Maybe a minute after I woke up, Henry was standing over my bed, looking put out himself and sounding all sarcastic, saying he didn’t know too many people who slept in their clothes, but it struck him as a fine morning time-saver. Had I eaten my cereal the night before, too, or would I like a bowl before school? Guess he’d been the one to find me in the woods and haul me back.
I kept up my silent protest against education over an oatmeal breakfast and all the way to the Sugar Hill City School’s front office, where trouble started right away. According to the scores from tests I’d taken the week before, I was high-school level in reading and writing and fifth-grade level in math. I hated math, so it was amazing I’d done that well—probably thanks to Manny and our time at the track. In spite of my better test scores, though, and despite the guidance counselor’s opinion that I’d be happiest in sixth grade, the county had a rule that “all students should be schooled with peers their own age, exceptions made only in rare circumstances.” The assistant superintendent, a bored-looking woman who talked like a robot, showed Henry the rule and didn’t even look at me. She said because I’d never attended school, I was “deficient in age-appropriate socialization,” and she wouldn’t recommend any exception in my case. When Henry asked her to rethink her decision, she told me to wait in the hall. I left the door open a crack and heard her say, “Test results can’t always be trusted. Most likely, considering Zoë’s near-feral upbringing, her higher numbers are a fluke.” Not only did she think I was a savage, she thought I’d cheated somehow.
“You know the thing that burns me most about being a kid?” I yelled at Henry when we got in the truck. “The worst thing about being a kid is that people twice my size with half my brains get to run my life.”
Henry sighed. “Wait till you start voting.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
“That woman’s an idiot,” he went on. “I could send you to boarding school if you want.”
“What?” I said again.
“There are some fine boarding schools, but nothing decent nearby.”
“I just got here,” I said. “You want to send me away?”
“I do not. It’s the last thing on earth I want, and the last thing you need. But I don’t like the alternatives, and neither do you.”
“I don’t get why I have to go to school at all,” I whined.
“It’s the law, Zo’. Until you’re sixteen, you have to go and I have to send you—somewhere.”
“You could teach me.”
Henry went quiet when I said this. “Zo’,” he said finally. “That’s not possible right now. For a lot of reasons.”
His jaw tightened. If I pushed harder, he might explode again, maybe yank something out of the dashboard or me out of my seat.
I folded my arms over my chest and went stone quiet as we drove. I gave Henry credit for taking my side with the assistant superintendent, but when I got to thinking how I was the one who’d have to sit stupefied for seven hours a day, five days a week, I took my credit back.
The upshot was that I was stuck in fifth grade. My teacher, Ms. Avery, was nice enough but as dull as petunias. Her saving grace was that she repeated every question at least once and prefaced the second or third asking with a specific kid’s name. This meant I could spend the day reading books from Henry’s library, coming back to reality only when my name was called.
“Class, who remembers the capital of Montana? Anyone? Zoë, do you remember the capital of Montana?”
“Helena, ma’am,” I answered.
The lessons were dirt easy and I nearly always knew the answer, though I never offered it unless Ms. Avery called on me. Everybody hated kids who showboated. Ross Purcell raised his hand so often that I named him Mr. Liberty, which made the other kids laugh. When Ms. Avery called on him he had the ugly habit of making a know-it-all face at the Mexican girl who didn’t speak English on his right, then smirking at the slow kid on his left, before giving his windbag answer.
Worse than Ross was Hargrove Peters, whose surly self sat more lying down than sitting in the last desk by the door. Though we’d never exchanged one word, he spent half of every school day staring at me in a burning way, like he already hated my guts. The last one out the door at the end of the day and late every morning, he barely answered if Ms. Avery called on him and never raised his hand in class. He just glared at me or wrote in some notebook he slammed shut if anybody walked by.
Shelby, the girl who sat across from me, said that Hargrove’s daddy was Sugar Hill’s mayor, and that made Hargrove think he was better than other people.
“He sure doesn’t like me,” I said.
“He doesn’t like anybody,” she said. “Don’t pay him any mind. I don’t.”
But by midweek his staring was bugging me no end. “Is he still staring?” I asked Shelby.
She glanced back and nodded. “Like a cat at a mouse.”
A few minutes later I got up to sharpen my pencils at the back of the room and check out Hargrove without him seeing. He’d have to turn all the way around in his desk to stare at
