Breakout

Indoor field day at school is boring and stressful; everyone is talking about Lizzie’s grandmother. Local newspapers have leapt to cover the story, reporting the generosity of giving a ham supper to law enforcement alongside the criminality of giving peppermint brownies to prison inmates. Lizzie writes parody articles emphasizing the unfairness of the arrest and the way prison officials, including Bill Tucker, have turned their backs on her grandmother; the tension briefly disrupts her friendship with Nora. Then she finds out that her grandmother provided the inmates with tools and a cellphone and writes a letter to her about how everyone is whispering about their family and what that feels like.

Nora begins thinking critically about bias and credibility and researches the quotation Mr. Simmons attributed to Abraham Lincoln in that morning’s announcements, finding the quote first appeared long after Lincoln died. In social studies, the teacher says the best way to solve a problem is to see how leaders dealt with similar things in the past; Nora thinks the officers are so busy searching they haven’t had time for research, so she and Lizzie write a letter to police outlining historical escape attempts and their outcomes.