I shove my entire lunch back into the bag. I wish I could crawl in too. How do I explain that those squeeze pouches were the only fruits and vegetables I could eat for a long time? “Easy calories,” Mom says. I can’t help it that I still like them. I must look like such a baby.

Coralee grabs my lunch and starts setting it back out again.

“They’re not laughing at your lunch. It’s just the trailer park thing.”

“What trailer park thing?” Bert asks. It’s the first time he’s looked up since he sat down.

“There’s us”—Coralee points at our table—“and there’s them,” and she waves her arms around the whole room. “The trailer park kids and the townies.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is, Robert. You’ve just never noticed because you’re a bit off. No offense.”

“A bit off what? The average?” He looks at us both and folds his sandwich wrapper into a square. “If so, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“So what’s the trailer park thing?” I say, turning so I won’t have to see the blond girl. I still can’t pick up the squeeze pouch.

“Now listen, you two. I’ve lived a lot of places with my mama, see.” Coralee points her crust at both of us. “And there’s always a line. A railroad track, a street name, a bridge. Doesn’t matter what it is. But there’s always some place that separates the weird from the normal, the poor from the rich, the white trash from the middle class.”

“But my mom’s a teacher and Bert’s dad runs Food & Co.” I don’t say anything about Dane and Susie because I’m not sure what they do, exactly.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we brick down the sides and plant little gardens, or what kind of cars we ride around in. A trailer’s still a trailer, even without the wheels.”

I let that sit a minute.

“So everybody’s staring at me not because I’m in a wheelchair. It’s because I’m from the park?”

“You got it, sister. You’re from Trailerland now.”

The only redeemable part of the entire day is gym, and that just proves how bad it was overall.

For a brief and terrifying moment, Rachel tries to help me change in the locker room. But Coralee chases her away again, and after a hurried emergency meeting between Principal Rutherford and Mr. Hutchinson, they decide to let me stay in my jeans. I just have to change into the yellow shirt with the lion on it.