Chapter Five

On Wednesday, day three at Jefferson Middle School, Nova woke up excited, got dressed excited, and ate breakfast excited.

It was Planetarium Day.

“Tell her about it, Joanie,” Billy said, sneaking a spoonful of sugar into his coffee while Francine wasn’t looking.

“You sit back in your chair and look up. The ceiling is curved like you’re inside a snow globe. Once the show starts, you feel like you’re there. I promise, you’ll love it.”

Nova could not wait to love it.

“Concentrate, please.” Mrs. Pierce put her hand over Nova’s hand, which was tapping the picture for PLANETARIUM on her schedule. “We need to finish today’s testing. If you can’t pay attention on X-Block days, you’ll have to miss out on X-Block.”

Nova gasped and removed her fingertips from the picture of planets. She tried to concentrate. She did not want to miss out on X-Block, so even though it was hard, she did her best job during testing, like Francine wanted.

“This has been your most productive session yet!” Mrs. Pierce exclaimed when it was time to turn Nova over to Miss Chambers. “I’m proud of you.”

Miss Chambers was going to work with Nova on eye contact. She’d call her name, wait for her to look, say “Good looking,” and give her a gummy. This was one of Nova’s most difficult tasks. She hated looking straight into Miss Chambers’s eyes. Anybody’s eyes, really. Didn’t matter who. She never even liked looking into Bridget’s eyes. Nova squinted. Come to think of it, she could not remember what Bridget’s eyes looked like. They were brown, right? Like Nova’s?

Nova touched her eyelids as if her fingers could figure out the answer.

“Hands down,” said Miss Chambers. “Nova?”

Nova did not look at her.

“Nova?” Miss Chambers guided her by the chin until they were staring face to face. “Good looking!”

After lunch, she let herself be led into a game of Hot Potato with Basketball Alex, Quiet Mary-Beth, and Bouncing Buddy. Miss Chambers tried to get Mallory to play too, but she said, “Why should I? It’s a stupid boring baby game for stupid boring babies.”

“That is not appropriate!” Miss Chambers scolded. “Apologize to your friends.”

“Sorry,” said Mallory, but then she looked at Nova and rolled her eyes. Nova tried to roll her eyes back, but without a mirror she wasn’t sure if she did it right. She might have just raised her eyebrows.

Miss Chambers held Nova’s hands to help her catch and pass the lumpy brown cloth potato before the music stopped. Mallory is right, thought Nova. This is a stupid boring baby game.