After the presentation, Mrs. Brisa started to clap. Alma and Shirin clapped too. Shirin even whistled.
Dustin did not clap.
“Is this over now?” he demanded. “Can I leave?”
Mrs. Brisa stopped clapping and turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Whoever told you that you had to come, Dustin?”
“You did,” Dustin grumbled. “You said I had to come for tutoring.”
“I never said that,” Mrs. Brisa said, shaking her head. “You don’t need tutoring. You need to do your homework. And you need to come to class.”
“You sent me that letter,” Dustin insisted.
Shirin jumped up from her stool now. She almost tumbled over but Hugo caught her arm. “Even if Mrs. Brisa did tell you to come for tutoring last week,” she said, “this is a lecture. You know that. There’s no reason for you to be here!”
“Unless you want to be,” Mrs. Brisa corrected gently. “Mr. Evans—your teacher from last year—told me that you love science. He told me that you and Hugo used to be quite the duo.”
Alma saw Shirin’s eyes bug and her mouth drop open in shock. It was exactly how she felt. Dustin and Hugo—a duo?
Before she could think about it further, Dustin started to yell.
“I don’t want to be here!” he shouted, right at Mrs. Brisa. “I thought I had to come! Why would I want to come here on purpose? Like I haven’t listened to that show-off enough in my life!”
“Dustin,” Mrs. Brisa began. “Let’s take a breath.”
“You are so rude! Ugh!” Shirin was advancing toward Dustin. “No one made you come here. You just don’t have any friends. Or maybe you just like making people feel bad. Maybe you’re just mean!”
There was a long silence, a thunderhead silence, a silence waiting to crackle into lightning and fire.
But instead, Dustin grabbed his backpack. “Whatever,” he muttered. “You’re the mean one.”
Then he ran from the room.
Mrs. Brisa watched him go. She didn’t look nearly as flustered as Alma thought she should be after being screamed at. “Hugo, that was an excellent presentation,” she said, turning to the front of the room. “I do want to remind you three that you cannot exclude anyone from a school club. However, if someone is being a bully or making themselves a nuisance, we can go through proper channels to have them removed.” She raised her eyebrows at Shirin. “Proper channels, not yelling, right?”
Shirin nodded, but she didn’t look apologetic.
Alma didn’t want to talk about Dustin anymore, and she didn’t want to stay in the Science Lab in case he came back.
“I have some things to show you two,” she said, glancing between Hugo and Shirin. “Maybe we can go now?”
“Yes,” Hugo said, gathering the remaining stacks of notes. “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Brisa. But if you’ll excuse us, we have some elemental hypotheses that are in need of serious attention.”