“It isn’t a trick,” Emily said.
She lifted the pencil away. She had not written. She set it down parallel to the worksheet, which was a kind of manners. Then she nodded at the paper under the fry basket, not touching the food, because people were particular about hands and their lunch, and because she was particular too.
“May I?” she said.
Caleb nodded before his mother could refuse. He drew the printed sheet out with two fingers. A smear of oil had made a translucent moon near the bottom margin. The problem was the sixth on a page headed, in a stern font, GLENFIELD REGIONAL, PRACTICE SET FOUR, GRADES 6–8. Below the header a coach’s name had been half cut off by the printer. The type was plain. Emily read the second line once in the printed version and once in the boy’s hand, and the difference was so small that anyone hurrying would have called it nothing, and so decisive that the nothing was the whole problem.
“Here,” she said, and she turned both pages so they faced the boy more than they faced her. She did not lean over him like a teacher correcting a board. She stayed on her side of the chrome. “You copied, when it is divided by seven, the remainder is twelve. The sheet says the remainder is two.”