RONALD REAGAN IS IN A lot of trouble.

Even when he got shot, he was making jokes, telling the doctors he hoped they were Republicans and telling Nancy sorry he forgot to duck. But now he stands in front of a blue curtain and behind too many microphones, his face white, his voice shaking.

“Listen,” he says. “We did not, did not, trade arms for hostages.”

But now it looks like maybe they did. When the reporters ask him questions about the money from Iran going to the Contras in Nicaragua, he looks like he is mad at them for asking, and also like he just remembered he left his keys locked in his car with the engine running. Oliver North is a Marine, and he says he would stand on his head if the president asked him to because that’s how much he loves this country. But nobody asked him to stand on his head. Somebody asked him to get money to the Contras in Nicaragua, even though Congress said not to, and he did it. He found a way. Maybe Ronald Reagan asked him, but maybe not. If he did, he’s in trouble.

Deena says Oliver North looks like Mel Gibson, but my mother says really, that isn’t the point. She leaves the news on when she feeds Samuel his dinner in the front room, watching reporters yell questions to Ronald Reagan as he walks from the White House to his helicopter. He waves and cups his hand over his ear like he can’t hear their questions because the helicopter is too loud, but he keeps walking, and you can tell that really, he just doesn’t want to hear them.

My mother is happy and mad about this at the same time. “Now who’s the cheater, Ronnie?” she says, eyes glittering. “Tell me who the liar is now.”

But I feel bad for Ronald Reagan. When I look at his face and hear his voice, I can see in his heart that he really is trying to be a good person. My mother says that’s because he’s an actor, but I think it’s real. When he says “God bless America,” I think he means it so much that in some ways, he is almost crazy, like maybe in his mind he sees a ray of light coming down from the sky, shining down on America and no one else, just because he loves it so much. So then he would have to lie and cheat to save Texas from the Communists, and he would still be as good as Moses, smiting down the Midianites, even the little children. It gets confusing, because that’s why he hates the Communists in the first place. Because they lie and cheat. But if America is really blessed, then it’s different for us.

I’m sure God loves people in Nicaragua, almost as much as he loves us. But it would be a bad thing if the Communists came to Texas, so maybe some of the Nicaraguans have to die to keep that from happening.

But I probably wouldn’t think that way if I lived in Nicaragua.

The reason Travis and Deena don’t get in trouble for missing so much class is because the school spent five thousand dollars on a computerized attendance system this year. The teachers said it was worth every penny, because now all they have to do is mark “absent” by your name on the slip that goes to the office, and the computer automatically calls your house. The computer called my house one day, when I really was sick. My mother, thinking it was a person she was talking to, said, “I know. She’s right here. She’s sick,” getting madder and madder before she figured out she was talking to a machine.

But Deena’s grandmother doesn’t hear very well anymore, so Deena just turns down the volume of the ringer on the phone before she leaves for school in the morning. She tested it a few times, calling from the pay phone at the Wendy’s across the street from the high school. If nobody answers the phone when the computer calls, it sends a letter right to your house, but Deena brings in the mail for her grandmother every day, so that’s not a problem, at least for now.

The attendance policy at Kerrville High says that you are allowed to miss thirteen days of each class each semester. You get thirteen sick days, no questions asked, whether you are sick for real or just sick of school. It sounds like a lot, but if you go over thirteen, you fail that semester, no matter what, even if you get pneumonia and are really about to die. But Travis figured out that the computer can only count: it can’t tell if you miss different classes on different days. So really you can miss thirteen gyms, thirteen algebras, thirteen biologies—and they don’t have to be on the same day. Since thirteen free sick days each semester mean twenty-six free sick days each year, Travis says he and Deena can get away with never going to a full day of school for almost the entire year without ever getting in trouble with anybody but the computer.

So really, two years of freshman algebra taught him something after all.

But Mr. Goldman is catching on, and he’s starting to balk. “Where are they?” he asks, looking at me. The dark eyebrows lower, and I know he knows I know. He’s figured out that I’m the one turning in their homework, all of it done in Travis’s handwriting.

“I don’t know,” I say. But I do, of course. They are either at Dairy Queen, or worse. Either way, Deena comes out a winner.

