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her.”
    “I dunno,” Beau said. “When your number’s up, your number’s up. Right?”
    I shrugged on the outside, but on the inside I screamed, “
No!
” Ditz was still a puppy; she hadn’t even
picked
a number yet.

chapter six
    “Are you hungry?” Beau asked, changing the subject.
    “I’m always hungry,” I said.
    “Same here.”
    We went up to Beau’s apartment. Beau’s mom was on the couch right inside the door. She had lots of dark hair, curling all over the place. Beau said, “This is my mom.” Then he introduced me by saying, “Mom, this is John. His dog got killed today, back in Kansas.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, John,” Beau’s mom said.
    I nodded.
    Then Beau said, “And that’s baby Marcel.”
    It wasn’t until that moment that I realized Beau’s mom had a baby in her arms—and that the baby was
nursing!
Right in front of me! And I could even see some skin. Worse, I heard slurpy noises that must have been the baby drinking!
    I didn’t know what to say or where to look. I’d never been so embarrassed in my life, and I could barely hear what Beau’s mother was saying to me. Something about food, but
yecch!
My appetite was permanently ruined.
    I stumbled into the kitchen after Beau, and I just
knew
my eyeballs were hanging out on threads. But Beau didn’t seem to notice or even care that I had seen what I had just seen! If someone caught
my
mother doing something like that, I’d die for sure.
    Beau was pulling things out of cupboards and the fridge and piling the table with food. Gradually, I realized that maybe my appetite wasn’t gone forever after all.
    We sat down at the kitchen table to a feast of cold chicken, leftover spaghetti, olive bread that was bitter but okay with butter, and some yogurt-garlic-cucumber stuff that tasted way better than it sounds. Just as I was reaching for seconds, a completely naked kid came waddling into the kitchen. It was a boy;
that
was clear. And bigger than the baby in the living room. Their apartment was crammed with boys.
    The kid climbed right up on Beau’s lap. “This is Claude,” Beau said. “Claude, this is John.”
    “Low,” Claude said, which I guessed was baby talk for hello. Then Claude reached into Beau’s plate and helped himself to a fistful of spaghetti. That killed my appetite once and for all.
    “You got brothers and sisters?” Beau asked me, tipping his glass so Claude could drink, leaving a slimy spaghetti ring.
    “A sister,” I said. “Older.”
    Beau hit himself on the forehead. “Of course.
Liz!
Drama club, lead in the school play, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Yeah, your dad says she’s really talented.”
    “How would he know?” I mumbled. “He’s never seen her act.”
    “Yeah, well, my dad’s never heard me play tuba,” Beau said.
    “You play
tuba?
”
    “No,” Beau said, laughing. “Ha! Got you!”
    I shook my head, watching Claude smear spaghetti all over his naked belly.
    Beau’s mom came into the kitchen. Her shirt was in place, thank goodness. She said, “Shhhhh! I finally got Marcel down for his nap.” Then she asked me, in a whisper, what Dad and I had planned for my vacation.
    I know grown-ups ask things just to ask them—without expecting real answers. But this time I said, “If it’s like all my other trips, the plan is that my dad works all the time and stays busy. And I either tag along, bored to death, or sit and wait, bored to death.”
    Beau’s mom burst out laughing. Then Beau did, then I did too. But for a few seconds my laugh sort of took off without me and I was afraid it would turn lunatic. That happens to me sometimes with Liz. She calls it the
screaming meemies.
Mom calls it hysterics. In either case, I call it something not to do in a stranger’s kitchen.
    Then Eric came in and loomed over the table, surveyingthe remains of our lunch. He ripped off a hunk of bread and shoved it in his mouth without saying anything. He wasn’t ugly, I realized—at least not