She takes the phone out of her apron pocket and thunks it back into its cradle. A sharp edge to her voice, she says, “Maybe because I just talked to him?”

  Fine, but she doesn’t have to be so nasty. I can speak in edges, too. “So maybe it’s good that he knows, after all. I guess he’s good for some things.”

  Into the silence, Etta says, “If tonight’s not the best night—”

  Mom waves a dismissive hand. “No, no. There are not enough more nights, and this thing with Kyle isn’t going away anytime soon. We’re still working out how to get through it together, that’s all. Ethan, will you help me serve? Etta, has Two had his dinner?”

  Etta puts some water down for Two, who has in fact had his dinner, and it’s nearly eight before we have our own. This is unheard of in our house, and I’m famished. I shovel food into my mouth as Mom and Etta discuss their approach. It’s all based on just what Mom said earlier, that the real challenge will be to fight the perception that all scientists are atheists, knowing the opposition will push things that way no matter what the topic is supposed to be.

  My own voice surprises me, like it does so often lately. “Can you prove they’re not all atheists?”

  Mom and Etta both sit back, and then Mom looks at Etta like she’s stumped. But Etta isn’t.

  “Have you heard of Dr. Francis Collins?” Mom and I both shake our heads. “He was the lead scientist for the Human Genome Project, mapping out the genetic blueprint that makes humans human. He’s a born-again Christian. I read his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. His point is that faith in God is actually supported by what science teaches us. God works through science.” She shrugs. “What I see is a long line with a movable point on it. The line itself is God. Toward the left is science, and toward the right is faith. Centuries ago that movable point was pretty far over to the left, so the science portion to left of it was pretty small and the faith part was pretty big. Over time, that point has moved toward the right as we learned more about science, so we needed faith a little less. I doubt that we’ll ever be so smart that the faith part will disappear entirely, but even if it does—the line itself is still God. Science will never replace God.”

  Again, my voice from nowhere: “So you believe in God?”

  Etta smiles at me. “I do, although it might not look like the kind of God you’re used to hearing about. Your friend Jorja would probably not recognize my belief as belief in her God at all.” She leans back, looks down briefly at Two, and says, “I will probably be asked that question Wednesday night, Ethan. I would be very grateful if you would spend a few minutes right now asking me questions you think I’ll hear from the opposition. I’ll write them down and work on my responses at home. Will you do that for me?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” And I go to the computer and print out the ten questions—and answers—about evolution and ID. I hand it to Etta. “This is a good start.”

  Mom gets up and reads over Etta’s shoulder. Etta says, “Ethan, this is very useful for discussions with people who try to attack the science of evolutionary theory.” She sets it down next to her placemat. “I’m also looking for the kind of question you asked me a few minutes ago. Do I believe in God, and how can scientists believe in God. Most of the audience on Wednesday will not be asking these ten questions. They’ll be asking really personal questions, and making accusations, based on their own feelings and fears. What would be really helpful is if you can pretend that you’re one of those people. Can you do that?”

  “Give me a few minutes,” I say, and go into the living room. I sit at the computer, half listening to Mom and Etta as they talk about the town hall, and pretend I’m Jorja. I open a blank file and start typing. Maybe half an hour later I’ve got a whole page full of questions. I go back to the top and read, and I have to admit that the first few are kind of mean-spirited, because I’ve been pretending I’m Jorja, and I’m mad at her. But after about the fourth question they start to get more realistic. At the end I even throw in one I’ve seen online someplace: How can homosexuality be natural when it doesn’t have any evolutionary advantages? To be honest, that one troubles me a little. I carry a printout into the kitchen.

  Etta takes it from me, reads through it nodding and smiling, and then she gets to that last one. She frowns a little and looks up at me. “Ethan, do you have reason to think people will bring up homosexuality?”

  “You never know. Max wants to prepare our debate team to respond to that kind of question. Plus Mom got a paper left on her windshield that says you’re connected with—what was that organization, Mom?”

  Etta says, “NAMBLA. Yes, I’ve seen that. You’re right, ludicrous though that whole string of illogic is.” She looks back at the page. “This question assumes there’s a scientific basis to say that it is natural. I wouldn’t know what to say to someone who says it isn’t. At least, not from a scientific perspective.”

  I tell her what Max has told me, what Sylvia has told him. Her eyes get big. I ask, “Do you want me to look that up on the computer?”

  “Yes, please.”

  It doesn’t take me long, and I print out a few pages about the pheromone studies. I even find a site that shows all the animal species that have homosexuality, and it goes on and on. I do a screen dump of a couple of pages just for examples. As I’m waiting for the printouts, I can hear Etta talking about the guy who wouldn’t plow for her tonight. Mom asks who it is.

  “Lowell Galway. I’ve known him for years. He’s been plowing the driveway since before I came back from New York. He plowed for my father.”

  I’m thinking that’s probably Bryan’s father when Mom says, “Lowell Galway? The guy who keeps a shotgun in his truck?”

  “Does he? I didn’t know. Guess I’ve never had occasion to see it.”

  By the time Etta leaves, she’s got a whole pile of stuff to read. Mom and I stand near the door as Etta puts on her boots, and I remember the sign I saw Saturday.

