Monday, January 5

DAVID

I get on the bus the first day after winter break, and Luke waves at me like he wants me to sit next to him, so I do, even though he’s two rows closer to the front than I usually sit. Two stops later, Sammie gets on and sits across from us. She’s carrying a rolled-up poster, which she sets down on the seat beside her. I don’t say anything about it because I know better.

Luke leans forward and flashes his white teeth and dimple at her. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, hi, Luke,” Sammie says. Then she turns to me. “Where’s your extra credit science project?”

“We had extra credit for science?” Which, of course, I knew.

“Yes,” she says impatiently. “It was super easy. All you had to do was calculate what you should be eating using MyPlate and keep a food diary for two days, and then match what you actually ate to the MyPlate recommendations.”

“Bummer,” I say, trying to sound super regretful. “I wish I’d remembered.”

Sammie always does the extra credit, even if she has an A-plus in the class, and she always thinks everyone else does it too, even when they’re me, a kid who’s allergic to schoolwork generally and to extra credit specifically.

Behind her back, the guys call her “Snergir,” which stands for “Super Nerd Girl,” which she kind of is, but they mostly say it because they’re jealous that she’s a better athlete.

“That sounds boring,” Luke says. Big mistake.

Sammie blinks, then blinks again, like she has something irritating in her eye. Then says to me, “It was totally cool.” She shakes her head so her hair bounces all over the place. And then she’s off and running. “I did it the first two days of vacation—”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “While you were away skiing?”

“Yes,” she says impatiently. “So I wouldn’t forget. I learned so much. Did you know that nuts have a lot of fat in them? In fact, a handful of peanuts—”

“Hey, Sammie,” I say, interrupting her, because in another thirty seconds she’ll be pulling the rubber band off her rolled-up poster and showing us her “totally cool” extra credit science project. “We should tell Luke about E. C. Adams. About teachers and stuff.” I turn to Luke. “Do you know what classes you’re in?”

“Nah.”

“You don’t have your schedule?” Sammie asks.

“Nope,” Luke says. “I’m supposed to pick it up from the guidance counselors’ office.”

“You couldn’t get it before winter break?” Sammie asks.

“I probably could have, but what difference would it make? I wouldn’t know any of the teachers’ names or whether they’re good or not.”

“I would have wanted my schedule ahead of time,” Sammie says. She looks at me, waiting for me to agree with her, which I normally would do, but I don’t because of Luke.

He turns to Sammie and asks, “So who are the good teachers? And who do I have to watch out for? Tell me everything I need to know about E. C. Adams Middle School.”

“The teachers are all nice,” Sammie says, which is completely not true.

“Señora Alicea is not nice,” I correct her.

“She’s not deliberately mean,” Sammie protests.

I turn to Luke. “Señora Alicea has a voice that is so high only dogs can hear her. She’s always about three seconds away from completely losing it.”

“Spanish teacher?” Luke asks.

“Yep.” I pitch my voice as high as I can, stick my chest out, and clap my hands together. “Clase, clase, escúchenme, por favor!”

Luke laughs.

“She’s not that bad,” Sammie says.

“Yes she is,” I say. But then I change the subject. “You’ll definitely have Mr. Phillips. He teaches all the seventh-grade science classes.”

“He’s nice,” Sammie says.

“He’s a space case,” I say. “A real hippie, from the nineteen sixties, with a ponytail and possibly the last VW bus on Earth. Always has a piece of chalk behind his ear—he’s allergic to the whiteboard markers. Also can’t remember anybody’s name. He calls everyone ‘you with the.’ I’m ‘you with the red hair.’ And my friend Jefferson’s ‘you with the president’s name.’ He knows Jefferson’s name, but he still doesn’t call him by it.”

Sammie pipes in. “Amanda Archer’s in my class. He calls her ‘Queenie.’ Like he knows she runs the grade.”

“What about English?” Luke asks, leaning over, toward Sammie’s side of the bus.

“I have Mr. Pachelo for English,” she says, and then she stops, because even she can’t bring herself to say Mr. Pachelo is nice.

“I had him last year,” I say. “This year I was spared. Mr. P has some . . . digestive problems. His classroom smells like farts all the time.” I do a cough-fart to imitate how he pretend coughs to cover up the fart sounds. “It doesn’t fool anyone because one second after the cough-fart, there’s a cloud of stink so bad your eyes start to water.”

