Ali’s parents were whispering at the kitchen table when she came downstairs the next morning. Their expressions were so glum it made Ali’s breath catch.
“Is Gigi okay?”
Digger motioned for her to take a seat. Ali braced herself for bad news.
“Your mother and I were just talking about Gigi. We’re worried about her. I couldn’t get her to leave her room at all yesterday. She seems distracted, and when I took her dinner up to her last night, she was talking to herself. We love living with Gigi, but we’re worried that at some point we won’t be able to care for her.”
“But Mom knows how to care for elderly people; that’s her job!”
Her mother winced. “You’re right. But at work we have special equipment, and alarms that tell us when a resident has left their room or is hurt, and there are lots of staff to help. At home, it’s just your dad.”
“I can help Digger after school and on the weekends. Please don’t make her leave.”
Digger’s voice was thick with emotion when he responded. “Ali, we’re not saying she’s going to have to go into a home, at least not yet. We’ll monitor her for a few weeks and hope things get better.”
“Can’t we hire a nurse?”
“Gigi doesn’t have money for a nurse. That’s why she asked us to move in with her. But we didn’t realize how unwell she was until we got here.”
“Where would she go if she couldn’t live here?”
“If it comes to that, I’ll try to have her placed in my nursing home soon,” said Ali’s mother. “I’ll talk to the administrator. We’ll likely need to get Gigi assessed in advance.”
“No!” Ali didn’t mean to shout, but Gigi stuck in a home with a bunch of sick old people made her frantic. “She’d hate it there, you know she would! The food would be awful, she wouldn’t have her things, and how could she feed her birds and squirrels?”
Her mother drew in a breath and reached for Ali’s hand. Ali jerked back and jumped to her feet. “She asked us to come live with her so she could stay at home. It sounds like you’re giving up on her. It’s not fair. You guys never try; you just move on when things get hard!”
“Ali.” There was a warning in Digger’s voice.
“Whatever,” Ali said. “I should go pack my things now. Nothing ever changes with you two.” She grabbed her knapsack and slammed the door on her way out. She didn’t care that school didn’t start for forty-five minutes or that she hadn’t eaten breakfast: she couldn’t bear to be in Gigi’s house a minute longer. Her parents were ruining everything again.
Ali avoided people all day. When Cassie pressed her about Toastmasters in homeroom, she muttered, “Probably,” even though she hadn’t checked with her parents. Not that they’d care one way or another. They didn’t care about her at all.
At lunchtime, she turned into a moth and hid in a crack in the wall behind a bookshelf in the library. She was too sad about Gigi and too mad at her parents to talk to anyone. It was only when she walked into science class that she recalled it was presentation day.
Emily cornered her straightaway. “Where were you? I looked for you at lunch. We needed to practice!”
“Sorry. I had to do something.” Emily had dressed up in a seafoam-green sweater dress and her hair was done up in elaborate French braids. Ali’s faded jeans and T-shirt were shabby in comparison.
Emily crossed her arms. “But you’re ready, right?”
Ali nodded. She’d read over her notes the night before, but now, knowing she had to speak in front of her classmates, she was a jittery mess. She took her seat, trying to swallow the lump that kept rising in her throat.
Mr. Corby clapped his hands. “Our first two presenters have done an interesting field study pertaining to the classification of organisms. Come on up, Ali and Emily.”
When the first slide popped onto the Smart Board everyone clapped. Emily had made it even better than what Ali had seen the day before. She’d changed the title to CLASSIFIED, and used a font to make it seem like their presentation was top secret. Everybody laughed. It must have taken her all evening to make it look so good. Ali had spent ten minutes reviewing her notes, then read until she fell sleep. No wonder Emily did so well in school.
Emily fixed her brightest smile on the class. “For our project, Ali and I did an inventory of all of the living creatures in a one-block radius of King’s Square in order to see how many of the kingdoms we could observe.”
ALI’S RULES FOR PRESENTATIONS
Ali was next, but her nerves made it impossible to deliver an Emily-worthy performance. Her words came out in a monotonous ramble. “We discovered that even though Emily lives in the heart of the city, she’s surrounded by tons of different organisms. For example, we saw almost a hundred people. Each of them was covered in bacteria, fungi, and archaea, which are single-celled organisms. We have ninety trillion of them in and on our bodies, which means that those hundred people had nine quadrillion things crawling on them.”
“I’m going to throw up,” said Tom.
“Cool,” said Cassie.
“Anyone else feel itchy?” asked Mr. Corby. The whole class, including Emily and Ali, cracked up.
Emily clicked through the presentation. She and Ali went back and forth, describing what they’d seen and identifying the correct classifications. Every time Emily spoke, people paid attention. They loved her funny pictures and videos. Ali didn’t get the same reaction. The longer she stood at the front of the classroom, the more rattled she became. Her delivery was so flat that during her last slide, a couple of kids yawned and Emily appeared ready to cry.
Still, if anyone could save the day, it was Emily with their closing remarks. “I guess to sum up, when we first started studying the classification system in class, it was kind of dull.” She grinned at Mr. Corby, who pretended to look offended. “But once we started to look around, we realized how cool it is to be able to organize the world into categories. Science helps us make sense of the world around us and allows us to talk in a common language.”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Corby, “Ali, anything to add?”
Ali shook her head and smiled weakly at Emily.
“Who was responsible for which part of the project?” Mr. Corby asked.
Emily took a deep breath. “We did the inventory together,” she began.
Ali waited. This wasn’t going to be good.
“And . . . ,” Mr. Corby said.
Had Emily already told him that she hadn’t pulled her weight? Emily paused. “And I did the rest.” She said it fast, like it pained her to say it.
Taylor gasped dramatically. Mr. Corby, face inscrutable, thanked them and told them to sit down.
“Can I say one last thing?” Emily asked.
“Of course.”
“I just want to say that I learned so much, like how to decide how to classify what you see. You think things are one way, and then they turn out to be something else altogether.” Without so much as a glance in Ali’s direction, she hurried to her seat. Ali slunk back to hers, wishing she could disappear.
“Next up: Cassie and Murray,” said Mr. Corby.