He knew that in Peru one bush housed more ant species than all of the United Kingdom, and that rain forests above three thousand feet were called cloud forests. That dogs had nose prints the way humans had fingerprints, that a violin contained more than seventy pieces of wood, and that ninety-nine percent of what people bought they didn’t use after six months. He knew that his sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Whitney, tried to make him skip another grade because he corrected her grammar mistakes out loud and napped during sharing time, and that his parents were melancholy when they ordered him pizza for dinner instead of making rice, or spoke quietly about their hometown and family that might be dead or alive, they would never know, or about America passing the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004, but so far had let only two hundred of their people—only two hundred, including their family!—into the country. He knew that Roberto the bully was right—that Mark’s father couldn’t really love him because he wasn’t his real father.
