“Seamus, that’s enough,” Miss Kelly said.

“Better than being an albino mushroom bonehead like you.” Annie was so mad she went to stand up, but Nora, who was sitting next to her, took hold of Annie’s arm and pulled her back down.

“Annie, you’re going to stay behind after school if you say another word.” Miss Kelly, brightly flushed, looked as if she had been canning all day.

Lew entered the classroom, faraway as ever.

“Lewis.” Miss Kelly vented a little of her frustration. “Late on your first day. That’s not a good sign, is it?”

“Sorry, Miss Kelly.” He didn’t give an excuse and sat down next to Raj.

His presence changed the atmosphere of the room. It was as if a leopard had just sauntered in. Everyone, including Miss Kelly, was in awe of him. Annie felt a little heart clutch of proud possession as he glanced toward her and smiled.

At recess, Annie, Raj, and Nora sat together in the lunchroom. Lew had left. He said his dad needed him for the hay harvest, but Annie wondered if he was just ashamed he had no lunch with him. Annie liked to watch Nora eat because she did it so primly, which she certainly hadn’t learned from her family. She had started to use an astringent for her acne, which would cause her whole face to go red and peel, and was thinking about getting the new radiation treatment.

Seamus, Aaron, and a couple of other boys brought their lunch to the next table. It was clear they were curious about Raj. For a while they whispered and laughed. Finally Walter Novus, whose dad owned the shoe store, called over, “Hey, Roger, we’re kicking your ass in Korea.”

“He’s from India, you muttonhead,” Annie said.

“I’m from England.” Raj was clearly tired of all this.

Seamus spoke. “Roger, which one’s black then, your dad or your mom?”

“He’s—” Annie began, but Raj cut her off.

“My mum.”

“Where is she, then?” Seamus asked.

“She’s dead.”

“How’d she die?”

Raj didn’t answer for a moment. Finally he turned to the boys, his face full of sad gravity, and said quietly, “We lived in a small tribe near the Pungabini Mountains in the north of India. She was the youngest daughter of the chief and was sacrificed to Kali the Destroyer because we’d had two years of bad harvest and they blamed it on her marrying an outsider.”

All the boys looked at him astonished.

“Sacrificed?” Seamus said.

For a second Raj appeared close to tears. “They staked her to the ground and stampeded a herd of elephants. My dad—he was a mercenary and a hunter—hid out and tried to shoot the elephants as they came close, but there were too many.”