Mr. Goldman doesn’t like this answer, and he keeps looking at me, pulling on his red tie. “Do their parents know how much they miss?” he asks. “What’s going on here?”

Mr. Sellers cuts in to rescue me. “Mr. Goldman,” he says, not even looking up from his book, “let us not bother the industrious Miss Bucknow with the whereabouts of her less industrious peers. If they choose to miss, they choose to miss. Their parents have been duly informed. Life, and class, will go on without them. We should focus on teaching the students who are actually here.”

But just then, just as he’s saying this, the door opens and Deena shuffles in, smiling at Mr. Goldman, her hair wet from the snow. “Sorry,” she says, like she really means it. “My watch broke.”

Mr. Goldman frowns, not just at Deena, but at Mr. Sellers too. “I already marked you absent and sent the sheet to the office,” he says. “You have to be here on time.”

“Yes sir,” she says, looking back at him, very seriously, until he turns around.

Mr. Goldman goes back to the chalkboard, telling us that it isn’t so important that we memorize the quadratic formula, but when we see it written down, we should be able to recognize it for what it is and plug the right numbers into the right spaces. But if you do want to memorize it, he says, it helps to know that you can sing it to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” And of course he does this for us, his voice low, straining on the high notes. This is what he is doing when all of a sudden he looks out the window and freezes, the chalk in his hand resting against the board.

We turn around, all of us. Outside, just across the street, Travis and Ed Schwebbe are walking slowly, their hoods pulled up over their heads and their hands in their pockets.

“Hold on for a minute,” Mr. Goldman says, setting down the chalk. “I’ll be right back.”

Ray Watley runs to the window the moment Mr. Goldman leaves. Deena gets up next, and then we all do. Mr. Sellers tells us to sit back down, but we don’t care about him anymore. Already we can see Mr. Goldman outside, jogging after Travis and Ed, his red tie flapped up over his shoulder, leaving footprints in the inch of snow that has fallen on the sidewalk since they shoveled it at lunch. He shouts out to them, and they turn toward each other, Ed saying something quickly and then running ahead, disappearing behind the Wendy’s. But Travis just stands there, smoking a cigarette, watching Mr. Goldman run toward him.

When Mr. Goldman catches up to him, he takes the cigarette out of Travis’s hand and throws it on the ground. He points at Travis and then back to the school as if Travis were just lost and maybe needed directions. Travis says nothing, his hands in his pockets. I can’t see his face from here.

They walk back together, Mr. Goldman still talking, not even acting like he is cold although he must be, in just one of his crisp colorful shirts with snow falling on his dark hair. We move quickly back to our seats, everyone in place before they get to the door. Travis takes his seat in the back, his eyes steady on the back of Mr. Goldman’s head for the rest of the hour, the hissing radiator the only sound in the room.

The protesters show up the next day, chanting loud enough for us to hear them in health and family life. The snow has turned into a cold March drizzle, but they are out there anyway, walking in slow circles in the school parking lot, carrying signs: DON’T LISTEN TO JENKINS; LISTEN TO JESUS!! DON’T MONKEY WITH FREEDOM OF RELIGION!

Mrs. Hansen pulls the curtains over the windows and turns on the air conditioner so the hum of it will drown them out, even though our hair is still wet from walking from the buses.

“Who are they?” Traci asks. “What do they want?”

Mrs. Hansen rolls her eyes. “Ms. Jenkins wants to teach evolution. It gets people stirred up.”

I am silent, taking this in. I don’t know what the protesters are mad about. I want to ask, but I’m worried if I do it will be like asking about Noah’s ark, and Traci will turn around and say, “You’ve got to be joking” again.

I am most disturbed by the sign that says you have to listen to Jesus instead of Jenkins, like Jesus is on one side and Ms. Jenkins is on the other. Ms. Jenkins has just handed back my report on the different kinds of cloud formations with an A+ and GREAT WORK written across the top, underlined three times. She’s my favorite teacher besides Mr. Goldman, but if she’s on a different side than Jesus, well then.

I have biology third period, and all through class, I watch Ms. Jenkins carefully. She moves around the room like nothing is happening, like we don’t all know that there are protesters outside with her name on their signs. She talks about chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer, scratching her graying hair so it sticks up at the sides. I am thinking that Ms. Jenkins doesn’t believe in God, and this is why the protesters are mad.

