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can you know what’s going on in the present without studying what got us here?”
    “It doesn’t matter what got us here. We’re here. What are we going to do about it? We can’t change what people did, we can only deal with the aftermath.”
    I set the pencil down and scratched the back of my neck. “A part of dealing with the aftermath is understanding the events that brought us to this point. You can’t truly deal with what is if you haven’t even looked at what was.” Olivia was quiet as she got up and replaced the bongos with the rest of my drums, and then wandered around my room. She looked at my books, then the things on top of my dresser. She touched the painted wooden beads of a sloppily made necklace. It cost a dol ar to make at a festival. Aaron and I used to love sitting down on the blankets and stringing the beads as the crowds passed by.
    His were long gone—given to the landfil s when he realized stuff like that wasn’t cool. I didn’t know why I stil had a lot of things from my childhood. Things that were now useless. They had no function, and were real y just pieces of junk with some kind of sentiment attached to them.
    I watched her as she moved closer to me, final y sitting down on the bed and facing my desk. She kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged.
    Her eyes were trained on the picture hanging low on the wal between my bed and desk. She tucked her hair behind her ears as I thought for a moment if she was going to ask who the woman in the picture was, but maybe she could just tel it was my mother. “I think it’s cool you get so passionate about things.”

    My eyebrows rose and she reacted to the cue. When she smiled, I noticed the crinkling of the skin around her eyes—another smal thing that made her seem older than what I knew her to be. She must’ve been able to tel that I needed her to explain what ‘things’ she was talking about because she added, “You know, defending history and playing the drums.”
    I wasn’t passionate about anything other than drumming, and even that seemed like a lukewarm fascination. Passion was something pure and indescribable—something one could see without being told. Olivia dancing was passion. Aaron on the footbal field was passion. “I can’t make you like history, but I can help you study it.”
    “Good.” She licked her lips, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and then said, “So, tel me the secrets.” I scanned my room as I thought back to her entering. She’d had nothing with her. “You didn’t bring your notes.” She shook her head even though it wasn’t a question. “Wel , I think the best way to see what’s going on is to review your notebook.”
    “I don’t take good notes.” That was usual y the problem with people who got poor grades in history. I tried to lighten my expression in an attempt to let her know that I understood, but it might have come out like a grimace. “I get distracted,” she said. “At my old school I sat by the window and never listened to what my teacher was saying.”
    “Do you sit by the window here?” She shook her head. “Then maybe it’l be different.”
    “I don’t think so,” Olivia said, and laughed. “I’m real y good a math and science, but that’s figuring things out, you know? Like solving something chal enging. history and English are just . . .”
    “It’s a different kind of learning, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be chal enging.” She was looking right at me, paying attention to everything I said. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but I went on. “Actual y, it’s more chal enging considering you’re not intrinsical y good at it.” Again, she laughed. I waited for explanation. God, she was pretty. I couldn’t think about it, or I’d never be able to continue our conversation. She stood up, crossed the room again, and used two fingers to lift up a few slats in the blinds. Her hair came to her mid-back. I wondered if she’d always worn it long. Maybe that was a