Unforgettable by Loretta Ellsworth

I could have been burned for witchcraft. If I’d been born eighty years ago, I could have been stuck in an insane asylum. Odd behavior begets odd punishment.
    I should be doing math homework right now for my fifth-period class. My backpack was returned to me this morning after the janitor found it in the toilet in the first-floor bathroom. Miraculously, most of the contents weren’t too wet. The calculator still works and my math book is readable, although the pages are curling at the bottom.
    Halle crosses her arms and lets out a small sigh, as though I’m a hopeless case.
    â€œOkay, let’s try it another way. Do you think Nick is a reliable narrator? You have to remember that everything is filtered through his eyes.”
    â€œYou mean do I believe everything he says?”
    Halle nods.
    â€œYes and no. I mean, we have to look beyond what he says about himself and the other characters.”
    â€œSo you don’t trust him?”
    â€œI guess I trust him to be true to his experience of the world. But he sees his own truth. We all see our own truth.”
    â€œWhat’s the truth in these chapters?”
    â€œWell, when he first sees Gatsby on the lawn, he’s staring out at a green light across the sound and Nick thinks he sees him tremble. That green light promises something. Maybe hope or love, we don’t know what yet. But we know that light and that action have some significance even if it is filtered through Nick’s eyes.”
    â€œThat’s good, Baxter. Really good.”
    â€œThanks,” I say, relieved.
    Then she crinkles her nose, what I’ve noticed she does when she doesn’t understand something. “There’s just one thing I can’t figure out.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    She leans closer. “Now that we know the truth in Gatsby , tell me, what’s the truth in Baxter Green?”
    My jaw tightens and I press my thumb down hard on the book as I fight for control. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI can tell you’re smart. So why does Mr. Shaw want me to tutor you?”
    â€œI got a C-minus on my first test.”
    â€œYeah, but why did you get a C-minus? I took that same test. It was super easy.”
    The trouble with lies is that they don’t hold up. It’s like using a colander, trying to keep the truth from straining out with the watered-down lies. It always leaks through. Even Dink, who pitched lies more often than Mom smokes a cigarette, got caught.
    I almost sound like Dink as I take the attack approach. “I’ll tell you if you tell me why you sit in the back and don’t wear your glasses when you can’t see the board.”
    â€œHow do you know I wear glasses?”
    â€œYou squint.”
    She stares at me long enough that I start feeling uncomfortable and I want to look away. But I don’t. To look away would be backing down, admitting that I’m hiding something—which I am, but there’s no way I’m admitting it.
    Halle puts her elbow on the table and rests her chin in her hand. “Most guys would never have noticed that kind of stuff. Then there’s the fact that we both like green jelly beans. It’s so weird.” She takes another handful from the bag.
    I’m starting to sweat, but I fake a smile and raise one eyebrow. “I can’t wait to find out what else we have in common.” It’s a cheesy thing to say. What I really want to tell her is that it’s not weird, that there’s a connection between us stretching back all the way to kindergarten and that you can fall in love when you’re five, even if it’s a different kind of love at that age, and that I notice everything about her; I always have. But that sounds even cheesier than what I said.
    My comment brings a blush to her cheeks. But she recovers and smiles back at me and says something that takes me completely off guard. “So do you want to go to a protest