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getting skinnier and skinnier.
    I turned off the computer when I heard my mother coming downstairs. She saw me sitting in her office and asked me what I was up to. I told her I was reading about the melting of the permafrost.
    She said, ‘Phin, right now you should be getting on your snow pants and boots because there’s nothing melting here today – it’s minus 21 degrees.’
    â€˜But,’ I said, ‘doesn’t it worry you that the permafrost is melting? The
perma
frost?’
    â€˜Yes, Phin, sometimes it does, but I don’t have time to think about it right now. Now, come on, we have to get going – quick as a bunny!’
    She handed me my jacket and snow pants, and I put them on, but what my mom said didn’t make any logical sense. If a starving grizzly bear walked up to a person having a picnic, would it be good for her to say she doesn’t have time to be scared because she hasn’t finished her sandwich?
    When I walked into my classroom this morning, I noticed right away that there were two things out of the ordinary. The first was that Mrs. Wardman’s desk was moved over too far to the right at the front of the classroom. I sit in the back row, which has seven desks. The middle row has eight desks and the front row normally has seven. But today it had eight. I counted twice to be sure. Eight.
    The other out-of-the-ordinary thing was that there was a lump on the show-and-tell table with a white sheet over it. It looked about the shape of the big box where I keep my Reull drawings.
    When everybody sat in their seats, the extra desk was taken up by a kid I had noticed in the hallway hanging up her jacket. I don’tusually pay much attention to girls, but I noticed this one because I had never seen her before. Also because she’s a big girl.
    Mrs. Wardman went over and stood beside her desk and said, ‘Children, this is Mitty. She’s new to our class. Please say hello.’ And then we all said, ‘Hello, Mitty.’ I felt sorry for and happy about Mitty at the same time. I felt sorry for her because she had a weird name and was also big, which meant that Lyle was bound to give her a hard time. I could already think of a few bad things that rhyme with Mitty, and I knew that even ‘waste of flesh’ Lyle, with brain cells for nothing but thinking up really mean things, was bound to think of them sooner or later. Mitty was definitely in for it.
    But I felt a bit happy too because having Mitty in the class might take some of the pressure off me and a few of the other kids since Lyle would have someone else to pick on. I felt a little guilty about feeling happy about that – but not guilty enough to stop thinking it. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say misery loves company. Maybe when misery is spread out it’s not so hard to take. Maybe it’s like when we have reading groups and there are five in each group instead of three, which means you don’t have to answer Mrs. Wardman’s questions as often.
    After we said hello to Mitty, we sang ‘O Canada.’ Then Mrs. Wardman announced that we were going to gain another new friend in our classroom – a class pet. She said we had to use our logic skills to guess what was under the sheet. I was a little worried when she said that because of the last time we did a logic exercise. She gave us ten minutes to write down what we thought was under there.
    I thought nine thoughts:
    1. There are only a few animals that are domesticated and would make good companion animals.
    2. One is the cat.
    3. We can see things eight times smaller than cats can.
    4. Another animal that makes a good companion is a dog.
    5. It can’t be a cat or dog because they would be making noises.
    6. A horse could be an animal companion.
    7. The show-and-tell table couldn’t hold a horse.
    8. Some people think pigs make good domesticated companion animals.
    9. We shouldn’t eat our