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a dancing dog?
    “Come on, don’t be modest. Surely you have something interesting to share.”
    I shook my head. At least I wasn’t the center of attention. In this class, there was no center of attention. I was just one bubble in a glass of cola, clinging to the side while a giant soda straw of a teacher tried to stir things around and suck us up.
    Parsons shuffled over to me and smiled a thin smile. His upper lip was nearly the same pasty color as his forehead. The head reminded me of the belly of a dead fish. “Now, Martin, one of the basic things we’ve discovered at Edgeview is that the students must learn to be open and honest about themselves. Open and honest. That’s the key. Please, stand up and share something.” He leaned over and patted me on the shoulder, then returned to the front of the class and crossed his arms. His whole body said, I’m waiting.
    It looked like there was no way out. I stared at him, standing straight ahead of me, acting all-powerful and filled with expert ideas and theories about what was right for us poor little students. Open and honest? As I rose to my feet, I realized that was the perfect description—I honestly had no idea what was going to come out when I opened my mouth.
    “Hi. My name’s Martin Anderson, and I’m not bald.”
    I sat back down.
    Mr. Parsons’s face grew red. Even the top of his scalp, through the strands of combed-over hair, turned the color usually only seen in ripe garden tomatoes. His face wasn’t just changing color, it was also twitching, like in the monster movies right before a guy turns into a werewolf. I expected him to start shouting, but he whirled away from me, fumbled around for some chalk, and wrote the lesson on the board. He broke three pieces before he was finished.
    I glanced over at Torchie. He held his finger up like a knife and ran it across his throat. Then he flopped his tongue out, closed his eyes, and dropped his head onto one shoulder. I guess that was his subtle way of telling me I’d probably not made a good first impression on Mr. Parsons.
    “Way to go,” Cheater whispered.
    Yeah, way to go.
    The class itself was pretty strange. I guess it was some kind of experimental teaching method. The idea seemed to be that we could learn math better if we didn’t have to spend so much time memorizing stuff and just used numbers in lots of different ways.
    I wasn’t sure whether it would work, but I was willing to give it a try, and I certainly didn’t want to get any further out on Mr. Parson’s bad side—if that was possible—so I paid attention. I even raised my hand once or twice, though he didn’t call on me.
    Things didn’t stay peaceful for long. About halfway through class, Mr. Parsons handed back some tests. When Cheater got his, he shouted, “It’s not fair!” He jumped up, knocked over his desk, kicked his chair, and rushed from the room.
    Nobody paid any attention. Not even the teacher. I glanced at the test where it had landed on the floor. On top, written in red pen, there was a large F. Then I looked over at Torchie.
    “He’ll be back,” Torchie said.
    Sure enough, Cheater returned a couple minutes later, acting as if
nothing had happened. He put his desk back and sat down. The bell rang.
    “Wow, you sure know how to blend in,” Cheater said as we were leaving for our next class. He raced ahead.
    “Yeah,” Torchie said. “Parsons looked like he wanted to strangle you.”
    I shrugged. “He’ll get over it. I didn’t really say anything all that bad. I hope the other teachers aren’t that sensitive. Is his class always like this?”
    Torchie shook his head. “Parsons keeps trying different stuff. Last month, we had to learn a bunch of songs about fractions. There’s this one jingle I still can’t get out of my head.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    He shook his head. “I wish I was.”
    Before I could ask him about our next class, someone punched me on the shoulder hard enough to knock me into the