There was tittering around the room. Everyone knew where Naomi had been: Bible study. She always missed everything for Bible study. She even missed their field trip to the amusement park when her dad made her go to a prayer retreat. In gym, when they did the unit on square dancing, she’d had to sit on the sidelines because her parents thought dancing was a sin.

“I don’t have much patience with excuses at this point, Naomi,” the teacher said. “You knew for some time that today was the deadline. I’ll need to speak with you after class.”

Then it was Nate’s turn. “I don’t have a proposal written out yet either,” he told Mrs. Unger. “I didn’t get around to it.”

“Maybe he was at Bible study too,” a voice muttered from the back row. “Or was it visiting hours at the loony bin?”

“That’s enough, Eddie,” Mrs. Unger said. “I can handle this problem without your participation, thank you very much.

“Since you and Naomi have not seen fit to plan properly, Nathan,” she went on, “I will make plans for the two of you. You can work together on your science fair project. I’ll expect a proposal by Thursday.”

Just last week Nate knew that Larry would have shot him a sympathetic look. But Larry was explaining his own project to the teacher now, something to do with robots. He and Travis had made arrangements to be partners—a team.

Nate looked at his friend. He thought about all the times they’d slept over at each other’s houses, the secret language they made up in third grade, the Soap Box Derby car they’d built for the fourth of July, their Paul Bunyan project (him dressed as Paul; Larry, in blue pajamas, as Babe, with blue food coloring on his face that took a week to wear off).

Now Larry was leaning over to confer on something with Travis, grinning in that way he had that always made Nate feel like grinning too. Suddenly Nate felt like Ernest Shackleton, alone in the middle of Antarctica with nothing around him but whiteout conditions in all directions. Worse than alone, actually. He was stuck in Antarctica with the most unpopular loser of a girl in the whole school.

If his dad were around, he would have loved helping Nate come up with his project idea. If his dad were around, the two of them would probably have been checking books out of the library, talking about their hypothesis. He’d be helping sketch diagrams, driving over to the hardware store to get the materials with his son. In Nate’s whole life he could never remember a time he’d embarked on a single project before first talking it out with his dad. Without him, the whole thing seemed impossible.