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energy, and I'm thinking she's right. I've probably burnt the calories I've set down on the table just by worrying about the grade I'm going to get on the Faulkner paper I've just turned in.
    We pull a couple of chairs over so everyone can sit. Michael's been reading my mind. "That Faulkner paper killed me. I was up till two in the morning doing the citations."
    "Like you won't get an A," Hannah says.
    "What's that supposed to mean?" Michael says.
    "Michael, have you ever not gotten an A?"
    "Yes," he says, a guilty yes that really means no. He probably hasn't, but so what. "Some of us want to get into a good college. Some of us want to go to med school and become doctors and not just meet some guy and have sex." He's noticed about Hannah too.
    "Some of us actually want to have a social life. You've been more intimate with your laptop than an actual female."
    "I don't own a laptop," Michael says.
    "For God's sake, you'll still be a successful adult one day if you get an A minus," Hannah says.
    "Please," Jenna says. "Don't."
    "What?" Hannah says. "He's getting obsessed. He started the nature of jade 38
    his American Government project practically before the teacher finished handing out the worksheets. We had two weeks to do it. He's like the teacher's pet in the Kiss-Ass School of Life."
    Michael looks murderous.
    "Not that," Jenna says.
    "What?"
    "For blank's sake. I wish you wouldn't say that." "What?" Hannah says. She squinches up her face. "Who's blank?" Akello says, twisting open the cap from his juice bottle.
    "You know. What you just said. 'For blank's sake.' Taking the Lord's name in vain."
    "Oh, fuck," Hannah laughs. "You're kidding me." "It's offensive."
    "You're kidding me," Hannah says again. "Maybe we should change the subject," I offer. "Yeah.
    Back off, Hannah," Michael says. "Me? God," she says. "Hannah!" Jenna says.
    "What? Jeez. I'm sorry! I can't help it! I say 'God' all the time. You never had a problem with me saying 'God' before. I don't think it makes me a bad person."
    "It's sacrilegious. You just shouldn't do it," Jenna says.
    "Like, 'Thou shalt not fight in Starbucks,'" Akello says. I'm beginning to like him.
    "Oh, for Christ's sake."
    "That's enough," Jenna says. "That's it." She shoves back her chair. Gets up, slams her balled-up napkin into the garbage can, and walks out.
    39
    "Great," Michael says. "That's our ride. If I'm late to Physics, Mr. Geurnley's gonna kill me."
    "She's gotten psycho lately with the whole Christian thing," Hannah says. "Shit, it's annoying."
    She's right, really. Jenna had gone from this really cool, fun person to someone who wouldn't listen to rock music. We went together to my first concert, an alternative band that played at the Sit 'n Spin, the Laundromat-concert place downtown. Two years ago, she'd had the side of her nose pierced, and that's gone too, ever since she started going to this Bible study group at the end of last year.
    Then again, my group of best friends, these people sitting around this tiny round table who are now realizing we'll have to walk back to school, these people I'd done every memorable thing with over the last three years, have all gotten a bit extreme. It is true, Michael is grade obsessed--
    he even has one of those shower curtains at home decorated with the vocab words and definitions that most often appear on the SATs. And Hannah is so guy magnetized that I even saw her flirt with Jake Gillette the other day, who's this seventh-grader who comes over from the middle school to be part of my calculus class. He's about four-foot-seven and sixty-eight pounds, and rides over on his skateboard that has a parachute attached to the back. The other day, Jake raised his hand to answer a problem, and then gave an answer to which Ms. Arnold responded, "Uh, these guys don't know about that yet. Let's hear from someone who doesn't know as much."
    Akello starts reading a newspaper. He is bored with us. I can't blame him. I'm bored with us too.
    "I don't