Mr. Priddles smiled at each of them in turn, sandy eyelashes fluttering. He had been assigned to sell them on enrollment here, and led Paul and Tooly through the impressive facilities — playgrounds, band rooms, canteens, an aquatic center — describing the plethora of pursuits available.
They passed a pond with rainbow carp bulleting through the water, and Tooly paused. A tortoise stood at the pond’s edge, looking at her. “Is he alive?”
“That’s our new school pet, basically,” Mr. Priddles told Paul, ignoring her. “We’re running a competition to name it. Oh — excuse me, one sec.” He hustled off to chasten a rowdy trio of second graders for running near the pond.
Entry forms were stacked by a ballot box, with a pencil hanging from a string. “What’s a good name for a tortoise?” she asked Paul, picking up the pencil and chewing the end.
“Don’t. That’s not clean.”
“What?”
He took the pencil. “Tim?”
“Who?”
“Tooly, pay attention. Naming the turtle: Tim.”
She hesitated, disliking his suggestion but not wanting to reject it.
Two small boys bumped up against Paul, like a couple of waist-high mobsters. “What’s the difference between a tortoise and a turtle?” one demanded.
Paul blinked. “Hmm, is it like the difference between a crocodile and an alligator?”
“Nooooooo!” the boy howled. “Tortoise has round shell and turtle has flat. Turtle has web feet and tortoise has normal. Bet you don’t know how old tortoises get.”
“Hmm, twenty?”
“Nooooooo! Tortoises live to, like, a hundred and fifty-five years old. Bet you don’t know the difference between a typhoon and a hurricane.”
“One is a strong wind and …” Paul speculated, plucking at pit stains forming on his shirt. “Or is that a hurricane? I didn’t mean that. Is it …?” He shut his eyes, rummaging for facts untouched in years.
The boys ran off.
“Is a typhoon where …?” Paul opened his eyes, finding his interrogators gone, only Tooly before him, filling out her entry slip. He fumbled for his inhaler. “Children,” he remarked, “they know facts about things. How do they know these things?”
“I don’t know the difference between a hurricane and a thingy.” She dropped her entry into the ballot box, having written “Jasper,” which suited a tortoise. “Can I pick him up?”
“Who up?”
“The tortoise that doesn’t have a name.”
“We’re not allowed, Tooly.”
“Why not?”
“The teacher said.” He’d said no such thing, but Paul often concocted regulations to bolster his authority.
When Mr. Priddles returned, he asked if Tooly wished to touch the animal. She did, and stroked its shell, tortoise limbs paddling slowly in air.
“Just one remaining issue, basically,” Mr. Priddles said. “We received a dossier from her previous school in Australia, but it seems to be about a girl in ninth grade.”
“Tooly’s nine years old,” Paul noted, “not in ninth grade.”
“Yes, I realized when we spoke by phone. Alas, their error caused us to reserve her a place in ninth grade. We do welcome your daughter. Just not sure where to put her. Strict limit on class size and—”
“I’m starting fifth grade,” Tooly interjected, fearful that someone’s mistake might consign her to a class of teenagers doing algebra exams and cross-country running.
Mr. Priddles flashed her an artificial smile, then resumed his exchange with Paul. As the men spoke, she ventured in ever-larger circles around them, drifting farther from their orbit until she was able to spin through a doorway and out onto a playground, where she watched older girls playing volleyball. A teacher ordered them to the main field for the International Day festivities, and Tooly trailed a distance behind.
At each new school, in each new country, she presented a new personality. It crystallized during the first weeks of school, after which there was no changing — people wouldn’t let you. In the end, you became what they expected you to be. At previous schools, she’d been diabolical, girly, a tomboy. But this time she had little urge to invent a new self, knowing it would be wiped away once they left. Even close friendships at her previous schools never lasted more than a few pen-pal letters after her departure, each note shorter than the last, until the responses stopped. It was just her and Paul; all else passed.
Among new children, she always spotted the outcasts first, and had read enough novels to prefer them. Sometimes this let her down — certain kids deserved social banishment. But hidden among the losers, she suspected, were her kind. What she longed for was a person who’d say, as none ever had, “This is all so fake, isn’t it? Wink at me sometimes and it’ll be our sign.”
The main field lacked cover from the scorching sun, so parasols were out, hats were on, and hands shaded brows. Parents occupied the plastic seats before the temporary stage, while hundreds of children sat on the grass around them. Tooly scanned the crowd. She found Paul nowhere.
The principal, Mr. Cutter, tapped the microphone, exhorting the kids to simmer down and take a seat. Tooly knelt on the grass, layering hair over her face to block the sunlight. After a tedious welcome, the principal inaugurated the International Day parade, in which kids from the fifty-two countries represented at the school tromped across the stage in traditional outfits from their homelands, sweating under headdresses, tripping in curl-toed boots, stating into the malfunctioning microphone “Welcome!” in different mother tongues. The procession — every nation in alphabetical order to avoid charges of political favoritism — concluded with the lanky daughter of Zaire’s ambassador, who whispered her greeting and scurried away.
Principal Cutter retook the microphone to announce the winner of the pet-naming contest. “After much discussion, we decided not to allow names of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sorry, boys,” he said. “Drum rolclass="underline" our school pet for the year 1988-89 is henceforth known as …” He drew out the suspense. “Her name is … Myrtle the Turtle!”
“Myrtle?” snorted the parent of a losing entrant. “Are you kidding me?”
“A turtle?” another grumbled. “Isn’t it a tortoise?”
“What’s the difference?”
While this perplexing question rustled through the crowd, hundreds of kids scrambled for the picnic tables, aware that a potluck lunch was soon to materialize.
“Not all at once, you guys!” Principal Cutter said, to no avail.
Thai support staff distributed plastic plates and forks, paper napkins, bottled water. Many mothers and the occasional father opened Tupperware containers of homemade (maid-made) food across the tables. Tooly entered a queue at random and exited holding a plateful of parsley-flecked meatballs with spicy sauce for hats, the native dish of a country she never identified.
She weaved through the crowd, attempting to appear headed somewhere, then sneaked into a building, past an Olympic pool, through the girls’ changing room, down a long hallway of lockers, passing a Thai janitor to whom she said hello, though he only looked down. The cafeteria was empty except for six boys younger than she, all boasting of disgusting food they’d eaten, including (they said) elephant and live snakes. One claimed to have eaten human being, though this turned out to be only his own toenails. At the presence of a girl, they fled.
Alone at the long refectory table, Tooly chased a slippery meatball around her plate, then parted her hair curtains and consulted the wall clock. A teacher had once told her that, viewed in the timespan of the universe, a human life lasts just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. Her life didn’t feel like a fraction of a second; things took ages. Time may pass quickly for the universe, but she had never been a universe.