Eileen says she feels sorry for people who don’t believe in God, just plain sorry for them. I don’t know if she would feel sorry for Ms. Jenkins or not, if she met her. I can’t imagine them in the same room. I can’t even have both of them in my head at the same time. They are like two parallel lines that should never cross each other, but keep going on side by side, always on different tracks.

At lunch, Mr. Goldman sits by himself, reading U.S. News & World Report, sipping orange juice through a straw, his green tie flipped up over his shoulder so he won’t spill anything on it.

“I hate that fucker,” Travis says.

I give Travis a look. I don’t like his calling Mr. Goldman a fucker. He’s nice. If anyone is confused about a math problem, he stays during lunch and helps them, eating a sandwich with one hand, writing on the board with the other.

Last week, he caught Libby Masterson passing a note to Traci. Usually this is a good thing for everybody else, because if a teacher like Sellers catches you passing notes, he takes it from you and reads it out loud to everyone. It can be very interesting. But when Mr. Goldman took the folded-up note out of Libby’s hand, she looked up at him with her rabbit face and said, “Please, please, don’t read it,” and just looking at her you could see that the note had something about him in it, and that if he read it, that would be it for her as far as being embarrassed. Sellers was in the back of the room, and he started snapping his fingers and saying, “Bring the note to me,” and we were all saying, “Read it! Read it!” But Mr. Goldman just wadded it up and threw it away and told Libby to keep her mind on math.

I was one of the people saying, “Read it! Read it!” and now I feel bad.

Deena does not say yes or no about whether Mr. Goldman is a fucker. She’s preoccupied, reading an article in People about Fawn Hall. Fawn Hall was Oliver North’s secretary, and she was supposed to shred the documents about Iran and Nicaragua but did not. The article is not about this, but about how Fawn Hall is not just a secretary but also a part-time model with a red sports car and a license plate that says FAWN 1. She drives around Washington, D.C., in this car with the windows down because she smokes. If there is a movie made about all of this Iran-Contra business, the article says, she could be played by Farrah Fawcett, or maybe Vanna White.

“She’s so pretty,” Deena says, looking at the picture.

Travis takes the magazine from Deena, shaking his head. “You’re prettier,” he says.

She smiles and places a raisin on the tip of his tongue.

I eat my yogurt and look at the clock. This is how it goes. I have to eat lunch with them when they stay on campus because they get mad if I don’t, but when I do, they say things like this to each other, and they have to be touching or feeding each other at all times. Right now his hand is on her knee under the table. I can tell this just by the way they are looking at each other. This look between them has everything to do with their having sex in Ed Schwebbe’s van every other day while I am sitting in algebra.

The protesters are still outside, the paint on their signs bleeding downward in the rain. They are all wearing jackets and scarves and hats, wrapped up like colorful mummies, and they have stopped chanting. Now they just talk to one another, holding the signs up with mittened hands.

Travis sees me watching them through the window, and he grins. One of his front teeth is crooked, yellow. This should make him look ugly, but it doesn’t. “Your old buddies out there?” he asks, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“What?”

He rolls his eyes. “Your church friends. The people who used to come and pick you up in the station wagon. With the bumper sticker. I recognize the car.”

Of course. I had not thought of this before, but of course Pastor Dave and Sharon are outside. I put down my yogurt, a wave of nausea passing through me.

“Maybe they’ll cancel it,” Deena says, turning a page of the magazine. “Biology, I mean. That’s what I vote for.”

Ms. Jenkins is on the other side of the cafeteria, eating a salad, her glasses pushed up into her hair. She catches me looking at her, and before I can look away, she smiles.

When school gets out it’s still raining, and we have to wait under the portico for the buses to come. Traci Carmichael watches the protesters, her thin mouth curled at one end. “Idiots,” she says to Libby. Libby nods in agreement.

At this very same moment, I hear one of them calling my name. I can tell from the voice that it’s Sharon, even though she’s wearing a ski jacket and a green scarf wrapped around most of her face. She holds a sign that says EVILUTION: DON’T BELIEVE THE LIE! In the other hand, she holds a Styrofoam cup.

She isn’t pregnant yet. Harry Hopewell didn’t help.

