Mr. Bartley plants himself in front of Logan’s center row. A murmur goes through the room as if Mr. Bartley broke a silencing spell. He holds up a palm like he’s a crossing guard halting traffic, and it’s quiet again. “Questions?” he asks.

Logan’s hand shoots up, but then she lowers it when Mr. Bartley aims his clicker at the Smart Board and brings up the assignment.

Kerrianne Nelson gets called on. “I’m confused. The Final Solution of the Jewish Question. Do you mean the Holocaust?”

Mr. Bartley says, “Exactly. The Final Solution was the plan and implementation of the Holocaust.”

“Ah, okay. I thought so.” She smiles at her boyfriend, Mason Hayes, but he’s too busy picking at a thread on his hockey jersey to notice. When she sees me looking at her, she frowns. Like most of the people at our school, I’ve known Kerrianne since kindergarten. We always got along, but for some reason when Logan moved to Riviere and joined us in eighth grade, Kerrianne stopped sitting with us at lunch and started hanging out with the hockey players.

“Question, Spencer?” This is a surprise. Like me, Spencer Davis never raises his hand in class. If Spencer talks, it’s to his hockey teammates or to the girls he deems worthy of his time and attention. He claims to have hooked up with at least a dozen. As if. Thank everything holy Logan isn’t one of them.

“Can we get extra credit for dressing up for the debate?”

I turn around to see if he’s serious. Oh yeah. Dead serious.

Mr. Bartley says, “Although I appreciate your desire for authenticity, Spencer, that does not extend to dress. No uniforms for this debate.”

Someone whispers, “Damn.” I glance around, but I can’t figure out who it was.

“Excuse me, Mr. Bartley—” Logan breaks off when Mr. Bartley calls on someone else.

He answers a question about citing sources, then another on the structure of our papers that are due the same day as the debate. Moving over to his desk, Mr. Bartley grabs a paper bag and shakes it. He says, “Each of you will draw a number—either a one or two. Call it out after you pick. Mason, you start.”

When it’s my turn, I mumble, “One.” Logan says, “Two.”

“All the ones will take the pro side. Twos will take con,” Mr. Bartley says. “You may work together to create your platform, but your paper must be your own. Your arguments should be based on the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942. A week from this coming Monday we’ll transform our room into the Wannsee Villa and hold our own top-secret Nazi conference to debate how to handle the biggest threat to the Aryan race—the Jew.”

The Jew. The way he said it makes my skin crawl.