None of us says anything as we climb the steps back to Ms. Sett’s room. But when we get to the top of the steps, Denis says, “Guys, I’m scared that she’s going to really be mean to us now.”

“We can take it,” I say.

Marci gives me a silly look. “We don’t have to take it. We’ll just complain if she targets us. I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Denis sighs. “We told on her.”

“She’s a grown-up,” I say. “This isn’t elementary school. I mean—well—you know what I mean.”

“We have a lot to do now,” Marci says. “I don’t care if she’s mean to us. I want new books. I’ll do what it takes to get them.” Denis and I nod and mutter different versions of agreement.

When we get back to class, Ms. Sett has the lights off and has a video cued on the whiteboard. “We have a day off school on Monday,” Ms. Sett says. “Let’s talk about why!”

She starts the video about Christopher Columbus. It’s all the same stuff we learned in second grade. How he got here in 1492 and “discovered” America, how one of his three ships wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, and how he was considered a hero in Spain. Nothing about how Columbus harmed the Indigenous population from the minute he landed. Nothing about how a person can’t “discover” a place that was already there and populated by people who already knew about it.

I keep hoping that the video will say something more honest toward the end, but the narrator only closes with the rhyme we all learned when we were seven: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue …

The minute it’s over, I put my hand up.

Ms. Sett says, “Mac?”

“I would like to talk about the truth about Christopher Columbus,” I say.

She nods.

I continue, “He enslaved, tortured, and murdered Native people and I don’t think we should consider him a hero anymore. I don’t think we should have done that in the first place.”

“That’s a valid opinion,” Ms. Sett says. “But without Columbus, we wouldn’t be here, right? And I don’t know about you, but I like living here.”

“That’s colonization, not discovery,” Marci points out. I’m glad she says it because I need time to gather my argument.

“I like living here,” I say, “but I also know that if someone showed up tomorrow the way Columbus did, and took you and your friends and made you slaves, sold your young daughters, or killed a bunch of your family, you probably wouldn’t be okay with it.”

“He didn’t make anyone slaves,” Aaron scoffs.

Ms. Sett huffs through her nostrils and rolls her eyes. “This is really a discussion for high school. Or college.”

“The truth is a discussion for high school or college?” I ask, and as the words come out of my mouth, I realize I am not in full control of them. Something happened to me in the principal’s office. I’m mad again. “Anyway, you said this classroom was like college on the first day of school. Why wait?”

“He didn’t make anyone slaves,” Aaron says again.

I turn to him. “Yes, Aaron, he did. First he took women and gave them to the sailors on his ships. Day one. Imagine he took your sister and gave her to strangers.”

Hannah Do looks uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be so blunt, but it’s hard to suppress a superpower.

“Plus,” I say, “he then enslaved the men in every place he found. He brought diseases that killed more than half the populations he came into contact with, and then when the slaves tried to revolt, he killed them and paraded their bodies through the streets. That was in the Dominican Republic, if you want to know. He was governor there.”

The classroom is quiet.

Ms. Sett puts her hands together in a sarcastic soft clap and speaks slowly. “Again, Mac, I think this is a history lesson for when you’re older. For now, let’s just do our worksheets and get this lesson over with, okay?”

“So you want us to learn lies?” I ask. I am way too mad right now and I know I’m being disrespectful. I know better, but if she doesn’t respect us enough to let us read regular words in a book, I don’t see why I should respect her while she teaches lies.

“He didn’t give women to sailors,” Aaron says.

“Aaron, be quiet,” Ms. Sett says. She looks suddenly awkward.

“You know,” I say to her. “You know the truth but you don’t want to teach it.”

“We’ll discuss it during recess,” she says. “Here in my room.”

I think I just got recess detention for telling the truth.

“Detention?” I ask.

She ignores me. “Let’s get these worksheets done and we can move on to the geography of the Caribbean! I even have my own pictures from three different islands!”

I say it again. “Detention?”

She ignores me a second time.

“Open your computers and start on the two lessons in there. You have fifteen minutes.”

I don’t like being ignored. It’s like pretending something isn’t happening when it is. While the other kids do their schoolwork, I use the search engine to look up if there’s a word for pretending something isn’t happening when it is.

I make a bullet-pointed list of terms for it.

• Gloss over
• Sweep aside
• Kick something into the long grass
• Turn a blind eye
• Look the other way

My favorite is the one in the middle. So many things in my life this week have been kicked into the long grass, I feel like I live in the long grass. My skin gets itchy just thinking about it.

Recess detention is more long grass. Ms. Sett either forgets she gave it to me or she remembers and leaves me here by myself to think about why we shouldn’t learn the truth about Columbus in sixth grade. Deep down I worry about how mad I am again, and I know the reason I got recess detention was because I couldn’t control my mouth earlier and I wonder if that leads to smashing mugs.

Then, twenty minutes in, she comes through the door and sits down at my pod of tables. I look at her and have this hole where my respect used to be. I don’t get how all my grace just disappeared today. But when I look at her, I can only see her sitting down and crossing out passages in books with a marker.

“I wish you wouldn’t challenge me in front of everyone like that,” she says. “I have a job to do and I must do it properly. Don’t get me wrong—I know what Columbus did and I know what you’re talking about. I just can’t teach that stuff to kids this age.”

“We’re twelve,” I say.

“That’s young.”

“It’s six years from adulthood.”

“True, but this is an elementary school. Your parents and the other parents of students in this class wouldn’t appreciate that.”

“Mine would,” I argue.

This is when the bell chimes and we can hear kids in the hallways. Ms. Sett gets up and smiles and says, “I do understand that you come from a house that’s different from the other kids’. But please try to just keep what you learn at home out of my lessons.” The hole where my respect used to be gets bigger when she says what you learn at home in that tone.

“So the Earth can be flat?” I ask. This is kinda mean to bring up Aaron like this. I know it. I don’t care. She just made it sound like my family is weird for talking about real things.

She looks at me like she doesn’t get it and moves to her desk, sits down, and rummages through a pile of papers there, acting again like this isn’t a big deal.

I explain, “I have to leave the truth at home, but Aaron James gets to say the Earth is flat in front of a geography teacher?”

She grimaces—like she’s making a hard decision. I hope the decision is to stop teaching lies, but she also could have gas from her lunch.

“The class knows Earth is round,” she finally says.

“But they don’t know the truth about Columbus, which is why it’s important to talk about it.”

“They’ll figure it out. Same as you guys figured out the words in The Devil’s Arithmetic, right?” she says, leveling me with a look over her glasses.

I’m speechless as the room fills up with my classmates.

I look at Hannah, who’s just sat down next to me.

I feel a little dizzy and not like myself.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I say I’m fine, but really I’m mad again. Between the crazy rules around here, my dad being, well, my dad, and now this, I’m done hoping adults do the right thing. I’m done thinking they have our best interests at heart. Except for Mom and Grandad, I think they all live in the long grass, even if they know they shouldn’t.