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sort of sticking-out teeth.
    The worst thing happened when we had a new teacher in our school, Miss Doyle, who was a real person and not a nun. She asked us if we had anything interesting to tell the class about where we lived, and I put my hand up and said we had some beavers living in the pond by our woods, and they’d made a big house out of sticks.
    “A lodge,” she’d said.
    “Yes, that’s right, a lodge,” I said, and by the end of my story, I almost believed it myself, I could see the beavers so clearly in my mind.
    Then, later, when we were in the lines waiting for the school buses, Gary Webb waited until Sister Laserian, who was on duty, turned her back. Suddenly his two best friends, Leonard Ricketts and Vincent Grossit, took hold of my arms. Then Gary Webb punched me really hard in the stomach with his fist and said I was a liar about the beavers. He said I was really stupid and that everybody knew you only got beavers in Africa.
    I thought I’d die from pain and no breath. Then Sister Laserian came back. I didn’t want to cry, but these big tears just spurted out on their own. I could never have told her what had happened. She shook me really hard and told me not to be such a big baby, in front of all the bus lines. The worst thing was, Pete was in the line a bit back from us, and I saw him turn away and go red and embarrassed because I was his brother.
    Then I remembered that Gary Webb lived over on the other side of Daneflete, nearly to Lokswood, so how was he ever going to know about it? I could do whatever I wanted down here.
    We found enough good flowers to make three really nice wreaths and wound them onto the frames with the little bits of rusted wire. Mimi brought some buttercups she’d pulled up, and we stuck those on as well, then filled out the gaps with bunches of hawthorn berries from the bushes.
    Cora chose one of the old gravestones. Only about six inches of it stuck up out of the ground. We pulled the grass away and tried scraping off some of the moss with the sides of our shoes, but it was much too old to clean. We let Mimi pop the wreath over the stone, then stood back to admire our work.
    “I bet the man in heaven who’s buried there is saying thank you,” said Pete. “We should say a prayer.”
    The only prayer Cora knew was the grace from her school dinners, so we joined our hands and said, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”
    “Let Mimi choose the next grave,” I said.
    “Pick a grave, Mimi,” said Cora, prodding her in the back. “Then we can put some more flowers on it.”
    “How about this one, Mimi?” called Pete.
    He was standing a few feet away from the side of the church, just along from the porch, next to a long stone box shaped like a coffin, its sides rising a couple of feet out of the grass. The narrow end of the grave had sunken much deeper into the ground than the wide end, and the stone lid, knotted with ivy, had slipped slightly sideways and backwards, leaving a dark opening.
    “Don’t like it,” Mimi said.
    “You’re not supposed to like it,” said Cora crossly. “We’re only going to stick flowers on it. Choose another one if you want, but hurry up.”
    “Don’t want to,” she said, her mouth turned down.
    “Shove it on, Pete,” I called, throwing him the second wreath. “Can you see in the hole — where the lid’s tipped off?”
    “I’m not looking in there,” said Pete, tossing the wreath on the grave from at least three feet away. “There might be a skeleton in it.”
    He came back over to us, holding his nose. “That grave really stinks,” he said. “I bet it’s the dead person inside making a smell.”
    All at once, the birds shot out of the trees and whirled high in the sky, crying as they flew.
    “Who’s that?” Cora said suddenly.
    My heart dropped into my boots. I knew it had to be Gary Webb; I just knew it. I couldn’t look up for shame.
    Cora pulled at my jumper. “Over