The Class

by Frances O’Roark Dowell

  “Maybe. The question is, are they panels that absorb echoes or panels that block sound? You’d think echoes, because it’s a hallway, right? Who cares if the sound goes through the ceiling? It’s just a roof up there anyway.”

  They chatted about sound absorption versus sound blocking the rest of the way to the library. The thing that a lot of people didn’t get about Henry was that he was supersmart, maybe as smart as Ben. Stefan was almost as smart as Ben—they both got taken out of regular math class to go to Mr. Lee’s for pre-algebra—but certain things came easier to Ben than they did to Stefan. He had a photographic memory, which was a definite unfair advantage, and he didn’t have to study very hard to get As. Stefan definitely had to study for math tests.

  “I bet the library has echo-absorbing paneling,” Henry whispered as they walked into the media center. Even Henry knew enough not to talk above a whisper around Mrs. Rosen, who wasn’t a librarian who gave second chances.

  “I don’t know why they’d bother,” Stefan pointed out. “Everybody’s too afraid to talk.”

  Henry grinned. “She’s the scariest librarian in the world.”

  See, Henry’s not so bad, Stefan wanted to tell his mom. For that matter, neither was Carson. Carson was mostly just goofy. Matt Collins was another story. Stefan would be scared of Matt Collins, except that one time when Matt had been a jerk to him last year, Carson had stepped in and said, “Dude, this here’s my little buddy. You got a problem with him, you’ve got a problem with me.”

  Embarrassing for Stefan, yes. But also a relief. He had to face facts: he was a natural target for bullies. He was short, spent most of the time with his face buried in a book, and had less than stellar hand-eye coordination. He needed somebody like Carson Bennett in his corner. And he liked Carson. He wouldn’t say they were friends exactly, but they got paired together a lot, and Stefan knew he was one of the few people Carson had told about his mom’s cancer. Ever since then there’d been a bond between them. An invisible bond, sure, one that nobody else really knew about, but it was real.

  He and Henry sat down at a table near the back window and opened up their notebooks. They were doing a presentation on city-states in ancient Greece, focusing on the city-state of Megara, which Stefan and Henry agreed was a very cool name. That was the thing about Henry—if you could just get him to shut up and quit irritating people, he was a nice kid. Unfortunately, if you put him in a group, he was like a bouncy ball pinging around the walls, out of control. Stefan knew that there would be a huge difference between the presentation they were planning, which was both informative and interesting, and the presentation that would get presented, which would fall apart in five seconds because Henry would do something dumb, like start snapping his fingers over his head as though he was doing some Greek folk dance. That would be classic Henry.

  “Dude, look—can you believe Mrs. H let her out?”

  Stefan rubbed his arm where Henry had elbowed him and then looked where Henry was pointing. Petra Wilde was pulling a book off a shelf in the fiction section. Interesting. Petra seemed like more the social media type than a reader.

  Of course there was the thing at Lila’s party, where Petra had first talked to Ben and then climbed a tree. Ben said it wasn’t any big deal, that she’d been bored and was just wandering around. Still, it had clearly been the beginning of something. The beginning of the Strangeness, Stefan thought, liking how that sounded.

  “You should ask her to the sixth-grade dance,” Henry said. Amazingly, he was still whispering. “Now that she’s gotten so strange.”

  “I’m not going to the dance,” Stefan whispered back, the very thought making butterflies flitter like tossed thumbtacks in his stomach. “So why would I ask anyone to go with me?”

  Henry put his pencil sideways between his teeth, smiled, and rolled his eyeballs around. “Because,” he said, not taking out the pencil, “she’s weird, you’re weird, why not be weird together?”

  “But I’m not weird,” Stefan insisted. He glanced nervously at Mrs. Rosen’s desk. They had to be near the limit for the acceptable amount of whispering. “I’m actually quite normal.”

  “Uh-huh,” Henry said, spitting out the pencil onto his open notebook. “Normal as me, and we both know that’s not normal at all.”

