My cheeky response causes both women’s eyebrows to leap off their faces, but I’m hot and want to get back to Hometown Days before they shut down all the cool rides. Ambrose celebrates Hometown Days in the run-up to the new school year, sort of a low-rent county fair. Corn dogs, carnival games, and a raffle at the church bake sale. Every one of Ambrose’s 3,300 residents come out to hurl a softball at a target to see if they can dunk the Reverend in a giant tank. All I want is to attack a funnel cake and ride the Chaos Casino, a rickety tilt-a-whirl painted to look like a deck of cards, but I can’t do any of that until my mom delivers her damn peach cobbler muffins directly to the Reverend himself. She’s obsessed. She won’t just set her basket on the bake sale table like everybody else. She needs him to accept it right out of her hands, like he’s got nothing better to do. She got all glammed up for him too—the good pearl earrings, coral lipstick, butterfly hair clip, the works.

Thinking about my mom hustling the Reverend to turn him into my new stepdad makes me want to hurl, and if I’m gonna hurl, I’d rather it be via the toxic combination of funnel cakes and Chaos Casino.

“Last time I checked, reverends are in churches, not schools,” says the second secretary, a scowling, red-headed woman.

“Well, I already looked there, duh,” I say. “And last time I checked, school ain’t started yet, so I don’t know what y’all are doing here.”

“We’re getting ready for the new year,” the first secretary says. “If that’s all right with you, little man.”

“How old are you?” asks the second.

“Twelve,” I huff, “but I—”

“Connor Major, then. We just finished your paperwork.”

“How’d you know…?”

“Got a seventh grader slot for a new kid coming from down south. Your little sassburger country accent tipped me.”

I broil at her clocking my accent as she scans me imperiously, from my ripped-up Keds to my unkempt hair. Mom warned me to talk normal around these Midwesterners, but when I’m worked up, the accent busts out. Ambrose, Illinois—this dump is countrier than I am. Nothing but cornfields and Christian billboards all the way into town. Which is exactly why Mom moved us in the first place.

“Connor, where’s your mom at?” the first secretary asks kindly. But I’m too annoyed to return her kindness.

“Where’s YOUR mom at?”

“All right, little man,” she replies, stiffening. “Why don’t you get on back to Hometown Days and—”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? JESUS!”

They don’t know anything. Already overheating, even in this air conditioning, I storm out as the red-headed woman calls out, “You better fix that attitude before school starts!”