The sun came streaming through the big open classroom windows as though the shades weren’t even down. Though Hope had no idea what good the shades did anyway…they were so ancient, so full of splits and cracks and holes.
     The end of October. High summer still. And there was a rumor going around that it wasn’t going to cool down even a little bit this year. Not even in December or January. That instead it was going to stay hot. Maybe even get hotter.
     Just thinking about it was depressing.
     Hope wished that Mrs. Ward hadn’t ended the study block on old New England. She liked hearing about snowstorms and winter and what used to be lakes of water, and how the lakes froze in the winter so hard and so deep, you could skate on them and slide across in toboggans.
     She wondered what that would feel like, sliding on ice.
     Today, Mrs. Ward had started their new study block on the history of Mexico. Hope had seen pictures of Mexico…nothing but sand and cactuses and not even very many of them, it was so hot and dry. She couldn’t imagine that people had lived there ever.
     She looked at Mrs. Ward, who was standing in a band of dancing dust motes, her hair all frizzy from the heat.
     “Mesoamerican,” Mrs. Ward was saying, “1519…Moctezuma, not  Montezuma…and it’s Hernan Cortez, not Herman…”
     But Hope was only half-listening. She was wishing she’d worn her cotton Capris instead of long pants. Even if the pants were orange. Well, sort of orange. All faded now into something you could almost call pink, passed down from Liz to Millie and finally to Hope. But tonight was Halloween eve, and almost everyone was wearing something that you could call orange.
     The air was so hot and heavy, all the other kids were only half-listening to Mrs. Ward, too, so the room was full of little noises, kids shifting in their chairs, scuffing their shoes on the linoleum, scraping pencils on paper, scratching their heads. The only bad thing about Mrs. Ward was her voice. It hardly ever hit more than two notes…duh-dah duh-dah duh-dah duh-dah.
     Hope opened her eyes wide to keep them from closing. She had promised Mom she’d read only two chapters of Murder On The Orient Express after she went to bed last night, but somehow she’d ended up reading the whole entire book. Two hundred and thirteen pages. So who knew what time she’d finally fallen asleep.
     Through the open windows you could hear a sky eye above the school. It droned two circles, then moved on like it did every two hours. As if anything reportable ever happened at Clinton Memorial.
     Out in the hall, someone slammed a locker, and somewhere off in the distance there was a rumble of thunder. That’s when Hope saw the stink bug. It was moving like a tiny robot, one leg at a time, and as stiff as if it were made of tin. It was smack in the middle of a blue square on Michael Paul’s orange and blue checkered shirt, and as she watched, it stopped about an inch below his right shoulder blade.
     Hope put her chin on her hands and watched it.
     Michael Paul had been the worst boy in kindergarten and almost as bad in first and second grades. Then in third grade he’d started to calm down a little, and now he was almost normal. Though Hope still found him completely annoying. And because both of them had last names that began with ‘Q’, they’d had the same teachers all through elementary school. And now they had homeroom, history, and math together. Just her luck.
     There had been three Michaels back in kindergarten, and just to keep them straight, Mrs. Lipsky had named them Michael Paul, Michael James, and Michael John. Michael James and Michael John had moved out of Clinton a long time ago, before fifth grade even, but by then, calling Michael Paul Michael Paul was such a habit, even his mother called him that. And she’d told Mom she didn’t even like his middle name. That it had been Mr. Quinlan’s idea to name him after his grandfather, Paul O’Malley Quinlan.
     It was a good thing she’d been the only Hope in kindergarten. In the whole school, for that matter, right up to this day. Because she hated her middle name…Violet…and being called Hope Violet would have made her miserable every day of her life.
     Mom had given all the girls a flower name. Hope Violet. Elizabeth Rose. Millicent Hyacinth. Mom’s name was Cherry. Which was technically a fruit, but was a flower first. Their brother’s name was Stanford, but everyone called him Bud. So it was like the whole family had this flower thing going.
     Hope sat there with her chin on her hands, watching the stink bug, which was just below Michael Paul’s collar now, wondering what Michael Paul would do when it climbed onto his neck. But then Jennifer Fish kicked Hope’s shoe from behind and Hope heard Mrs. Ward saying her name.
     "…Hope Quinn? Hope Quinn, have you gone to another galaxy?”
     Hope dropped her hands onto her desk and looked up into Mrs. Ward’s narrowed eyes under frowning eyebrows. “Hope, perhaps you haven’t been daydreaming. Perhaps you’ve been deep in  thought about Aztec civilization? Perhaps you can tell us something fascinating about it that the rest of us don’t know yet?”
     How could Hope possibly know anything about Aztec civilization when it was only day one of Mexican history? But this was Mrs. Ward’s way of making a point with people who went off into a trance during class. She had this thing about ‘inattentiveness’, which, she said, was an extremely annoying form of rudeness.
