Vi walked right up to her, and Marianne could’ve sworn she was going to grab her face in her hands or shake her or something. But instead she just stared right at her, her amber eyes full of determination. “That is ridiculous,” she insisted. “The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Everyone can learn. And so can you. I am going to teach you. Right now,” Vi said.

Marianne forced a laugh. “Okay? Um … good luck. Like … greater women have tried before,” she said to a chuckle from Dan, though she meant it. She was thinking of her mother.

“I will!” Vi said, holding a finger in the air as if she was giving a speech in front of a huge crowd. “I will teach you one thing!”

“Sure, great!” Marianne fake-celebrated. “Let’s do this! Give it your best shot!”

At the suggestion of a challenge, the fear of revealing her secret left her and was replaced by a sensation of confidence. On this fact, Marianne would be correct.

“Great!”

Vi cleared her throat.

Marianne glanced at Nina and Dan and saw that Dan had joined Nina in the seat next to her. They watched Vi and Marianne like they were a movie.

“Okay,” Vi said softly. Moving to the center of the front of the classroom, she tapped her flash-card stack on the table to straighten it and pulled up the first one. “One fact. One thing. Easy. Here goes: What theory states that the universe is constantly expanding?”

“I don’t know.”

“The big bang theory.”

“Like the TV show.”

“Okay, good.” Vi took a beat. Then repeated: “What theory states that the universe is constantly expanding?”

Obviously, she’d just heard the answer. That didn’t mean she’d remember it later. “The big bang theory,” she answered dutifully. “That doesn’t prove you can teach—”

“That was step one,” Vi announced.

“Okay, but I don’t understand any of it…”

“Exactly, Marianne,” she said, resembling Mr. Garcia once again. “Great point. To remember, you have to understand.”

“A theory of expansion?” Nina butted in. “Isn’t it about the beginning of the world?”

Marianne remembered she’d heard that somewhere, too.

“We’ll get there.” Vi moved to the front of the room and wrote BIG BANG—EXPANSION—INFINITE on the whiteboard with a purple marker.

And, to Marianne’s astonishment, a darkness lifted from Vi. She stood straighter. She moved about the room slowly, with a kind of grace.

“I want you to close your eyes.”

Marianne glimpsed Dan and Nina in the seats right behind her. They closed their eyes, so she did, too.

“Now. Picture all the energy you can conceive of. Imagine anything in the world that ever was or ever will be, all at once, exploding outward into the universe.”

Vi’s voice and speech reminded Marianne of a narrator at a planetarium. Soothing.

“Do you see it? It’s spreading out right now, as we speak. All energy, all matter, is still going and going and going, expanding outward through infinite space.”

Marianne imagined lemonade and Possum and the desk before her and Dan’s crutches and Nina’s one smile and her own body floating out and away.