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Most are half brothers. Baby Adam’s sleeping again, I guess.”
    Her stepmum reappeared. She shook my hand and said,“I’m Angela. Sorry. It’s a madhouse here.”
    She made us all a cup of tea. She asked about school and then told a story about little Andrew: he sat at the counter earlier in the day, ate a cookie, and said, “This is the life.” She laughed as she told this; then there were shouts from upstairs. “How many times do I have to tell you boys?” she cried. Leaving her steaming mug on the counter, she disappeared out of the room.
    “Your stepmum’s so nice,” I said. I suddenly remembered, “I should tell my mum where I am.” I texted Mum. I didn’t want to actually speak to her.
    Rosa-Leigh was digging in a cupboard, and she called over, “I can show you photos of Canada if you like. I’ll show you photos of my boyfriend.”
    “You have a boyfriend?”
    “Not anymore. I told him we’d have to break up when I moved here.” She took some photos out of a drawer and laid them on the counter. One was of her cuddled in the arms of this tall, cute guy dressed in winter sports clothes. She said, “He was a ski instructor.”
    She made us some pasta and sauce, so we ate that while watching a film called Familia , which is some random Canadian film about an aerobics instructor and her daughter moving in with another mother and daughter. Afterward, she showed me a poem she’d written about England and rain. I could picture everything in it, and I told her so. She let me read three more. One was about being in love withher boyfriend, and she told me it was out of date but she still liked it. The next was about them breaking up—it was harsh but brilliant, about a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of an empty room. In the last poem, which was what she called a prose poem, she wrote about the word love . She asked me about one of the lines. I made a suggestion, and she read the poem out again and liked the change. Prose poems are between prose and verse—maybe I’ll try and write one.
    It was getting late, and I still had homework to do, so I rang Mum because she hadn’t replied to my text. She said she’d come and get me. I was surprised, but I wasn’t going to say no and go back out in the rain and cold.
    When Mum stood in the doorway at Rosa-Leigh’s house she looked like a lost kid, small and wide-eyed. The expression on her face made me want to get out of there as soon as possible. Rosa-Leigh’s stepmum asked us to stay and have a drink, but Mum must have felt the same way I did. Suddenly all the noise and people were too much. Mum said we had to go.
     
    It was raining and dark when we got out of the car. Our street smelled of wet leaves. Mum said, “The worst time of the year,” and her voice was tight, like it wasn’t the worst time at all, like there were times that were far worse.
    As soon as we got inside, I hurried up to my room. I flicked through the channels on the TV, but there wasnothing on. In the end I switched it off. Then this sentence popped into my head about sticks and trees. I had to write it down. As soon as it was on the page, I wanted to write another. Ended up, I wrote a poem.
    The sticks on the trees
    Stand up harsh and bare
    With rings on their fingers
    And knots in their hair
    The silver of winter
    Is smoky with rain
    The witches of sunlight
    Fly low again
    I think it’d be better if there was another verse but I can’t think of one.
    SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11 TH
    Oh my God! Oh my God! Dan, the guy from the party with the blue, blue eyes, just called. He got my number off Megan and he called. Oh my God! He said hi, and then he asked if I wanted to do something on Friday, and I asked him what, and he said come to his house and hang out with him and maybe a couple of his friends. I said, “Yes!” (I tried to sound relaxed and not ridiculously excited.) Then we talked aboutschool and films—I told him about Familia —until Mum made me get off my phone.
    I