Mabley sits next to me on the bus ride home. Now that the Number Sense competition is over, I don’t have to stay after school.

“You want to hear something weird?” I tell her. “Guess who’s coming to dinner at my house tonight.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Tomski.”

For some reason, I feel bad even talking about it, but I talk about it anyway. It’s like I’m using this information to say something funny, because I want Mabley to be interested in what I say, but the information isn’t really information—it’s something actually happening to me.

“It’s not that weird,” Mabley says. “It’s like, medium weird. It’s on the weird scale, but it’s not . . . I mean, your mom is a teacher. They’re just like colleagues, right?”

“I don’t know. What am I supposed to say to him?”

“Remember to raise your hand before you speak,” Mabley says. But she’s not really making fun of me, she’s just trying to go along with it.

That night, when the doorbell rings, Mom calls out, “Can you get that, Ben?” She’s getting changed in the bedroom, and Granma’s busy in the kitchen. So I open the door and there he is. He’s got a bunch of flowers in his hand, and he looks about as nervous as I feel.

“Good evening, Ben,” he says, and clears his throat. “Is your mom at home?”

I notice two little pink marks on his nose, where his glasses must have pinched him—but he isn’t wearing glasses when he comes to our house. It feels funny to have a teacher on our doorstep.

“She’s just . . .” but I don’t want to say she’s getting ready, like she’s trying to make herself pretty for him. “She told me to get the door. You can come in.”

Mr. Tomski wears the same jacket and tie he always wears to school. He doesn’t know whether to give the flowers to Granma or to wait for my mom. In the end, Granma takes them off his hands and puts them in a vase, which she sets on the table.

“Don’t they look sweet,” Granma says. I can tell she’s making an effort to be nice.

“Hey, Mom,” I call out, toward the bedroom. “Mr. Tomski’s here.”

“Please,” he says. “Outside of school, you can call me Tom.”

“Is that your name?” Granma asks, laughing. “Tom Tomski?”

Mr. Tomski has a lopsided face, with heavy cheeks and thick eyebrows. He also has a lot of very black hair, but either he didn’t comb it or it just got messy anyway, because it sticks out in all directions. When he smiles, it looks like he’s sucking on a piece of candy.

“My Christian name is Harlan, but I never liked it much. Everybody just calls me Tom.” He talks kind of slow—like he has nowhere to get to and doesn’t mind passing the time. Then Mom walks in, wearing a green dress. She gives him a hug and we sit down.