In the Company of Crazies by Nora Raleigh Baskin

room. I used to love Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?
    I had a really clear memory of coloring in little animals to go with that story in kindergarten and then reading the book with the teacher. This might not be so bad.
    Then the kids came.
    There was one aide for every two or three kids. So by the time everyone got off the bus and came into the room, there were about thirteen kids and five teachers. Including me.
    Just getting everyone out of their coats and hats took a really long time. The kids with a lot of physical problems and the two in the wheelchairs had someone help them. Mary Belle told me to just wander around and help whoever needed it.
    I turned to the cubbies. For a second I didn’t move at all. I just stood there frozen. Everyone needed help. Except the two little twins. They were helping each other. That’s right where I went first.
    “Do you need any help?” I asked one of them.
    “No,” she answered. She was pulling her sister’s arm out of her coat. The sleeve had turned inside out and gotten too tight. But that didn’t stop her.
    “Maybe if you slip it back on and take it off from the bottom,” I tried. “Like this.” I began to take the coat and pull it back up, but the girl immediately pulled away.
    “I’ve got it,” her sister said. “We don’t need any help.”
    “We don’t need any help,” the sister with the stuck arm said.
    I stepped back. There was a little boy behind me who was just standing there. He hadn’t even taken his hat and gloves off. He was wearing snow pants and a jacket.
    “Can I help you?” I said.
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me.
    I wondered if I should just start. Or would he get mad? Maybe I should ask him first.
    “Hello,” I said. I was sitting on the floor until I felt the cold and wetness from everyone’s boots seeping into my pants. I quickly switched to kneeling.
    “My name is Mia. Can I take off your coat for you?” He still didn’t answer.
    I heard a big impatient huff from behind me. It was one of the sisters. The one who had snapped at me a second ago. She was definitely the leader of her twin set. Her sister stood nearby, but behind, just a tiny bit. They both had their coats, hats, and boots off and hung up.
    I could see how really skinny they were. And there was an odd look to their faces, sort of like extra skin around their eyes. And they had big eyes.
    “You’re not doing it right,” the leader said.
    “Doing what right?”
    She had her hands on her hips. “Damian won’t talk to you unless you touch him,” she told me.
    “Touch him?”
    She let out a big breath of air. She was totally exasperated. “You have to grab his face. But gently. Like this.” She demonstrated on her sister, who burst out giggling, but I got the idea.
    “Oh,” I said. “Well, thank you. So what’s your name?”
    “My name is Ruth and my sister is Naomi,” she told me. “It’s from a Bible story. Now do you think you can handle this?”
    I nodded and Ruth took her sister’s hand.
    “Oh, by the way, I’m Mia,” I said before they turned and headed for the water table.
    Ruth stopped and looked at me.
    “We know that,” she said. “You live upstairs.”

    * * *
    Cecily had this freak thing wrong with her when she was a baby, not even a year old. One day she kept lifting up her left leg, like she didn’t want to put weight on it or like it hurt. So my mom took her to the doctor, who didn’t know what it was, so he sent us to another doctor and then another and another all the way up to an oncologist, which, I found out at six years old, is a cancer doctor.
    If Cecily had been able to talk, it certainly would have helped. But while her twenty-plus-word vocabulary did (naturally) place her in a very high percentile for intelligence (actually measured), it didn’t allow her to tell us what was wrong with her leg.
    Nothing.
    It turned out to be nothing. After a bunch of X-rays, bone scans and blood tests, they found that