“Hey,” she said.

“Hi, I’m Jessica.”

“Yeah,” the girl said, as if that were terribly obvious. Jessica wondered if she’d already met her in some other class. “I’m Dess.”

“Hi.” Okay, that was hi twice. But what was she supposed to say?

Dess was looking at her closely, trying to figure something out. She squinted, as if the room were too bright for her. Her pale fingers played with the translucent, yellowish beads on one of the necklaces, sliding them one way and then the other. They clicked softly as she arranged them into unreadable patterns.

A book arrived on Jessica’s desk, breaking the spell that Dess’s fingers had cast.

“When you get your book,” Mr. Sanchez announced, “carefully fill out the form attached to the inside cover. That’s carefully, people. Any damage you don’t record is your responsibility.”

Jessica had been through this drill all day. Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma. The teachers made everyone go through them page by page, noting every mark or tear. Supposedly there would be a terrible reckoning at the end of the year for anyone criminal enough to damage their books. Jessica had helped her dad do the same thing for their rental house, recording every nail hole in the walls, checking every electrical socket, and going into detail about how the automatic garage door didn’t go up the last foot and a half. Moving had been annoying in all kinds of unexpected ways.

She began going through the textbook, dutifully checking every page. Jess sighed. She’d gotten a bad one. Underlined words, page 7. Scribbles on graph, page 19…

“So, how do you like Bixby so far, Jess?”

Jessica looked up. Dess was leafing through her book distractedly, apparently finding nothing. Half her attention was still on Jess.

The speech was all ready. Everyone in Oklahoma seems very nice, and it’s much warmer than Chicago. But somehow she knew that Dess didn’t want the speech.

Jess shrugged. “The water tastes funny here.”

Dess almost managed to smile. “No kidding.”

“Yeah, to me anyway. I guess I’ll get used to it.”

“Nope. I was born here, and it still tastes funny.”

“Great.”

“And that’s not all that’s funny.”

Jess looked up, expecting more, but Dess was hard at work now. She’d skipped to the answers at the back of the trig book. Her pen leapt from one to another in no apparent order while her other hand fiddled madly with the amber beads. Occasionally she would make a change. She noted each one on the form.

“Several moronic answers corrected by nonmoron, page 326,” she muttered. “Who checks these things? I mean, if you’re going to be all new-mathy and put the answers in the back, they might as well be the right ones.”