I grinned, putting my phone away.
“So, what are you going to do?” Ruth asked, lugging her giant lunch. “Are you going to stay with the clarinet? Or switch to bassoon? Or quit band?”
“Ugh, Ruth, you know I have no idea,” I whined.
“If you switched to bassoon, you’d be first chair,” Ruth said, smirking. “Get it? Because you’d be the only chair.”
I hate band.
■ ■ ■ ASSEMBLY 7:30 A.M.
How many assemblies did this school have? In middle school they just made a lot of announcements over the loudspeaker instead of forcing everyone to shuffle into the auditorium. Luckily, Fabián had saved us a seat far away from Wesley and Teighan_23.
“James K. Polk,” Principal Saulk boomed, walking onto the stage. He had one of those microphones that clipped over his ear, the kind that made you feel like you were watching a TED Talk.
“Does anyone know why this school is named after our eleventh president?” he asked, scanning the audience as if he thought someone was going to raise their hand. News flash: Nobody raised their hand.
“James K. Polk was one of the few presidents who accomplished everything he set out to do in office. And he did that by creating very actionable goals.”
Fabián got out a sheet of paper and started scribbling something. It was a Would You Rather? chart. I grinned; this was one of our favorite games. He handed it to me, and I began writing the first question while Ruth shot us a dirty look. Sometimes it felt like Ruth was the angel on my shoulder, reminding me to be good. But Fabián was definitely the devil.
“Actionable means realistic. And when President Polk was elected, he set out to accomplish just four things. Four things that he completed while in office . . . and he never ran for a second term.”
Would you rather . . . go to Homecoming with Principal Saulk or James K. Polk?
Fabián chewed his pencil, thinking. “Was James K. Polk hot?” he whispered.
I shook my head. James K. Polk was dead. And very moldy by now. Fabián circled him anyway.
Principal Saulk continued pacing the stage, like he was recording a comedy special and not our freshman welcome assembly.
“James K. Polk’s four goals were to cut taxes, make the US Treasury independent, annex the territory of Oregon, and win California and New Mexico from Mexico.”
Fabián suddenly booed. A couple other Mexican kids joined him. Principal Saulk looked uncomfortable.
“¡VIVA LA RAZA!” someone shouted. I started booing, too, out of solidarity. People were getting out of their chairs now, and Fabián and I stood up with them as we jeered loudly.
“Okay, okay, fair enough. Maybe not the best example of actionable goals.” Principal Saulk chuckled nervously.
The crowd kept booing. I knew loudly heckling a school administrator was something Quiet Parvin shouldn’t be doing, but the bells of justice must ring. This might have been the best thing that had happened at high school so far. Ruth looked supremely uncomfortable.
“Enough!” Principal Saulk shouted. “If you need to talk to anyone about the trauma of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, I encourage you to reach out to our head counselor, Mrs. Everly. Now, what are four goals you want to accomplish this year? Please write them down,” he directed us.
I sat down and got out my notebook, then I stared at the blank page. What the heck did I want to accomplish this year?
I looked over at Fabián’s paper. Not . . . commit . . . genocide, he wrote. That was a good one.
Ruth, of course, was already done. 1—Make first chair clarinet, 2—stay on Honor Roll, 3—get a 4.0 GPA. I looked closer. In tiny script she’d added, Come out to my mom, as number 4, with an asterisk. At the bottom of the page, she’d written, *Reach goal.
I smiled. I was proud of Ruth. She had a good list. Maybe she wasn’t going to wait until graduation to come out to her mom after all.
I tapped my pencil on the page.
1—Go with Matty to Homecoming.
Fabián read over my shoulder and whispered, “Good luck with that.” I swatted him away.
2—Pick an instrument/decide if I want to stay in band.
3—Get better at Farsi.
4—Finally understand how leap years work.
“Parvin, number four isn’t a real goal,” Ruth whispered, clearly spying. I sighed.
“Ruth, how can there be one-fourth of a day left over at the end of every year? How?”
“It has to do with the rotation of the Earth. What do you not understand? Besides, you can google that in two seconds. It’s not a real goal.”
I scribbled out the leap year goal and angrily wrote in a new one.
4—Make a new friend.
I glared accusingly at Ruth. She glared back.
“Yeah, a cute one,” Fabián whispered.
The auditorium was silent with the sounds of papers shuffling around. Suddenly, someone raised their hand. Principal Saulk blinked a couple times, like the hand was a mirage in the desert.
“Yes? Mr. . . . ?”
“Cheng,” a voice finished for him. It was Emerson Cheng, the arsonist from our middle school. He wore baggy pants and a gold chain around his neck.
“Cherry Bomb Cheng goes to Polk? How did I not know this?” Fabián hissed, already texting someone about this new development. They had a long-standing beef, in that Emerson always set off the fire alarm with fireworks at school dances just when Fabián was getting the crowd heated up.
“Emerson’s eyebrows grew back in,” Ruth observed.
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “He actually looks pretty cute now.”
“Parvin. He’s a pyromaniac,” Ruth chided me.
“Don’t worry, Ruth, I’m a Leo.” I patted her arm gently.
Emerson stood up in the middle of the auditorium, facing Principal Saulk.
“Principal Saulk, what does the K stand for?” Emerson asked.
“Excuse me?” He blinked back rapidly, fiddling with his mic pack.
“The K? In James K. Polk? Our eleventh president?”
The whole auditorium was staring at him now, but Emerson didn’t seem fazed.
“I . . . er . . . ,” Principal Saulk said, his face turning bright red. “Well . . . I . . . I don’t actually know,” he finished, his voice trailing off.
The entire freshman class was drop-dead silent. Fabián tried hard not to laugh.
“Okay,” Emerson said.
“Yep.” Principal Saulk nodded back to
