Ethan rarely announces himself when he calls me. No Hey or Hi or How’s it going? It’s like in his mind we are engaged in a perpetual conversation that happens to be quiet a lot of the time. I take a breath. I dread it’s him and I’m glad it’s him and I’m especially glad he can’t see my face. I sit at my desk in my bedroom shuffling through my physics papers. “Yeah.” “Tricky, didn’t you think? Those last two?” “Um …” I find the paper. They hadn’t been. Should they have been? “Sort of. Not too bad.” “Of course not, Henny. They were only tricky for the normal people.” I recoil a little but say nothing. I know I find school easier than most people. I am self-conscious about it. I’m not sure why I am this way—if it’s because of my father’s energetic homeschooling or if it’s just a quirk of my brain. Sometimes I wonder if it’s the reason they let me come here. To a different person I would say something like “I already got to this section in a summer school class,”
