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into Gregor’s mirrored eyeglasses. What Shoebag saw in the lenses was his true self: the antennae, the six legs, the shiny brown shell.
    “Why isn’t Gregor around more?” he asked Fatso.
    Gregor himself answered. “When I’m here, I wish I was there, and when I’m there, I wish I was here. I keep going back and forth.
    “He keeps skipping school,” Two Times spoke up. “He keeps skipping school.”
    Then the bell rang and lunch was over.
    Shoebag threw his paper bag in the trash can on the way out of the cafeteria. He checked the inside of his pencil box.
    There was Drainboard, straddling the metal compass.
    She said, “I’m sorry, Son, if I caused a commotion. Hard Italian salami is my downfall.”
    “I think I made a friend, Mama,” Shoebag said.
    “Remember, though, honey, people will turn on you. You can’t ever trust them.”
    “But one just saved your life, Mama!”
    “That was very unusual, Shoebag. I guess there’s an exception to every rule.”
    “Go back to sleep, Mama. Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
    “What bedbugs?” Drainboard hopped up on all sixes with her antennae quivering.
    Shoebag grinned. “It’s just an expression,” he said.
    At the end of the school day, when Shoebag went down to the cloakroom, took off his shoes, and stuck his feet into the white fur boots, he felt something in the left one.
    It was a piece of folded paper, which he took out, opened, and read.
When Gregor is here, you have nothing to fear, But everyone knows that he comes and goes, So wait for the day when Gregor’s away, Then I’ll be nearby and Stuella will cry!

Eight
    T HAT FIRST MONDAY OF every month, when the Zap man came, Pretty Soft and Madam Grande de la Grande stayed in the park until The Beacon Hill Elementary School let out. Pretty Soft never swung on the swings or went down the slides, for she could not chance falling and getting a bruise or a black and blue mark.
    Just as the children came running toward the swings and the slides, Madam Grande de la Grande always said, “Oh, dear, dear, dear. Here they come. Here come the civilians! And you know what they might do.”
    “They might tell me bad things,” Pretty Soft would say, “or they might recognize me and feel jealous because they are not television stars. We had better hurry home!”
    “They might ask you for your autograph, too,” Madam G. de la G. would say. “My, how they pestered me for mine when I was Glorious Gloria de la Grande! I could not eat out anywhere, or walk my little bulldog, or shop, or sit in the sun, but one of them showed up, autograph book in hand, pen thrust into my face! Oh, dear, oh, dear, it was dreadful how they loved me!”
    That day, before any little civilians showed their faces, Madam was tutoring Pretty Soft in charm.
    “Never say what you think,” she said, “and never mean what you say…. And remember to give a compliment of some sort, one a conversation.”
    “What kind of compliment?” Pretty Soft asked.
    “Nothing serious, child. Say, ‘You have such good taste in clothes,’ or say, ‘You have the most interesting eyes.’ Say, ‘My, you’re amusing!’ or say, ‘This conversation has given me so much to think about.’”
    “Could I say, ‘I like your eyeglasses’?” Pretty Soft asked.
    “If they are unusual, yes. But phrase it with more flair, dear. Say, ‘I simply cannot take my eyes off your eyeglasses! They are simply splendid!’”
    After that suggestion, Pretty Soft’s mind wandered during the rest of the charm lesson. She was imagining herself complimenting a certain big boy with dark glasses and a long nose, who sometimes appeared in the park with the Beacon Hill Elementary School civilians.
    She did not know his name, or anything about him. She and Madam Grande de la Grande would be leaving the park just as he arrived. He never seemed to notice Pretty Soft, perhaps because she looked so young. She would hear him calling out in this very,