Schooled

Sophie’s dad has abruptly left town, going back on his promise to take her for her driver’s test and leaving without giving her the engraved bracelet she was waiting for. Sophie takes her frustration out on Capricorn. As they watch their favorite show together, Trigonometry and Tears, Sophie lashes out at Capricorn for over-empathizing with one of the characters, saying, “What do you care? It’s a TV show” (102). Because television programming is new to Capricorn, it’s hard for him to watch characters make bad decisions and not be able to help them. He then realizes that the show is a lot like life off of the farm. On the show, characters avoid their problems, and eventually those problems disappear; on the farm, he and Rain “followed simple logic: you plant tomato seeds, you get tomato plants. No seeds, no tomatoes. Cause and effect” (104). Life at school seems to follow the same logic as the teen soap opera. Capricorn has delegated all of the responsibility for the Halloween dance to others, and somehow the work is getting done without him doing anything. Capricorn thinks, “No wonder T & T was such a popular show. It was practically an instruction manual for life” (104).