She made a sound like she was spitting out a bug and then repeated my words in a high-pitched voice. “He came over for a party and swam in our proper in-the-ground pool. Olympic-sized.”

“Oooooh,” said a guy sitting behind me. “I had no idea my grandma’s aboveground pool wasn’t proper.”

A bunch of other kids were snickering. It was time to shut up. I stared down at my desk. I wanted to get up and move away from the angry God-defending boy and the angry in-ground-pool-hater girl, but I was too scared. I wanted to button my long-sleeved shirt up over Doug’s face. You know how the only sports we’ve ever really done are Ping-Pong and a little bit of water polo? Well, my advice to you is to take up boxing and maybe running. Because Ping-Pong and water polo leave a person defenseless against attack. I never thought I’d need self-defense. You don’t need it when you have friends.

At least no one punched me on the first day, so that’s something. I kept my mouth shut for the rest of school so I wouldn’t make anyone else mad. I also kept my shirt buttoned up so no one would see Doug’s face. Just like me, Doug wasn’t popular here.

Like I said before, I hope your first day of sixth grade was better than mine was. We’ve been here for two weeks and it feels like six years.

TTYS. Or not.

Rodney

3

Hey, Larry,

Me again. I thought you might like to know more about where we are and about my second day at the lamest school in the world. The house is kind of interesting and also depressing. It’s small and old and not too nice, but the walls are covered in these big photos that my mom’s cousin Maria took. They’re pictures of her mountaineering and rock climbing, so they show incredible skies and mountaintops and cliffs and people sleeping in slings on the sides of mountains. Maria’s pictures make me feel like I should go outside more. Maybe we should go to a climbing wall when I get back. You’d probably be good at climbing. Remember that time we went to that basketball player’s house in Los Angeles for my dad’s show? It was me and you and my dad and your mom and the crew, and the player had an actual full-sized climbing wall in his house. And a full-sized basketball court. And a home theater with those big fancy chairs. Remember how we didn’t do any sports, even though the player said we could? Instead, we went to his theater room and watched Black Panther for, like, the fourth time and ate proper movie popcorn until your mom made us go back to the hotel? That was a fun one.