Five new kids join our grade. It’s always the same with new kids. They come on the first day in their public school clothes, their huge pointy collars, polyester blends, and all the wrong shoes, but by the next Monday they’re in topsiders and Bean shoes, the boys with tiny buttons at the tips of their little collars and the girls in wraparound skirts. Then, once they look like the rest of us, they change everything around. No one is in my homeroom with Miss Perth. Mallory, Patrick, Gina, and Neal are all with Mr. Harding. I think on the first day that Neal will explain why he didn’t write back. I stand right behind him in the lunch line, but he never says a word. By Thursday I hear he likes a new girl named Tillie Armstrong. I decide never to speak to him again. On Friday I take a suitcase to school and in the afternoon I wait with Patrick and the other kids from his carpool for Mrs. Utley to pick us up. She’s late because she had brownies in the oven. She brings them and we pass the warm pan from the front to the back to the way-back, cutting out huge squares.