     Hope hardly ever got in trouble. Especially with Mrs. Ward, who’d had Bud and Liz and Millie and had sent special letters of condolence to each one of them, including Mom, when Dad died.
     Someone in the back of the room snickered. And then a funny feeling came over Hope. The one she’d been getting lately for no reason. The room went just a little out of focus and Mrs. Ward got a little hazy, too.
     “Well, the people were divided into eight social groups,” Hope heard herself saying. “First came the Emperor, then the nobles, the priests, the merchants, the farmers who owned their own land, the warriors, the peasants, who owned no land, and finally the slaves.” She hesitated. “Everyone was part of a Calpulli, a kind of family, even though its members weren’t necessarily related. Like a town. Like Clinton. But a lot smaller.”
     She had to clamp her lips shut to make herself stop. Because there was a lot more stuff floating just behind her tongue. And she had no idea how it had gotten there.
     Mrs. Ward and the classroom came back into focus, dead silent. Mrs. Ward’s eyebrows had stopped frowning and her mouth was in the shape of a little ‘o’. She stared at Hope for a second, then she took a step backwards, turned around and walked back to the front of the room. “Very good, Hope,” she said in a small voice. Then she announced that History was finished for today, even though they still had ten minutes to go. “Turn to page 72,” she said, “and read quietly until the end of class.” She glanced at Hope one more time and went and sat at her desk.
     Hope opened her book and held it up in front of her face. She didn’t want to see anyone and she didn’t want anyone to see her. Something weird was going on and she couldn’t tell it to anyone. Because how could you tell someone that things were in your head and you had no idea how they’d got there?
     And now they’d started coming out of her mouth!
     She leaned forward and touched her forehead against the smooth page. Was she going crazy?
     When the bell rang, she wanted to be the first one out of the room, but she got stuck behind Michael Paul, who was stomping the poor stink bug into the linoleum, and that slowed her down enough so Mrs. Ward had time to catch her eye. Mrs. Ward crooked a finger at her, and Hope let everyone go by until they were alone.
     “I’m very glad to see that you’re reading ahead, Hope.” Mrs. Ward frowned. “And doing extra reading, too. But…is everything all right? Here at school? At home? I know it’s been a difficult year...” She cleared her throat. “You seem…I don’t know…a little preoccupied. If you need to talk to anyone, Hope, all you have to do is ask. You know that, don’t you?”
     Hope nodded. “Everything’s okay. I just…I guess I stayed up too late reading last night.”
     Mrs. Ward nodded. “Well. Try and get more sleep. And give my best to your mother.”
     “I will.”
     As Hope walked through the doorway, she glanced back. Mrs. Ward was staring after her, with a look on her face that said she was probably going to put a call in to Mom, just to be on the safe side. Which was just what Mom did not need.
     Then she walked straight into Henny, who was waiting for her outside the door. “Wow,” Henny said, “what was all that about? It was so weird. I mean, did you know all that stuff or did you just make it up?”
     Hope shrugged as they started walking down the hall. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess…I guess I read about it somewhere and it kinda stuck.”
     “Kinda stuck, yeah…” Henny rolled her eyes from side to side. Mom said that most people with chocolate-colored skin had brown eyes. But Henny had the bluest eyes Hope had ever seen. So Henny was unique.
     “And I guess Mrs. Ward won’t be doing that to you again for a while, huh?” Henny said. Then she grinned. “Calpull-ee!” She said it with a roll of her tongue. “But really, Hope, you did a good job on the accent, which was a huge surprise.” Then she waved her fingers in the air. “Bye-ee. I’m gonna be late for gym! Again!” and she darted down south hall, the ribbons on her curly pig tails flying.
     Accent? What accent?
     Hope watched Henny as she ran down the hall. She and Henny had been together since kindergarten, when Henny moved to Clinton and was so scared the first day of school, she couldn’t even talk. Hope had held her hand for one solid hour until Henny finally relaxed. They’d been best friends ever since. And Henny had never been quiet for that long ever again.
     What would Henny say if Hope told her about the funny feeling?
     At the end of the hall, Henny flung the door to the girl’s locker room open and disappeared.
     Anyway, it was Henny who did accents. Not Hope. Henny could talk exactly like her Great Grandmother Tandi. Though now that she was a hundred and thirteen, Great Grandmother Tandi didn’t talk much anymore. ”How ole yuh is, now I ax yuh likkle gal?” According to Henny, that’s the only thing Great Grandmother Tandi had ever said to her. Hope liked to hear Henny say it. The way her voice went up and down. Almost like a song. Though Henny said Great Grandmother Tandi used to scare her a little. “Voodoo,” Henny would whisper, “she knows Voodoo. And once, a long time ago, she turned a man who annoyed her one too many times into a toad!”
     Hope didn’t think anybody could turn anybody else into a toad. Even with Voodoo. But she thought Henny was lucky. Even though Henny didn’t have brothers or sisters, she had two grandmothers and a great grandmother and aunts. And if you begged, one of them might tell you a story about duppies and vampires. Plus, Henny had a dad. Though, like most dads, he worked far away and only came home once in a while.
