Free Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

Janna to forget to send the payment,” Sasha says when I join them. She sounds like Marianna.
    Normally Sasha’s comment would make me smile, but my head is cloudy. It’s the second day of April.
    Holy moly.
    I sip slightly warm milk through a straw and wonder about my empty lunch account. Janna never forgets first-of-the-month responsibilities. (Rule number 28: Pay before play.) I always knew when it was a new month, because envelopes were on the counter, ready-to-be-mailed envelopes with checks inside — checks for bills, checks for school lunches and Girl Scout dues
(Am I no longer a Girl Scout?),
checks for the newspaper delivery man and the Fresh Market next door that lets us say, “Charge it, please.” No new balance means that she’s no longer paying for my hot lunches.
    Seeing Briggs’s apartment must have convinced Janna that we’re doing all right on our own. But we’re not! Not really. Until Gage finds a real job, he can’t afford to pay for my lunches. What am I supposed to do?
    In the midst of my despair, another depressing thought hits me: April second. That would have made yesterday April Fools’ Day. I feel the long tug of missing. Missing the days when everyone at Eastland Elementary marched through the school hallway wearing crazy hats. (Last year, Janna showed me a picture of my mother in elementary school wearing a handmade hat with wild pipe-cleaner shapes zinging out in all directions, and I made one just like it.) Missing the days when Gage would play April Fools’ jokes on me. (One time he put salt in the sugar bowl and nearly fell over while he watched me take my first bite of oatmeal.) Missing the days when I didn’t have to wonder where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep each night or if Girl Scouts was no longer something I could put on my Carter application.
    That’s what I’m pondering when Linnie says, “GT prowl. Watch out!”
    I look up and see Mademoiselle Barbary, our Gifted and Talented teacher, in the double doors of the cafeteria.
    I lower my head and take a bite of my Tater Tots.
    “She’s coming,” says Sasha.
    I wish the approaching Mademoiselle were an April Fools’ joke. When you’re in kindergarten through third grade, being a GT kid is solid. You get to go to a special room and participate in projects, like making a time capsule or learning French. But when you’re in fourth and fifth grade, it means getting pulled away from your friends at lunchtime to discuss “the unique problems of the gifted child.” Lately it’s been even worse because I’ve fallen into the category of “underachieving gifted child.” Now I feel like she has her eyes on me all the time.
    “What are your aspirations?”
Linnie says, imitating Mademoiselle.
    I can’t help myself. I look up. That’s when Mademoiselle gives me a little come-with-me wave.
Aaagh.
I say good-bye to my friends, pick up my tray, and follow her.
    Seven of us sit around the big wooden table in Mademoiselle Barbary’s room today: Daniel, Sam, Gracie, and I have been in this group since it started. She asks us if we are being appropriately challenged. “I am,” shoots out Daniel, who is sitting next to me. We all nod,
We are, too!
(We learned last year that if you say that the work is too easy or that you’re bored, you’ll get tons more work to do — on top of the homework that the other kids get.)
    I glance at the supplies on the shelves across the table. How I wish we could play with clay for a little while. “Invent something!” Mademoiselle Barbary used to say.
    “Are you sure?” she says now. “I just looked over last quarter’s grades, and some of you are not living up to your potential.”
    I look around the table, wondering if she’s addressing anyone other than me.
    “Often bright kids don’t do as well as they could when the subject matter isn’t interesting,” she adds in her I-know-how-it-is voice.
    Still no one speaks up. I start to feel sorry for