Chapter 6

The next morning, Oak walked up the street to the corner where her mom had told her the bus would come to collect her. She left a little bit early, just to be safe, and there was a touch of something that felt like fall in the air. Back home in San Francisco, the days would be cool already, and feeling this colder air made Oak especially homesick.

She sighed deeply and stopped on the corner. There was no one else there, and after a few minutes, Oak wondered if maybe she’d misunderstood her mother, or if perhaps her mother had been wrong. But then she saw someone else walking up Rollingwood Drive toward her: her next-door neighbor and classmate. Alder, his name tag had read. She was relieved to see him, even though she didn’t like him, because his presence meant that she was in the right place after all.

He didn’t look thrilled to see her, and other than lifting his chin a tiny bit in acknowledgment of her presence, he didn’t say hello, and his hands stayed where they were, firmly holding on to the straps of his backpack.

They stood there, side by side, waiting for the bus without talking. Finally, though, Oak thought, This is ridiculous, and said, “So, do you think Mr. Rivera will bring us doughnuts today?”

For a second, it seemed like Alder was going to ignore her, but he must have decided that was too rude, because he answered. “Why would he? He learned all our names by the end of the day.”

Oak shrugged. “I dunno, but I’ll bet he does. He just seems like the kind of guy who would.”

“Whatever,” Alder said. “I’ll bet he doesn’t.”

“Then it’s a bet,” Oak challenged, annoyed by what a jerk Alder was being. What did he have against her, anyway? He was the weird window creeper, not her!

“Whatever,” Alder said again.

Just then, the bus arrived.

“Five dollars,” Oak threw over her shoulder as the bus doors opened and she mounted the first step.

Alder didn’t reply.

“Well, you’re new,” said the driver. She was a pale, youngish woman with short brown hair that lay in a wave across her forehead. Her ears were each pierced three times, and she wore a black T-shirt with white block letters that read “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE” and jeans with holes in the knees and black lace-up boots. Oak immediately decided she liked her.

“I’m Faith,” the bus driver said. “What’s your name?”

“Oak,” said Oak.

Faith’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No kidding,” she said. “How about that? Two tree kids on one street.”

Oak felt offended to have been lumped in with Alder, but she decided to forgive Faith this one time.

But as she walked down the aisle, Faith called after her, “Two tree kids! On one street called Rollingwood!”

She would have to forgive Faith twice.

Mr. Rivera greeted the class with not one, not two, but three boxes of doughnuts.

“Regular, gluten free, and vegan,” he said proudly. “Everyone, take one to start.”

The line for the regular box was longest, so Oak decided to try a vegan doughnut. Cynthia was in that line ahead of her.

“Oh!” said Cynthia. “Are you vegan, too?”

“No,” Oak said, “but I don’t mind eating like one.”

“Meat is murder,” Cynthia said wisely.

“I guess,” Oak said, though she thought “murder” was maybe taking it a bit far. “Are you a vegan?”

“Most of the time,” Cynthia said. She selected a maple bar and placed it on a napkin. Oak took a round glazed.

It felt weird to sit back down in rows to eat the doughnuts; it seemed like everyone felt like doughnuts turned the classroom into a semi-party, and people clumped together in groups of threes and fours, turning toward each other so their backs were out to the rest of the room.

Oak clustered up with Cynthia and Miriam. Miriam had taken one of the gluten-free doughnuts, chocolate with chocolate frosting. It was smaller than the regular doughnuts and it looked denser.

Oak glanced around at the other clusters as she bit into her doughnut; there was a really tall, athletic-looking boy with floppy blond hair and a sunburn, laughing with a group of boys around him. It was the biggest group, six boys all together. There was a clutch of four girls over by the window at the front of the classroom, laughing conspiratorially about something. There were a few boys and one girl over by the door, talking about a game, it sounded like, from the scrap of conversation Oak overheard.

“That game really plays best if you have a couple of icosa-hedrons,” one of the boys said.

The girl who was with them, who wore her straight black hair in a ponytail laced through the hole in the back of her baseball cap, rolled her eyes behind thick purple frames and said, “Just call it a d-twenty, Dorian—no one is impressed.” Her name was Darla; Oak remembered from her name tag the day before.

Mr. Rivera stood, leaning on his desk, ankles crossed, smiling as he chewed. His mustache, Oak noticed, was dusted with powdered sugar. When he’d popped the last piece into his mouth, he wiped the sugar from his face, balled up the napkin, and threw it overhand toward the trash can. It missed by at least a foot, landing soundlessly on the floor.

Mr. Rivera looked up and saw that Oak had seen his bad shot. He smiled and shrugged, like What can you do? and then retrieved the napkin and tossed it in the can.

She liked him, Oak decided. Doughnuts, and a sense of humor, and plus he’d earned her five dollars. Oak looked around the room, wondering where Alder was; maybe she could collect her winnings now and rub it in a little.

But then she saw him—he was sitting alone at his desk and picking forlornly at a doughnut. Oak suddenly didn’t feel like being pushy or making fun.

“Okay, kiddos, finish up your doughnuts,” Mr. Rivera said. “It’s time to get to work!”

The class broke into a collective groan, but Alder, Oak noticed, looked relieved. He folded a napkin around his doughnut and tucked it into his desk, then reached around into his backpack to get out his school stuff.

The other kids filed toward the trash can to throw away their napkins; the sunburned kid, Oak noticed, and another boy, who seemed to be his friend—Marcus, she thought his name was—both successfully tossed in their balled-up napkins from a pretty impressive distance, causing Mr. Rivera to whistle in appreciation. Within a few minutes, everyone was seated at their desks, and they had to pull out their science books, and the school day began.

“I want to try something a little different this year,” Mr. Rivera said. “Something exciting.”

Oak didn’t know how exciting anything he had planned could be, if it had to do with the heavy brick of a textbook on her desk, but she was willing to listen.

“Each of us is made of many pieces,” Mr. Rivera began, snapping off the cap from a green marker and turning to the whiteboard. “Let’s make a list.”

He wrote in big block letters, all capitals:

PIECES OF A PERSON

“Arms!” shouted out Marcus, and the class erupted into laughter.

Mr. Rivera laughed too. “Sure,” he said, “arms.” And he wrote it on the board, followed by another word—BODIES.

“Okay,” he continued, “so we don’t have to list all the parts of the human body one by one, because that could take all day, let’s just leave it at BODIES. And, yes! We are made of our bodies. But what else?”

There was a moment when no one said anything, and Mr. Rivera stood patiently waiting, twirling the green marker around his fingers in a smooth and practiced motion.

Then Cynthia said, “Memories?”

“Yes!” said Mr. Rivera. “Definitely.”

MEMORIES went on the board underneath ARMS—BODIES.

“Family,” someone yelled from the back.

Mr. Rivera nodded and added FAMILY to the list.

The class seemed to loosen up, and kids called out words almost as fast as Mr. Rivera could write.

“DNA!”

“Water!”

“Blood!”

“Traditions!”

“Love.”

“Electricity.”

“Teeth!”

“Toenails!”

“Bacteria! We’re made of millions of them!”

Mr. Rivera wrote down each contribution, including the body parts, even though he’d said they’d lump those together. Soon the board was covered in an assortment of words that looked pretty strange together.

“Okay,” Mr. Rivera said at last, capping his marker and setting it aside. “Now, I want you all to copy down this list, and I want you to circle three of these things, whichever seem the most interesting to you.”

Oak used capital block letters to write her list, like Mr. Rivera had. Then she sat back and stared at the words. Which ones intrigued her the most?

Slowly, she circled ELECTRICITY.

Then, MEMORIES.

And finally, FAMILY.