There are exactly twenty desks and every room takes rearranging and all the teachers are nice and none of them look like they have ever had to do this before. My science teacher, Mr. Miller, yells, “Can you hear okay in the back?” like my CP has also made me deaf. My speech teacher, Mrs. Roman, takes five minutes to tell the class about her cousin who also has cerebral palsy and is now working as the manager of a Target in Edmond “in spite of it.”

I don’t drink any liquids all morning so that I don’t have to use the bathroom, but by lunchtime I am dying, and luckily the whole sixth grade eats together, so Coralee comes with me and guards the door. I hear her growl at someone from outside the stall.

It’s only eleven thirty, and all I want to do is go home, but we head into the cafeteria instead.

Mom has packed me a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich and a squeeze pouch of applesauce. One of my leftover linzers is in there too, but it’s so hard and dry I can’t even bite all the way through. The tables in the lunchroom are in long rows with stools attached (of course), so I have to sit at the end. Coralee sits to my right, and I don’t even mind when Bert takes the other side. Without saying hello, he unwraps a chicken salad sandwich with a Food & Co. sticker on it. I bet everything he eats comes straight from the day-old deli counter.

“So I already have homework in history, math, and Spanish,” Coralee says, and takes a bite of her pizza. She’s the only one that bought hot lunch. “How? I mean, how is that possible?”

“It costs the government eight thousand dollars a year to send one student to school. Of course the teachers are going to give you homework. It would be financially irresponsible for them not to.”

“Bert, we need to work on your filter,” she says.

I want to talk. But I’m just so tired. I unscrew the applesauce.

“You all right over here?” It’s Rachel. She crouches down next to my chair with her hand on my arm. And that’s all it takes—one adult to make all forty kids in the room look my way.

I see someone from homeroom, one of the girls, the blond one that wouldn’t move her backpack. She looks at my squeeze pouch and laughs. I push it under the table.

“She’s fine.” Coralee shoos Rachel away and she leaves, but her perfume hangs around and puts me off my food entirely.