The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

living room with the big, soft, broken sofa in the middle of it, and he sat in another big chair right next to it and looked straight at me. He had no computer or phone or iPad or even a TV as far as I could see. Towers of dusty books surrounded us.
    I could feel something that I hadn’t felt for a long time. Something quiet and difficult to spot, but it was the feeling that you get when someone is listening to you. Really listening carefully. And it makes you want to tell things exactly the right way. It makes you want to take your time and explain and get it right.
    I told him how much I’d missed Meg, but also how Paloma Killealy was a great new arrival in the neighborhood, and howeverybody liked having her around and how nice her hair was and how everyone thought she was beautiful.
    â€œOkay, then, let’s start with Paloma,” he’d suggested, which I supposed was as good a place as any.
    â€œI may have taught her a lot of stuff that I am quite good at explaining, but she taught me a lot too.
    â€œIn particular, the thing that sticks in my mind most is what she told me when she first arrived about a thing called The Ratio. It’s a useful thing for anyone to be aware of, and if it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have known about it.”
    â€œThe Ratio?” said Barney, quietly building up the little fire, slowly placing sticks in a pile and then balancing a big wooden block on top of them.
    â€œYes,” I replied. “The Ratio. Paloma knew a lot about it because she’d moved a total of seven times since she started school. You learn stuff when you move around like that. Not everyone knows about The Ratio, but it’s always the same—no matter what school you go to.”
    Paloma said it was kind of a universal rule. If you’ve ever been at school, like ever in your whole life, you should have some inkling, some vague idea that it exists.
    For any class of average size, this is roughly the way it goes:
    There’ll usually be four or five alphas: top dogs, people like Andy and Greg, she told me. They’ll walk in slow motion, like astronauts, and they never have to move out of anyone’s way. Their lockers are always closest to the door. They don’t have to wait in the queue and everyone looks at them when they pass by. Each of the alphas has one or two hangers-on. Nobody really quite understands what’s in it for the hangers-on, but they are faithful and true in the way that alphas don’t ever seem to deserve.
    Invisibles are another group: around seven smart, decent,quiet, good kids who no one takes much notice of and whose names Paloma predicted everyone would forget within a year of leaving school. And then the “actives” are five cheerful souls who never seem to notice the underbelly that lurks like a watchful reptile in every class. They throw themselves into ten-kilometer runs and colors days and events designed to make school look like a wholesome, simple, happy, straightforward place.
    There are three or four serious messers—their sequence on the ladder changes daily: they’ll lose their popularity in a split second by flicking a spitball at some target, and accidentally hitting Andy Fewer.
    There is a small bunch of outliers: the punky, kohl-eyed, T-shirted, pink-haired, black-booted, notebook-writing, music-listening crew, never quite knowing where they fit in and not being sure if they ever want to.
    And that’s pretty much it. Except for one more. One other person. The person on the bottom. Nobody wants to be a member of this sad little one-man club, but somebody always is.
    â€œSounds complicated,” I’d said.
    â€œThat’s because it is,” she’d replied. “Knowing The Ratio is vital,” she claimed.
    â€œIs it?” I asked her. I told her that our class was not like that. Everyone got on with each other. We didn’t have any outliers and certainly nobody who was the