Today when Petra and I walk into the tutoring room five minutes after the last bell, Nellie Long is sitting at her desk, gazing at the ceiling with a huge smile on her face as if there’s something wondrous up there. （I check. There’s not.） But I ruin her good mood as soon as I suggest we get to work.
“I don’t want to read Lord of the Flies.” She scowls at me like I assigned the book.
“Why not?”
“It has nothing to do with my life.”
“It seems like it’s just about boys,” I concede, “but really it’s about the human condition.”
She looks at me blankly. “I am not a fly,” she says.
“Or a lord,” Petra adds from across the room. I glare at her.
“How about your history essay?” I offer Nellie.
She sighs and agrees to this reluctantly, hands me her essay, watches the worry accrue on my face as I read. “See, what I’m trying to say,” she explains, “is that even though World War II happened thousands of years ago, it’s still relevant now.”
“Okay,” I say. “How?”
“How?”
“How is World War II still impacting our lives today?”
“Obviously because”—her expression suggests maybe I’m the one who needs tutoring—“I have to write this big report about it.”
Kyle M. and Kyle R. are wrestling on the floor instead of letting Petra help them with geometry. Petra is doing her nails. When Mrs. Radcliffe shoots her a dirty look, Petra says, “I’m not getting in the middle of that. I’m a pacifist.” When I shoot her a dirty look, she raises her eyebrows and says, “Trade you?”
I look at Nellie’s essay. She’s written “World War Too” a dozen times already, and she’s only got three paragraphs.
“Deal.”
The Kyles are likelier to pay attention to me than Petra anyway because they want to get in good with my sister. They like Mirabel. Everyone likes Mirabel, but them more than most. They’ve had a crush on her since we were little, though it would take a lot more than being nice to me at tutoring for her to be interested in either one of them.
I stand over the Kyle-ball and try to be as fierce as possible though I am small and they are huge, though I am one and they seem many, though I am standing still and they are rolling around like drunk puppies.
“Liar,” Kyle R. spits.
“You’re the liar,” Kyle M. retorts.
“Liar,” Kyle R. says back. Limited vocabulary. They should study with Petra and me. Actually, I guess that’s what tutoring is, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
“I saw it.”
“You didn’t.”
“My dad saw it.”
“Then he’s a liar too.”
Petra rolls her eyes at me. I smile at her. She smiles back.
“Go for it,” she tells me, because sometimes the only way out is wading over to the other side.
“What did you and your father see?” I ask Kyle M.
They stop, part, and sit up, panting, still drunk puppies.
“Moving truck,” he wheezes. “We both saw it. Down by the library. A moving truck.”
* * *
Petra’s mother does not leave her house. It might be that what happened broke something in her brain, or it might be that what happened honed something in her brain so that she realized she was safer inside, but in any case, it’s been five years since she went outdoors. She used to leave on Sunday mornings to go to church, but she’s Sikh, and though Pastor Jeff did his best, she felt she could do just as well on her own at home. She’s perfectly loving and involved in her daughter’s life, but only in her house.
Petra’s father lives in New Jersey but works in New York, which he calls “the city,” as if there’s only one. This sounds glamorous, and might be for all I know, but Petra reports that he lives in a dark one-bedroom apartment with a view of a parking lot, spends hours commuting on a train that smells like summer feet, and then does other people’s taxes all day for not even enough money to be able to afford to get an apartment large and non-gross enough that his only child could at least visit more often.
Since Petra’s mother only lives in her house and Petra’s father only lives in New Jersey, they bought Petra a car. It is older than we are, at least fifty percent mold, and also smells like summer feet, but it is better than my car which is a bicycle.
After tutoring, I climb into the passenger seat, and with absolutely no discussion, Petra heads toward the library.