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Marisa maneuvered herself down the hallway, searching for Rene. She was nervous and on any other day would have snarled when a boy bumped her backpack. But this new school was unfamiliar territory, not the place to holler "Watch where you're going,
pendejo
!"
    She spied Rene tying his shoes in the courtyard. She made a face at the white socks—she would have to talk to him about those socks and the high-water pants. She would have to tell him that he had to dress with the times.
    "Hi Rene," she said as she approached him. Her voice, she sensed, was flat. She had been happy to get Rene's call three nights ago, but now was different.
    He stood up, waving an arm bearing an oversized watch.
    "It's good to see you, Marisa," Rene said brightly. "How do you like it here?"
    "I guess it's okay. But I don't know anybody except you."
    "Nine hundred students." He gave a honking laugh and said, "Nine hundred and one students now."
    "Rene, are you being funny?"
    He nodded and honked his laughter again.
    Marisa scanned the school yard. She told him that she had an appointment with a counselor before classes.
    "Hope you get Mr. Laird. He's real nice."
    Marisa noticed his pants cuff caught in his sock. "Oh, god," she moaned, but admonished herself for thinking of the N-word—
nerd.
    "Rene, we're going to have to talk," Marisa remarked as she nudged him away. "But first, I'm hungry." Her eye had caught sight of a snack bar with a fluttering neon light.
    "Talk about what?" He produced a cleanly folded handkerchief from his pocket and began to clean his eyeglasses. His eyes were beady as a salamander's.
    "Stuff," she answered vaguely, aware that the time wasn't right. She prodded him toward the snack bar, where she eyed the doughnuts and the array of pies, apple being her favorite though chocolate was way up there, too. Her gaze floated up to the bananas speckled with dark spots. She debated whether to enjoy a true sugar rush or the much healthier banana. Last night, while eating a bowl of ice cream—her last, she'd promised—she had decided to stay away from cookies, ice cream, sodas,
and potato chips. She was determined to shed a few pounds.
    "Give me...," she said to the student behind the screen window. "Give me an apple—no, no, a banana." She turned to Rene. "You gonna get anything?"
    He wagged his head no. His eyeglasses were crooked on his face.
    "That's sixty cents," the girl said through the screen.
    Marisa let six dimes roll from her palm and slapped one before it fell off the counter.
    The two sat on a bench away from the milling crowd. She peeled back her banana and offered a bite to Rene.
    "No, I had some in my Wheaties," he said.
    Marisa laughed and nearly dropped the banana. She was thinking,
He eats Wheaties? The "breakfast of champions"? Then how come he's so
... weak? But she admonished herself for the second time within ten minutes. She was no better than he, a fourteen-year-old girl with her own problems. She didn't want to be stuck-up.
    "What's funny?" Rene asked.
    "Nothing's funny," Marisa finally answered after clearing her throat of the first bite of overripe and
mushy banana. "It's just kind of weird being here."
    "You'll like it," Rene said. "I'm glad you're here. There's lots to do."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Like clubs."
    "You belong to a club?" Marisa had never belonged to anything except Girl Scouts for a month. She would have stayed longer except she had eaten six boxes of Girl Scout Cookies and didn't have the means to pay for them—the thin mints were irresistible.
    "Yeah, I belong to the science club."
    Marisa stuffed the banana in her mouth to keep from laughing.
    "And chess team. Plus thespians. Though I have never been in a play. But I like to read them in bed. I used to be able to recite some of
Hamlet.
'To be, or not to be—that is the question; / Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings...' I learned it when I was in sixth grade."
    Marisa let the banana stay in her mouth. Her stomach