The day it rained spiders on my house was a pretty bad day all around.

It started with my mom shoving a brown paper lunch bag into my hand. "Just try to fit in," she said.

Easy for her to say. It was bad enough we had to move to this town and I had to start a new school, but she at least could've had the decency to move before the school year started. Here I was, showing up two weeks late to fourth grade.

I hefted my gold sequined backpack on my shoulder and scowled.

She opened the front door. The sky was gray to match my mood. "Look," she said, "by the time you get home, the moving truck will be here with the rest of our stuff. We can even order pizza if you want."

I shrugged. I wasn't going to let her bribe me with pizza, even if she got it with olives and extra garlic.

"I'm going to clean the upstairs rooms today," she went on. Yesterday afternoon she had forced me to help her clean and she'd kept squealing and carrying on about all the spider webs. "Then maybe you can make a playroom up on the third floor," she said hopefully.

I rolled my eyes.

"Okay, love you, honey. Don't be late." With that, she basically pushed me out the door and closed it behind me. Hmph.

Our new house loomed over me. My mom said it was called a "Victorian." It had dark purple siding and a couple of tower-like parts sticking up. There was a porch on the side of the house instead of the front and a huge red maple tree shaded half the yard. The people who sold it to my mom had only lived there during the summers. The whole thing was kind of dumpy and dirty and it looked like it should be haunted.

Well, this was it. First day. New school. No friends. Might as well get it over with. I hefted my backpack on my shoulder once again and set off down the sidewalk.

I passed a bunch of normal looking houses, in normal colors, with the regular two stories, no weird towers and sunny front yards.

As I rounded the corner near the school, I noticed a little flower garden with a white gazebo in it. Two girls, one blond and tall, the other brown-haired and short, were leaning against the side, talking and texting.

I didn't make eye contact, but I heard one of them say, "She looks like a pilgrim." They giggled.

I felt a knot in my chest. I knew they were talking about me. Because of the mix-up with the moving truck, all I had were some lounging-around-the-house clothes and my old school uniform. I had been forced to wear my black blouse with the white collar, and my black skirt that went down past my knees. They didn't require uniforms at my new school. These girls were wearing t-shirts from a store in the mall and expensive jeans.

So much for trying to be normal. Strike one: stupid clothes. I put my head down and kept walking.

*****

McFinnerly Elementary School was much uglier than I'd imagined. It was a low, one story, rectangular brick building with no interesting features whatsoever.

My old school in the city had been three stories tall with two stone lions out front that we painted different colors or put clothes on when it was school spirit days. I missed it already. I guess maybe I shouldn't have screwed things up when I was there.

In the main office, there was a lady behind the desk with poofy red hair and fake red fingernails. I stuck the paper my mom had given me in front of her face.

"Oh," she exclaimed. "You're the new girl!" No kidding. "Well..." She looked down at the paper. "... Gwendoline... welcome to McFinnerly." Ugh, I had asked my mom to just put "Gwen." I hated when people used my whole name, and they never pronounced it right anyway. They said the end part like the word "line" (because it's spelled that way, thanks mom), but it's really supposed to sound like "lynn." Gwen-doh-lynn.

I tried to smile, but it was my fake smile that mom says makes me look like I've just smelled something gross.

The secretary handed me a scrap of paper with my locker combo on it, and grabbed some fifth grade girl in baggy jeans to walk me to my classroom.

The door still had a rainbow "Welcome to 4th Grade" sign on it, but it was all ripped and torn around the edges now. A row of dented, tan metal lockers lined the wall in the hallway.

I stuffed my bag into locker 21, only keeping out my binder and pencil case. I hurried into the classroom, just as the bell rang.

The teacher, Mrs. Knowles, introduced me as Gwen (at least she had gotten the memo), but thankfully didn't make me say anything about myself or where I was from or anything stupid like that.

Also thankfully, I got a desk near the back of the room by the window. The two girls from the gazebo sauntered in just as Mrs. Knowles was going over the schedule for the day. They were in my class. Great.

I didn't catch any of my classmates' names that first morning. Except the girl with the jar of flies.

Yup, I said the girl with the jar of flies.

Next to me by the back windows, sat a girl who wore a black dress, black and white striped tights, and black Converse sneakers. Her long dark hair hung in a braid down her back. And on her desk was a mason jar with what looked like a piece of apple in it, and about six flies buzzing around. "Miss Gladwell," the teacher said at one point, "could you maybe set your... uh... little friends... aside for a while?" Some of the other kids snickered.

"Sure thing, Mrs. K," the girl responded a little too loudly. She leaned back and set the jar on the broad counter in front of the window. "They can't go in my locker," she explained. "They don't like the dark."

