MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19

We’re going on a field trip to the history museum

and I end up on the same bus as Deja.

I try my hardest to sit at the front but she sees me

before I can duck down—yells my name

relentlessly

until I make my way to the back with her

and her friends.

She lets me have the window

and allows me to be ignored

but in closer proximity.

Her friends are loud and sing songs

I don’t know, and some that I do.

She overhears me murmuring to Chaka Khan

a name I only know because of ISAP,

and she bumps me with her elbow,

beaming. We sit close, singing low,

and then she bumps me again, pointing:

In the seat across the aisle and one up,

Melody Ross is sitting with Matt Wheaton,

her boyfriend of two days—

they have a sweatshirt over

their legs. Her hand is under it,

in Matt’s lap, moving.

Not slick, Deja whispers, laughing,

and it doesn’t occur to me that this

can be funny, that some things

can be done by some people

and not by others

and the rules change all the time.

When I crack up, Deja thinks I’m laughing

at Melody and Matt, but really

I’m laughing at the lightbulb in my head

and how it only took one person to screw it in.