“You have enough credits, and this is private, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Saturday afternoon?” she said.

“Saturday afternoon,” he promised.

Saturday morning, before Aus picked her up for the nursing home trip, Macey was sitting at the breakfast table with Mom and her girlfriend Mrs. Framm and a pot of coffee.

“You know who is still around?” said Mrs. Framm. “Bonnie.”

“Bonnie!” exclaimed Macey’s mother. “I haven’t thought of her in a hundred years.”

Macey loved the gossip of grown-ups, especially about old school acquaintances. Her own brilliant, sophisticated mother could still get furious over a slight from fifth grade. It made Macey feel so much better about holding a grudge against Lisa. Mom and Ginger Framm loved to discuss who had not succeeded who ought to have; who’d gotten fat and disgusting who had certainly looked better thin; and best of all, who turned out to be boring who had called herself creative.

But Mrs. Framm turned to Macey with this particular gossip. “Bonnie,” Mrs. Framm explained to Macey, “would remember Mr. Sibley very well. She became a science teacher because of him. Mr. Sibley changed Bonnie’s life. She became a Freedom Rider in the sixties because of Mr. Sibley. He was the first black person she ever met, and the best teacher she ever had, and she decided to teach high-school chemistry in his honor.”

“That’s so sweet,” said Mom.

It isn’t sweet, thought Macey. It’s profound. It’s important. But it isn’t sweet.

Ginger Framm was a committee woman who never omitted a detail and certainly never postponed till tomorrow what might be done this minute. She whisked up the kitchen phone, called Bonnie, and said in an organizing voice, “Bonnie. Cordelia Macey Clare’s daughter is doing a school paper on Mr. Sibley, remember, that seventh-grade science teacher you had and I didn’t? Talk to her about him, okay? She has lots of questions.”

Macey took the phone nervously. “This is so nice of you, Bonnie,” she said lamely. She didn’t like calling grown-ups by their first names. It felt as if she’d arrived at a party wearing the wrong clothes.

“There’s nobody I’d rather talk about than Mr. Sibley!” said Bonnie, who had surely been a cheerleader. “I’m so thrilled that somebody is going to do him justice.”

What did that mean? Do him justice? Macey felt strangely afraid.

“He was such a fine man,” said Bonnie. “What teaching technique!”

Macey pulled herself together. “Actually, I’m mainly interested in the fire.”

“What fire?” said Bonnie.

“The fire in December where he lost his home.”

Bonnie was puzzled. “I don’t remember anything like that. Are you sure it was Mr. Sibley?” She launched into excited descriptions of chemistry experiments, and gravity experiments, and electricity experiments.