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  Bridget gave her usual reply: “Still working on it, Mr. Lockard.”

  “Practice makes perfect.” That’s what he always said.

  “Right now I’m trying to sketch things from life, like that.” She motioned toward Mrs. Lockard’s pear painting in the adjoining dining room. “But it never turns out right. Like, the bowl of fruit doesn’t look like a bowl of fruit.”

  “What does it look like?”

  Bridget thought about it. “Worms.”

  Mr. Lockard laughed. “Maybe you can be the next Van Gogh. If he painted a bowl of fruit, it wouldn’t look exactly like the actual bowl. It looked like someone’s dream of one. It’s remarkable, actually. And there’s a Van Gogh at the art museum.”

  Clink, clink, clink.

  Charlotte tugged Bridget’s shirt toward the stairs. “Let’s do your hair so we can go.”

  “Where you off to?” Mr. Lockard asked. All the pills were tucked away in the compartments, so he shut the lids. Snap, snap, snap.

  “Red’s,” said Charlotte.

  “Red’s! Now there’s a blast from the past.” He rubbed his belly. “Pizza sounds delicious. Maybe I’ll join you. My treat, of course.”

  The girls said nothing then hurried up the stairs with matching panic in their eyes. Once Charlotte closed the door, Bridget said what both of them were thinking: “I like your dad and everything, but . . . he can’t come. He just can’t. It will be mortifying. MOR-TEE-FYE-ING.” She paced the room, opening and closing her palm, as if to say gimme-gimme. “Where’s Sphinx? We need Sphinx.”

  Sphinx was a piece of quartz from Egypt. One of Mr. Lockard’s colleagues at Swarthmore College had given it to Charlotte as a gift, because she wanted to be a geologist one day. She had a collection of more than one hundred rock specimens in trays on her dresser, each with an identifying label—hematite, pegmatite, pyrolusite, feldspar—but the quartz was her favorite. At some point she and Bridget had decided that it brought them good luck and they named it Sphinx.

  Sphinx was always in the same place—in the tray, marked Egyptian quartz. Charlotte snatched Sphinx and shoved it in Bridget’s hand. Bridget stopped pacing and cradled the quartz to her chest.

  “Please, Sphinx, make Charlotte’s dad change his mind.” She pushed the quartz toward Charlotte. “Now you.”

  Charlotte took it but didn’t make a wish. Instead, she said, “I’ll just tell him not to come.” She put Sphinx back in its place.

  Bridget exhaled and collapsed on the bed with her back facing Charlotte: her way of saying let’s get started on the bun.

  “Okay,” Bridget said. “What will you say?”

  “I’ll just tell him the truth. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  Bridget paused. “Maybe. But your parents are different. They’re so . . . old-fashioned.”

  In elementary school, Bridget had thought Charlotte’s parents were an unending trove of interesting stories. Particularly Mr. Lockard, who had been to the Sistine Chapel, could name at least seventy shades of green, and had an old record player where he’d spin David Bowie records.

  But that was then.

  Ten minutes after wishing on Sphinx, Bridget had a perfectly imperfect bun on top of her head.

  “Do you want one, too?” Bridget had asked, moving locks of her hair without looking at Charlotte. “I mean, it might make us late, but I can do it.”

  Charlotte’s hair suddenly felt unnaturally long and heavy.

  “No,” Charlotte had said. “I don’t want us to be late.”

  Good thing, because Bridget was already halfway to the stairs.

  Maybe my dad changed his mind, Charlotte thought, as her sneakers hit each step. Maybe he realized how ridiculous he was.

  A parent at Red’s after school? It just wasn’t done. Even she knew that.

  But when Charlotte’s foot hit the final step, she saw him sitting in his recliner with his jacket on, the one he always wore even though her mother insisted he needed a new one. He was wearing his Phillies cap and had the house keys in his hand. He stood up when he saw them, and smiled.

  “Ready?” he said.

  Charlotte and Bridget exchanged looks.

  The back of Charlotte’s neck felt like it was on fire.

