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okay, I wouldn’t, even though in my head I was thinking that it seemed like quite a good strategy. It felt like it would work much better than Granny Deedee’s metaphorical oxygen-restricting guidelines.

    Not long after that, D. J. spent an entire recess shouting, “Hey, Loser Boy,” at me. He walked over and stood for about ten seconds staring very closely at my face and breathing quite loudly. Then he spat his bubble gum at me and pulled my bag off my back so that everything in it, like my compass and ruler and copies and pens, clanged andskidded and slid all over the floor of the corridor.
    â€œFlip off,” I said as he was walking away, but I may have said it quite quietly, because I don’t think he heard.
    â€œCosmo, why does chaos appear to accompany you wherever you go?” asked Mrs. Cribben, my history teacher, who happened to be passing by. And I felt like telling her to flip off with herself as well. But in the end I didn’t bother.
    Later in class when Mrs. Cribben asked each of us what our special skill was, I said “riding.”
    The Geraghty twins both started to laugh in this identical way they have, showing off their oddly small teeth, and D. J. Burke did a mocking kind of snort until snot came out of his nose.
    I didn’t see what the problem with telling the truth was, even if it did sound hilarious to the three biggest idiots in my class.
    My granddad had taught me all the things he knew about horses, including how to gallop really fast on them. It’s a pretty difficult thing to do, but he always said I was a natural.
    At least that’s what he used to say until he forgot my name and started asking me who I was and what I was doing in his house.

    It was excellent to be the owner of a horse, even though everyone kept having a huge convulsion about it because of the expense of renting the stables, but as far as I wasconcerned, it was well worth it because otherwise we wouldn’t have had anywhere to keep him.
    My horse’s name was John. I took him out after school every single day. I used to shout in for Granddad as soon as I got home, and then he’d put on his coat while I threw my bag at the door. And Gran would stick her head out the window when we were already on our way.
    â€œWHEN are you going to do your HOMEwork?”
    Me and Granddad would both say, “Later,” so that our voices sounded like we were one person, and then we’d walk down to the stables and Granddad would tell me that I was learning a million important things every time I went for a run with John—“Better than any homework,” is what he used to say.
    Granddad would look carefully at each one of John’s feet, and he would trace his stump of an index finger around the grooves of John’s shoes and feel every single one of the little bolts to make sure they were fine and tight. If there was even the slightest thing loose or frayed or wrong, then Granddad would replace the shoe, filing down any scraggy bits, because only by doing that can you be a hundred percent sure that your horse is going to stay sound. Granddad showed me how to do it in case, he said, there might be a day when he wasn’t able to.
    We’d carefully put his saddle and bridle on, and then my granddad would watch me as I jumped up. John was able to move extremely fast. He was a thousand percentbetter than a lot of humans I knew. For example, he never called me names or asked me nosy questions or got angry with me for being neurotic. Obviously. Because he was a horse.

    Not everyone deserves to own a horse. It’s not like having a Nintendo Wii or a skateboard or anything. People with short attention spans like most of the idiots in my class wouldn’t have been able to take care of a horse in a million years. I mean, you can’t throw them in the corner when you’ve finished with them. They are a massive responsibility.
    Horses’ feet are shaped like