“We don’t have much time,” Jett said. He took her by the arm and ushered her through the house and to his bedroom.

“Is your father home?” Roni asked.

“He’s in his office.”

“Can I meet him?”

Jett shut the door to his room and looked at his prize. “He’s working.”

“You know,” she said, “all the girls have a crush on him.”

“What?”

“All the girls at temple. He’s handsome. Sammy says he looks like the hot uncle from a television show. I don’t remember the name. Full Home? Full Apartment? Full something.”

“He’s an extremely busy man. And anyways, we need to get started on your paper.”

Roni handed the binder to Jett. She sat on the floor and he sat on his bed. He was suddenly embarrassed by his bedspread, which was covered in a repeating pattern involving Buzz Lightyear and Woody the cowboy. He hadn’t bothered to request a new one because why would he? Girls never came to his room. And besides, the bedspread had been a birthday present from his mother. Only wasteful, insecure people retired perfectly good bedspreads.

“Just so you know, this isn’t my usual bedspread,” he told Roni. “My usual one’s in the wash. But this one, it’s not that stupid, when you think about it. It’s really soft, and the material’s pretty good quality. And people would probably think you were mean if you joked about it.”

Roni looked confused. “My grandmother back in Israel made my bedspread out of old baby clothes.”

“That’s really cultural of you,” Jett said, and then turned back to her paper, which was, from what he could tell, complete nonsense. “This is a pretty good paper,” he told her. “I’ll just mark the grammar and spelling errors.”

“I appreciate this,” Roni said, and for one generous, billowing moment, she put her hand on his knee. She then leaned back so that she was resting on her elbows, her head tilted to the ceiling, where Jett had, years ago, meticulously arranged a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars according to a laminated star map his mother bought at the Cosmosphere gift shop. He made a mental note to take them down.

“Don’t you just hate school?” Roni was saying. “Don’t you wish you could live on the beach? In Israel, everywhere is a beach. You turn left and there’s a beach. You turn right and there’s a beach. Here it’s just McDonald’s and gas stations.”

“We have wheat fields,” Jett said. He hated when people talked about the ocean. He’d never been.

“Oh, wheat fields! Can you surf in them? Can you make castles or find seashells? No. Nobody does anything good in a wheat field. There’s nothing fun here. I can’t wait to graduate and move back to Israel.”

“But you can’t go back.”

She looked at him. “Why not?”

“Because America’s great. It’s where the rest of the world wishes it could be.”

She laughed at him. Not one of her usual shy giggles, but a full on laugh. A mean laugh. “No it’s not. It’s boring. One big giant yawn.” She feigned a yawn for emphasis.