We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books , and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

      J. Kirk Howard , President

      Printed and bound in Canada.

       www.dundurn.com

       To Mom and Dad with much love

      I pause to think of years gone by

      (A child can’t know how time will fly)

      And moments that will never fade

      That live in memory’s parade.

      The many times Dad read to me

      Those wondrous words of poetry

      (Of moo cow moos and master’s hands)

      Transporting me to made-up lands.

      And Mom, in endless, countless ways

      You cared for me through childhood days

      You mended clothes and hearts and knees

      And taught me so much — patiently!

      Within my heart to hold, to stay

      The gold remains. The dross? Away!

      What live — and shall live ever after

      Are memories of love and laughter.

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Parents who read to their children give them something that cannot be equalled by any other means. My parents, Bob and Pauline Russell, to whom this book is dedicated, shared their love of poetry and literature with my brothers, Danny and Andrew, and me from the time we could barely walk. Some of my fondest childhood memories are centred around stories and poems, and I can still hear their voices, one soft, one deep, but both delivering the words with feeling and passion. For their love and support, then and now, I thank them. For many other things, I thank:

      My husband, partner, and best friend, Brent.

      My son, Anthony, his wife, Maria, and daughter, Emilee. My daughter, Pamela, and her fiancé, David Jardine. My brothers and their families: Danny and Gail; Andrew, Shelley, and Bryce. My “other” family: Ron and Phoebe Sherrard, Ron Sherrard and Dr. Kiran Pure, Bruce and Roxanne Mullin, and Karen Sherrard.

      Friends: Janet Aube, Jimmy Allain, Karen Arseneault, Dawn Black, Karen Donovan, Angi Garofolo, John Hambrook, Sandra Henderson, Jim Hennessy, Alf Lower, Mary Matchett, Johnnye Montgomery, Marsha Skrypuch, Linda Stevens, Ashley Smith, Pam Sturgeon, and Bonnie Thompson.

      At The Dundurn Group: Kirk Howard, Publisher, as well as very special thanks to some of the awesome team: my editor, Barry Jowett; director of design, Jennifer Scott; and assistant editor Jennifer Gallant.

      My fabulous agent: Leona Trainer of Transatlantic Literary Agency.

      Teenagers! Hearing from you is the best part of writing, and I love getting your letters and emails. In recent months, the following readers have taken the time to get in touch: Avalon Borg, Victoria Briggs, Laura Graziano, Melissa Harms, Vanessa Hesse, Samantha-Louise Landry, Samantha Lo, Andrea Lucchese, Chelsea Purdy, Bailey Tait, Kelisha Villafana, and Veronica Williston. Also, Fiona To has shared many words, as well as work that holds tremendous promise.

      You are on these pages and they belong to you.

      CHAPTER ONE

      You know how it is when you get a feeling that something big is going to happen? Like when you wake up in the morning and everything inside you somehow knows that there’s a good thing coming, and then you find out that your essay won a pizza party for your class, or your best friend invites you to her family’s cottage for a whole week, or something else really cool happens.

      Well, it wasn’t like that for me. In fact, that Thursday started out like any other day.

      I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, made a sandwich for lunch, and headed off to school. The day passed as normal as you please, with nothing out of the ordinary at all.

      I checked the mail on my way in from school that afternoon. I always did that, seeing as I got home before Mom. She worked over at Pete’s Diner and didn’t get home until after seven. Some days it was even later. She always brought our supper home in a brown paper bag. Usually it was the special of the day. Sometimes they ran out of the special and we had hotdogs and fries or, if the tips had been really good that day, a piece of chicken. Whatever it was, it was always almost cold because the diner was a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment. But by then I’d be hungry enough not to care, even if I’d had a snack after school.

      Anyway, I was mentioning the mail. I never paid much attention to it, although I knew some people did. They probably got more interesting mail than we did. We never got any mail worth getting excited over. At least, we didn’t before this particular day. Mostly, the only thing we got was bills. Mom tried to look cheerful when she opened them. She’d usually say something like, “Well, this isn’t too bad. We can pay this.” Once in a while, though, she didn’t say anything and she couldn’t quite hide the worry. Then I knew not to ask for money for a Saturday matinee or any of the other little extras that we could usually afford.

      On this Thursday, there was a letter for Mom. I hardly glanced at it before I put it on top of the fridge, except to see that it had some kind of business return label in the corner and that Mom’s name and address were typed. I figured that meant it was probably a bill of some sort. I hoped it wasn’t