When Lily Baker was led into the grade seven classroom of Sir Joseph Elementary, Kate put her gaze on the floor like the rest of the students. And there was only one real reason for it—Lily Baker looked like trouble.
Kate didn’t want trouble. Her best friend Holly had just moved to British Columbia, and since then, Kate spent most of her lunch hour reading quietly at her desk or out beneath the maples in the playground. She could have tried to make new friends, but all the girls were mean and loud and demanded that you pick a side in the class that was divided right down the middle between Sophia Cuthbert’s friends and Layla Meeb’s friends. The two sides hated each other, which was why Kate had never bothered to pick one.
Occasionally, Kate played soccer with the boys, but she couldn’t keep up with them. And she didn’t like being the only girl on the field.
“I heard she just moved into the youth home down the road,” Sophia Cuthbert whispered a few seats away as she nodded to the new girl at the front. A few snickers bounded through the room from people who were loyal to—or afraid of—Sophia.
Kate dared a glance up at the new addition to their class, taking in the set of messy braids that reached down to Lily Baker’s waist, and the daring pale blue eyes that seemed ready to challenge anyone whose stare lingered a little too long. But as Lily Baker strutted down the aisle to the only open seat in the classroom, a book fell out of her bag. She stooped to scoop it up, but not before Kate saw the title: Folktales on Fridays.
A smile found Kate’s mouth. She put her attention back on the teacher at the front, thinking of her own copy of Folktales on Fridays hiding on her bedroom bookshelf with its margins filled with scribbled notes, its folded down page corners, and the three bookmarks she kept to mark the passages she loved most.
It seemed Lily Baker liked to read.
Shouts rang from behind the portables at lunch hour recess. Kate only heard them after chasing a soccer ball that far. She paused when she picked up the ball, listening to the threats of high-pitched girls.
“What did you call me?” Sophia Cuthbert’s voice was unmistakeable.
“I said you’re scared to face me yourself. You really had to bring a whole pack of girls to back you up?”
Kate rounded the corner of the portables in time to see Sophia grab Lily Baker by the braids and start shoving. The rest of Sophia’s pack moved; clawing, shrieking, and some too shaken to do anything but watch.
The ball grew heavy in Kate’s hands. And when she raised it—aiming right between Sophia Cuthbert’s gray eyes—she picked her side after all.
Sophia screamed as blood spurted from her nose. The soccer ball spun off, and all the girls turned toward Kate like a pack of wolves.
Lily Baker blinked at first. Then, she burst out laughing. “Are y…” she interrupted herself with a cackle. “Are you crazy?” she shouted to Kate. “I wasn’t really going to…” she bent over, holding her stomach as she laughed so hard, she shook. “I wasn’t really going to hurt her; I was just talking smack!”
That was the day Kate went home with a bruise on her lip, a smile on her face, and a detention notice for her parents to sign. It was also the day she told her mother she wanted a sister.
