Nine, Ten: List 1

People would remember that day with all sorts of adjectives: serene, lovely, cheerful, invigorating, peaceful, quiet, astounding, crystalline, blue.

People would remember that day with all sorts of adjectives: serene, lovely, cheerful, invigorating, peaceful, quiet, astounding, crystalline, blue.

And for that Sergio had been flown to Chicago, put up in a hotel, and given three meals a day, and when they had called his name—his full name, Sergio Kinkaid Williams—he had walked across the gigantic stage of the Court Theatre and received his plaque, which was now weighing down his carry-on bag as he perused the newsstand.

And for that Sergio had been flown to Chicago, put up in a hotel, and given three meals a day, and when they had called his name—his full name, Sergio Kinkaid Williams—he had walked across the gigantic stage of the Court Theatre and received his plaque, which was now weighing down his carry-on bag as he perused the newsstand.

Her lips pressed together. Her brow furrowed.

“A girl does not need to flaunt her beauty to the world,” her mother had told her many times.

“Sorry. I mean thanks,” Naheed called back. “I mean sorry.” But her voice was absorbed into the airport terminal din.

In his eighteen years of long-distance hauling he had never gotten a serious infraction.

Maybe that made this all the more ironic; it certainly seemed more unfair.

Apparently, Will’s dad had been on his way home after being on the road for two and a half weeks, making the trip home from Denver, when he saw a car not quite pulled over on the side of the interstate and the driver, a man clearly in distress, slumped over the steering wheel.

“Your husband was trying to help,” the tall one said, but of course it was all speculation.

In this case they figured Will’s dad had seen a fellow motorist in trouble, stopped his rig a few feet ahead of the disabled car, walked over, and been about to open the driver's door to see what was wrong when another car came racing down the highway.

“Where are you from? Why weren’t you here last week when school started? Did you just move here?” Vanessa asked in rapid-fire succession.

To say Nana wasn’t fond of Sergio’s dad was an understatement.

A gift? A card? Money? Money was always nice. Something to commemorate his accomplishment.

“There’s a hundred-dollar fine for fare evading. You have any ID?”

“There’s a hundred-dollar fine for fare evading. You have any ID?”

He couldn’t even come up with something to masquerade as a gift.

Sergio felt his heart constrict with a terrible rage, a blackness that clogged his ears, like being underwater.

Sergio thought for a second that Nana was going to clobber Paul with the coffee mug she was holding.

For some reason, even though Naheed and Eliza had never been friends before, Eliza had attached herself to Naheed this year, sort of like a new puppy. And sort of in a reciprocal way—even though it was annoying—Naheed didn’t mind, because sixth grade was so much more confusing than fifth had been, and as strange as she was, Eliza seemed to know what to do and where to go in this unfamiliar maze of hallways and classrooms.

If gambling were allowed in her religion, which it was not, Naheed would have bet what was coming next, because lately it seemed that the universe was conspiring against her.

No, surviving middle school seemed to be predicated solely on who your friends were.

Didn’t she know resistance was futile?

Now this year there was a whole batch of new kids from different elementary schools combined, and Naheed swore she could feel everyone jockeying for position, like horses on a racetrack.

There was a short discussion as to what “dominant side” meant.
No, not who was bossier. Not who weighed more.

No, it was meant to determine if you were right brained or left brained, usually connoted by handedness.

They had the rest of the week to implement their experiments, and by Friday their final reports were due.

Naheed knew that she, too, had probably sounded exactly that way when she was nine and had first started wearing the hijab.

It shows that we are modest. That we are not looking for attention.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t normal,” Eliza went on. “I just said I never heard it before and I wondered what the etymology of your name is.”

Mrs. Salinger was pacing the room, but she stopped at their desk and asked the boys, “And exactly how does that indicate sensitivity?”

It was as if all of a sudden Naheed was a giant in the room with an endless skein of cotton on her head and everyone was staring at her, and it.

Sebastian echoed the sentiment. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”

The boys said it in unison and repeated it a few times for good measure, like a Greek chorus.
“Annoying Eliza. Annoying Eliza.”