Cover

Also by Jennifer Swender

Solving for M

Dedication

For P.J.

1. Razzmatazz, Pacific Blue

The first day you show up at a new school, some teachers give the person bringing you in a real earful. They say something like “Don’t you see how many I’ve got in here?” Then they make a face and look you up and down. One teacher pointed at me and made an outline of me in the air. Like I was so big, where was she going to put me?

I have a right-before-the-school-year-starts birthday, so whatever age everybody’s turning that year, I’ve already turned it before the year’s even gotten started. Plus, one time when we moved, they made me do second grade a second time.

But this teacher didn’t point at me when I showed up at the door. She didn’t roll her eyes and breathe out sharp like I was the last thing she needed that day. She smiled, and I don’t even think it was a fake grown-up smile.

“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Ms. G.”

She wasn’t one of those young teachers who try too hard to be your best friend, but she didn’t seem like one of those old-fashioned, super-strict ones, either. She looked like just a normal teacher, except that she was tall, tall, tall. She was maybe the tallest teacher I’d ever had. Even I had to look up to really see her.

The kids were sitting all curled over their desks like a bunch of fiddlehead ferns. Maybe they were taking a test. That’s one of the only good things about your first day at a new school. If there’s a test, most teachers will say “Oh, don’t worry about this. You weren’t here when we learned it.”

She pointed to a desk smack-dab in the middle of the checkerboard room. I would rather have a back-row desk or at least an on-the-edge desk, but this was the only empty one, except for a seat way up at the front, where everyone could see you all the time, and I definitely didn’t want that.

On top of the desk was a book. Its cover was bright pink and shiny, and on top of all the razzmatazz, a bunch of numbers were floating out of some kid’s head. Math. Good.

It was the kind of book with pages you can write in. Most teachers barely ever really check them. They just glance them over to see if all the blanks are full.

“Page one hundred and seventy-eight,” she whispered to me. Almost the end of the book because it was almost the end of the year.