Part 2 Summary

The narrator and her family begin life in their new home. After misadventures with the movers and an uneasy settling in period in the new house, the narrator and her younger siblings start school. While her brother Tim and her sister Alexandria immediately make friends and do well, the narrator feels herself stared at, judged, immediately disliked, and very lonely. She records how she comforts herself by eating, comments that her father is away working most of the time, and complains that her mother is always nagging her about improving her appearance and her attitude.

The first friend the narrator makes is a girl named Gerta, whom she describes as a similar kind of outcast to herself. Gerta is soon replaced by Beth, who like the narrator is bookish and shy. Unlike the narrator, Beth is Jewish. The narrator confides her deep interest...