Sammie nods, pinching her nose shut like there’s a real Pachelo fart in the air. “Some of the girls spray perfume on their hands right before class. I sit in the back of the room, where the smell’s not as bad.”

The bus pulls up in front of the school, and as we stand to get off, I feel kind of like when Mom and Pop take me to sleepaway camp in the summer, except this time I’m Pop and Luke’s me. I’ll watch him walk off the bus, spot the cool seventh graders, and wave good-bye to me, exactly the way Pop watches me as I walk through the gates of Camp Towanda and wave good-bye to him. Except my eyes won’t be all red, and I won’t be honking into a Kleenex.

Part of me also feels just a little bit relieved, because of Sammie.

But Luke waits for me to get off the bus and walks into school right next to me. We pass Corey Higgins and Markus Johnson and their crew, who always stand outside until the last possible minute, and I watch Luke size them up, and them size him up.

“Dude,” Corey says, nodding at Luke.

“Word,” Luke says, nodding back, but then he turns to me. “Can you go with me to the guidance office?”

“Sure,” I say.

Together, we walk upstairs, past the music and drama and art rooms, to the counseling wing, and Mr. Lang, who’s my guidance counselor, turns out to be Luke’s counselor too. He hands Luke his schedule, says, “Welcome to E. C. Adams Middle School, Mr. Sullivan,” and we’re on our way out when a short woman with curly gray hair and purple eyeglasses stops us.

“Gentlemen,” she says. “What luck.”

She holds out one hand to Luke. “You must be Luke Sullivan. I’m Dr. Ginzburg, the school psychologist.”

He nods, takes her hand, and shakes it.

“Tough time to start at a new school,” she says, still smiling widely.

Luke shrugs, and she pats him sympathetically on one shoulder, then turns to me.

“David Fischer,” she says, like she knows me. She holds out her arms kind of the way Pop does when he’s about to hug me. I take a step back and she holds her hand out for me to shake, so I take it.

“Thank you,” she says to me, “for helping Luke find his way around.”

She starts to walk with us as we leave the guidance office, asking Luke about his favorite classes at his old school, his hobbies, the new baby. I half listen to them talk as we walk, but half of me is scanning the halls for familiar faces, because I don’t want any of my friends to see me with the school psychologist.

We get as far as the art room and I’m beginning to get nervous because it seems like she’s going to walk Luke all the way to his first-period class, and me along with him, and we’ll definitely cross paths with some of my friends, which will mean an entire lunch period of the guys making jokes about my mental health, so I say, “I can take it from here. I know where I’m going.”

Dr. Ginzburg smiles at me like she knows exactly what I’ve been thinking. “All righty,” she says, patting my shoulder. Then she puts her hand on Luke’s shoulder and says to him, “I’m here if you need me. Do me a favor: Stop by in a week or so and let me know how everything’s going, okay?”

Luke nods.

When we’re around the corner, I breathe a sigh of relief. “Whew. That could have been super embarrassing.”

“What?” Luke asks.

“Being walked to class by Dr. Ginzburg.”

“Why?”

“She’s a psychologist, duh. Like if you’re having a mental breakdown or something. My friends would have a field day with that.”

“But she was walking with me,” Luke says. “Because I’m new.”

Technically, he’s right. She was walking with him, and not because he’s crazy, just because he’s new. But my friends wouldn’t care about technically. And all of the other kids who could have seen me walking down the hall with the school psychologist really wouldn’t care about technically. It’s not worth explaining to Luke, though, because it’s moot.

“What’s your first class?” I ask. “I’ll walk you there.”

It turns out Luke’s in social studies with me, and Mrs. Russo puts him at the desk next to mine. And then he’s in Spanish second period with Señora Alicea and me, and in English, and every single one of my classes. In every class, he gets a seat next to mine. Except in math, which is the only class I have with Sammie. She sits next to me, in the back row. Mrs. Knell puts Luke on the other side of Sammie, so she’s between the two of us.

At lunch, he even chooses to sit with my crew, the seventh-grade goofballs and second-string athletes. I figure it’s because he’s taking his time, seeing if the Corey-Markus table is really the top of the heap. But I kind of like having him at my table, even if it’s only for a day.

As long as I can keep him away from Sammie.