She’s looking at her computer screen. “Sixth grade, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “How about just after lunch?”

  That’s recess, but I don’t mind.

  “Sure. That’s perfect,” I say.

  “Great! She’ll see you here at ten after twelve.”

  I say thank you and then walk with Marci and Denis to Ms. Sett’s room.

  “The first step is finding out who did it,” I say.

  “Then why they did it,” Denis says.

  “Then we fight it,” Marci says.

  Ms. Sett is outside her classroom door giving high fives and fist bumps to welcome everyone. Part of me still feels wrong for going over her head and going to the principal first, but the three of us agreed it would be best.

  “Good morning, three musketeers,” Ms. Sett says. “I hope you had a great weekend!”

  “We did!” Marci replies.

  Denis smiles. I feel like a liar because my weekend was … complicated. No one knows this except for me. I aim to keep it that way.

  By the time lunch comes, Denis is nervous and jiggling his leg.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “She’s going to be nice.”

  Marci says, “She’s always nice!”

  Denis jiggles his leg anyway and we wait for the bell to sound and slowly walk to the main office. We wait for a few minutes and then the secretary tells us we can go in. We say hi and sit down in the chairs in front of Dr. McKenny’s desk. There’s a handmade desk plate with an apple drawn on it that reads DR. PEGGY MCKENNY, PRINCIPAL.

  “So,” she says while giving us a double thumbs-up. “What can I do for you three?”

  Marci pulls out her copy of The Devil’s Arithmetic. “In two areas of this book, the words have been censored.”

  Dr. McKenny looks at the two pages Marci has marked with Post-it notes. “Whoever crossed this out sure meant it!” she says. “I’ll get you a new copy, Marci.”

  “Ours have the same crossed-out words,” I say. “All the copies are blacked out that way.”

  This clearly surprises Dr. McKenny. “Huh,” she says.

  “Do you know who might have done this?” Marci asks.

  All of us, including Dr. McKenny, stay quiet because it feels obvious—Ms. Sett writes all those letters and makes all those rules. But we have to make sure, I guess.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Dr. McKenny says. “It’s only a few words.”

  “The word is breast,” Marci says, “and it’s not nothing. It’s an insult to our intellectual freedom.”

  I’m impressed. Denis looks at his feet.

  “As a taxpayer, my mom paid for those books,” I say. “And this weekend we had to buy a replacement so I could read the book as it was meant to be read, not in a censored way that someone else thinks I should read.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a mix-up,” Dr. McKenny tells us. “No one wants to take any of your freedoms away. Or waste your mom’s tax money, Mac.”

  Very hesitantly, Denis adds, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you seem to be acting like this isn’t a problem. This is a problem. All the books have been censored. This is not just a mix-up. Someone did it on purpose.”

  “Please don’t treat us like we don’t know what we’re talking about,” Marci adds, the whole time staring shyly at Denis. “We’ve spent the entire weekend researching what to do when a school restricts our right to read. We know there should be a protocol when someone challenges a book. We know that we can protest like the students did down in York.” York, Pennsylvania, just over the river, has been in the national news more than once for censoring things.

  “Just because we’re twelve doesn’t mean we’re dumb,” I say.

  Dr. McKenny sits back in her fancy leather desk chair and smiles and nods. “I’m so proud of you guys,” she says. “Good for you for being so smart and using resources and planning how to fix this problem.”

  “So you didn’t know these books were censored?” Marci asks.

  “No. But I’ll find out who did it and we’ll go from there,” Dr. McKenny answers.

  “We all need new books,” I say. “Greg at Tad’s Books said he’d be happy to order however many you need.”

  Dr. McKenny puts her hands up and says, “Whoa, guys! Slow down. I’m sure this is all going to be fine.” She keeps talking but it sounds like blah-blah-blah to me because I realize she’s still pretending like this is okay. I can see it in her face. She’s smiling in that way adults do when they think kids are doing something cute.

