The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family

work, but even great artists had to go sometimes, surely.
When she returned, Helena was gone.
No. That wasn’t quite accurate. Helena wasn’t gone. Her basic form was still there—the head, the neck, the ears. But otherwise, she had been completely destroyed.
A strangled cry escaped from Caroline’s throat.
The other kids’ eyes bored into her, and Caroline wished she could somehow shoo them all away. She rocked back and forth, trying and failing to calm the screaming in her brain.
For once she didn’t see any colors. Just blank canvas.
“Oh, no!” the teacher exclaimed. “I was checking up on some of our other artists and . . . oh, no.”
She narrowed her eyes and looked over the room of kids, with an expression far grimmer than Caroline would have believed possible for someone with pink hair. “Now. Does anyone know what happened to Caroline’s sculpture?”
Silence descended upon the room for one long and horrible moment. Then two. Then . . .
“She did it!”
Micah pointed his finger right at Marissa.
The teacher frowned and turned toward them. “Is this true?”
Caroline did not listen to Marissa’s rapid stream of words, which became increasingly high-pitched. All she could hear was the scream in her own mind.
She’d been so close to making something beautiful. Now, thanks to a stupid trip to the bathroom, it was all gone and she could never, ever bring it back.
With any luck, she wouldn’t have any more classes with Marissa. But that didn’t really matter, did it? Lara had been right: Middle school was full of jerks. There would always be Marissas, in this class and in every other one she attended.
How could she possibly make it through the entire school year here?

CHAPTER TEN: OF NEW FRIENDS AND OLD SISTERS
Caroline would have preferred for her school day to end right then and there, but of course it didn’t. She still had a whole list of classes to suffer through before she could go home and bury herself in her comforter. Next up was math, which had never been one of her favorite subjects.
Tears pushed against Caroline’s eyes for the entire class period. She didn’t actually cry, thank goodness, but the threat of it felt far too present. Not crying took up so much of her concentration, in fact, that she failed to understand a single word that the teacher said.
“. . . finish that for tomorrow,” the teacher said at the end of class.
Caroline flinched. Well, there was yet another thing for her to fail at. Unless she could ask someone about the assignment. At elementary school, she could have always asked her paraprofessional about it later. But things were different here, in this strange place where they changed classes every hour. Here there was no paraprofessional, and she didn’t know anyone else. Not really.
It took Caroline thirty whole seconds to realize that it was now time to go. Gathering up her things didn’t take much time, since she hadn’t bothered taking out her notebook in the first place.
“Hey,” a voice came from behind her.
She swung around to face a dark-haired boy with thick glasses. She had seen him before, probably, but she could not quite place him. Remembering faces could be hard for Caroline. Hopefully, he would not be terribly offended by her failure to recognize him.
Her tablet was still around her neck, but since she didn’t much care for talking and walking at the same time, she just nodded.
“Pretty boring class, right?”
Caroline nodded again. She was a little surprised that the boy kept talking to her. In Caroline’s considerable experience, most people had little interest in continuing a conversation with someone who didn’t talk back right away. Clearly, this boy was not most people.
“Um . . . I hope it’s not rude or whatever to say this, but are you okay?”
After the morning’s events, Caroline felt very not-okay. Weirdly enough, this boy asking her about it made her feel a tiny bit more okay.
“It’s cool if you don’t want to talk right now. If you actually hate talking to me, you can totally leave. I don’t want to bore you to death when you’re already having a bad day.”
Caroline continued to match her stride to the boy’s quick steps. Upon taking another look at him, she realized why he was so familiar. It was Micah, the boy from art class. Without a pencil in his hand, it had been difficult to recognize him at first.
“Oh, so you like talking to me?” Micah said. “Cool. So I just wanted to tell you that I thought the zebra was awesome. And Marissa is totally the worst. After that she deserves a little payback, if you ask me.”
The idea of payback felt ominous to Caroline. But she had to admit that there was definitely some appeal.
“You’re not the only one, you know. Marissa and her friends went to the same elementary school as me last year. They probably made half the fifth-grade class cry at one point. Including, well, me.”
Caroline gave Micah what she could only hope was a sympathetic smile. She wondered what Marissa could have done to make him cry, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.
“This is, um, kind of embarrassing to admit, but she told everyone that I peed my pants. I didn’t! Everyone called me Micah Pee from then on—you know, because my last name is Perkowski. Anyway. I just wanted to tell you that you’re not alone. I’ll stop talking if you want now.”
Biting her lip, Caroline tried to figure out how to tell the boy that yes, he could keep on talking to her. She settled on shaking her head, giving him a big smile.
“Really? You don’t mind me going on like this? Wow. I think you might be the only one.”
Grinning widely, Micah patted her on the back. Caroline didn’t much like being touched, but she appreciated the effort.
“I’m going to lunch. You want to sit together?”
Never before had Caroline nodded quite so quickly.
*   *   *
LOCATION: Language arts class, fourth period
EVENT: Nothing, nothing,