Mr. C. stands up and paces the aisles a few more times, so I try to focus on the essay questions. The directions say to pick three out of five. The sixth, for extra credit, is actually fairly interesting.

“Is democracy a failed experiment? Pick another failed social experiment and compare.”

This one is a soft pitch to me. I start by stating the obvious, which is that to determine whether or not an experiment has failed, you first have to define success. And then I introduce my favorite subject to talk about, which is communism, although I do point out that putting communism next to democracy like that often leads to sloppy thinking because one is an economic system and the other one is political, and they could go together, theoretically. And then I get into it. I drop the big names—Lenin, Marx, Mao—although strictly speaking, I don’t know what they did or thought or said. I just know you’re not supposed to like them, and that’s good enough for me. I like how their names sound; they ring with this upsetting clang, like a pot dropped in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant, disturbing the dignity and repose of the capitalists at lunch. Or at least they should. My father was a radical political economics professor and had some theories about oppression and human liberation, which is all I know about him. By the time I’m two pages into my essay, though, it’s not about my father. As I cover page after page, everything else disappears, the noise from the wall clock, the depressed sighs of the other students. One thought leads to the next thought until I’m scrawling down things I didn’t even know I knew. It’s like I’m learning something, maybe from myself.

“Miss Velasco.” Mr. C. is standing next to my desk.

“What?” I look around. The classroom is empty. I’m the only one left. I slam the test down on his desk and run out of the room.

Outside, it’s started to rain.

I thread my way down the stairs in front of the school, through groups of kids standing around in front of the buses on their last day of classes. Nobody says a word to me as I go by. Grimshaw and I are a pair of pariahs, like a virus in a lipid envelope. She’s poor and I’m smart, so between the two of us we’re practically an un-American activity. On the other side of the line of buses, Grimshaw is waiting for me on our bench.

When I sit down next to her, she puts two cigarettes in her mouth, lights both, and hands one to me. Every year at the end of the last day of school, it’s our tradition to smoke a ceremonial cigarette on school property.

“A wet menthol,” I comment. “Yum.”