  Fact: Being treated like a child makes me angry.

  Fact: Being angry makes me scared that I might be like my dad.

  On our walk back to class, I don’t tell Marci or Denis that I don’t trust Dr. McKenny. I pretend along with them that she’s going to get to the bottom of the mystery and replace the censored books. I pretend she cares about the truth.

  By Wednesday, Marci gets impatient.

  “I don’t know why it would take this long to find out who censored the books.” She walks up the steps to the second floor and rounds the corner to go up the next flight. “We’re all in the same building, right? It can’t take that long to ask.”

  Marci must be mad, because she can usually go fast up these stairs and seem fine, but now she’s breathing heavy. When she frowns, there’s a dimple on her cheek that comes out, and even though I don’t want her to frown, the dimple is, well, cute.

  Anyway.

  In the two days since our meeting, we’ve already read the first three chapters of The Devil’s Arithmetic in lit circle and completed the worksheets Ms. Sett gave us. The story is about a girl named Hannah and what happens to her during Passover Seder. I don’t want to spoil anything in the book, but it’s not a historical novel, like you’d think due to the scenes that are censored and the subject matter. It’s really a time-travel story—my favorite kind. Time travel is something I think about a lot because sometimes I feel like I was born at the wrong place in history.

  I should have been born at a time when adults didn’t pretend something is okay when it’s not. I don’t know if that time ever existed.

  Maybe I needed to be born in the future.

  At recess on Wednesday, while Marci still talks about how Dr. McKenny should have gotten back to us by now, I tell Marci and Denis about the things Mom, Grandad, and I wrote down on the legal pad—the stuff to do after what we’ve already done, like write letters to the editor, protest, and contact the press, the publisher, and the American Library Association.

  “Great list,” she says. She seems far away. Her frown-dimple is still there.

  “What’s wrong?” Denis asks.

  “I’m so tired of the patriarchy,” Marci says.

  Denis sighs. My shoulders get tense.

  She adds, “This is clearly sexism at work.”

  The patriarchy is a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination [typically] against women.

  “Please, Marci,” Denis says.

  I don’t say anything or sigh. I try to hold my face in a smile but I can’t tell if it’s working. I really like Marci, but when she talks about women’s rights, I feel bad because I’m a guy.

  “That’s the only reason this word is being censored. This specific word. Think about it,” Marci says. “The world acts like boys are like computers that can’t be reprogrammed to act sensibly, so they’re ‘protecting’ you from a perfectly normal word. So dumb.”

  “Are there computers that can’t be reprogrammed?” Denis asks.

  Marci ignores him.

  I can’t think of anything to say.

  “Don’t you understand?” Marci continues. “You can’t think feminism is just about girls. It’s about you guys, too! The reason this book is censored is because people expect you to be immature and stupid. All boys. Sixth-grade boys. Too stupid to read about six million people who were murdered and not giggle at one word about a body part.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “It’s sexism.”

  “It’s disrespectful. As if you can’t handle the word breasts!” Marci says.

  “Breasts,” I say. “I mean, if they’re on a chicken we can talk about them all day, right?”

  Marci looks at me funny for that, but I think it makes sense. Right then, Hannah Do walks toward us from the playground and waves. Marci and I wave back. Denis’s back is toward her, so he turns around to look. He waves, too.

  I say, “It’s on the menu board at Wendy’s. It says their tenders are made of one hundred percent chicken breast. Breast. It’s right there!”

  Aaron shows up. “Did someone say the magic word?”

  We ignore him. Hannah Do stops walking toward us.

  “Why are you ignoring me and talking about bad words over here?” Aaron asks.

  “It’s not a bad word,” Marci says.

  “Why are you so ignorant?” I ask back.

  “Because it really makes people like you mad,” he says.

  “Go away, Aaron,” Denis says.

  I watch Hannah turn around and walk back toward a bench on the other side of the playground. It makes me mad.

