He throws back his head and laughs. His laughter makes me laugh, too, like I just said something really funny. Sabine seems mostly concerned that her white clothes not brush up against anything dusty. “Follow me,” Hugh says.

He goes up a set of narrow stairs at the back. The stairs are creaky and kind of spongy underfoot. The light gets clearer and brighter as we ascend. At the top of the stairs, he opens the door and we step into a high-ceilinged room with lots of dormers and roof angles, all paneled with beadboard painted white; a simple single bed with an iron bedstead; a table and a chair. And books, lots and lots of books. The light through the trees shifts around and throws shadows everywhere so the place looks alive.

“Let’s get some windows open in here,” he says.

“So we can breathe,” says Sabine.

“Your father created this space,” Hugh tells me. “It’s where he came when he wanted to be left alone.”

I start reading the spines along one shelf. “Are all the books in here about China?” I ask.

“Not necessarily,” Hugh says. “Keep looking.”

It’s the most political library I’ve ever seen. Revolutions. Russia. Communism. The exact same books that Mr. C. has in his classroom, only more of them and just as dusty. I stand up and look around me. “I feel like I’m back in Western Civ. Mr. C. would absolutely love this place.”

“Who is this?”

“He’s the guy who failed me in history,” I tell him, “and I have to take it over when I get back home. He has all these books, and I read them when things get a little slow.”

“You failed history?” Hugh asks. “How could my brother’s child possibly fail history?”

“It’s complicated.” While I leaf through books that feature Marx, Mao, Castro, and other people that would irritate my mother, I tell Hugh and Sabine about Mr. C. and why I’m in Foundations, and my friend Melody Grimshaw, and Irony Man, and how we failed the exam together, all of which Hugh seems to find amusing. He seems interested, though, so I keep talking, and as I tell them about my life, the Serena that is far away joins with the Serena that is here and makes me feel that I am still the Serena who can talk to people. I sort of talk the two Serenas together.

“Tell me more about Irony Man,” Hugh says. “How does he fit in?”

“He’s my new superhero action figure,” I explain. “He rescues people in distress, but then he delivers them to a far worse situation than the one they escaped.”