Liar & Spy

In the morning, there is a message spelled out on Georges’s desk in Scrabble tiles that reads “LOVE YOU PICKLE” (33). Georges’s dad explains that it’s a message from mom. Georges thinks about how his mother’s “job is officially the day shift, seven a.m. to three p.m.,” (33), but that when the night shift nurse calls in, she has to stay late, sometimes even having to work the entire evening shift, from three p.m. to 11 p.m. Those shifts are called “doubles”; Georges explains that they all hated doubles until his father was fired, and then his mother started volunteering for them whenever possible. His father quietly asks if Georges is ready to go to school, and Georges reflects on their habit of being quiet in the mornings so that they don’t wake up his mother after she’s worked a double. Georges leaves a message for his mother in the Scrabble tiles that reads, “HAVE A GOOD DAY / LOVE ME” (34).

In science class that day, Dallas flicks Georges’s ear and calls him “Gorgeous,” an unwanted nickname that Georges earned as a result of his name’s unusual spelling. Mr. Landau writes TASTE on the whiteboard, causing a boy named Carter Dixon to chant “Taste-test” (34).