  “We should get to work,” Stefan said, not bothering to argue that he and Henry weren’t anything alike. Sure, they were both smart, but Stefan actually got good grades, and Henry, unlike Stefan, was good at sports. Unlike Henry, Stefan had friends and didn’t bounce off the walls or snap girls’ bra straps or yell out “Cowabunga!” for no reason in the middle of Drop Everything and Read.

  “Okay, but are you going to ask Petra to the dance or not?” Henry asked. “Because if you don’t, I might.”

  “Go ahead,” Stefan whispered. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Okay,” Henry said, pushing his chair away from the table. “You’ve got a deal.”

  Stefan shook his head as he watched Henry walk over to Petra. This was going to be embarrassing. Or at the very least awkward. But then again, who knew with the new Petra, the one who kept to herself, who sat alone in the cafeteria and read a magazine while she ate? The one who Rosie had declared a total loser and untouchable, but who didn’t seem to care. Yesterday Ben was talking about nuns who cut off their hair when they joined a convent, and Bart had made a joke about Sister Petra. Maybe he was onto something. Maybe Petra had joined a religious order—or a cult.

  One thing was for sure: Petra Wilde may have gotten weird, but she’d never be weird enough to go to the dance with Henry.

  When Henry leaned in and whispered something into Petra’s ear, her left eyebrow shot up in a way Stefan thought was really cool. He wondered if she’d had to practice that in front of the mirror.

  Petra looked over at Stefan. He shrugged, as if to say, Sorry, wasn’t my idea. Petra smiled back at him, as though the two of them were in on a joke. Now Stefan felt a little light-headed. Could a smile really have that effect on a person? Make them feel like maybe they had to go to the bathroom all of a sudden?

  Maybe Petra was a witch. Now there was a theory. Or maybe she was just a naturally powerful person. Everybody agreed that Becca never would have cut off her hair in the art room if Petra hadn’t been with her. Had Petra really tried to convince Becca to get in trouble? Intellectually, he could understand why you might do that. What a challenge, right? How do you make the biggest goody-goody in the world go bad?

  Only, Stefan wondered if Becca had already been on the road to misbehaving before Petra got ahold of her. He’d noticed Becca pouring sugar into Mrs. Herrera’s desk drawer on Monday morning, and before that, he’d seen her take the caps off two dry-erase pens and put them in her pocket. It was like she was having a secret war with their teacher, but why?

  It could only be the Strangeness, he thought now.

  Henry crossed the library back to the table. Mrs. Rosen was also walking toward their table, so instead of saying anything, Henry turned to a fresh sheet in his notebook and wrote, She said yes!

  Stefan grabbed Henry’s pencil, completely forgetting it had just been in Henry’s mouth. Petra’s going to the dance with you?!?

  Mrs. Rosen was two tables away. Henry looked over at her, looked at Stefan, and slapped his hand over his mouth to keep from—what? Exploding, it looked like. Not me, Henry wrote. She said yes she would go to the dance with YOU!!!

  And then he lost it. Just as Mrs. Rosen reached their table, Henry fell out of his seat and started rolling down the floor.

  “Henry Lloyd, get off the floor and into my office!” Mrs. Rosen hissed. She turned to Stefan. “I’m very surprised at you, Stefan Morrisey! Please go back to your classroom.”

  Why was she surprised at him? Stefan wondered as he gathered his things. He hadn’t done anything. Wasn’t doing anything. Was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.

  It wasn’t until he was back out in the hallway that he remembered he was going to the s
ixth-grade dance with Petra Wilde. But that was crazy! He barely knew Petra Wilde. Besides that, he didn’t know how to dance.

  She’d probably said yes as a joke, Stefan told himself. She probably didn’t mean it.

  He immediately felt relieved.

  And disappointed.

  Which was confusing.

  “Hey, Stefan!” a voice called from behind him. He turned around and there she was, the Queen of the Strangeness herself.

  “Hi, Petra,” he stammered. “Sorry about all that. I mean, Henry and everything.”

  Petra looked confused. “Why are you sorry? You’re the one who wanted him to ask me, right?”

