Hi. I’m Nani. I’m a girl in Mrs. Eberding’s fifth grade class. Yousef’s in the class too. We’re the ones who read outside, behind the school, even when it’s cold, instead of having lunch in the cafeteria. I do it because I don’t like the cafeteria or the kids in it, and Mom lets me make my own sandwich. Yousef does it because he doesn’t eat lunch.
Once I offered him half my sandwich and learned his family doesn’t take charity. Or handouts like free school lunch, he said.
Another day, he was sad and wasn’t reading. I thought maybe they’d teased him about his thrift store clothes again. “They say I should go back where I came from,” he said.
“But you’re from here, your parents too, and everybody’s legal!”
“They don’t care.” He slipped something into his coat pocket.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What is it?”
He stared at me. “Don’t laugh. And you can’t tell anybody.”