“Lexie!” she screeched. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t answer. I just stood there, my eyes shiny and wild and my face flushed.

“Did you do this?”

I shook my head.

“Who did, then?”

And I thought, Oh, great.

This again.

Even though I hated Demi at that moment, I wasn’t going to tell on her. Not after what happened with Anastasia. So I said, “Someone.”

“Right. Upstairs,” Kyria Maria snapped.

She marched up behind me and into the classroom. “Sit down, please,” she said and then she stood at the front, shook her long dark curls, and folded her arms. Her arms are well muscled because she’s into exercise and goes to the gym all the time (Mom told me), so you don’t want to mess with her. She might be small and pretty, but she could lift a bus in each hand.

“Someone has just smashed the small window downstairs. I’m going to ask you all just once who did it, and I want an answer. So? Who was it?”

She looked at us and waited. No one said anything. Seconds went by that lasted a hundred years each.

“I see. In that case, I’m going to nominate someone to tell me.”

I swallowed. My face was so hot, you could have fried eggs on my cheeks, but I kept my eyes on the desk and my mouth shut.

“Aredy, who broke the window?”

Aredy wriggled in her chair like her jeans were crawling with maggots and said, “I don’t know. I was upstairs the entire time.”

“Demi? Did you see what happened?”

I squinted at the table. As if that lying toad would tell the truth. I didn’t twist around to look but Demi must have shaken her head, because Kyria Maria moved on to me.

“Lexie? I’m coming back to you because you were the only one who was there. If it wasn’t you, you’re going to need to tell me right now who it was.”

You could have roasted potatoes in my stomach. Done a barbecue on my scalp. My lips welded together, and all that came out of me was invisible funnels of rage.

“Well, then, we have a problem.” Kyria Maria’s voice was cold as winter in Russia. “If you can’t tell the truth, Lexie, you’ll have to stay behind so I can talk to your parents.”

I tried not to spontaneously combust but I was thinking, Truth?

TRUTH?

Do. Not. Even. Mention. That. Word.

The rest of the lesson, Kyria Maria was in a monstrous mood.

I sat there squirming. We were still in church, don’t forget. Broken windows and lying weren’t very holy. We were all going to go to hell, for sure, and that was freaking me out, but that still wasn’t a good enough reason to tell Kyria Maria what had happened. I’ll tell you something about trying to understand the whole truth–lies are more hellish than any hell I could ever picture.

Kyria Maria kept me after class, and when Mom arrived, she told her about the window. “I have to assume it was Lexie,” she said. “Since no one’s told me otherwise.”

“Did you break it, Lexie?” Mom asked, right there and then, in a voice so loud and hard, people in Denmark took cover under the table. Her eyes were filled with shock and shame and disappointment and all those bad things you don’t want to ever see in your mother’s eyes.

I frowned and stuck my jaw out. “No.”

“Who did, then?”

“Not me.”

“If you can’t say who it was, then you’re guilty,” Mom said. Don’t even ask me where she got that nonsense from. “How could you? In our church! If Pappou knew…”

Pappou had been chairman of our church for about twenty years. He wasn’t now, but it made him a little like the Pope in our community.

“Sorry, Angelina, but I’m going to have to ask you to pay for the window,” Kyria Maria said, putting her hand on Mom’s arm.

“Of course. Send me the bill.”

“First I have to find the caretaker and ask him to cover it up so we don’t get broken into.”

Mom gasped. “Oh no. I didn’t even think of that.”

“Meanwhile, perhaps Lexie here should reconsider her relationship with the truth.”

Invisible insects crawled around under my skin. I wanted to shout, Yeah? Really? You think so?, but I was in enough trouble already.

Mom edged away from me like I was a violent criminal. She shook her head and said, “I’m so sorry, Maria. I don’t know what’s got into her. It’s probably…you know.”

Which annoyed me. It’s probably you know what?

Kyria Maria said, “That’s what I thought, too.” Which annoyed me even more.

Mom gave Kyria Maria a look and said, “It’s late. We’ve got to go. Say hi to your mom. Tell her the tiropita she made for Nikki’s birthday was the best I’ve ever tasted.”

Kyria Maria said, “Oh my God!” (That can’t be a good thing to say in church, right?) “She’ll be over the moon! Bye, Angelina. See you at Zumba.”