Mrs. Knowles sighed just a little bit. "Thank you, Hazel."

Well, at least maybe I wasn't going to be the class weirdo.

*****

At lunch, the fly-jar girl, Hazel, sat down next to me at the end of the long table. I felt a little embarrassed to have a brown bag lunch, but looking at her tray made me feel a little better about my cheese sandwich and apple. She had a bunch of jello and some creamed corn.

"So," she said. She looked at me expectantly as if she'd asked me a question and was waiting for an answer.

The gazebo girls walked by on the other side of the table with their trays. They looked at us. "Now we have a pilgrim and a witch," the taller, blond girl said. The other girl laughed.

Hazel stared straight at them and made a hand motion in the air. The shorter girl got a weird look on her face. "Freak!" she spat and they both hurried away.

Hazel shrugged.

I was supposed to try to fit in and not make waves. Now I was hanging around with the class "witch," and already had two popular girls making fun of me? Strike two.

I looked around frantically to see if anyone would help me get away from Hazel, but they were all deep in conversation with their friends.

"So," she said again, stuffing a chunk of jiggling green jello into her mouth, "don't talk much huh?"

I didn't want to be mean to her, but maybe if I gave her the cold shoulder she'd get the hint and leave me alone. "I just want to get through this stupid day," I said. "No offense."

She shrugged again. "None taken. I like your pilgrim outfit by the way."

"It's not a pilgrim outfit," I muttered. "It's my old school uniform."

"Well, don't worry about Natalia and Elspeth," she said. "They're rotten to almost everyone." I assumed she was talking about the gazebo girls. Then Hazel turned her dark eyes to me and said very seriously, "I'm sorry I can't go to recess with you today. I'm getting picked up early. You'll be okay."

We ate in silence for several minutes and I was feeling really awkward.

Then the brown-haired girl got up to throw away her tray, but she must've tripped or slipped or something. She went crashing forward, her dirty tray went flying, and she was covered in creamed corn and leftover milk. It was epic.

The girl's face got bright red as everyone stared and laughed. Her friend helped her up and rushed her out of the cafeteria. Hazel continued to stuff jello into her mouth as if she'd expected the whole thing to happen.

*****

The sky was even grayer when I left school. I walked as fast as I could, partly to put as much distance between me and my horrible new school as possible, and partly to try to beat the rain.

With every step, I thought again of all the stuff that had happened. The moving truck mix-up. The dumb dirty house that looked like something out of horror movie. The snotty girls. My old uniform. Getting stuck with the weird girl at lunch. Sitting under a tree at recess alone because no one invited me to play kickball.

When I got home, I yanked open the front door and dropped my backpack in the corner. I threw off my buckled uniform shoes and started for the stairs. There were cardboard boxes everywhere.

"Hey, honey," my mom cooed, stopping me in my tracks. "How was your day?"

Seriously? I looked at her smiling face. Her short red-brown hair was sticking up all over the place, but she always got to look pretty even when she was messy. Her clothes were dirty from cleaning the house. "The moving truck came. I'm just going to grab a couple of the small boxes from the car before it rains. Then we can order pizza and unpack some stuff!" She smiled even wider. Ugh!

I stomped upstairs to my new room as loudly as I could, and slammed the door. I flopped down on the bed (thank goodness the house had come with some furniture) and stared at the peeling, old-fashioned blue and gold wallpaper. I wondered if my mom would come up and try to talk to me about my "bad attitude."

I loved rain. I could hear it just beginning to patter on the roof and the windows.

Or so I thought.

A second later, I heard my mom shriek, and a door slam. I jumped up and ran downstairs.

She was standing by the door, frantically wiping at her clothes and hair. "Are they on me? Are they on me?"

"What happened?" I rushed over to her. She didn't seem hurt.

"Spiders!" she shrieked. "So many spiders. Outside!"

I went to open the door, but she grabbed my arm. "No!" she said. "They're falling from the roof or something."

I'm sure I made an "are-you-on-drugs-mom?" face. I opened the door anyway and sure enough, a whole bunch of wriggling spiders were falling down in front of the door. I slammed it fast.

The rain was pattering against the windows. Or was it rain? I ran over to the living room window. The outside was thick with light brown, skinny spiders! My mom was pulling off her shirt and shaking it, just in case. I ran to the kitchen window. Spiders there, too. Loads of them.

I came back into the front hall to face my mom, who was standing there in her bra and running her hands through her hair.

"Um, we might want to wait on ordering pizza," I said. "I think it's raining spiders." Strike three. So much for normal.