River is normal. This is what normal looks like. Not normal for here, normal for out there, normal for everywhere else—bright, educated, untroubled, unworried. Whole. And us? We’re not normal, not for anywhere.
And some things come clear more slowly, to us and to bright, clean, sparkling River himself. He knows much about the world out there and, apparently, the world which built it and the worlds which came before, but about our world here, the one in which he finds himself now, he knows nothing. Not even who he is.
Two
“Templeton?” says Nellie.
“Templeton,” I affirm. I have heard it from three different people now, and that is how many sources Mrs. Lasserstein says you need before you can put a fact in your research paper.
“The rat in Charlotte’s Web?”
The Kyles laugh at Nellie because we are sixteen, and she is not remembering Charlotte’s Web from her childhood or reading it aloud to a younger sibling but is actually studying it with her supplemental reading group. But the Kyles should not laugh at her. One, because it is mean. Two, because we all read at different levels, and different does not mean smart or stupid, and everyone has their own strengths as well as their own challenges. Three, because Charlotte’s Web is a good book regardless of how old you are. But mostly, four, because she is right.
“Yes,” I tell her and the Kyles. “A rat. Exactly.”
Because I have also confirmed that River Templeton is that Templeton. His father is Nathan, not Duke, but only because Duke is his grandfather. I have only one source on this rather than three, but since the source is River himself, that makes it a primary source rather than a secondary source, and sometimes you only get one of those. You could also interview his father, but of course he did not come to school. You could also interview his father’s father, but he would not grant you an interview. I know because Mama tried. A lot.
What happened was that I saw Mab in the hallway looking weird.
“One,” I said, and she did not even look up.
“One!” I said louder, and many other people looked up, but Mab did not.
“One,” I came up and said in her ear, and her head snapped over to me, and her eyes met my eyes and told them something was terrible. “Something is wrong?” I guessed.
She nodded.
“You feel sick?”
“No.”
“You thought of something sad?”
“No.”
“You got a bad grade on something?” This was a stupid guess because Mab never gets a bad grade on anything.
“That’s him.” She pointed with her chin at the walking-away back of someone. I could not see his front, but I still knew who she meant because there was only one him we had discussed recently: the new person living in my library.
“He is a kid?”
“He came with his family.”
“He is Track A?” I asked even though I was pretty sure because otherwise how would Mab know?
“Sure. He’s not from here.”
“Some people who are not from here also are not Track A,” I said.
She did not say anything because that was true, but that was not her point.
“Was he mean?” I guessed. She looked at me for the first time in the conversation. I looked away.
“No. He was fine.”
“What is his name?” I asked.
Mab’s expression was hard to identify. Closest was proud. She looked proud of me. Like I had finally asked the right question.
“River,” she said.
“River?” I wrinkled my nose. It was a weird name.
“River Templeton.”
She made big eyes at me, so big I had to meet them, and then I had to look away.
“Are you making a joke?” I asked because Mab is often making a joke, and it is hard to tell.
“It is a sick joke,” she said. And first I felt relieved and then I felt strange because one, it was not funny, and two, she did not look like she thought it was either.
That is when I got my other two sources.
“Alex Malden,” I called to him politely. “Can you tell me the full name of the new student in your class please?”
Alex Malden looked at me like I am weird but said, “River Templeton?” His voice went up at the end like a question, but his question was not whether the new student’s name was River Templeton. He knew the new student’s name was River Templeton. His question was why I was asking, why I was asking him, and why I am so weird.
No one knows the answers to these questions, so I turned to Petra.
She started nodding before I could even ask the question. “For real, sister,” she said, and she meant me, even though we are not sisters, because my sister is like her sister which makes us like sisters too. That is the transitive property which I learned in geometry.