Marianne laughed a loud, full laugh. “Dan, I only understand, like, half of what you say half of the time.”

“Who hates someone because of what they did as a baby?” Dan mumbled to himself. “My sister’s a baby. And I’m fine with her. Please don’t make me put her face on the other team next time.” He smiled. “She’s just really cute.”

They lingered outside their respective classrooms.

“Ugh, I don’t want to go in…” she admitted to him.

“It’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “See ya. Infinity Galaxy tonight?”

When Marianne arrived at Ms. James’s doorstep, her favorite teacher smiled her grandmotherly smile and said, “I hear congratulations are in order.”

Marianne nodded.

“What’d you think of the final chapters?” Ms. James went on, as a stream of kids sauntered in behind her.

“Um, I’m not quite caught up yet,” Marianne admitted. “Workin’ on it!” she added.

Maybe if you just got far enough into a book, it got good. Or at least by halfway through, you started to care about the characters enough to like it. Marianne was in part three of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and found herself tearing up, despite a lurking boredom that refused to go away entirely. The dad in the story died. And even though he was terrible in some ways, she hated that his daughter, Francie, had to go on without him.

Marianne’s sorrows were broken up by a knock on her door. It was her mom, reminding her that her cousins would be there in about half an hour for “fake Easter.” Her uncle Sean and aunt Kendi always went to Miami for Easter, so they redid Easter with her mom’s siblings in early May, but her grammy didn’t join for that one because she said it wasn’t “really Easter.” Lillian and Marianne had been calling it “fake Easter” for as long as she could remember. They’d already had a Seder and real Easter over spring break, so her parents usually seemed pretty over it by the time her mom’s brothers came over to celebrate.

Marianne led her little cousins, Suri and Nia, around the backyard in an egg hunt.

Here and there she gave them hints by tilting her head toward the daffodils or the sprouting crocuses where pastel eggs hid.

As Marianne helped the kids find the final egg, she tried to ignore the familiar tumble in her stomach that started up whenever she thought about Lansing. Was winning ever really fun if there was always more winning to do?

As Nia spotted the last blue egg behind the flowerpot, Marianne took note of Skyla on the other side of the chain link fence. She was waiting for her dog, Sully, to finish going to the bathroom.

Skyla raised a hand in a wave. Marianne did, too.

Besides a “Congrats!” text, they hadn’t talked much since the competition. Since the “heart” button.

Or since she’d joined Quiz Quest, really.

Even the thought made Marianne mad. Did she really need someone’s “blessing” to join Quiz Quest? Or to do it whatever way she wanted to?