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Brontë—”
    “Fine. Enough.” She holds up her hand and smiles pleasantly. “We’ll see how you keep up.” She jots a few notes on the envelope. “Take the last seat in the second row.”
    The girls sit in two rows on one side of the room, and the boys inone row on the other. We outnumber them, but that’s to be expected. Most boys have to work in the quarry as soon as they are old enough. In all, there are about thirty of us in the ninth grade.
    When I sit down, a round-faced girl with chin-length curly black hair taps me on the shoulder. “I’m Chettie.” She smiles. “My pop said you need a tour guide.”
    I smile appreciatively at her. As I look around the room, I see that the kids are more polished than me. One girl wears a plaid wool jumper with a drop waist. I wear my best skirt and a white blouse, but as I survey the room, I see it’s not good enough. I’ll have to convince Papa to let me buy some tartan plaid to make myself a jumper. I am the only one with a lunch pail, which I quickly shove under my seat.
    Miss Ciliberti begins the lessons with mathematics—not my strongest subject, but I do my best to follow the lesson. When the bell rings and Miss Ciliberti dismisses us for lunch, I am relieved. This school is much harder than Delabole, and Miss Ciliberti has very little patience. If someone doesn’t know an answer right away, she moves on to the next student without as much as a second glance. There will be no lemonade and tea cakes under the tree at recess. I doubt they even have recess here.
    “Where are you having lunch?” Chettie asks.
    “I could eat anywhere. Outside, I guess.”
    “Outside? Nobody eats outside.”
    “Where do they go?”
    “Home.”
    “Home? That’s three miles away for me.”
    “Well, we all live a few blocks from here. You want to come home with me?”
    “Sure. I won’t be any trouble. I have my lunch.” I show Chettie the pail.
    “That looks like something Pop takes to the quarry. He works in the quarry all summer when school is out.”
    “My pop uses this pail when he works in the quarry. He’s a farmer but goes in whenever we need the money.”
    “I don’t like my father to work there.”
    “Why not?”
    “Have you ever seen the quarry? It’s the scariest thing, just this giant pit filled with black water, and the men have to get in these boxes and they’re lowered into the hole to work.”
    “Papa doesn’t talk about it much. And he’s never taken us there.” Little does my new friend know, we haven’t gone anywhere, not even Allentown or Easton. We stay on the farm.
    “Pop doesn’t say much about the quarry either,” Chettie admits. I can already tell we have lots in common. How lucky to meet her on my very first day of school. This will make everything so much easier.
    As we walk to Chettie’s house, she takes time to introduce me to her friends, who are nice enough but look me up and down suspiciously.
    When I mention this to Chettie, she replies, “They’ll get nicer when they know you better. After all, it’s not like you’re a Johnny Bull. You’re Italian too.”
    Chettie takes a sharp turn onto a stoop on Dewey Street. “This is it. The Ricci palazzo.” She laughs. When she opens the screen door, she hollers for her mother, who yells back from the kitchen. The house has more furniture than ours, their settee is covered in burgundy velvet, and there are rugs that are old but clean. In an alcove hangs a cupboard with a small pine table underneath. A set of delicate teacups and saucers are arranged on the shelves, and on the table is a white ceramic bowl filled with green apples.
    Chettie calls to me, “Come in here, Nella.”
    I continue to the end of the hallway to a bright kitchen filled with children younger than we are. “I am the oldest of the brood,” Chettie says, grabbing a roll stuffed with salami. She sits down and helps her mother feed the little ones who sit around the table. I start to count them. “There’s