  “Um,” said Charlotte. She glanced at Bridget, but Bridget looked away this time. “Actually, Dad? We kinda . . . well, we wanted to go by ourselves.”

  Mr. Lockard’s smile faded. He nodded like he’d just been told the solution to a problem he hadn’t known existed.

  “I mean . . . ,” continued Charlotte. “It’s just kinda embarrassing, you know?”

  “Oh,” Mr. Lockard said. “Yeah, of course.” He cleared his throat and tapped his forehead. “Senior moment!”

  The girls laughed uncomfortably.

  “I’ve got stuff I need to get done around the house, anyway.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and gave Charlotte a twenty, which was enough for two visits to Red’s. “Dedicate a slice to me.”

  Life According to Ben

  Part V

  Ben entered the lunchroom like George Washington crossing the Delaware. It was the evolution of Ben, day one. Time to meet people. He was already so far behind. In the campaign. In adolescence. In life. He didn’t even know who his opponents were, but it didn’t matter. He would run on his own merits.

  He straightened his shoulders and stood tall. He cleared his throat and wiped his sweaty palms against his pants. His heart thundered, but if he wanted to win this battle, he had to charge through his fears.

  His shoes click-clacked as he made his way through the double doors, but no one noticed him. The lunchroom was noisy, much noisier than the one at Lanester Elementary, which he hadn’t thought possible. Recyclable materials were everywhere. Crinkling water bottles. Dented soda cans. Plastic straws. The rectangular tables overflowed with them. They also overflowed with sixth graders. There were boys to his right, hunched over an iPad. There were girls to his left, popping sodas open. Kids were everywhere—pushing out and pulling in chairs, balancing lunch trays, biting apples, shoving food into their mouths, talking and gawking and losing themselves in conversation.

  Ben eyed them, wondering who he should approach first.

  He decided on the iPad table.

  The boys were huddled around a game he didn’t recognize. Something with zombies strutting out from wrecked cars. A boy in a Louisiana State University Tigers hat splattered one of them just as Ben walked up.

  “Oooh, Theo, that was awesome,” the other boys said, in succession.

  Ben had a low opinion of zombies as combatants, so he was less impressed. Not that he was going to say so. Zombies technically didn’t have brains, so they would fail miserably in a battle of wits, logistically speaking. If Ben ever encountered a zombie, he’d repeat the famous quote attributed to Shakespeare: “I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see that you are unarmed.” Not that video games needed logic. Minecraft didn’t make much sense either, if you really thought about it. You can’t build a waterfall in the middle of an erupting volcano, for example. Not that Ben had ever tried to do that. But still.

  “Uh. Who’re you?”

  Ben blinked. He heard the groans of a dying zombie and nothing else. A hundred pairs of eyes looked back at him. At least it felt like a hundred. Theo and his friends were gaping as Ben stupidly stood there. A burn of embarrassment bloomed in his chest, but he willed it away and stuck out his hand.

  “Hi,” he said, as cheerfully as possible. Channel your inner President Carter, he told himself. Friendly and personable. Friendly and personable. “My name is Ben Boxer.”

  They studied Ben’s hand like it had sprouted from his nose.

  A robotic voice grumbled from the iPad: “Would you like to continue, soldier?”

  “I’m running for student-council president,” announced Ben.

  Theo raised his eyebrows. “And?”

  “And I’d love to have your vote!” Easy does it.

>   The boys waited for him to say something else.

  “I’ve never missed a single day of school,” said Ben. Show of dedication.

  “And I’m a friend to the environment,” he added. Show of personal values.

  “Which environment?” said Theo. “Pluto?”

  The boys erupted like hyenas, but the joke was on them. Pluto could never sustain complex life forms, much less humans. Pluto’s atmosphere sustained winds of up to 225 miles per second, and the temperatures sometimes reached minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Only.

  The joke wasn’t on them.

  Not really.

  That much Ben knew.

  “Thanks anyway, guys,” Ben said.

  He pivoted on his heel and approached the neighboring table. Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. So said Calvin Coolidge.

  The next table was full of girls with identical ponytails, right down to the type of ribbon. The only difference was the color of the ribbon and the shade of the ponytail.

