said Lucy Wilkes. That’s Lucy all over. She’s bright and bonnie and bounce-back optimistic, like a rubber ball that misses the lampshade and hits you in the eye on the rebound. We’ve been friends for years, but I’m glad I don’t sit next to her in every class. When Lucy’s cat Fudge was killed last October she was upset, of course, but even while she was reaching for the Kleenex she was thinking how to turn the situation to her advantage. From that day on she started pestering her parents for a dog, quietly but persistently. She’s an expert at that. “It will – it might – help put the bad memories behind me,” she’d tell them, her voice just shy of a whimper. By late November they looked about ready to give in, and I don’t blame them. Of course they wanted to make it right. What parent wouldn’t, after what happened to poor Fudge? It had taken days just to get the blood stains out of the lawn. In a way I admired Lucy, but I was a little sickened, too. It wasn’t just that she seemed a bit quick to forget Fudge (even if he was a scraggy old mog who spent twenty hours of every day asleep on the sofa).
