She turned around in her chair and reached over to the buffet to get the photograph they’d taken of her kindergarten class just before summer holidays started. "See?" she said, pointing. "This is Bobby and he picks his nose all the time, and he’s picking his nose in the picture, so that’s good. But this is Wendy, with her eyes closed ’cuz she was blinking. That’s not perfect. Wendy cries every time she doesn’t get a gold star in spelling, and she knows three dirty words, and she always gives Matthew the celery from her lunch, but you can’t tell that in the picture, can you? She’s just someone who blinked at the wrong time. If you want someone who should be blinking, it should be dozy old Peter Morgan, who always laughs too loud."

Uncle Dave scratched his head and looked awkward for a bit, then said, "Well, Muffin, when you put it like that... I suppose there are always some things that aren’t aesthetically pleasing... I mean, there are always going to be some things that don’t fit properly, as you say."

"Not always," she said.

"Not always? Someday things are just going to be right?" Uncle Dave asked.

Muffin handed me the dice and said, "Your turn, Jamie. Bet you’re going to land in jail."

Next morning Muffin joggled my arm to wake me up. It was so early the sun was just starting to rise over the lake. "Time to go down to the boatyards."

"Again?"

"Yep. This time for real." So I got up and dressed as quietly as I could. By the time I got down to the kitchen, Muffin had made peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and was messing around with the waxed paper, trying to wrap them. She had twice as much paper as she needed and was making a total botch of things.

"You’re really clueless sometimes," I said, whispering so Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear. I shoved her out of the way and started wrapping the sandwiches myself.

"When I rule the world, there won’t be any waxed paper," she said sulkily.