  Yellow Ribbon was holding court. She had just asked the others if they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be? When they all fell silent to think, Ben said, “Nice ponytails.”

  They swung his way.

  “My name is Ben Boxer.” He stuck out his hand.

  The girls exchanged looks, unsure of what to do. Finally the one closest to him—Purple Ribbon—shook his hand, and he continued on: “I’m running for student-council president, and I’d love to have your vote.”

  “Ben Boxer?” Yellow Ribbon said, like it was a dirty word she needed to spit out. She didn’t wait for him to answer. She huffed and not-so-casually stifled a laugh with her closed fist. “Yeah, we know.”

  “We do?” said Purple Ribbon.

  There was something familiar about Yellow Ribbon. Ben’s mind went through a series of mental flash cards. Yes, he knew this girl from somewhere. But where? It’s not like he was acquainted with a million girls. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular. Clearly. But this experience would change that.

  The evolution of Ben.

  Day one.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “As in, Ben Boxer—biggest dork in school.”

  That’s when he realized who she was.

  Sherry Bertrand.

  The girl who had cheated off Kyle’s spelling paper that time.

  The girl who had been carted off in tears under the shadow of Ben’s accusatory finger.

  “Uh,” said Ben.

  “Also,” Sherry continued, glaring at him. “That whole running-for-president thing? And wanting our vote? Not. Likely.”

  “Uh,” said Ben.

  “News flash. You have to be in eighth grade to run for president. And you are so obviously not in eighth grade. You don’t even look like you’re in sixth grade. More like third, tops. Sixth graders can only run for treasurer and there’s no way you’ll win that, either.”

  “Ouch, Sher,” Purple Ribbon said, frowning. “Do you have to be so—”

  “Listen,” Sherry said, leaning forward on her elbows. “You won’t win treasurer because I’m running for treasurer. So . . .” She spread her arms, palms up, and shrugged, as if to say: So there’s really no point for you to be in the race.

  “Oh,” said Ben.

  “Did you know you have to give a speech in front of the whole grade on Friday?” Sherry fake-frowned. “That’s a lot of pressure for a third grader.”

  The girls laughed. Not quite the howls from the boys’ table, but a laugh was a laugh when it was at someone else’s expense.

  “Good one,” mumbled Ben, his throat suddenly dry. He half waved and turned, saying, “Nice to meet you” as the laughter carried on.

  Not Just Lunch

  Rabbit Hole: In 2017, Haitian immigrant Denis Estimon started a club at his Boca Raton high school called We Dine Together. Its purpose is to make sure no one eats lunch alone.

  Lunch wasn’t lunch at West Middle School. Yes, they served food, but most kids got a bag of chips and a soda and sat outside. They all had their own spots, including Charlotte and Bridget. They made their way to the big tree near the soccer field and sat in its shade.

  “Hey,” Charlotte said, squinting in the sun. “I was thinking—if you wanna hang out with Sophie, maybe . . . I don’t know, maybe the three of us could go somewhere. She could come to my house. Look at my dad’s art books or something.”

  Bridget used to love sitting on Charlotte’s bedroom floor with one of Mr. Lockard’s heavy coffee-table books spread across her lap. She and Charlotte would look at Michelangelo’s naked statues and giggle.

  “Oh, speaking of Sophie and art books . . . ,” said Bridget. “Sophie had an idea to start an art club and she asked me to join. Dee Dee Montgomery will be in it, too. She’s in our class.”

  Charlotte noticed that she said our class instead of my class, and somersaults turned in her belly.

  “We mapped the whole thing out this morning,” continued Bridget. She popped a Cheeto in her mouth. She could eat a whole bag without her fingers turning orange. It was the way she held them, with the very tips of her painted fingernails.

  When had she started painting her fingernails, anyway?

  “Do you want to invite her to my house after school?” asked Charlotte, after a long pause. “Instead of going to Red’s, I mean. Maybe some of my dad’s books will help with the art club.”

  “I don’t know.” Bridget sighed. “I guess I can ask.”

