Ellis laughs. “How about lesbian luncheon? Is that better?”

“No,” Mom says.

“Uh, g*y garden part—”

“Stop it,” Mom says. “Don’t be so small-minded.”

“Yeah,” I say.

Mom reaches over and rubs Ellis’s forearm. “I think you need a Mommy and Me night.”

Oh. Of course she does. Because nothing spells parental discipline for homophobic slurs like dressing up fancy and underage drinking at some faraway country club where larger minds are present.

“I’m running with Jess this week,” Ellis says.

“Come on. One night away from running won’t kill you.”

“I’ll go,” I say, seemingly out of control of my own mouth. Why did I just say that?

“I think I can do Thursday,” Ellis says.

“Great,” Mom answers. “We’ll go Thursday.” She doesn’t look at me when she says this. Her hand is still on Ellis’s arm. This was like a private conversation they had. My offer to go along stayed in another dimension.

Dinner conversation drifts, and Dad mentions his stapler and how he now uses Diane’s (the alleged thief) every time he needs to staple something. No one responds to him, either, as if he’s in the same dimension I am.

“I made dessert!” Mom says as I’m clearing the table. “I had too many eggs, so I tossed together a bread pudding.”

“Oh,” we all say, because the Joneses don’t eat dessert unless it’s a holiday. We all sit back down, and she serves us each a bowl of warmed bread pudding with ice cream.

When she sits down, she turns to me. “How’d your date go on Saturday night? Kristina said it was a lot of fun.”

“It was.”

“Fun fun, or just fun?”

I think back to Saturday. I look forward to this Saturday. “Just fun, but with the possibility of becoming more fun,” I say.

“You should go out more often. You know, you can see Jeff on Friday nights, too, if this is getting hot and heavy,” she says.

Bleh.

“I want to know if it gets hot and heavy before it gets hot and heavy,” Dad says. “It’s my right as a father. Plus, I’ll have to sit him down and give him the talk.”

“It’s not getting hot and heavy,” I say. “And who says that anymore?”

Ellis says, “Hot and heavy. Hot and heavy. Hot and heavy.”

“Shut up,” I say. She sticks her ice cream–covered tongue out at me.

“You have the rest of your life for that stuff anyway,” Dad says.

“Gerry, you know nothing about teenagers,” Mom says. She turns back to me. “Unlike your father, I know everyone is doing it. You don’t have to talk about it, but just promise me you’ll be safe.” Oh, my God. I need an invisibility pill right now. I need the ring from Frodo Baggins. Precious! Where is the ring?

“Can’t we go back to talking about the lesbian luncheon or whatever?” I say while I get up and leave my half-eaten dessert in the sink. I am suddenly paralyzed by the truth. I have no control over my life. Now that I’ve made worlds collide, I’m in less control than I ever was before.

Thursday night when I get home, Ellis and Mom are already getting dolled up for their Mommy and Me night, and Ellis is in the red dress that is too low cut for a sixteen-year-old.

“I love it!” Mom says.

I close my bedroom door and read more Plato. Today’s humanities class was the day I was waiting for. Penny Uppergrove, the über-valedictorian who has a photographic memory, finally freaked out. She drives Ms. Steck crazy. But what’s the answer? How can any of us pass a test if you don’t give us answers?

Today she shouted, “I give up! How am I supposed to study anything if there are no answers?” Then she burst into loud, obnoxious tears. It ended with two of the Zeno-lovers talking her down in the back of the room along with Ms. Steck promising that the class wouldn’t hurt her GPA.

I hear Mom and Ellis clip-clop their way down the steps after sufficient makeup application and jewelry adornment.

“I say we make Thursday the new Friday,” I hear Mom say to her on the way out the door. “Who needs school?”

And for sure, Ellis doesn’t go to school on Friday. Neither does Penny Uppergrove. But her father comes to see the principal, which is the talk of sixth-period lunch.

They say: That Ms. Steck is letting the kids run her class.

They say: What kind of class doesn’t have tests? Is this where our tax money goes?

We start our unit on the Allegory of the Cave. It’s a part in Plato’s Republic where he wrote a dialogue between his brother Glaucon and his teacher, Socrates. The short version: People chained in a cave are only able to see a wall. The wall has shadows cast from a fire they can’t see. They guess at what the shadows are. Their entire reality becomes these shadows.

Clay has read it before. Of course. Knows all about the Allegory of the Cave. “The only life these prisoners know is the sounds and shadows of the cave. Imagine living like that!” he says. “Or maybe we are living like that, right?”

Ms. Steck stops him before he can spoil the rest. Apparently there is more excitement to come for the prisoners in the cave. For now, all we have to worry about is a three-hundred-word essay from the point of view of one of these prisoners exploring the realm of belief versus the realm of knowledge.

Which, if you think about it, is a really funny subject to explore around Unity Valley.

20

CONFESSIONS OF A DANCING QUEEN.

COMPARED TO LAST SATURDAY, work is a breeze. I am sent into the freezer to do inventory for the second big job next week. I see Dee a few times—out in the kitchen from a distance. She smiles at me and I get that feeling again, like the first time she smiled at me at the hockey game.

Before we leave the parking lot, she says, “I’m really stoked for tonight.”

“Me too.” I reach for her, but she pulls away a little—like she’s trying to make me want her more by keeping her distance all morning.

She fiddles with the zipper on her sweatshirt, then looks up and has a weird expression on her face. “What’s it like, Jones? I mean—what should I wear?”

She’s clearly nervous. I smile and say, “Whatever you wear will be perfect. You’re beautiful. You’d look good in anything.”

“You really think I’m beautiful?”

“Would you rather I said you’re hot? Sexy? Hot and sexy?”