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seat and put my arm alongside my work so that she wouldn’t be able to look at it. I think she was going to say something else to me, but Mr. Porelli came back into the room. That shut her up.
    By the time Mr. Porelli let us go, the school was almost deserted. I went to my locker and got what I needed for the night. Then I headed for the door. On the way down the stairs, I ran into Jana. I didn’t want to talk to her, but she stepped right in front of me.
    â€œI wasn’t trying to tell you what to do or anything,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve heard about you and—”
    She’d
heard
about me?
    â€œYou heard how stupid
I
am so you thought you’d tell me how smart
you
are, is that it?” I said. “Okay, so now I know. But let me ask you something—do your parents know that their little princess goes around hitting girls? Or did turning on the waterworks convince Ms. Everett to make an exception for you and not call them?”
    Jana stared at me. Her face turned red. Her lips started to tremble. Her eyes got all watery—what a baby!—and she wiped at them with the back of her hand.
    â€œWhat I meant was, I saw some of the papers that fell out of your binder earlier,” she said. “You mix up a lot of letters. You’re dyslexic, right?”
    I felt my hands turn into fists. I hate that word. I hate when people say it.
    â€œI have a cousin who has the same problem,” she said. “He’s good at math, like you, except when they’re word problems. Then he has trouble. I was going to ask if you had tried the peer-tutoring program, because I tutor my cousin sometimes, and he says it helps. But forget it, okay?”
    She spun around and started down the stairs. She was moving fast, even though she wasn’t supposed to be running on the stairs. Her dark brown hair flew out behind her.
    I watched her for a moment, and then I chased after her. I didn’t catch up to her until she had reached the main doors.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. Punching Rufus was one thing. Making a girl cry, especially when it turned out that she wasn’t trying to give me a hard time after all—that was something else. “Really, I’m sorry.”
    When she turned and looked at me, I saw that she’d been crying again. She didn’t say a word. She just raced out of the school. I felt like an idiot for apologizing. It never got me anywhere.

chapter seven
    Neil was making supper when I got home. I could tell from the way he popped his head out of the kitchen to look at me that Ms. Everett had called my mom, and my mom had called Neil. But he didn’t say anything. He never did. He always waited for my mom.
    My mom got home an hour after I did. I was in my room, but I heard her come through the door. I heard her drop her purse on the floor beside the table in thefront hall. I heard her talking to Neil, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. For the longest time after Neil moved in, I thought my mom agreed with him about everything. I never heard them fight. But after a while that started to change. They started to close the door of whatever room they were in, and I would hear from the sharpness in their voices that they were arguing. This was one of those times.
    Finally someone knocked on my door.
    â€œWho is it?” I called.
    â€œIt’s me.”
    My mom. I told her to come in.
    But when she opened the door, I saw that Neil was with her. They stood side by side at the foot of my bed.
    â€œMs. Everett called me at work,” my mom said.
    â€œIt wasn’t my fault.”
    My mom shook her head. She looked tired. She glanced at Neil.
    â€œMs. Larch saw what happened,” he said.
    â€œNo, she didn’t. She only saw part of it.”
    â€œBut you did knock that boy to the ground, didn’t you, Sport?”
    â€œYeah, but that’s because—”
    Neil cut me off. “And you