     The last warning bell rang and Hope took off down north hall.
     Thank goodness Mr. Grogan’s lab was on the shady side of the building, and thank goodness he’d set up two fans, so that compared to History, it was almost cool. Hope dropped into her seat. What a relief.
     While everyone trouped in and sat down, she looked at the blackboard. If you plant a piece of chalk in a fast-moving stream, which side of the chalk will erode faster? The side facing up-stream or the side facing down-stream? She thought about it and decided definitely the up-stream side. Explain why there is a calm eye inside a tornado. She took a notebook and a pencil out of her backpack and drew a tornado. She had no idea about the eye. Vortex was written in big letters. At least she knew what that was…water going down a drain. And under vortex, it said: Big whirls have little whirls which feed on their velocity, while little whirls have lesser whirls, and so on to viscosity. Whatever that was, viscosity.
     She stared at the word, waiting, but there was nothing in her head that shouldn’t be there. She sighed, grateful for that at least, and sat back.
     Mr. Grogan bent down behind the experiment counter and came up with two big plastic bottles. He set them on top of the counter next to a bicycle wheel lying on its side. He filled one of the bottles with water, then he dropped in some colored confetti. Every time he did something, it got quieter and quieter in the room. He fitted a kind of connecter into the bottle top and screwed the empty bottle into it, too, so they were standing one on top of the other, neck to neck. Then he turned them over so the filled bottle was on top. The water from the top bottle began to drip into the bottom one, then it stopped, and everyone looked at Mr. Grogan. Had he done something wrong?
     “Watch,” Mr. Grogan said. He picked up the bottles and swayed them in a circle three times, then he put them back down on the counter and water from the top bottle began to fall into the bottom one in a circle, the confetti whirling in a tiny tornado.
     “Cool,” someone said.
     “Can anyone name instances of vortex you might see in your home?” Mr. Grogan asked.
     “The bathtub,” Allison said, waving her arm in the air, “when you pull the plug.”
     “The toilet, when you flush.” That was Brian, of course. Everybody laughed.
     “A tornado!” That was Allison again, still waving her arm.
     Steven snorted. “When was the last time you had a tornado in your house, Alley-son?”
     Everybody laughed again and poor Allison turned red.
     “A vortex is both a simple and a complicated thing,” Mr. Grogan continued. “It is both fluid and stable. And its these conflicting criteria that define it. The structure of a vortex takes water down the drain, allows planes to fly, and keeps planets in their orbits.”
     Hope watched the whirlpool of water and confetti.
     “As with most things, entropy is a complex phenomena,” Mr. Grogan said too loudly.
     She looked up.
     But it wasn’t Mr. Grogan. Mr. Grogan was gone. It was a man she didn’t know, with long red hair, a long red beard, and a narrow face. He was wearing a white shirt with no collar, and a bright red braided rope hung around his neck. There was a green metal disc hanging from the rope with a sort of ‘Z’ slashed in it.
     She drew in a breath, waiting for the rest of the kids to react, too. Like when Mrs. Phaneuf got hit with a soccer ball right between the eyes and when Mr. Emerson’s chair broke when he sat down, and when the beaker exploded right here in this class just last week. Each time there had been a kind of collective gasp. But there wasn’t a sound now. Except maybe her own heart beating in her ears.
     “The concept of entropy, Hope,” the man said, “is something you will need to become very familiar with.”
     He was talking to her. Only to her.
     She looked at his eyes. There was such a look of kindness in them, a look that reminded her so much of Dad that she knew it was okay. Okay that Mr. Grogan had disappeared, along with the classroom and everybody in it.
     “Entropy is both a tendency toward disorder,” the man said, “and a state of maximum homogeneity.” He walked toward her. “In other words, Hope, to keep the stability that creates the world you know, there must exist the tension of opposing forces. Without those, the world, this world, will cease to exist. These forces must stay essentially equal. That is vital. And when that balance is disturbed, there are terrible consequences.” He took a step toward her. “That is the condition that exists now, Hope. A condition of extreme unbalance. And this condition must be righted. Luckily, there are some who are fit to engage in the struggle to regain balance. But very few. Perhaps too few.” He came closer, so close she could smell him. It was like nothing she had ever smelled before, but it made her think of Old New England. Of icy cold air and the smell of trees that stayed green all year. Then he smiled. “You are one of those few, Hope. So do not resist the knowledge that lies in your mind. Open yourself to it. And never fear for your safety.”
     He gave her a long look, and just for a second, she thought she saw Dad standing there, not in front of the man, but part of him, as though the two of them were double-exposed. And then the man and Dad were gone.
     At the front of the room, Mr. Grogan was spinning the bicycle wheel and saying something about inertia and outside force, and in the seat beside Hope, Charlotte Wu was snapping her gum.