“Like her?” I’m not sure what Mabley is talking about. “She kind of scares me. You never know what she’s thinking.”

“Who knows what anybody’s thinking,” Mabley says.

The doors are open now; everybody’s streaming off, heading for their lockers before school—but I’ve got all my books with me and head straight to homeroom.

Laura waits for me after math class—she eats lunch with her own friends, but we walk to the cafeteria together. “I hope they do suspend Pete from the basketball team.” She’s normally a quiet kid; she’s normally a bit like me. It’s funny to hear her talk like that, like she has all these strong feelings all the time.

“I don’t even know what they did,” I tell her.

“They just had lunch at KFC. But to get there, you have to cross over the highway. We weren’t even supposed to leave the campus. They could have gotten run over. Real stupid,” she says.

But saying it like that makes me want to stand up for them. “They just wanted to get away from that gym. Don’t you think there was something . . . all of us sitting there, taking tests . . .”

“Nobody made them sign up,” Laura says. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel bad for Pete. Those kids act like nobody else exists.” She means Mabley, too. “We could have gone to sectionals,” she says.

But nothing happens to Pete in the end. That night, the Hornets win another basketball game—Pete scores twenty-one points. It’s almost Thanksgiving, and that’s kind of the general spirit, forgive and forget. Pretty soon, nobody cares about the Number Sense competition. We have a short week, and then four days off. Ms. Kaminski brings a pumpkin pie to class on Wednesday. “My daughter made this,” she says proudly, so I eat my piece, even though the crust tastes kind of raw.

It doesn’t matter; we’re all going home. I hear kids making plans for the long weekend. It feels weird—it’s still sunny out, they talk about going swimming. In New York, you wonder when it’s going to snow, you can see your breath outside, the stores have lights in the windows, they’re getting ready for Christmas; but in Austin you only see stores when you drive somewhere. And I don’t have anybody to make plans with, so I pretty much stay at home.

Mom lets me sleep in on Thanksgiving, but around eleven o’clock she comes into our bedroom. I’m awake now, reading in bed. She says, “Do you want to help me and Granma make the dinner?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I’m just reading my book.”

She goes to get something from her closet but then kind of hangs around.

“What are you reading?” she asks eventually.

“Tom Sawyer,” I tell her. “It’s our homework.”

I’m hoping she’ll leave me alone, but she just stands there, and I finally look up.

“In New York, you used to cook with me all the time.” She sits down on the bed next to me; I roll over a little. She’s holding the subway map apron she wore in our old apartment.