I took another look at the girl sitting next to me. My eyes widened. For one thing, the girl was beautiful. She was long-legged and thin, and even sitting down she appeared graceful.

Also, she was black.

There were no black students in our entire grade. This new girl would be the only one. In fact, there are only about six black kids in the whole school. They're in the seventh and eighth grades.

Wow. This was pretty interesting.

"Class," Mrs. Frederickson said, rapping on her desk with a pencil. "Good morning. As you've probably noticed, we have a new student. Her name is Jessica Ramsey. Our seating has changed a bit to make room for her. Jessica is sitting at Rachel Robinson's old desk, and Rachel and everyone after her have moved over one seat."

I saw Rachel cross her eyes at Jessica, tilt her head to the side, and stick her tongue out. If Jessica noticed, she didn't pay attention. She just kept looking straight ahead at Mrs. Frederickson.

Why, I wondered, did Rachel care about her desk so much? We only sit at these desks during homeroom. We don't even keep stuff in them, since other classes use them the rest of the day.

"I hope," Mrs. Frederickson went on, "that you will make Jessica feel welcome." Mrs. Frederickson sounded sincere, but I noticed that she didn't ask Jessica to stand up and introduce herself and tell us where she had come from. That was what she had done when Benny Ott was new. From day one, we'd known that Benny was fromDetroit , and that his dad sold car parts and his mom was a secretary and Benny hoped to become a great actor.

Jessica Ramsey sat next to me, a mystery. I kept looking at her long legs. Maybe she was a dancer or a gymnast or something. Of course, I looked at her face, too. Jessica's eyes were huge and dark. Her lashes were so long I wondered if they were fake. Probably not, if her mother was anything like mine, and I decided that was a distinct possibility, since Jessica wore glasses and didn't have pierced ears, either.