“It’s been a long day,” her mom said. “Let’s finish this tomorrow, okay? I’ll have a schedule and plan written up by then. In the meantime, you think on the best time-management scenario going forward, ’kay? We’re in this together,” her mom said.

But, of course, they weren’t.

As Marianne walked upstairs to her room, she could hear their hushed voices murmuring to each other.

“She’s going to grow up and remember her dad as always aggravated with her. Is that what you want?” she heard her mom scold her dad.

“But she’s better than this! She’s so bright!” he whisper-yelled.

Why did parents think that kids didn’t know they were talking about them? They could’ve spoken at full volume. She knew everything they’d be saying.

Before Marianne got to her door, Lillian popped out of the bathroom, scrunching her hair dry with a towel.

“You were on my mind in the pool today,” Lillian said.

“Weird,” Marianne teased her.

“And I was thinking, Mar can do this. It’s like in swimming when your time isn’t good, and it’s not going to get better for a while, and you just have to keep getting in the pool. You’re not gonna get faster if you’re dry.” Lillian put a hand on Marianne’s shoulder. “Right? You have to jump in that water.”

“Uh-huh,” Marianne said. “Sure.” And she went into her bedroom.

Marianne plugged in the white Christmas lights that hung around her walls and took in their perfect glow.

She noted the unread copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn sitting on her unused desk.

She took a seat, picked it up, and chewed on a pencil.

“Alright, Tree Book,” she said. “Whaddya got?”

Page one: Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York.

Marianne pulled out her phone, googled Jeopardy!, and clicked on a video of an old episode.

Around 1200 BC in the Middle East and 600 BC in China, the Bronze Age was replaced by this metallic age.

It’s the geographic-sounding name for an almond in a hard candy shell.

Idiomatically, surgery might find you “under” this, though one isn’t necessarily used.

Idiomatically? An almond with a hard candy shell? What even was all this?

The guy asking the questions reminded her of a less smiley version of her mother. He appeared polite and straightforward, and even though Marianne knew he had the answers written down in front of him, it seemed like he knew them on his own, anyway.

He was kind of like how she pictured God.

Fact after fact after fact and she didn’t know a thing, and then:

Known as Orcinus orca, it’s the largest of the aquatic mammalian family Delphinidae.

“Killer whales,” she immediately said out loud to the serious man. To no one.

“What are killer whales?” a meek-looking woman replied.

“Correct,” the host said, awarding the woman points.

Funny. She’d learned that from her animal calendar. Each month had a different creature with a little paragraph about it. She’d discovered that tortoises could live to be over one hundred and fifty years old and that ravens could talk, like parrots.