S. Channing: ... funny tickling in her stomach. Mama called this the Gut Voice and told Danny and Bug to listen to it. But Bug didn't want to listen to her Gut Voice, because what it was saying, even before mama said, "I think we might need to change it up this summer", was that summer was about to be canceled.

"Why do we have to change it up?" Bug wasn't entirely sure what changing it up meant, but she didn't want to ask, lest she looked babyish. That was Danny's favorite insult as of late. And there was no way she would prove it true.

"It's just that Danny..." Mama stopped herself. "Daniel." Daniel. That's what Danny wanted to be called now. "Needs a bit of space this summer.

Bug had been hearing a lot about Daniel's need for space these past few months. First, early in the spring, Danny had told Mama that he didn't want to go to the magnet school he and Bug had both attended since kindergarten. This coming fall, he would be attending Venice High School.

A few weeks after that, Mama had taken Bug out for ice cream on the Santa Monica Pier and told Bug she was getting her own room. For a brief second, Bug had thought they were moving to one of those big houses with wall-to-wall carpeting and grassy backyards with pools, like the one her friend Beth Ann lived in. But then why would Mama be taking her out for ice cream to deliver good news? Ice cream was for bad news.

The bad news was this: Bug was being moved out of the biggest bedroom she and Danny had always shared and into a tiny alcove next to the bathroom that Mama had sometimes used as an office. It was too small to fit a bed and a dresser and desk, so with Hedvig's blessing, she was their land lady as well as their downstairs neighbor, Mama and Philip built Bug a sleeping loft. Bug did like the loft. It had a wooden ladder and her window looked out onto a big magnolia that made it feel like she was sleeping in a tree house. But even if she liked the room okay, that didn't mean she wanted it. No one had asked if she wanted it. And worse, Danny got to keep the biggest room, instead of switching with Mama, who had the medium-sized room. It just wasn't fair. Bug had complained to Mama about this, which was a big mistake. One thing about Mama was that she didn't give two hoots about fair.

And now, Daniel's need for space meant that Bug's summer was canceled. "It's just that Daniel," Mama was explaining, "has babysat you for the past few summers."

"Babysat?" Bug was offended. "Danny doesn't babysit me. In summer, we go to the beach. It's what we do."

"Well, this summer, we're going to have to figure out something else for you to do."

School had yet to let out, but Bug could feel the summer slipping through her fingers like sand at the beach, which she would not be going to.

She wanted to cry. Bug loved the beach. And the three months she got to spend there made all the bad parts of living in Venice, like her pretend bedroom and hearing gunshots at night and having to sit in a bus two hours a day to go to a good school and never having friends sleep over because nobody's parents wanted them to sleep in a place where gunshots went off at night, worth it. Bug loved everything about the beach: the way the brisk water made her toes go numb, the way the drying salt made her skin feel tight, the way tropical tanning oil smelled, and the way the sand sounded when you laid your head against it. She even loved things about the beach other people hated, like how salt water stung her scratched mosquito bites or how the sand got everywhere. And she meant everywhere, in her sheets, her shoes, in the crack of her butt.

Mama couldn't take that away from her. She just couldn't.

"I don't want to figure something else out," Bug cried. "I want it to be like the other summers."

Mama shook her head. "Daniel is 14. He wants to hang out with friends his own age. I think that's fair."

"Fair? Bug scoffed, feeling the heat in her ear lobes, which was how she knew she was about to lose her temper. "What do you care about fair?"-