  “If not, I can help you with your homework, if you still need it. That is, if you don’t go to Red’s or something. Last week you said you needed help studying for Mr. Groskin’s social studies test.”

  Bridget looked into her bag of Cheetos like she was talking to them. “Yeah, sure,” she said. She paused. “So . . . about art club.”

  Charlotte watched an ant crawl in the dirt in front of them. “Yeah?”

  “We’ll probably have our meetings over lunch. Because Sophie can’t stay after school most days. She has soccer practice.”

  Somersaults. Tumble, tumble, tumble. They defied gravity. They somersaulted into Charlotte’s throat and turned into a huge knot.

  “But Sophie doesn’t have A lunch,” Charlotte said.

  The students at West were divided by A lunch and B lunch. The summer before sixth grade, Bridget and Charlotte had held Sphinx together and wished with all their might that they would get the same lunch.

  “Sitting alone at lunch is a fate worse than death!” Bridget had said, her hand clasped over Charlotte’s. “Help us, Sphinx!” And even though they meant it, they’d exploded into giggles.

  When they both got A lunch, they attributed it to the irrefutable powers of Egyptian quartz.

  “I know,” Bridget replied. “She has study hall, and she already asked if she could use it for art club meetings.”

  “But . . .”

  Charlotte left the word hanging there and hoped Bridget would latch on to it.

  She didn’t.

  Life According to Ben

  Part VI

  There is nothing to fear but fear itself. So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  Ben had pumped himself up by the time sixth-period advanced English rolled around. He was skilled at it. His father had taught him that half of life was attitude. You may have smarts, his father had said, but if you don’t have the right attitude, nothing else matters.

  Ben wondered what his father’s attitude was toward his mom, now that they were devolving?

  What was his father’s attitude toward him?

  Oh well. That may have mattered yesterday, but it didn’t matter now. Today, he had something more important to think about.

  Yes, he’d been slightly—okay, more than slightly—defeated in the lunchroom. But success didn’t come easy to anyone. Take Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos. Their beaks changed with the ecosystem. They didn’t just shrug and say, “Oh well, some finch in a baseball cap made fun of my beak, so I’ll just go extinct now and fo
rget about survival.” The finch straightened its feathers and said, “I will sharpen my beak and change the world of science forever!”

  Ben needed to do something bold like that.

  Something to go down in the history books.

  The courage swelled inside him. Increasing levels of determination fired through his brain as Ms. Abellard stood in front of the smart board, providing literary definitions that he already knew. His knee, trying to contain all the unfettered enthusiasm of a man with a plan, bobbed up and down, and before he could stop himself, he sprang from his seat and stood next to his desk. The movement was so sudden that the chair scraped against the floor and everyone—including Ms. Abellard—turned toward him.

  Ben realized he was holding his pencil, so he used it to tap the top of his desk.

  “Ms. Abellard, I’d like to make a brief announcement, if I could,” he said. He could hardly stand still. He bounced up and down on his toes.

  Ms. Abellard raised her eyebrows. She was still pointing to the definition for story arc.

  “Do you need to use the restroom?” she asked.

  John, Dan, and Eddie—the boys who sat around him—snickered.

  “No, ma’am,” Ben said. “I just want to make a brief announcement regarding my candidacy for student-council office.”

  “Oh,” Ms. Abellard said. Her eyes darted around the classroom. “Well—”

  “It’ll only take a moment,” Ben said, quickly. “I promise.”

  Another chair scraped against the floor.

  “Ms. Abellard, this is an unfair advantage!” said Sherry Bertrand.

  Ugh. How could he have forgotten she was in this class?

  Maybe because he never knew in the first place.

  Now that he thought about it, he never spent much time noticing any of the other kids. He typically kept his eyes ahead, listening to the lecture, taking notes, disappearing into his mind, which operated with much more finesse than the minds of other eleven-year-olds.

  What else had he missed?

  “If Ben Boxer gets to make a totally random ‘speech’ to the class, then I should make a speech, too.” Sherry crossed her arms and smirked. Ben studied her face. Her lips were pale pink and shiny, and she was dressed like a mannequin at the mall.