Today Sofia does not participate as her classmates look at pictures of sea creatures in old copies of National Geographic and Mr. Monaghan’s special Encyclopædia Britannica. She does not ooh and whoa with them as Mr. Monaghan draws a to-scale stick figure of a human being on the chalkboard, and next to it a to-scale giant squid, and next to that a blue whale. She stares at Marco, and she waits in vain for Mr. Monaghan to remember that it should have been her turn. She feels the great unfairness of life rippling through every fiber of her being.

Antonia knows something is wrong with Sofia with the sixth sense of someone who does not understand, yet, that human beings think of themselves as separate containers. She participates in the sea creatures lesson, though rumbling around in the crush of children without Sofia makes her nervous. She cranes her neck with everyone else to see the picture of sharks lined up by size, and gasps on cue at the diagram of a shark’s many rows of sinister, red-rimmed teeth, but she sits quietly as Mr. Monaghan calls on her classmates to name the seven seas, and doesn’t raise her hand even when the rest of the class is stumped on “Indian.” She looks down at her shoes, which are very black against the pale of her stockinged legs. For a moment, she imagines being one inch tall. She could live inside her desk then—weave blankets out of torn-up paper, the way the mice she found in her closet had done with tissues; eat crumbs and bits of rice from leftover arancini and the occasional shaving of milk chocolate. She does not notice Sofia narrow her eyes as Marco makes his way back up the row of desks.

It is this moment that Sofia’s anger boils and cannot be contained inside her skin anymore. As Marco DeLuca approaches her seat, Sofia clenches her small hands, and extends her leg to catch him across the shins.

Antonia looks up to see Marco DeLuca sobbing as he picks himself up from the floor. In the din that follows, Antonia snatches up images that she will sort out later—Sofia, her leg still lifted into the aisle, her mouth open in shock; Maria Panzini, wailing and clutching the side of her desk in a very good impression of an old lady; Mr. Monaghan, face bare in unmasked shock and horror; and a single, glistening, red-rimmed tooth, lying on its side on the linoleum floor.

And as Antonia watches, she sees a strange expression creep over Sofia’s face—a version of the one Sofia’s father wears when he smashes a water bug under his shoe, or slits the glistening belly of a fish.