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leukemia from the radiation.”
    Mrs. Luna stopped talking. Her eyes shifted left, and I looked to see Taylor Rinehart whispering something to Maddy Miskowski.
    “Taylor, what are you thinking?” Mrs. Luna said.
    I would have been embarrassed to be called out by Mrs. Luna for being rude, but not Taylor. She flipped her hair over her shoulder even though it already was pulled away from her face by a headband that matched her shirt.
    “Well, it seems kind of depressing to me,” Taylor said, but she was giggling when she said it. “Can’t we do something else?”
    I looked back to see if Mrs. Luna was bothered, but she just smiled. “You have to hear the whole story before you decide if it’s depressing or it’s hopeful,” she said, and she nodded at Taylor with her eyebrows raised, as if she was asking permission to go on.
    “All right ,” Taylor said, gazing around to make sure everyone still looked at her.
    “This little girl hears an old story that says a sick person who folds 1,000 paper origami cranes will get a wish granted and become well again.”
    “So,” Taylor interrupted, “she gets better in the end?” A few of the popular kids sitting around her were laughing even though what she said wasn’t funny.
    “No. This is a true story, and as in real life, not everything works out as we might wish. Many thousands of Japanese died from being exposed to radiation, as did Sadako, the girl in this story. Before she could finish her thousand cranes, her grandmother, who died in the bomb blast, returns to take Sadako to the land of a thousand spirits.”
    Again, Taylor’s whining voice broke in like an alarm clock in the middle of a good dream. “So what do the cranes have to do with anything if she didn’t finish them and she didn’t get her wish granted? Sounds pretty stupid to me.”
    I prayed Taylor would just drop out if she didn’t like the play Mrs. Luna chose.
    “The beauty,” Mrs. Luna said kindly, “is that her classmates finished folding the paper cranes for her. Eventually, Sadako’s friends realized their dream of building a monument to her. That statue commemorates Sadako’s biggest wish, beyond even her wish of saving her own life: that there would never be another bomb like that again.”
    Finally, Taylor was silent. I looked over and she was making a face that looked like, Huh? That’s the ending? But at least she wasn’t talking anymore.
    Then, of course, Kailyn raised her hand, and Mrs. Luna called on her.
    “Will we have to try out?” Kailyn asked.
    “Yes. First, we’ll read through the play together while we’re meeting at lunch like this. That will give you a chance to decide what part you’d like to try out for. Then—”
    Kailyn raised her hand again. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?” Mrs. Luna said.
    “Kailyn the questioner,” one of the class clowns called out.
    Then everyone got to see Mrs. Luna’s tough side. She could be nice and patient with comments and questions like Taylor’s, but she didn’t go for people being mean.
    She looked straight at him. “Sir, I don’t know your name either. It is?”
    “Oscar.” He tried to slouch down in his small seat, but he couldn’t hide.
    “OK, Oscar,” she said, and she wasn’t yelling, but the look in her eyes made certain no one else would mouth off. “I’m glad you want to participate, but you will be kind to your classmates. You won’t like the consequences otherwise.”
    Kailyn was still raising her hand.
    “Kailyn, is it?” Mrs. Luna smiled at her.
    “Yes. When will the tryouts be?”
    Just then the bell rang, and everyone grabbed stuff and shot out of their seats.
    “Clean up your messes,” Mrs. Luna shouted over the noise. Then, quietly she added, “Kailyn, we’ll talk more on Friday, OK?”
    I gathered my trash slowly, trying to come up with an excuse to quit. This wasn’t shaping up to be fun, especially without Justine around. But something stopped me. Maybe I couldn’t come up with a