Feathers Part 1 / Chapter 2 Summary

  • At lunchtime, the cafeteria is serving hamburgers and French fries, but the new boy takes a fish sandwich. What a weirdo. Who chooses a fish sandwich over a real, juicy burger, anyway?
  • Frannie goes to sit down with her friend Samantha and is annoyed to see that she's sitting with Maribel Tanks. Maribel is a girl who used to go to private school, and she's constantly putting on airs.
  • Maribel talks about how much better her private school—Casey School—was, and Frannie thinks about how her mom says that Maribel's mom acts like she's better than everyone. She owns a grocery store—Tanks Groceries—but it costs more than everywhere else.
  • When Frannie expresses that they should have assigned the boy a buddy or something so he wouldn't be alone all the time, Maribel snidely says that Frannie should go over and hang out with him.
  • Then Maribel launches into a story about how the boy came into the store and paid for all his stuff with pennies. Can you imagine? Frannie and Samantha tell her that pennies are money, just like anything else.
  • When Maribel complains about how the boy belongs on the other side of the highway, where the white people live, Frannie reminds her that it's the 1970s and segregation doesn't exist anymore… not legally, anyway.
  • After they finish eating, they go out into the schoolyard and see a group of boys—Rayray, Trevor, and Chris—approach the new kid and ask him what his name is. When they ask him if he's deaf, he says no, but signs that he is not.
  • Frannie is shocked that he knows sign language, just like her. She only knows it because her big brother, Sean, is deaf.
  • Trevor gets mad and tells the boy that he looks like Jesus. Oh, burn.