He called me Emmie. Not Hot Wheels. Not Em.

By the time Dad comes to collect me, we’ve come up with four people to use for our project, and we agree to each figure out one more to add by the end of next week, which is when our final list is due. Good thing we have a couple months to work on this, because we’ve got to be in the running for slowest team ever.

“Have fun?” Dad asks as we drive home through the early fall twilight.

Parts of it were a little stressful—like Momma Rose looking me over with eagle eyes and feeling a bit out of place in their fancy house. But the rest—meeting Shuri, talking about famous people we admire, getting to meet Devontae’s family and see what he’s like when he isn’t at the laughing center of his group of friends—all of that was jam up.

“Yeah. It was good.”

Later that night, a message chimes on my tablet as I’m getting ready for bed.

Broncs&Boots: Shuri says you should come over again sometime. If you want.

Well, after that, it’s past midnight before I can fall asleep.

19

Tortoise to Jackrabbit

What with dinner at Devontae’s and trying to figure out what that message from “Shuri” was all about, it takes me until Sunday afternoon to remember to look up what Mr. Milling meant when he said my friends and me had pulled off an impressive whatever he called it. I dig through the dirty clothes basket to find the pants pocket with the paper he scribbled the word on—luckily, nobody’s done the wash yet.

testudo (n)|te-’stü-(,)dō

pl: testudos

Def: A cover of overlapping shields or a shed wheeled up to a wall used by the ancient Romans to protect against an attacking force.

Latin: testudin-, testudo, tortoise, tortoise shell.

I have to laugh once I see what the word means—a packed-together group of soldiers, moving along in sync with their shields out and overlapped, making an enemy-proof place to hide inside or fight from. He could have just said he saw how they all clumped up to hide me from Dawn, but I guess that’s what makes him one of my favorite teachers. I get his point, but the testudo we’ve made is a whole lot faster than any old tortoise.

I know it’s a little unfair—how we’ve kept Dawn hopping from the first bell to the last, especially after our conversation at the Dollar General yesterday. She’s cooler than I thought—a little—and I know it’s not her fault I got stuck with an aide. I do. But right now, it’s about the only thing I feel like I have any control over at school.

Besides, she didn’t seem too fussed about it.

So we keep it up on Monday … but not quite as much as before. A few escapes here and there, enough to give me some breathing room—not quite enough that I can’t play it off as an accident.