  “Listen, you know how your signs are getting stolen? I saw one the other day in somebody’s yard, and next to it there was a sign that said if anyone steals the sign again it’s another fifty dollars to Etta Greenleaf.”

  Mom laughs, and Etta stands up straight and stares at me.

  I go on. “So I was kind of thinking, you know, we could plant some of those other signs beside the regular ones. It would make it look like you’ve got all kinds of support.”

  One boot on, the other foot still in just her sock, Etta reaches out and hugs me.

  I’m most of the way up the stairs after she leaves, on my way to my room so I can finish my homework, when the phone rings. It’s kind of late, which of course makes me think something’s wrong somehow, and I listen as Mom picks it up. Her voice sounds hesitant but not irritated as she says, “Dave.”

  It’s Dad. She talked to him already once tonight. Is he okay? I sit on a stair just far enough down to be able to hear without being easy to see and listen shamelessly to the half of the conversation available to me, filling in the other half as I sense what’s going on.

  “Yes, thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it.... Well, I guess I’m kind of her campaign manager. Ethan’s been helping her put signs up. . . . You knew? How?”

  Shit. Dad! Shut up about things I haven’t told Mom! Like, that I’ve seen you at all.

  “He didn’t mention it.”

  I’ll bet Dad’s wishing he hadn’t said anything, about now; he probably doesn’t want Mom to know about fluffy Connie. Maybe he just wants to make sure I haven’t ratted on him.

  She listens for a couple of minutes, and since Dad’s not really talkative I’m thinking she’s giving him a chance to hang himself by tripping over his own words. I know, mixed metaphor, but I’m tired. But when she does speak, her voice is almost sweet.

  “I know, I know. It’s been really hard on all of us. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I know I should have. I’m just trying to cope.”

  So the part I fill in for myself is that Dad is apologizing for flying off the handle after I told him about Kyle, and Mom’s letting him. She’s forgiving him.

  Maybe there’s hope for them. As I move silently toward my room I rest my hand on my ass, willing the tattoo to send balance into my parents’ marriage.

  Chapter 11

  Jorja walks right past me on the bus Tuesday, even though I’m sitting against the window on “her” side, in the seat we’ve normally shared in the past. I don’t turn to watch, so I don’t know where she ends up after rejecting my offer of a truce. Max gets on at his stop, and his eyes widen a little when he sees what side I’m sitting on. He rejects me, too, even though I’m wearing my cool new-slash-old bar code pea coat for the first time, and sits on the other side, a few rows up. I’m sure that’s as much so we won’t be seen sitting together again as it is that I’m on the “wrong” side. And I’m beginning to feel creepy enough over here that if he’d sat in an empty row I would have got up and sat with him. But he didn’t. It’s actually a little scary that I feel like I have more guts than he does. And even scarier that I might have more guts than is good for me.

  No one sits beside me all the way to school. And the chasm, other than my tiny little statement, is still there. To try and make myself feel a little better about my isolation, I remind myself that I’d started this year being proud—or at least pretending to be proud—of my outlier status. So even now that I’ve essentially declared a side, I’m still an outlier. Life’s a funny thing.

  Philosophizing about my isolation isn’t enough not to make me feel creepy. There are twinges in my stomach from that kind of low-level anxiety that you can’t really do anything about. I need a distraction. I could, of course, pull out a book, but that seems kind of desperate. And then I realize I have something much better. My iPhone.

  I pull it out and start cruising on the Internet, nothing particular in mind, and I end up on iTunes. In the back of my mind someplace I know there’s some music I had wanted to download, if I could just remember what it was. I browse aimlessly, stretching my mind back over the last week or so, and then it hits me: k.d. lang. By the time I get to school, I’m stocked up on about three albums, nearly blowing my whole month’s allowance on Mom’s credit card.

  When I get to my first class, the chasm has followed us all from the bus. We don’t have assigned seats, but usually most kids sit in the same seats out of habit or something. Not today. And it keeps going throughout the day. There’s some number of kids, how many I can’t tell, who look kind of bewildered and don’t seem to understand what’s going on or what they’re expected to do about it. This keeps me—and probably anyone else—from being able to get a sense of which camp outnumbers the other. But one thing’s for sure: Each camp is much bigger than either debate team.

  Jorja isn’t in Biology. I don’t have a clue where she is, but I’m positive this is some kind of protest on her part. As for me, the stuff I’d been looking up last night for Etta gave me lots of great fodder for my homework, and it’s kind of fun to hand it in.

  More Darwin today, or at least his theories. And today there are more comments from the kids. I’m guessing that somewhere between Jorja setting the stage yesterday and the thinking Sylvia had us do for homework has made some of the Teen Meet kids bolder. They start asking questions that have a lot in common with those ten I’d given Etta, the ones that almost make scientific sense. It seems I’m not the only one who found them. Max must have passed them on to Sylvia, or maybe she already knew how to respond to them, because she holds her own, for sure. The only thing she can’t win against is when someone starts quoting scripture. And this usually brings out protests from kids on the other side of this issue. Like Marra, and Max. But others, too.

