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knows I’m lying. I can feel her watching me as I go to get my bike. She is a sticky kind of person, like a spider in a web. I’ll tell Cynthia to come to my house next time.
    When I get home, my father is there, standing in the entryway. “Where were you?” he asks. His eyes are flatangry. There is a white crumb of something he was eating on his cheek and I am careful not to look at it.
    “I was at Cynthia O’Connell’s house. I told Ginger.”
    “Uh-huh. Well, you didn’t tell me. Did you?”
    “You weren’t here. So I just told Ginger.”
    “She has nothing to do with this. When you want to do something, you ask me, not her. In case you have forgotten, I am your father. I decide where you will and will not go.”
    I am not ready to take on the load of this. He has been so much better lately, I’d forgotten how he can turn. The thing to do is get past him, let it soak in that I am home now, he can be done.
    “Sorry.” I start to walk past him.
    He puts his hand on my shoulder, pushes me back in front of him. “I’m telling you,” he says. “Don’t you start this. Don’t you be taking off places without telling me.”
    Oh. I see. He’s been thinking of Diane.
    “Sorry,” I say again, and this time he lets me go.
    In my room, I take out Cherylanne’s few letters, hold them all together, sort through them one by one, then hold them all together again. I can smell the dinner he’s making. Liver and onions, which I hate so much. Sometimes he makes bacon with it too and then I can mostly cover it up. I put Cherylanne’s letters back, start my homework, and don’t look up until he calls me to eat.

“P eople, PEople!” Mr. Hadd says. “This is BABY work!
One
leads to
two
leads to
three!
What is the
problem
with this problem? What do you not understand?” He is so genuinely amazed. Like a star has landed in his lap. Big fat eyeballs, looking out at us. And wounded, too. He looks at us like we have broken his heart. “Katie,” he says. “What do
you
not understand?”
    “Well, just the part … I think …” I hate math so bad. I hate Mr. Hadd so bad. I take in a breath. “I don’t understand one thing you just said. On account of I’m a dummy.
Duh.”
I hear from the little muffled and surprised sounds the class is making I am a hero.
    “Is that right?” he says, but what he means is, keep it up and you’ll go to pay your regards to the principal. That’s what he calls it, pay your regards. Eduardo Hernandez pays his regards about once a week. He always leaves smirking, but when he comes back his face is a little caved in. Everyone is nice enough not to stare at him, but since he sits right across from me I can’t help but see his hurt feelings. Well, now it might be my turn.Mr. Hadd is boring his eyeballs into me. I can keep on my path to make kids like me, or I can be quiet. I don’t really want to go to the principal’s office. I think I could make a good case for myself, but also they might tell my father. I shrug, look down at my desk, let the teacher win. I have other things to do besides get in trouble in math class.
    Mr. Hadd sighs and turns to the blackboard, starts writing. He is about squeezing that chalk to death. I watch him put numbers and symbols down, but I am thinking about a new girl I met in our English class today. Taylor Sinn is her name. Sinn! She got seated in front of me. She had a big black purse like grown women have, the good kind of leather. It was gaping open and I saw a pack of cigarettes in there. Benson
&c
Hedges, menthol. Also a spray bottle of perfume and a natural-bristle brush that is not in drugstores, you have to get them in department stores. She’s really tall, but she’s still our age. She has green eyes slanted just a little to be so interesting, and she has long thick blond hair, straight as a board, and she wears a thin black velvet ribbon to hold it back. Kind of like Alice in Wonderland. I never saw hair like that, shot through with a kind