to Puerto Rico in the summer just to see how it felt.

“Oh, that will be fun,” she said. “You can use your Spanish that Señora Steinman has been teaching you. And you’ll get nice and tan.”

It felt good to lie. After that I started lying all the time, and because I was the new kid, no one could say I wasn’t telling the truth. I spent holiday breaks in Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands; I pulled out my father’s heavy atlas (my dad had the towns of Avellino and Sorrento circled in red Sharpie) and would find new islands I had never heard of before and couldn’t even pronounce—MartInik, Montes-rat, Guadel-oup-ee. I never said Cuba, because I knew my mother hated them, and good thing too, because my jig would’ve been up—Americans weren’t allowed in Cuba. And I didn’t stop at islands, either; it was really anywhere with palm trees. I told Michaela Silves that I took a boat on the Amazon. She said she had family in Brazil and asked where else I went. When I couldn’t name any cities, she inadvertently saved me by saying most of her family was in Portugal, anyway.

It was recess and I was standing over by the fence that separated the grass and jungle gym from the parking lot. We weren’t allowed to play football after Kader Kalan’s lip was split open on Pierce Stone’s knee during a fumble.

After football was taken away, Lenny tried teaching us rugby—he had learned how to play in New Zealand. It wasn’t football, so we weren’t breaking any rules. Lenny grabbed one of those classic red balls ubiquitously associated with dodgeball (we weren’t allowed to play that either) and had us stand in the backline rugby formation and toss the ball to each other. Rugby was okay; it was like football, except you really didn’t go anywhere. But after only one and a half recesses, Mrs. Lydell caught onto us and took that ball away, too.

That’s why I was over by the fence during recess, because we didn’t have anything to do. I sucked on a Tootsie Pop that Karl gave me. It had a blue wrapper, but the candy was actually purple—that bothered me. I fiddled with the wrapper, folding it over and over again into tiny squares and triangles until it was too tight to keep folding.

“Hey, that have the ‘Indian Star’?” asked Paxton as he approached me, leaving Pierce Stone’s circle underneath the monkey bars.

“The what?”

“The ‘Indian Star.’ Ya know, the boy with the feathers on his head and star? It brings good luck. But if it doesn’t have it, you have to throw it out.”

“Why?”

“Because that brings bad luck, duh.” I unfolded the wrapper until it was completely flat. “Doesn’t have it, doesn’t have it! Throw it out, Vic!”

“That isn’t true, Paxton. Why are you always lyin’? This isn’t a white lie either. You can’t just talk about luck like that.” And I gave him “the horns”—the infamous symbol used by Italian grandmothers to put a hex on enemies and by my father when the Cowboys or Eagles were kicking a field goal. (The symbol was introduced to the world by Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath, who, unsurprisingly, had an Italian grandmother who frequently needed to ward off evil. And now the gesture is forever associated with all things metal.)

“Hey! What the heck was that?!”

“A curse. You tried to put bad luck on me, so I’m it putting back on you.”

“That’s not funny, Vic! I’m telling Mrs. Lydell.”

“Okay, okay, okay. I take it back. I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright. Hey, come here, I gotta tell you something.” And as we walked down the fence, he looked over both shoulders to make sure we weren’t being followed. “I got some news about Pierce, but you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“He’s being sent to boarding school far away? In like, Mendham or Morristown?”

“What?”

“My cousins live out there and it is so far away.”

“No. Pierce…”

“Oh! Or maybe military school? That way he could be sent to Iraq.”

“Iraq? Where is that?”

“I don’t know. Out in the desert somewhere, like Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker lives in Star Wars.”

“Oh, cool.”

“But Luke Skywalker doesn’t live in Iraq. My mom says it’s where the bad guys are.”

“Vic, this isn’t about Iraq. Vic, listen, Pierce’s parents are getting divorced.” And after he said it, he grinned and stared, soaking in the pleasure of sharing the secret. “But listen…” He looked over his shoulder again; Mrs. Lydell was chasing Lenny and Andrius around the blacktop as they tossed the red dodgeball to each other, screaming, “Rugby!” “You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, Vic. You can’t tell.”

“Okay, Paxton. I won’t tell. I got it.”

As Paxton ran across the blacktop to add a third to Lenny and Andrius’s game of keep-away, I scanned the jungle gym to select someone worthy of divulging my tender secret. Michaela Silves, Kelly McCallister, and Olena Lazarenko were in the tower perch, pointing and giggling; Michaela blew me a kiss. I dodged the wet missile and hid behind an oak tree that typically served as the respawn point for manhunt. I peeked around the other side of the trunk and saw Silas, the white African, and Maine Ogden throwing pinecones at the fence.

I trotted over to them, hiding and ducking behind foliage so I wouldn’t be struck by a Michaela lip-bomb, but when I reached the two chuckers to share my morsel of knowledge, nothing came out.

“Spit it out, Ferraro. We have cones to chuck,” said Maine Ogden, impatient and disgruntled.

“Oh, uh…” Now I looked over my shoulder and saw that Mrs. Lydell had somehow wrangled the red dodgeball away from the guys, and that Paxton was already scheming up something new beneath the blue spiral slide. “I, uh… I heard that Pierce’s brother had head from Rachel Feinberg… or Feinstein.”

“Had what?”

“Who?”

“I don’t know… something Jewish like that… ya know?”

“Ferraro, I don’t know what you are saying, but don’t interrupt us unless it’s something good. If I hit that cone with

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