Muncie busied herself as we came past her. Ezra and I sat all the way in back. The couple kids already in their seats showed a sleepy interest in Ezra, nothing more. One girl, a senior, looked Ezra over, then nodded to me.

“She thinks we’re going together,” I whispered in his ear.

Ezra’s arm pressed against my shoulder as we sat, huddled together in the backseat. “Aren’t we?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Did you think we were going together?” I asked.

“We’re here, we’re together, we’re going—” Ezra shrugged.

I couldn’t tell if he was teasing.

We went straight to the office and checked Ezra in officially. Ezra gave Mr. Vernon, the new secretary, his paperwork from Montpelier and a note from the visiting nurse.

More kids were staring now.

I guided Ezra to his homeroom. The last I saw of him, he sat loose and easy in his seat. The girls couldn’t keep their eyes off him.

Occasionally I caught sight of him during the day, moving from class to class. He always had two or three girls around him. I heard one ask him where he came from. Ezra said, “Down south.” The girl didn’t ask where down south. She accepted “Down south” as good enough.

Ezra sprawled his long legs out into the bus aisle on the ride home. He rehashed his day. “My math teacher practically had a coronary when I answered the problem of the week. She posts a brain teaser every Monday on the top left-hand corner of the blackboard. Apparently no one ever solves them.”

Ezra could describe the people he’d met so well, I knew who he was talking about even when he couldn’t remember their names.

Once, Muncie turned in our direction. Then Rudie started talking to her and slowly Muncie turned away again.

I guess I heaved a pretty big sigh. Ezra looked from me to Muncie, then back to me again. But he didn’t say a word.

Twenty-Six

Every afternoon that week, Ezra offered to help with chores. But he looked so tired at the end of the day, I told him I didn’t need him. At any rate, after dinner each night we’d park ourselves at the kitchen table to tackle homework.

Ezra usually finished before me. It all came so easy to him. I’d be procrastinating, putting off something I didn’t want to do, while he’d whip through math, English, science.

“Mrs. Haskins wants us to write a letter to the person in history who’s had the greatest impact on us,” I told Ezra.

“Tough one,” Ezra said.

We’d just finished a unit on World War II, so I started thinking along those lines. I considered the people I’d read about who had survived concentration camps. And the ones who hadn’t survived.

As I sorted through my ideas, Ezra pulled a fresh sheet of paper out of his notebook, uncapped his pen, and began writing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.