But wait.

Dan had said she’d need to answer 10 percent of the questions.

He didn’t say she had to answer them correctly, did he?

In class, if you tried and tried but never got it, you were a time suck. But on Quiz Quest, you could call out answer after answer with no follow-up, no breaking down of what you didn’t understand and why. You could call out “Teddy Roosevelt” to almost any question. As long as you did it enough—and carried around a stack of flash cards to show how hard you were studying—you could be seen as putting in the effort.

If she could show up, answer enough questions, and perform the role of Quiz Quest teammate with loads of gusto, she could prove to Mr. Garcia she deserved the credit. She could escape the confines of Anna Etheridge Middle School forever. And she could sail off into the great adventure that was high school.

She could do this.

Marianne turned on her heels, tossed her gum in the trash, and followed her teacher and Vi back into the room of a million questions.

“I’m back!” she trilled to Nina’s frown, Vi’s fury, and Dan’s grin. “So. What’s the next thing I need to learn?”

4

MARIANNE CAME HOME TO the smell of her dad’s cooking and the sound of Lillian plucking a bluegrass-like song on her guitar.

Her parents had decorated their home with art and trinkets from all the traveling they had done before Lillian was born. A throw blanket from Morocco covered the couch and behind Lillian’s shoulder some wooden Japanese dolls decorated a shelf.

“You’re getting good,” Marianne told her, plopping down next to her on the living room couch. “Not like that’s a surprise,” Marianne added.

Without stopping her playing, Lillian laughed her off. “I’m an amateur.”

“I mean … obviously?” Marianne pushed Lillian’s shoulder. “But so what? We should start a band,” she declared. “Sister bands are the best.”

“Yeah, we could be like HAIM,” Lillian said, tearing her dark blue eyes away from the notes for a moment to smile right at Marianne. Lillian had a tiny gap between her two front teeth and an uneven curve to one side of her lips. When Lillian grinned, she stood out. While Marianne had inherited a light, even spray of freckles from her mom, Lillian got their dad’s smattering of random dark moles. Marianne told Lillian they looked like Marilyn Monroe beauty marks, but Lillian jokingly called them “goblin dots.” Lillian never seemed to worry about being a certain kind of pretty.

“Except HAIM is a trio,” Lillian added, fiddling with the strings again. “Maybe Mom and Dad need to have another baby.”

“Or we could call our band Two-Thirds HAIM,” Marianne said.

“And you say you’re not good at math!” Lillian joked. She put the guitar down on her lap and spoke as if she’d been dying to share something. “You should see this girl at school—Harper—she’s like … one of these people you know will be famous one day? She even performed at some venue in Detroit once. Like an actual professional musician. Her band is called Unreliable Narrator and she writes these songs from, like, the perspective of all these different characters from books.”