Marianne twisted around to look toward Vi’s seat in the middle of the room. Had that note been her version of some sort of encouragement, or a threat?

“Okay, before we dive in too much further, let’s start with what’s usually the most difficult: connecting the equation with the line you see on the graph. Don’t worry,” he responded calmly to a few complaints. “We’re going to go over this again and again. If you’re confused at first—you’ll get there.”

Marianne returned to her fantasy of herself at Quiz Quest Regionals: the spotlight on her team, the judge wearing a long black robe asking questions over a loudspeaker … She tried to imagine what would happen if she answered every question incorrectly, buzzing and randomly shouting out names and places she’d heard of before: “Christopher Columbus!” “The Galápagos Islands!” “Harriet Tubman!”

What would Vi do? Push her off the stage? Pull her hair? Forfeit the game to escape a loss? Would Dan still like her? Would Nina literally explode from panic? Would there be “proof of effort”?

Kylie Chen raised her hand and asked several questions at once. Mr. Garcia took the time to break them all down. Marianne saw Kylie taking notes, and she tried to do the same.

But wait, why couldn’t the team win, anyway? In spite of her? Skyla hadn’t thought of that.

They could. She’d seen how smart they all were. If only they could get all their problems with one another worked out, their brain squad could probably handle 10 percent stupidity.

No Quiz Quest that day, thank the glorious heavens. The day was almost over.

Lit class next, then she’d be free.

She’d promised her mom at the end of their homework session the night before that she’d read a chapter of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn before she turned the lights off.

But she hadn’t. Why hadn’t she? What was wrong with her?

And she still wasn’t listening to Mr. Garcia, and she saw him notice that, and she forced herself to stare at the graph and the X and the Y and some little paragraph about correctly filling a fish tank, and then she couldn’t breathe. The air she took in wouldn’t reach the bottom of her lungs. It stayed in the very top of her chest right under her collarbone.

Mr. Garcia’s voice morphed into a low drone like he was speaking in slow motion. The tapping of Kylie’s pencil next to her amplified a thousand decibels and seemed to bang right on Marianne’s eardrum.

“Bathroom!” Marianne stood up, grabbed the pass, and hurried out the door.

“Hi, Ms. Kelley!” She managed to greet the hall monitor as she ran into a bathroom stall and rested her forehead against the graffitied door.

juan likes astrid

gemma sux

have a beautiful day beauties

“That’s a really awful thing to do,” Skyla had said.

And maybe it was.

“I love you, but I gotta go,” she had said.