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laughs, but every time I had to leave, she could tell I was going to hang with the kids she hated, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the hurt from showing. She also couldn’t stop the rants about how stupid or how mean they were, or how they were going to ruin my bar mitzvah. So I guess I took the easy way out. I’m not exactly proud of it, but after a few days, when I saw Patrice’s number on my caller ID I stopped picking up. At first she just called more. Then it tapered off. She got the point eventually. After a couple of days, she stopped calling entirely.
    A few days before school began, I found myself sitting in Pam’s living room addressing bar mitzvah invitations. To my amazement, I had a group of kids to invite. Here was my list:
    Brett Connelly
    Eddie Jones
    Malcolm “Fudge” Venter
    Lucy Abendroth
    Kendra Peterson
    J. D. Canaday
    Nicole Willis
    Seth Ashley
    Bridget Keller
    Ryan Ritchie
    Patrice DeCrette
    I got out Pam’s old white pages, looked up their names, and copied each name and address as neatly as I could onto the fancy envelopes my mom had bought for the occasion. After that, Simon and I walked down the block to the mailbox. But this strange thing happened when I opened the slot to drop in the invites. The first ten envelopes slid right on down the chute, but I just couldn’t mail Patrice’s. It was like it was glued to my hand. Not literally, of course, but suddenly my heart was pounding and I was frozen. I mean, how awkward would it be if she came? She hated them. They hated her. Why put myself through that on the most important day of my life?
    And then I had this really terrible thought. What if Brett and his gang found out Patrice was coming and then refused to come themselves? I remembered Lucy and Patrice’s exchange at Calvi’s the first time I had seen them together. Then I remembered how Eddie had made fun of Patrice at the quarry. And then I had the final thought—the biggie. I mean, I was still waytoo pissed to talk to him, but what if Dad came to my bar mitzvah anyway? What if he walked into the basement of the Methodist church and no one was there except for my mom, Pam, Patrice, and the rabbi we found online?
    I closed the mailbox, slipped Patrice’s invite back into my pocket, then called for Simon and ran home.
    And then, before I knew it was happening, it was Labor Day, and summer vacation was over.

6
    MY SCHOOL back in New York was a gray brick building in the middle of a city block. The nearest blade of grass was two blocks away in Central Park. But my new school, Dan Quayle Middle School, looked a lot like I imagined a typical American school would—a redbrick building on the outskirts of town, surrounded by three sports fields and a big digital scoreboard. Pretty impressive. On the first day of school, there was a green and white banner hanging over the main entrance that read W ELCOME Q UAILS!
    The night before my first day, I was pacing around Pam’s little house, pretending not to be nervous, when the phone rang.
    It was Brett. “Stick close to me tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll smooth things out for you.”
    God looked down from the heavens and smiled on me. Truly I was one of the Chosen People. Without Brett, I would’ve taken my first terrified steps into that building alone only to be completely ignored. But with the quarterback by my side?
    â€œHey, come meet the Brain,” he called out as he guided me down the main hall. “He’s from New York! That’s right, the Big Apple!”
    I was in. The cool new kid. And you should’ve heard some of the questions.
    Like: “Hey, New York. You ever been where John Lennon got shot?”
    Or: “I hear you guys don’t have any trees!”
    Or: “How many times have you been mugged?”
    I didn’t care what they asked, I was just happy to have made it. The road was clear from here on out, because Brett