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Show leg from the plate and started chewing on it indifferently. "You still worryin' about school?" asked her mother. "I guess." "Relax, love. It's going to be all right. Promise." Then, like a lawyer trying to persuade a jury, her mother folded her arms together and said, "Look, what's the worst thing that could happen at school?" Kim shrugged. "I don't know." "Think of it. The worst thing that could happen is that you could be lonely for a few days, maybe a few weeks. But you'll get over that. You'll make friends. Chances are they'll be better friends than you had in Idaho." Raw memories flooded over Kim of her first day in the fourth grade-the only new student coming from a farm where her mother had tutored her for three years. She saw herself sitting in the back row of a crowded classroom in a small rural school. T.J. Whipple, the newly elected class President stood smiling and cocky in front of the class. One of his duties was to pair up students so they could march in some kind of order to the cafeteria for lunch. "Remember, the quietest will be called first," said the teacher, Miss Pingree, in a voice of pinched optimism. "Anyone calling out, 'Me first' will automatically be sent to the end of the line." It didn't take more than half a second for Kim to figure out that it was not the quietest, but the most 11 |