School of the Dead by Avi

friends?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œNeed anything?”
    â€œPens, pencils, notebooks.”
    Mom said, “Can we wait for the weekend?”
    â€œSuppose.”
    To Dad, I said, “What do you know about earthquakes here?”
    â€œCalifornia has about ten thousand earthquakes a year.Most are small. Maybe a few hundred are greater than 3.0 magnitude. Only about fifteen to twenty are greater than 4.0.”
    â€œHow do you
know
that?”
    â€œThe US government has a website that lists the day’s earthquakes. San Francisco is famous for them.”
    â€œHey, did you guys tell the school about Uncle Charlie and me?”
    Mom, shaking her head, looked at Dad.
    Dad said, “I didn’t. They don’t need to know.”
    â€œThey
do
know.”
    Dad shrugged. “If you told them, that’s okay.”
    But I hadn’t.
    Later, in bed, as I was trying to sleep, an idea came: Uncle Charlie must have told Penda I was coming to the school.
    Only I realized that was impossible: I had been accepted at Penda
after
he
died. But
someone
must have told them about Uncle Charlie. If it wasn’t my parents, or me, then who?
    I started thinking about that boy I kept seeing around the school and in the tower: how he looked like the kid in the school office painting, the one they called the Penda Boy.
    Not possible
, I told myself again.
    I felt an urge to get to school and look at that painting oncemore. I was certain that it would
not
be the kid I kept seeing, for the simple reason that that was impossible.
    The first thing I did when I woke the next morning was look around for Uncle Charlie. He was not there. Good. That told me I could handle my memories. One problem solved.
    Next, when I got to school, I went right into the school office. Mrs. Z, sitting behind her desk, looked up. “Hello, Tony. How did your first day go?”
    â€œFine. I’m supposed to ask you for a list of the sports teams I can join.”
    â€œGood idea.”
    As she bent over to get the list from a drawer, I looked at the painting of the Penda Boy. My heart sank. The kid in the painting really did look like the boy I kept seeing.
    Mrs. Z handed me a sheet of paper.
    â€œMrs. Z,” I said, pointing to the painting. “He died, right?”
    â€œThe Penda Boy? Oh yes, a long time ago. In the high tower, they say.”
    I left and headed up the steps, my thoughts on the Penda Boy.
When impossible things happen, does that make them possible?
I looked around to the other steps. I didn’t see the boy, only Uncle Charlie.
    Exasperated, I told myself that whenever I felt upset, UncleCharlie appeared, as if I was asking him for help.
    â€œI don’t need you,” I called out.
    â€œYou talking to me?” said some kid right behind me.
    â€œNo, sorry,” I said, and hurried on, trying not to think of the boy.
    As I went from class to class, I felt I was being judged by students and teachers. In various subjects—science, art, and math—teachers kept asking if I had learned this or that, as if constantly saying,
Do you know anything?
Not much, apparently. And there were kids who asked, “Who are you?” That made me feel more isolated than ever.
    No sooner did I feel alone than Uncle Charlie appeared. I told him—in my head—
Uncle Charlie, I’m trying to get along without you.
That seemed to satisfy him. He went.
    But not the blond boy. I kept seeing him, always partly veiled by a crowd of kids. I tried a new tactic: When I saw him, I closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, he was gone. That convinced me: I could switch him off the way I did my memory of Uncle Charlie.
    And, following my decision not to hang with losers, I also avoided Jessica and her friends. I was never going to be with the
in
group, but once you are with the losers, you’re a loser forever.
    The next day, my face appeared on the homeroom portrait wall. I
had
taken