  Suddenly everything makes me mad.

  My dad, the mug, the thing he said about not being able to love. Ugh. I’m mad that someone censored our books. I’m mad that Dr. McKenny acts like it’s no big deal. But mostly, I’m mad that Hannah was too scared to come talk to us because people like Aaron like making people like me mad. And it worked because, fact: I am so mad.

  Marci seems to sense something is wrong. Her eyebrows express a quiet concern. Then someone yells, “Watch out!” and Marci jumps up and catches a football that was headed toward a group of kids standing behind us. The whistle sounds, Marci hands the football to the recess teacher, who happens to be Ms. Sett, and we go back inside.

  Three minutes into lit circle, the intercom on the wall clicks and the secretary asks for Marci to come to the office. Ms. Sett nods and tells her to go. Marci looks at me and Denis and shrugs. Ms. Sett has a smirk on her face, and I sense that she probably knows we talked to her boss about the censored books. I don’t get why Denis and I weren’t also called to the office. I get kinda mad about it.

  Grandad told me a story once about what divide and conquer means. It’s a control method by people in charge to make the people not in charge fight with each other. I think that’s what Ms. Sett and Dr. McKenny might be doing. If they divide me, Denis, and Marci, maybe we will stop caring so much about what they do wrong.

  Either way, I worry about Marci too much to read the book. My brain just does that thing where it makes up scenarios about how Ms. Sett is going to punish us the whole school year, even though she’s acting perfectly like herself.

  Ten minutes later, Marci arrives back in the classroom with an oversized blue sweatshirt over her other clothes. I can tell she’s been crying. I think she’s still crying. She sits down at our group six pod of desks and picks up her book and pretends to read. All my anger from recess turns into concern.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper.

  “Shh. Read,” she answers, but her lip can’t even shush me all the way, it’s quivering so much.

  It’s still hot in the school, and Marci’s face looks red going on purple.

  Ms. Sett comes around to each group and asks some quiet questions about what they’re reading. When she gets to our table, she asks Marci, “Feeling better?”

  Marci doesn’t look at her.

  Then Ms. Sett asks something about what Seder is and what Passover is and Hannah answers for us because Denis and I, and even Aaron James, are looking at Marci, trying to figure out what just happened.

  When it’s time for club block, Marci rushes off to chorus and I read ahead in the book, even though Ms. Sett has written on the whiteboard: DON’T READ AHEAD!

  At dismissal time, Marci takes off the oversized sweatshirt, leaves it on her desk, and then almost runs down the steps. Denis and I have to jog to keep up with her, the whole time saying variations of “What’s wrong? and “What happened?”

  “She dress-coded me!” Marci explodes once we get outside.

  “What’s that mean?” I ask as we start walking home.

  “Of course you wouldn’t know,” she huffs.

  “It’s not Mac’s fault,” Denis says. He turns to me. “It means that they made her wear that big sweatshirt because she was wearing something that was against dress code.”

  “You’re wearing a T-shirt and—whatever those are called,” I say. “What was—like—”

  “They’re called capri pants,” she says. “And the problem was, if I lift my arms up, like I did at recess, my T-shirt goes up.”

  Denis and I wait for more, but Marci just keeps looking ahead. I remember her catching the football at recess, but I don’t remember what happened to her shirt when she jumped up and caught it. It all happened so fast.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I tell her. “If you hadn’t caught that football, it would have hit a bunch of kids.”

  “Exactly,” Marci says.

  Denis is now walking with his arms up, and his T-shirt rises up about six inches. I can see the elastic part of his boxers peeking out of his board shorts.

  I do it, too. My T-shirt goes up, and I can feel a breeze on my back.

  “Don’t rub it in!” Marci says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was just trying to figure out how long my shirt would have to be for it to not ride up like that.”

  “Halfway to your knees, I bet,” Denis says.

