“They weren’t in any of my morning classes,” I replied. I’d nodded while internally rolling my eyes at the idea that having a random connection to one out of hundreds of people at a new school could make anything about this move less terrible.
I’d heard of that an eighth-grader back home used they/them pronouns. Marianne told me Ollie’s pronouns are they and them, Dad had said that morning before I’d left the house. Apparently someone Dad worked with had a kid in my grade. Mostly because it had ended at eleven thirty. The first day of school (the classic half day) had been fine. All of this while life went on without me, back home. And it was going to be the two of us, alone together, for exactly one hundred and ten days in a new city, in a new state, at a new school, for my first semester of seventh grade. “Are you trying to tell me this quaint month-to-month rental is the proverbial prison?” Dad was a walking stereotype of a college professor: myopic, balding, lactose intolerant. He sighed his professorial sigh, adjusting his glasses. Then we’ll paint it over, go back home, and pretend this semester never happened.” “And then three … And it’ll go all the way up to one hundred ten. “It’s just a line,” I replied, standing on my bed, Sharpie in hand, as late afternoon sun slanted through the window. (Feb.“That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I said you could decorate your bedroom however you wanted,” Dad said from the doorway. Agent: Wendy Schmalz, Wendy Schmalz Agency. Repeated scenes and conversations from various points of view sometimes prove tedious, but the novel makes a compelling argument, reinforced by an extended optical illusion metaphor, for looking at the world from another’s lens. The first half of the novel describes the semester from Essie’s point of view, while the second part shares Ollie’s perspective, revealing that Ollie is struggling to forge an identity outside of their work as an LGBTQ advocate and is not as confident and collected as Essie believes. Polonsky ( Gracefully Grayson) sensitively handles Ollie’s gender identity while fully fleshing out their character. Essie’s feelings seem requited, but the duo only have until the end of the school year to navigate their budding relationship.
Counting down the days until she can return home, Essie’s outlook begins to shift when she meets-and immediately begins crushing on-classmate Ollie, who is white and nonbinary. Louis, who is upset that she must spend the first semester of seventh grade in North Carolina, where her father is a visiting professor. This dual-perspective ode to the joys and complications of first love follows Essie Rosenberg, a white girl from St.
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