#23

“So this is the cafeteria.” I said pointing towards a decrepit building. I wasn’t much of a tour guide, but it wasn’t like I was trying to impress anyone.

“What time does lunch start?” Anna asked while kicking a tile that stuck out of the ground.

“Eleven-thirty.” We began walking to the gym. We didn’t talk much; mostly we just heard the scuffling of our feet against the concrete and the construction workers as they rebuilt the art room.

Anna spoke up. “You know, my old school had huge library. The one you showed me is tiny.”

Oh no, I thought to myself. Here comes the flurry of comparison and complaints.

“Our old library had three floors. They had a floor exclusively for magazines – not the pop culture stuff like Seventeen or GQ, but the good stuff. I love looking through NG’s stuff.”

“NG?”

“National Geographic, silly.”

Her pompous attitude was beginning to get to me, so I asked about why her family moved here.

“It’s only temporary. They came to help out because of the earthquake. You know, nature has to rebuild itself after catastrophes, too.”

I gave her a barely audible “uh huh” and started picking up my pace. “That's the gym over there . . . behind the office building. We have PE tomorrow, so we’ll show you around the gym then. And that over there is Mr. Walker’s office; he’s the principal. He’s pretty nice, but he gets pretty impatient if you talk back at him. He’s got like, five kids; all of them graduated from high school already.

“Hey, I was wondering. Where is Namibia? It sounds like a cool place.”

“Err . . . It’s in South America.” I caught her off guard.

That night I looked up Namibia on the internet and as I expected, Anna was lying. I wondered how much of her life she had lied about. I figured I could interrogate her the next day, but I was still deliberating whether I should get the class involved. I decided against it; I wanted to know how much I could get out of her myself.