Pastor Dave stands next to her, holding an umbrella over both their heads. She touches him on the shoulder and points at me. He waves, taking care to keep the umbrella steady. They start to walk toward me but stop when they get to the sidewalk. “You have to come over here to talk to us, honey,” he yells, waving me toward them. “We’re not allowed to cross the sidewalk.” They stay right there, their toes on the edge of the grass. Traci and Libby turn around, verifying that yes, he is speaking to me.

I pull on the hood of my jacket and step out from underneath the portico, moving toward them, but not all the way, stopping well before the sidewalk.

“It’s so good to see you!” Pastor Dave calls out. “We’ve missed you so much, Evelyn. Hey, do you need an umbrella? We’ve got plenty in the car.”

I shake my head and show him the folded-up umbrella in my hand. “I’m just going to the bus.”

They both nod, still smiling. They are getting hurt, I think, wondering why I am not coming closer, crossing over the invisible line. “How’s your grandmother?” Sharon yells, her hands cupped around her mouth.

“Good,” I say. I turn around to see the windows of Ms. Jenkins’s classroom. She could be looking down from them, but she isn’t. “Good.”

“Good,” Pastor Dave says, his eyes steady on my face. “Would you mind telling her what we’re doing out here?” He points behind him, at the people carrying signs. “She’s welcome to join us. We’ll need all the help we can get in the next two weeks.”

“I’ll tell her,” I say, turning around with a wave. “Well, that’s my bus.”

“We could use your help too,” he calls out. But I am already walking toward the bus, and I pull my hood closer around my head, pretending I don’t hear.

If Eileen could see the way that Travis acts in algebra now, she would say he was being a pill. That little pill, she would say, shaking her head. Meaning his behavior is hard to take.

He comes to algebra now because he has to, but he does little things that probably make Mr. Goldman wish he would have just let him stay outside, smoking with Ed Schwebbe in the snow. Travis has joined forces with Ray Watley. They each sneeze loudly every five minutes and say “Bless you” to each other every single time. He doesn’t do his homework. He doesn’t even bring his book.

After three days of this, Mr. Goldman balks. “Travis,” he says, “where’s your book?”

Travis takes his time responding, his fish eyes moving slowly around the room. “Forgot it,” he says.

Mr. Goldman rests his hands on his waist, leaning heavily on one foot. “Okay,” he says. He walks back to Mr. Sellers’s desk and pulls an algebra book out of one of the drawers. The drawer squeaks loudly, but Mr. Sellers doesn’t wake up. “Here you go,” he says. “We’re on page two thirty-six.”

Ray Watley sneezes.

“Bless you, Ray,” Travis says.

Deena’s eyes catch mine. Travis sneezes.

“Bless you, Travis,” Ray says.

Traci Carmichael rolls her eyes, so Libby does too. Mr. Goldman goes back to the chalkboard, where he has drawn a graph with red and blue chalk. He is talking quickly, chopping off the words the way he always does, his hands moving in front of him. I like the way he talks about math, all breathy and excited, like he is letting you in on a secret and you are lucky to be able to hear it.

But only a minute later, he stops talking. “You going to open that book, Travis?”

Travis looks down at the cover of the book, as if he is considering this question for the first time. He yawns and leans his head to the right. “In a while,” he says.

Mr. Goldman nods, scratching the back of his neck. “Go ahead and open it now.”

Travis opens his book to the first page. Ray Watley sneezes again.

“Bless you, Ray.”

Mr. Goldman looks down at his shiny shoes, his mouth moving as if he is trying to do some sort of deep-breathing exercise. “Okay,” he says, clapping his hands together one time, “let’s try this. How about I give you guys the rest of class to work through the problems in this chapter in groups of three. That was going to be your homework for tonight, but you can do it now. If you have questions about tomorrow’s test, just come up, and I’ll help you individually.”

This is quite a deal, a generous offer, and we know it. Deena and I move our desks together, and she nods at Travis to join us. But he’s still looking down at the first page of his book, which has nothing on it but the acknowledgments and copyright dates, and he’s dropping his pencil on his desk over and over again, hard enough for it to bounce up on its eraser. Traci looks up from her paper, nudging Libby.

“Fifth grade,” she whispers.

