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Everybody in the right place?”
    Everybody was. “Good,” said Dr. Walpole. “Maybe you’ll all move up into the first and second rows, then, to indicate your intense interest in the subject. We shouldn’t need to use the last two rows at all. Come on.” Slowly, the rest of the students moved, filling in the desks beside and behind Frank Delgado and me.
    Possibly Dr. Walpole was being kind. Possibly this was simply her usual mode of operation. Whatever, I didn’t care for it.
    At three-thirty, I escaped to my car. I’d parked facingthe school, with a view of the front entrance, and as I turned the engine on, I spotted Frank Delgado coming out. I continued to watch as he made his solitary way across Memorial Drive and loped down along the Charles River.
    If I’d been home, I would have talked about him that night at the dinner table. “There’s this kid, a skinhead, in one of my classes,” I would have said. My parents would have been very interested. But then, if I’d been home, I’d have already known all about him. I had been thoroughly entrenched in the information circles at my old school.
    I went back to the Shaughnessy house. I had homework to do. Calculus would be easy for quite a while; I’d done it the year before. Same with several other subjects. But Dr. Walpole wasn’t teaching history out of a textbook; instead, she was assigning a lot of primary source reading. That night’s was on the medieval church hierarchy. Thrilling.
    On the porch beside the front door, Vic had nailed up a new mailbox for me. In it was a large manila envelope from my mother. I ripped open the envelope and found some college applications. Stanford. University of Chicago. Dartmouth. My mother had attached a short note:
    Dear David
,
    I’ve written to all the schools on our list from last year and given them your new address. Here are the applications that had already arrived here. If more come, I’ll send them on, of course
.
    Best love
.
    She had also included newspaper clippings from
The Washington Post
: a series about the college application process and the pressures on Young People Today. I grimaced, and then stuffed everything back into the envelope. I was staring down at it when I felt a presence at my elbow. Lily.
    It was time to forgive her for what she’d said to me about Emily. She was just a kid; she couldn’t have known what she was saying. I opened the door and gestured her inside in front of me. We mounted the stairs. I reached for conversation. “Wasn’t today your first day back at school? How’s sixth grade so far?”
    â€œRotten.” Lily opened the door of her parents’ apartment with her key.
    â€œCare to elaborate?” I asked. I wanted to go on up to the attic, but felt uneasy leaving Lily. Where was Julia? She didn’t work. Shouldn’t she be home to greet Lily?
    â€œNah.” Lily bounced on into the living room. After a second the television sang out in a commercial. Reluctantly, I followed her. Lily had flung herself onto the carpet in front of the TV and was wielding the remote control with an expert hand, rapidly flicking from channel to channel and finally settling on a cartoon,
Scooby Doo
.
    â€œLily?” I had to raise my voice. “Lily!”
    She didn’t turn. “What?”
    â€œWhere’s Jul—your mother?”
    â€œShe has her O.A. meeting at four today.”
    â€œO.A.?”
    â€œOvereaters Anonymous.”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “She’s not fat. Did she used to be?”
    Lily was concentrating on the TV. “No, she just likesthe people there. She says they’ve all suffered deeply and they have great strength. It’s uplifting to hear them.” Lily restored her attention to the TV, and I thought she was finished, but then she added: “Mom goes to G.A. and A.A., too. They’re sort of the same thing, only different. You