dad said, opening the fridge. “Six centimetres?”
    “I wish,” I groaned.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, pulling out a carton of milk. He put it on the counter before patting my head. “You’re getting there, Nugget.”
    “J.T.,” I reminded him as he filled a glass.
    “J.T.,” he repeated, with a wink.
    Wendy finally hung up the phone, checked the wall, then turned to face me. “You need to get over it,
J.T
. Enoughabout your stupid height.”
    Easy for her to say. My sister was already taller than Mum and worried about hitting six feet by seventeen. She was the star of the high school volleyball team.
    “I know, but —”
    “It’s about speed and skill,” she said.
    “I have speed and skill,” I told her.
    “So what are you complaining about?”
    “Wendy,” Mum interrupted, with a warning tone. “Can you please finish folding the laundry upstairs for me?”
    My sister started toward the door while I stared at the wall and wished the pencil mark was about a foot higher.
    “If size means that much, maybe you should forget hockey and be a jockey,” she said as she walked by.
    “Maybe you should be a giraffe,” I muttered.
    She stopped in her tracks and glared at me. “What did you say?”
    “Nothing,” I told her, knowing from years of experience how easily she could pin me.
    * * *
    Back in my room, I tried to shake off my frustration and disappointment. Maybe I’d grow a bit extra in the next month to make up for it. Anything could happen, right? My day had been proof of that, considering King Kong was about to become my Math tutor.
    I flopped on my bed and made it through the first two chapters of
Over the Moon
, totally surprised when I kind of liked it. In fact, I actually cared what would happen next and probably would have read even more, but I knew there was Math homework to be done.
    Our assignment was a