On Monday morning we had a fire drill before first period. On the way back to homeroom Peter Klaff told me he’d had two warts removed from his middle finger over the holiday weekend. “Did your mother do it?” I asked. “Yeah … with dry ice,” Peter said. “It burned.” He held his finger up to my face. “You see that … right there … that’s where they were.” Peter Klaff had never stood so close to me. I pretended to be really interested in the black marks on the back of his finger. I even touched them, just to show how interested I was. Peter is growing. He comes up past my eyes now. “It must be weird having your mother for your doctor.” As soon as I said that I got a mental picture of the Klaff family sitting around their dinner table. I could hear Dr. Klaff saying, Stephanie Hirsch was in for her yearly check-up today. Her breasts are beginning to develop. It’s about time, Peter would say, between mouthfuls. She’s probably going to get her period soon, Dr.
