After the final bell everybody, fifth through eighth grade, files out at the same time and waits in the same long line between ropes like at an amusement park. Except instead of a ride, you’re waiting for your bus. Different buses pull up to different spots, but you can’t get on your bus until it’s your turn in line.

To be clear, this is a terrible organizational idea.

But none of this should have mattered, because me and Coralee and Bert were riding in the van. Except car kids aren’t allowed to cross to their vehicles until all the buses are gone. And Rachel, being Rachel, decides she has to stand with us until my mother or other guardian “is visible.” And so I sit hunched over in the cold while every single student files past me.

If they had stared or even laughed, it would have been better, because then Coralee could have said, “What are you looking at?” and Bert could have cited the temperature at which water becomes gas or something like that, and we’d at least have had something to do. But nobody even looks at us. It’s like we aren’t even there. And I spend the entire time wishing I weren’t, because it feels like I don’t exist. Even Coralee doesn’t look up from her shoes until all the buses have driven off in a cloud of fumes and we all hear Mom calling and waving from, yes, one of the handicapped spots not ten feet away.

“So how was everybody’s first day?” Mom asks when we finally pull out into traffic. But nobody says a thing—all of us silent and staring out three different windows.

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Mema says. I give Mema one of my best Mom eyebrows. “I mean, that Rachel’s a pill, and two thirds of your teachers sound like space cadets, but none of this is unfixable.”

The hot chocolate’s long gone and my fingers are frozen. Mema hugs me tight. We’re sitting in the glow of yellow from the kitchen window now that night has set in.

“I can’t do it all over again.”

I didn’t cry all day, but now I do a little. Just the idea of going to sleep only to get up and have to go back there makes me so worn out, I can’t even move to get myself back in my chair.

“But you don’t have to, honey.”

She takes my face in her hands, and somehow they’re still warm.

“You will never ever have to have a first day again. You’ve already done lived that. Firsts are the worst, that’s what I say. First dates, first kisses, first days, first jobs. Now it’s on to day two, and who knows what’s waiting for you?”