  “Uh, well, huh.” Stefan really couldn’t think of an answer here. He should just say it. Say the thing they both knew. Be brave, my good man, he could hear his dad saying, in his Knights of the Realm voice. “Listen, I know you said yes as a joke, and that’s okay—”

  “Who says I said yes as a joke? Did you ask me as a joke?”

  I didn’t ask you at all, Stefan almost blurted out, but he stopped himself. What if Petra was serious? He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “No,” he said, which was the truth, but only half the truth. “Did you answer as a joke?”

  “No,” Petra replied, and she sounded serious. “I would enjoy going to the sixth-grade dance with you. It’s in two weeks, right? Because I’m thinking about making my own dress. Do you like orange?”

  “Orange is nice,” Stefan said.

  “Okay, good,” Petra said. “And Stefan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for asking me. I think we’re going to have fun, don’t you?”

  She smiled at him, and Stefan felt light-headed again. “I hope so,” he said. “I can’t really dance, though.”

  “I’ll teach you,” she said. They’d reached Mrs. Herrera’s classroom door. Petra held out her hand and Stefan took it, as though he were the sort of boy who held girls’ hands every day of the week. “You just listen to the music and move to it. Sometimes it’s easier if you close your eyes. Here—I’ll show you.”

  Petra closed her eyes and started humming a song that Stefan didn’t recognize. She shuffled a few steps to the left and a few steps to the right. Stefan followed her, laughing a little bit because he felt goofy dancing in the middle of the hallway, but also because it was, well, sort of fun. He was sorry when Petra stopped moving.

  “You’re a natural,” she said, dropping his hand. “But I guess we should go in.”

  Stefan opened the classroom door, bowed, and said, “After you,” and Petra went inside. When Stefan followed her, he found that the whole class was staring at them, their eyes full of big question marks.

  “Did you lose Henry?” Mrs. Herrera asked from her desk. “Or did he get in trouble?”

  “He got in trouble,” Stefan said, and then he wondered if Mrs. Herrera would get fired because Henry had acted crazy in the library.

  “How ’bout you, little man?” Matt called out. “You look like you’re nothing but trouble.”

  A bunch of kids laughed at that. Stefan laughed too. He was going to the sixth-grade dance with Petra Wilde. They’d just held hands in the hallway. If that was trouble, Stefan was all for it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rosie

  Friday, October 6

  Rosie sat by herself on the bus and stared at her phone. Petra’s face stared back at her, except it didn’t really look like Petra’s face. Not the old Petra, at least. This new and unimproved Petra had big ears that stuck straight out and a head like a balloon. Who knew that Petra’s head was so big or that her neck was so scrawny? Good hair covers a multitude of sins, Rosie’s mom liked to say, and now Rosie knew what she meant.

  How dare Petra cut her hair without discussing it with Rosie first! Not that Rosie was in charge of Petra or controlled their friendship—their former friendship—but they’d been a team. They conferred about clothes and makeup and boys. They did not make rash decisions about their hair.

  Rosie sighed and looked out the window. She didn’t know why she was even thinking about Petra anymore. Petra was over. The problem was, lunch wasn’t as much fun without Petra, and recess was boring without Petra, but the bus ride home was the worst. It was when Rosie missed her former best friend the most. They’d always spent the ten-minute ride home going over every little detail of the day—who had worn what to school, who’d had a bad hair day (ha!), which kid in their class had said the stupidest thing (not counting Carson, who said stupid stuff on purpose), who they should spend the following day making miserable.

  And the best part was the secret list they were keeping about Lila, using a notebook app on Petra’s phone. It actually wasn’t just one list, it was an entire city of lists. Rosie’s favorite one so far was called “What Lila could do with all that hair if she ever shaved her legs.” Their answers included: (1) Knit a sweater; (2) Make a wig for someone with cancer; (3) Give it to the birds to build nests with; (4) Weave it into fabric to make a skirt so we wouldn’t have to look at her hairy legs.

  But on Wednesday, two days after she’d hacked off her hair, Petra had started riding her bike to and from school. Rosie hadn’t known you could ride your bike to school, but apparently if your parents filled out a permission slip that said you would promise to stay on the bike path, it was okay. Ever since Wednesday, Petra had shown up to school with her hair (what was left of it) all messed up and her jeans stuck into her socks like she was a mentally ill person.

