We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen

crazy person. But I was still angry, so I kept shouting, and eventually her calm voice was replaced by her exasperated voice. Just before she left my room, she announced that I wouldn’t be getting my allowance this weekend.
    There goes the H&M skirt.

PERCENTAGE-WISE, I would give the rest of my week an average of 73. What follows is the daily breakdown.
TUESDAY—76%
    I didn’t have to worry about gym class, because every other day I have French, home ec, math, and business ed. Lucky for me, Jared isn’t in any of my Day Two classes. Also lucky for me, Phoebe is in my business education class.
    Unlucky for me, Ashley is in my math class.
    I may not be the best reader of social cues, but when someone yells, “I hate you all,” it is pretty hard to misinterpret.And as I told Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich on the phone late last night, Ashley still hates her own father a year and a half later, which tells me she’s really good at holding a grudge. In fact, I told Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich all the gory details, even though Ashley threatened me with murder, because (1) I know that everything I say to her is protected by a little something called
doctor/patient confidentiality
, and (2) I figured it was good for an outside party to know about the threat, just in case Ashley ever follows through.
    To be honest, Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich sounded tired. It was after eleven when I called her. Technically I’m not seeing her anymore, but when we moved, she gave me her home number in case of an emergency, and I felt that being threatened with assassination qualified.
    “Try to see it from her perspective,” Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich said. “You and your dad were rather abruptly thrust upon her. She must feel like her whole world’s been turned upside down.”
    I confess that I don’t like it when Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich takes someone else’s side. “What about
my
world?” I asked. “
My
world’s been like riding the Hellevator at the fair!”
    Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich agreed and said some kind things, which made me feel better. So much better that I told her about Ashley saying she couldn’t wait till she became “unconstipated.” It made me laugh all over again.
    I think Dr. Elizabeth Moscovich wanted to laugh, too, but instead she said, “Now, Stewart, we’ve talked about this. Not everyone is intellectually gifted like you. Different people are smart in different ways.”
    Maybe that’s true, but I’m beginning to suspect that if you blew into one of Ashley’s ears, the breeze would come right out the other side.
    For example, after school on Tuesday I went into the family room to watch TV. Ashley was already there, watching some celebrity gossip show. She didn’t look happy to see me, but I thought,
Tough. This is my house now, too
. So I sat in the purple-and-green chair and peeled off my socks. Schrödinger wandered in and jumped up onto my lap.
    When a commercial came on, she muted the TV and asked, “Why did you give your cat such a dumb name?”
    “It’s not a dumb name. Schrödinger was a famous physicist. And he developed a thought experiment….” I stopped. “It’s actually super-complicated.”
    “So? You think I won’t get it?”
    Yes
, I thought. But all I said was, “Okay. Do you know about the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?”
    “The what of the what?”
    “It basically says that matter on a microscopic level, like an atom, can be in two places at the same time—that is, until you
observe
the atom. Then it will just be in one place.”
    Ashley yawned. “That’s ridiculous. Nothing can be in two places at once.”
    “Well, in one sense you’re right. Because the theory doesn’t work on a macroscopic level, meaning, everything we can see around us. Like, this chair I’m sitting in can’t be in two places at once.”
    “Thank God for that. One place is bad enough.”
    “Anyway, Schrödinger wanted to challenge the Copenhagen interpretation. So he came up with this