  “The patriarchy is so dumb!” Marci says.

  We’re quiet for a block, cross Main Street, and cross the road to be in the shade.

  “How can it be the patriarchy if Ms. Sett is the one who dress-coded you?” Denis asks. I’m glad he does.

  “The patriarchy is everywhere! It’s a system! We live inside of it. Adults, kids.” Marci points to the blob of younger kids walking ahead of us. “They all live inside of it, too. It never ends!”

  “Does it say somewhere in the dress code that we can’t lift our arms?” Denis asks.

  Marci smiles a little. “Only girls, I guess.”

  “Volleyball is going to be difficult,” I point out. “And basketball.”

  Marci smiles again. She doesn’t say anything, but I think we made her feel better. But most of me knows that both Denis and I feel weird talking about the patriarchy and sexism because we’re guys.

  Right then, I realize why Mom has so much grace … and I feel bad knowing Marci is probably using grace right now to even talk to us.

  The next day, Dr. McKenny gives all three of us an appointment during first block.

  I never expected to be nervous, but Dr. McKenny smiles so wide when she walks in and closes the door behind her, it’s creepy.

  “I’ve done my snooping,” she says, “and I know what happened with the books.” She brings her hands together and holds them in front of her, clasped, making a point with each syllable. “So it’s all over now. You guys can stop worrying.”

  Denis says, “We’re not worried. We want uncensored books and we’d like to know why whoever did this did it.”

  “Well, it’s obvious why she did it,” Dr. McKenny says. She. She said she. Marci looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

  Then Marci tells Dr. McKenny, “It’s not obvious to me.” Marci’s taking notes on a legal pad—Grandad would love her.

  Dr. McKenny says, “The person who did this told me that while working through this book in earlier years, those areas of the book made some students very uncomfortable and made some of the boys in class giggle. Some of them complained, so she took care of the problem.”

  “I knew that was going to be the reason,” Marci says.

  “It’s sad,” Dr. McKenny says, “but true. Not all sixth graders are as mature as you three.”

  I’m skeptical. Adults do a thing when they lie to kids—they make up wild stories. She’s doing that.

  “The second passage says that she motions to her undeveloped chest,” I say. “I don’t understand how anyone could be uncomfortable with that. So I don’t think anyone giggled. And I don’t think anyone complained, either.”

  Dr. McKenny looks directly at me, and her smile is now two counties over. “Are you saying that I’m not telling you the truth?”

  “I think I’m saying that I don’t believe that anyone ever complained about this book. That’s all.” What I really mean is: Go ahead, tell me the last time a bunch of kids came to a teacher to tell her that they were made uncomfortable by a word in a book. This doesn’t happen.

  Denis adds, “Also, if this logic applies, I could complain to Ms. Sett today about the content of any other book and that means she’ll censor all the copies in her room, right?”

  “It is hard to believe,” Marci says. “You have to admit that.”

  There is uncomfortable silence. A lot of it. Marci and I make eye contact and smile a little bit.

  “I think we’ve said enough on this topic,” Dr. McKenny says. “I’m glad you brought your concerns to me and we cleared it up.”

  “Are we going to get new books?” I ask.

  “It’s just a few words,” Dr. McKenny says. “And you already know what they are!”

  There is more uncomfortable silence.

  “We didn’t clear anything up,” Marci points out. “You’re still supporting censorship. So nothing has changed. Though now we’ve wasted a week. That’s all.”

  “Thanks for your time, though,” Denis says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Thank you.”

  The three of us get up and leave her office as Dr. McKenny looks at us with a mix of confusion and optimism on her face. Meaning: She’s hoping she just stopped us but really has no idea if she did or not.

  Fact: She not only didn’t stop us, but she just made us more determined than ever.

  None of us says anything as we climb the steps back to Ms. Sett’s room. But when we get to the top of the steps, Denis says, “Guys, I’m scared that she’s going to really be mean to us now.”