  Usually when she got off the bus at the end of the day, Rosie felt energized even though she’d spent the last seven hours being bored to death. It was those list-making sessions with Petra that revived her. And usually Fridays were her best days, because she didn’t have to do homework when she got home, so she could text with Petra and Carson and Matt, or even better, have a sleepover with Petra and text Lila about how they were soooo sorry Rosie’s mom would only let her have one friend sleep over at a time.

  But today, on what should be the best day of her week, Rosie felt like she needed a nap, and she never needed a nap. She almost tripped getting off the bus, and a couple of kids laughed when Mr. Melton, the bus driver, called, “Careful, young lady! You could break an ankle!”

  Rosie ignored him and trudged down the sidewalk to her house.

  “You want a snack?” her mom asked when Rosie came into the kitchen and threw her backpack on the table. “I just made Gabe and Garrett some graham crackers and peanut butter.”

  “Are you trying to make me fat?” Rosie only asked this to irritate her mom; she knew the answer was no. Her mom made a huge deal about people’s weight and went to Weight Watchers every week even though she didn’t need to lose a pound.

  “The protein in the peanut butter balances the carbs in the graham crackers,” Rosie’s mother explained. “So you don’t get the same sort of insulin spike you would if you’d just eaten the graham crackers by themselves.”

  Sometimes Rosie wondered what it was like to come home to a mother who was just pulling a tin of blueberry muffins out of the oven. Her mom had never been that kind of mom. For the first eight years of Rosie’s life, her mom had been a lawyer, and then quit when the twins were born. Just like that she went from the sort of mother who was always working and had a hard time making it to Rosie’s ballet recitals on time to a mother who was obsessed with making Gabe and Garrett the smartest, healthiest, most high-achieving babies ever known to humankind.

  And now she never made it to Rosie’s ballet recitals. The twins weren’t good with babysitters. “Aunt Maggie is going, and she looks just like me,” her mom always said. “So everyone will think your mom’s there!”

  Aunt Maggie and Rosie’s mom were twins too, and they did look a lot alike. But having someone who looked like your mom in the audience wasn’t the same as having your actual mom in the audience. And Rosie’s dad never came to anything because he was always out of town. Rosie was starting to suspect he traveled so much because he didn�
��t really like their family. Neither did she, actually, but she was stuck at home until she was eighteen whether she liked her family or not.

  Oh well, Rosie thought as she grabbed a cup of yogurt from the fridge. She was planning on quitting ballet after this year anyway, so it wouldn’t matter who did or didn’t show up at her recitals, because she wouldn’t be there either.

  “I’m going upstairs to FaceTime with—” Rosie almost said Petra, because that was another thing they did on Friday, video chat as soon as they got home to make weekend plans. Rosie had to remind herself she wouldn’t be caught dead FaceTiming with Petra anymore. “Lila—I’m going to FaceTime with Lila.”

  “Oh, honey, I need you to look after the twins. It’s only for thirty minutes, but I didn’t make it to the store earlier, and if I don’t go now, I don’t know what we’ll do for dinner.”

  “Order a pizza,” Rosie suggested as she grabbed her backpack from the table. “The twins love pizza.”

  “Yeah, but my rear end doesn’t, and yours won’t either. You can chat with your friends in the living room. The twins are watching TV.”

  Rosie sighed. The problem with having a former attorney for a mother was there was no point in arguing with her, because you couldn’t win. Rosie carried her yogurt and her phone into the next room. Gabe and Garrett were watching something idiotic on Nickelodeon, a channel Rosie’s old nanny, Amy, had never let her watch. Amy was pretty much against TV in general; she liked taking walks or playing soccer or helping Rosie practice for her dance recitals.

  “Rosie Posie!” Gabe squealed when he saw her. “Can I sit on your lap?”

  “No, you can’t,” Rosie told him. “And you can’t call me Rosie Posie, either. It’s stupid.”

  “But I’m smart,” Gabe said. “I can read.”

  “No, you can’t. Recognizing a stop sign isn’t the same as reading.”