49

EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT.

It was the Choc-o-rama that did it. I was fine until then. Despite everything I’d been through, I didn’t cry once.

Not when Kathleen said she got saddled with me. Not when Nick agreed. Not when Bitsie blackmailed me. Not when the police were after us. Not when the guy wouldn’t sell me a bus ticket. Not when Arnold kidnapped us. Not when Bitsie tore his nose off.

So no matter what you might think about me, you can’t say I’m a sookie-baby. I did pretty well.

Until we got on that stupid bus.

It was completely empty and I could tell the bus driver was sort of hoping to have someone to talk to for a while, but I went right to the very back and flaked out on the seats. I was hoping the Bess movie would just start up again and I could forget everything for a while, but it didn’t happen. It was like there was one of those rude, noisy people in the theater, ruining the movie for everybody else. Every time I’d picture some funny little thing Bess did, the guy in my head would scream, “People like that should be locked up!” or “Selfish brat!” or “Another one of her lies!”

I gave up. I considered lying under the seats and pretending it was Dreemland, but the floor was really sticky and I wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of my life glued to a Greyhound bus.

I tried to think of something else, but the only thing I could come up with was how hungry I was.

I hadn’t eaten in a whole day. More than a whole day.

I was starving.

I dumped everything out of my knapsack, hoping I’d maybe find a furry grey mint or a rubbery Cheezie or even a hard little hunk of Mum’s tofu brownies left over from school. All I found was a grumpy puppet, a stolen cell phone and a busted-up Choc-o-rama.

I turned off the cell phone and threw it back in my knapsack. I gave Bitsie a look that said “shut up” and he did. I couldn’t believe it. He’s usually not that sensitive to other people’s moods.

Then I picked up the Choc-o-rama.

It had been bent before, but now it was completely broken in two. The wrapper was all torn and dirty. A lot of the “chocolatey coating” had chipped off the “crispy wafer filling” and what was left had gone kind of white, like it had been through a terrible shock or something.

It didn’t look like a commemorative chocolate bar that anyone would want to keep for the rest of their life even if they’d pledged that they always would, so I decided to eat it.

That’s when I started to cry.

It’s stupid, I know, but right until that very moment I always sort of believed there was a chance that somehow everything would turn out okay. Even better than okay.

Kathleen would be my friend again. Zola wouldn’t lose her job. Bitsie would grow a new beak and quit acting so immature. And Nick would… I don’t know exactly what I hoped Nick would do. Not be my boyfriend or ask me out on a date or even take me out for ice cream. I’m not that dumb. He’s a grown-up and I’m a kid from Beach Meadows. I guess I just wanted him to notice once more that my eyes matched my T-shirt. That would have been great.

But there I was sitting with a stolen, broken puppet, eating the Choc-o-rama Nick gave me the day I thought everything in my life was just going to keep getting better and better. It didn’t taste very good. It didn’t fill me up.

And pretty soon, no doubt, I’d be pooping it out into a toilet somewhere.

No wonder I started to cry.

At first it was just tears dribbling down my face and onto my chocolate bar, but pretty soon I was really sobbing. Sobbing—then making this walrus mating call when I tried to get some air—then sobbing again. It just kept coming and coming and coming.

The bus driver ignored me⁶⁶ and Bitsie tried to ignore me for a while too.⁶⁷

But then he did something that really surprised me. He sat on my lap and put his arms around my neck.

He hugged me!

I threw him off. Sure, I’d done a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to do, and I’m not saying I wasn’t to blame. But I never would have done them if it hadn’t been for Bitsie.

If he thought he could just hug me and everything would be absolutely a-okay again, he was crazy. This wasn’t TV.

He picked himself up off the floor, climbed onto my lap and hugged me again.

I tried to throw him off again but he managed to hang on with one arm. I pried that arm off, but by the time I did he’d grabbed on with the other one. We did that switch-o-change-o thing for a while and then I just gave up. I let him stay there. If he wanted to get soaked with tears and drool and snot while I sobbed away, fine. Just as long as he didn’t ask me to stop.

The only problem was that his antennae and yellow fuzz-ball hair kept getting in my face. I bent down his antennae and that kept them out of my way, but each time I’d push his hair down it would pop back up and get in my nose again.

So I had to keep pushing it down.

That’s all I was doing.

I know he thought I was patting him—like this was a sign of affection or something—because he hugged me even tighter when I did it, but he was wrong. This wasn’t about forgiveness or friendship or anything like that. It was just about that stupid hair of his getting up my nose. If I’d had a pair of scissors, I would have cut it off.

Maybe it fooled me a bit too, though, because the longer we sat there hugging and patting, the more Bitsie seemed like the best friend I ever had. I know you’re probably thinking that doesn’t say much about my other friends. Who could be worse than a lying, cheating, stealing, arrogant little puppet?

But you know what hit me?

It wasn’t his fault. Bitsie honestly didn’t know any better.

He’d never had a friend. No one had ever cared about him before. How was he supposed to know how friendship worked? He was just figuring things out as he went along.

Like the rest of us, I guess.

And so he made some mistakes⁶⁸—so what? I guess we all do when we’re learning something. Just think of the clothes I thought were nice before I saw what everyone was wearing in Toronto! It wouldn’t be fair to hold them against me now. I didn’t realize overalls were so lame. I’ve learned since then.

I finally stopped sobbing when a man got on at New Cumberland. He looked at me like “Oh-no-I’m-stuck-here-for-four-hours-with-a-nutcase.” But that wasn’t why I shut up.

I shut up because he sat down and put a newspaper over his face so he could get some sleep, and I saw that front-page picture of Bitsie and me.

⁶⁶ I bet he was glad I didn’t sit down and talk to him after all.

⁶⁷ There’s nothing he hates more than bodily fluids, and by that time I was covered in them.

⁶⁸ Some?!? Like a million. But my point is still the same.