Chapter 16: Wasp

I decided to test her on Friday, at the committee meeting, in front of nine witnesses.

I am a statistics major.

You don't accuse a hypothesis of anything until you've run the trial.

The council room smelled like dry-erase markers and somebody's lunch.

Camille sat at the head of the table in a cream blazer, with her clipboard squared against the edge.

"Miranda!" she said. "I'm so glad you came. I was worried you'd had enough of us."

"I wouldn't miss it."

"We love that," she said, and wrote something down.

Her thumb slid across the clipboard, back and forth.

I sat down across from her and put my hands under the table.

The treasurer began on the catering budget.

I tapped my thigh, once, lightly.

"There is a wasp on Camille's left shoulder."

The white words floated up over my head, in full view of the room.

Nobody else looked up.

Camille's whole body jerked.

She flung her arm across her shoulder and knocked her pen off the table.

"Sorry!" she said. "Sorry. I thought I felt something."

"A bug?" the treasurer asked.

"It's gone," Camille said, and she laughed, high and fast. "I hate wasps."

I kept my face flat as a graph.

The treasurer went back to catering.

I tapped again, one finger at a time.

"A spider the size of a hand is walking across the agenda."

Camille's eyes dropped to the paper in front of her.

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