“How many foster kids have you had?” I asked.
“Six,” she said.
“What happened to them?”
She didn’t even blink. “None of your blessed business. Their stories are their own.”
I thought for a moment. “Okay. What’s your superpower?” Teena said everybody had at least one.
Francine tapped her hand against the steering wheel. “I work with idiots all day every day and never lose my temper,” she said. “Given some of my customers, not to mention my co-workers, that’s a daily miracle.” She took another sip of coffee. “What’s yours?”
I said, “I don’t take snow from anybody.”
Francine snorted. Coffee flew out her nose. “Snow!” But she wasn’t mad, she was laughing. “Grab me some of the paper napkins off the floor, there, will you?”
I did. Francine wiped the steering wheel. She tossed the dirty napkins back to the floor. “What’s Suki’s superpower?” she asked.
“She can make herself invisible,” I said.
* * *
■ ■ ■
The school was big, brick, kind of shabby, just like my old one. The security officer smiled at me. The principal introduced herself—Dr. Penny—and shook my hand.
My new teacher, Ms. Davonte, didn’t. She didn’t even smile. She didn’t look glad to see me at all. The first thing she said was, “I don’t know where we’re going to fit in another desk.”
Like that was my fault. Everyone in the class stared at me. Nobody smiled. I said, “I can sit on the floor.”
A boy in the front row, white skin, freckled face, plain brown hair, said, just loud enough for me to hear, “Next to the garbage can.” The boys sitting near him snickered.
Ms. Davonte said, “Strike one, Trevor. And it’s only eight o’clock.” She walked over to the whiteboard and drew a slash under the name TREVOR written in the corner of the board. Trevor sighed, rolled his eyes, and muttered something else. Ms. Davonte said, “What was that?”
Trevor said, “Nothing.”
Ms. Davonte said, “What?”
Trevor said, “Nothing. Ma’am.”
Ms. Davonte turned back to me like she’d half forgotten I was there. She sent someone off to the custodian’s to get another desk. She looked down at the papers the principal gave her, frowned, and looked back up at me.
I knew what she was thinking. I said, “I go by Della.”
She nodded. “Good.” She introduced me to the class as Della, not Delicious. She didn’t make me say anything else, which I appreciated. The custodian brought in a desk. Ms. Davonte made everyone in Trevor’s row, except Trevor, get up and push their desks back a space. She put me in between them and Trevor.
“How come I don’t get to move back?” Trevor asked. “Put the new girl in the front.”
“I don’t think so,” Ms. Davonte said.
Then she said she was just about to pass out a math quiz. She wouldn’t expect me to do well, but she’d have me take it to see what I knew. She said, “Do you have a pencil, Della?”
I shook my head. Her eyes traveled from my face down to my glitter hoodie past my new blue jeans and purple high-tops, to my total lack of backpack or school supplies. When she looked me in the face again her expression had changed. Like, Girl, maybe you should have got yourself a pencil along with those new shoes.
I rolled my eyes and said, “My mama said the school had plenty of pencils I could use.”
My mama never even put me into school—it was Clifton did that—let alone told me anything about pencils, ever, or cared if I had school supplies. But the whole class was still watching to see if I could hold my own, and I had to let them know I could. Like the way that boy Trevor made it clear he didn’t care how many strikes Ms. Davonte gave him. You gotta be tough from the start.
4
Ms. Davonte found me a pencil. Said she wanted it back at the end of the day. Whatever. I went through the math quiz and wrote some numbers down. I didn’t know any of the answers. Couldn’t tell you whether I’d been taught any of it before or not. Sometimes stuff teachers say just doesn’t stick. Like today—there wasn’t room for math inside my head when it felt like the whole class was still staring at me. I had hoped my new shoes would help more.
Trevor turned around. “Nice shoes,” he said.
I didn’t know if he meant it. “Thanks.”
He said, “Too bad you’re so ugly, wearing them.”
I guess not.
Ms. Davonte said, “Trevor, are you talking during a quiz?”
He said, “No, ma’am, the new girl asked me a question.”
“Della,” Ms. Davonte said, “please be quiet. If you have a question, raise your hand and ask me.”
I raised my hand. Ms. Davonte nodded. I asked, “How come I have to sit behind this snowman?”
The class exploded with laughter. Ms. Davonte’s face froze. When she got it unfroze, she said, “You’re not getting off to a very good start, Della. We don’t use language like that in my classroom.”
Sure we did. I just had.
Ms. Davonte told us to pass our quizzes to the front. The girl next to me turned and whispered, “What’d you do that for?”
I nodded toward Trevor. “He’s a jerk.”
She said, “Ignore him. We all do.”
I turned my quiz upside down before I passed it forward, but Trevor turned it right-side up when he took it from me. His eyes widened. “You’re stupid!” he said.
Better stupid than a snowman. I was trying not to say that out loud, but I still might have, except that Ms. Davonte spoke first. “Trevor, that’s two.” She drew another slash under his name on the blackboard. “Three strikes and you don’t get recess.”
Trevor glared at me. “She didn’t get in trouble for calling me a snowman—” More laughter. It’s just hilarious, the word snowman. “Three.” Ms. Davonte drew a third slash.
Since it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning I wondered what she was going to threaten Trevor with for the rest of the day. I mean, three strikes is the limit, right?
Also, I felt bad. Because by rights one of those strikes should have been mine. I had called him a snowman right out loud, and hadn’t gotten in trouble at all. That wasn’t fair. The whole class knew it and I did too.
I took a deep breath and raised my hand. “Ms. Davonte—”