Excerpt from One Word, Six Letters by Adib Khorram, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1

Dayton

You know you've messed up when you get marched into the principal's office.

Not the little waiting area outside, where the bad kids—the troublemakers and class clowns and bullies—sit while they wait for the hammer of judgment to fall on them.

No. You're standing in the doorway of the principal's actual office.

You thought a high school principal would have a fancy office, maybe with windows and a mahogany desk or something, but this is just like every other part of the main office: gray walls full of pushpins, heavy wooden doors, black office chairs, and a tan desk that isn't made of real wood.

Dr. Matthews's office faces out to the rest of the main office, but the windows are coated with some sort of cling film that makes them all blurry, so you can't see out and no one can see in. One corner is peeling away from the glass.

Mr. Clemens, your ELA teacher, frog-marched you in here. You're not 100 percent certain what a frog march is, or where you heard the term, but you're pretty sure that's what happened. He deposits you in the chair across from Dr. Matthews's desk. It's metal, with a soft cushion for the seat, and it sinks beneath your weight. The fabric is so scratchy your butt itches through your shorts, but you don't scratch or shift, because even though Mr. Clemens isn't touching you, hasn't touched you at all, you feel like he's got a hand clamped on your shoulder, keeping you in place.

"It'll be a few minutes," he says. His voice is kind of high for such a burly guy, bald and round-faced with a full mustache. His brown skin turns pale in the fluorescent lights.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. You wonder if you can risk a reach for it. It's probably your boys making fun of you for getting in trouble. Maybe telling you off a little, too. It wasn't cool, what you did, but you didn't mean anything by it.

You reach for your left pocket, but Mr. Clemens spots the movement.

"No phone."

You put your hand back in your lap.

Mr. Clemens hovers behind you, his gaze drilling a hole in the back of your head. Or maybe that's your imagination. Maybe he's on his own phone, doing a crossword puzzle or something, because teachers get to do that kind of thing. Students don't.

Your stomach grinds against itself, and you wonder if he can hear it.

The thing is, you never would've done it if Reggie hadn't dared you. You missed breakfast this morning. Marshall's been eating twice as much ever since football season started, so all that was left at home was your mom's gross organic-vegan-keto protein bars that she doesn't share anyway.

But Reggie bet you twenty dollars, and the Pop-Tarts in the vending machine were calling your name. You've got a quiz in US history fourth hour, right before lunch, and you're pretty sure all your teachers from kindergarten through fifth grade talked about how important it was to eat a good breakfast before you took a test.

They stopped reminding you of that in middle school. And they stopped giving you recess, too. And now here you are, in high school, with no recess, and no breakfast, and no Pop-Tarts. Not even the twenty dollars Reggie promised you, because Mr. Clemens pulled you out of the assembly before Reggie could hand it over.

Your stomach gives another growl, and this time you're pretty sure Mr. Clemens notices because you can hear his feet shift.

There's a bowl of individually wrapped Life Savers mints on the corner of Dr. Matthews's desk in a little square bowl. You don't need a mint, even if they do make your mouth light up when you crunch them, but maybe it would stop your stomach from grumbling.

"Can I have one?" you ask. You're kind of surprised your voice still works, given how dry your mouth is. And your throat.

Mr. Clemens sighs, and you're pretty sure he's going to make you ask again and say May I instead.

Excerpted from One Word, Six Letters by Adib Khorram. Copyright © 2026 by Adib Khorram. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.