You usually ask Matt Murphy to be your partner in art class, but you asked him during recess to be partners with Randy Duger instead. Your gamble pays off. Only you and the French girl don’t have partners for the last project.

When you scoot your desks together, you notice that she has all of her crayons in color order like you keep yours. She smells like birthday cake. She seems happy to have a new partner because usually she gets stuck with Alyssa LeRoy.

(Randy usually takes Jake as a partner and then because Jake is taken Robbie takes Maggie as a partner. If Maggie doesn’t take Christine as a partner then Babby gets taken. But since Maggie takes Christine this time, then Babby needs a partner and she takes Laura. Laura usually pairs with Annick. In this case, Annick pairs with Alyssa. Usually Alyssa is left over for the French girl. It’s very complicated. Anyway.)

The project requires dipping yarn and pictures in glue and pasting it on a posterboard about our families. You have to find things in common and place those on the board with your families names attached to them.

You try to talk with the French girl, but you aren’t sure that she understands everything you say. Her voice is strong when she speaks, as if she’s handled each word too much beforehand.

“My Dad is a radio DJ,” you say. “It means that he talks on the radio.”

“My Dad is a robot scientist,” she says.

The best robot you’ve ever seen was on the show Silver Spoons. The kid had a little remote control robot that would bring him lunch on a tray. You tell her about this, but make sure to let her now that you don’t like the show.

“What about Small Wonder?” she asks.

Yes, you admit, that is a better show.

You both cut out pictures of dogs. You tell her that your dog needs a walk every day exactly when you want to watch tv. Also you tell her that you mom is following Mrs. McCallister for some reason.

She doesn’t say a lot.

You think you shouldn’t, but since you can’t think of anything else to say you tell her that you once read a story in a TIme/Life book about ghosts that had a girl that wore a ribbon around her neck. In the story, the hero falls in love with the girl and she agrees to marry him on one condition: that he never removes the ribbon from her neck. Then, one night as she sleeps, he pulls the ribbon loose and her head rolls off and falls to the floor.

You immediately regret saying this. It was all you could think of, you know?