“Jean, we don’t have much time. You have to clue me in. Tell me what I need to know to survive in Norm school. What do they talk about?”

I’m happy to have a straightforward question. I think for just a moment. “I don’t know what the boys talk a-bout. The girls talk a-bout boys.”

She reacts with mock horror. “Boys? Is that all? Not politics? Not literature? Not philosophy? Not society? Not Marxism?”

I shake my head. When I calm a little, I say, “Well, at Cross-town High there is one lit-tle group of girls who don’t talk a-bout boys.”

“Hooray! There’s hope! Tell me! Tell me! What?”

“They talk a-bout … hor-ses.” At first she doesn’t understand, but she thinks about it and then does a double take that climaxes with a groan.

“Did you say horses? Shit!”

We laugh heartily, but I’m uneasy. How will she get along? Norm kids won’t sit still for her lectures or her weird Bible stories. She will indeed be a foreigner.

Around us cars are pulling in and pulling out with campers headed home. They stir the sand and gouge deep ruts in the ground. I feel sand on my arms and in my hair.

“Sa-ra, you should come back next year.”

I want to say I’ve never had a friend like her. The girls and guys at school expect me to be something I’m not. At worst, I’m the mascot, an inferior who makes them look good. At best—the height of my aspirations up to now—not myself, but, merely, almost-one-of-them. I dress like them, but I look different. I go to the burger place with them, but I don’t eat. I go to the ball games, but I try not to cheer too loud. People always comment on how I “fit right in.” Before, I took that as a compliment, but now I know people only talk about how well you fit in if you don’t, really.

I’ll never be like Sara, but I don’t have to be. With her, I can be myself. Even become myself. To become myself, I need this place, this strange place, whether I like it or not. And this place without Sara is inconceivable.

I want to say these things, but if I do, I might cry.

Sara looks at me. “I just can’t come back. There’s one thing I haven’t told you. When Bob—the Great White Father—had the little powwow with me yesterday, he told me I can’t come back unless I actually sign a paper that I’ll behave ‘appropriately’.”

“No way!”

“No way in hell. I’ll never be what they think is appropriate. But, whether you like it or not, I admire you. Before I knew you, I thought you either resist or you are a no-good weasel. But you don’t stay furious all the time, and you’re no weasel. You’re smart and you’re for real. And you stay so calm. So cool. It blows me away.”