It’s true. I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Mr. Goldman waits five minutes before he says anything, and when he does, his voice is quiet, calm. “Travis, you can work by yourself, or you can work in a group. But I want you to use this time to work on your assignment. You can’t just sit there.”

Travis catches the pencil in midair and points it at Mr. Goldman. “I’ll do it later.”

It’s so quiet now that all you can hear is the ticktock of the large electric clock on the wall, counting off the seconds, and the sound of Travis’s pencil bouncing on his desk.

“I want you to do it now, Travis.”

He bounces his pencil again. “Well, I want to do it later.”

Ray sneezes again, though even Travis has given this up by now. That’s how dumb it is.

“Then you can leave. You’re absent, okay? You’re not here today mentally, so you’re not here at all.” He walks to the door and opens it, one arm gesturing toward the hallway. “Just go.”

Travis laughs, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. “Wow. First you want me to come back, then you want me to leave. You need to make up your mind, Mr. Goldman.”

We wait, watching Mr. Goldman’s face. He looks tense, tired. “Dude,” he says suddenly, his hands resting in front of him, palms up, as if he were waiting to catch something falling from above. “I’m trying to work with you here, okay? It’s my job to teach you, and I want to do that. But you’ve got to work with me, okay?”

Travis remains seated, but his face changes. There is almost a smile, and I hope this is a sign that maybe he is finally starting to see that Mr. Goldman is trying, that he is acting dumb.

“Okay?” Mr. Goldman tries again.

Travis tilts his head to the side. “Um, did you just call me dude, Mr. Goldman? Dude?”

Ray sneezes.

Mr. Goldman looks down at the floor, rubbing his chin. “Just get out, Travis. Just leave.”

“Okay, dude.” Travis stands up slowly and takes his backpack off the back of his chair. He gives Mr. Goldman the thumbs-up. “Right on, my man! Out of sight!”

Everyone is looking at Travis except for Mr. Goldman, who is looking at some point over Travis’s head toward the back of the room. He walks away from the door before Travis can get to it, and sits back down at his desk.

“You got it, dude. Far out,” Travis says, flashing the peace sign from the doorway. Ray Watley is laughing, but no one else is.

Mr. Goldman doesn’t look up. “Don’t come back until we talk.”

“Okay, dude.” Travis waves, his backpack slung over one shoulder, opening the door. “Bye, dude. Righteous, man. Righteous.”

And then, the terrible thing happens. One of the straps of Travis’s backpack catches on the doorknob as he is walking out, and since the other strap is already around his shoulder, part of his body is jerked back as the rest of him tries to go forward. His head hits the doorknob on his way to the floor, and everyone hears him yelp.

Deena’s hand goes to her mouth. Traci laughs, one loud Ha!, but the rest of us just sit there, looking down at Travis hanging from the doorknob, his face twisted with pain.

Mr. Goldman gets up quickly, moving to the door. “You all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Travis says. He keeps his eyes lowered as he stands up, rubbing his head. He does not look up once as he unhooks the strap of his backpack so he can try to exit again.

That evening, a little gray car pulls into the parking lot of Treeline Colonies, moving slowly in front of Unit B, the driver squinting at the numbers on the doors. It takes me a moment to see it is Mr. Goldman, because he is wearing a hat and a black fisherman’s jacket and no tie. I close my book, and move closer to the window.

He walks up the concrete stairs to the Rowleys’ door and knocks. Mrs. Rowley answers, Jackie O barking in her arms. She shuts the door, and Mr. Goldman walks back to his car in the parking lot, his arms folded across his chest. I think maybe she’s lied to him, told him Travis wasn’t home, but the door opens again, and Travis comes out, yawning and pulling a sweatshirt down over his head. He takes his time coming down the stairs. Mr. Goldman sits on the bumper of his car, one foot resting on the knee of the other leg, leaving enough room for Travis. But Travis stays standing, looking at his shoes, his hands pushed deep inside the pockets of his jeans.

Mr. Goldman talks, one arm moving back and forth between them, like a bridge for his words to fall onto and bounce more easily into Travis’s ears. They stay like this for a long time, Mr. Goldman’s breath turning to steam in the cooling March evening. When the sun starts to set, I have to squint to see their faces, turning gray and then shadowed against the dusking sky. Travis leans on one foot and then the other. And then, maybe just because he’s tired of standing, he sits.