  After about five of these Bible references, Sylvia’s impatience starts to show. “Everyone, please. This is Biology. Science. Just saying something is true without providing sound data, repeatable tests, and conclusive results isn’t science. Scripture is about faith, not facts. If you don’t have facts to talk about, you aren’t talking about science.”

  We could almost start our debate right here. Either that, or another rock-ball fight. Max is scribbling furiously, and so is Marra, no doubt taking notes to use in the debate. They’re obviously much more into this controversy than I am. I just want it to be June so we can call the school year over. June is “up” for me right now, I decide. Bats hibernate in winter around here.

  The debate meeting is weird because of Gregory not being there. Marra, of course, already has some research material in multiple copies for us, and she doesn’t even show it to Sylvia before she hands the copies out. Sylvia gives us all copies of the ten questions article I’d sent to Max, and Max has some papers he’s not sharing. I assume they’re about homosexuality.

  Sylvia says, “Okay, let’s take a moment to skim over what I’ve handed out—thank you, Max, for finding it—and then we can look over Marra’s material.”

  Max? Those questions were my find! I glare at him, but he’s not looking at me. I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt; maybe he just forgot to tell Sylvia that I sent them to him.

  Marra says, “Ethan hasn’t brought anything.”

  Max still won’t look at me. I glare at him again, not sure whether to stand up for myself here or not. Then I remember what Etta had said about those questions, so I use that as an excuse to claim them. “I found those ten questions last night. But I think that kind of argument is the easiest to be ready for. We also need to be ready for a different kind of opposition.”

  Sylvia says, “Like what, Ethan?”

  As I tell her about some of the other things I’d found last night, I consider giving Kyle the credit. But this doesn’t seem like a moment for irony. Then I repeat what Etta said, about how emotional some people will get.

  There’s silence for maybe five seconds, and then Sylvia says, “Ethan is absolutely correct. The position the ID team will come from will not be directly from scripture, because the proponents want to deny that their position is inherently religious or specifically Christian. So we must remember that the debate isn’t about the Bible. It’s about what is science and what is not science, and why. Also, remember that the audience will not be all classmates. It’s on Sunday evening, and there will be lots of different people there, not just students who’ve been studying science recently. We must be ready to spot arguments that come from emotion and not facts.”

  So I’ve just helped keep us on the same track as Etta. Maybe I’m not a bad captain after all.

  By the time we get to American History, Mr. Coffin has obviously had to deal with the opposing camps in his other classes, and he’s not taking it lying down. As we come in, he hands us each an index card with a number on it. I look at mine: seven. Max, behind me, gets eighteen. Coffin tells everyone, “Sit at the desk with the matching number. I will be checking.”

  The numbers on the desks are in order, and they start at the back of the room and go across, so I’m nowhere near the front. Everyone is really quiet, almost like we’re afraid to talk to each other. Coffin leans against his desk at the front and looks all around the room.

  “It’s the year nineteen fifty-five,” he says, “and those of you with numbers nine and lower are black citizens. All others are not.” Kids look around; I try to see if all the newly black kids are on the evolution side of things, but we’re not. Coffin has really mixed it up. “The non-black citizens are convinced that black people are less intelligent, less industrious, and somehow less worthy than they are. They believe the issue of black versus white is understood only by those who know that blacks are inferior. They believe this in their gut. And they believe they’re using their brains as well. It’s obvious to them; why else would God have made blacks so obviously different?”

  He pauses, then looks to us in the back. “So, all of you back there, smarter people than you have decided you’re not worthy of the good things in life, that you need to accept the position we’re convinced you belong in. This isn’t a problem for you, right? Because our gut tells us that we’re right. What your guts tell you is irrelevant, because our guts are worth more.”

  Dead quiet now. Really awkward. I look around again to see who else is black. There’s Jorja, at the other end of the row, and Marra, who must be apoplectic at the idea that anyone would think she’s anything other than the best of the best.

  Coffin’s voice breaks the painful silence. “Good news for those in back! Between nineteen fifty-five and the present, we’ve figured out and proven that there is no support for this belief about black people. You are every bit as capable at intellectual and industrial achievement as anyone else. And, today, there are not many people left—black or white—who cling to the fallacy that black people are inferior. And yet fifty or so years ago, many white people were willing to defend that fallacy with everything from discrimination to violence to murder.”

  He turns suddenly. “Jorja Loomis.” From the corner of my eye I see her jump. “In what year did the black woman Rosa Parks refuse to give up her seat to a white person on a public bus?”

  “Um . . . I—I don’t know.”

  “Max Modine?”

  “Nineteen fifty-five.” Clever, to figure out that it was the year Coffin already gave us. But then, Max is sitting toward the front of the room, so he’s one of the smart people.

  “A peaceful march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery ended only six blocks from where it began when local law enforcement troops committed immensely violent acts upon the marchers, severely wounding large numbers of people. This is known as Bloody Sunday, and it occurred on March seventh of what year? Naomi Fallon?”

  “Um . . .”

  Ha! She’s in the very front row, but she didn’t know.

  “Anyone?” Silence. “Nineteen sixty-five. Take these down; you’ll be tested.”