Marnie would start to giggle and Wilson would lean over his seat and hold out his cell phone and say, “Why don’t you report that to the police, retard?”
“They’re supposed to follow the rules! They aren’t following the rules!”
One day I sat down in the first row of seats so I could watch Mrs Ringwood’s driving. She slowed Bus #7 as we approached the intersection of Sandy Road and Route 9W. Then we rolled slowly by the stop sign.
“Mrs Ringwood! You didn’t come to a complete stop!” I shouted. “Mrs Ringwood, that’s against the law. It says in the manual that you must come to a complete stop. A complete stop.”
Mrs Ringwood turned onto Route 9W. “Let it go, Rose.”
“Mrs Ringwood, are your headlights on?”
A spitball hit me on the back of my neck.
“Hey, that driver wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Did you see that, Mrs Ringwood?”
We reached School Lane. Ahead was Hatford Elementary. Mrs Ringwood turned the wheel to the right and we started to swing into our bus lane.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Mrs Ringwood, stop right now!”
Mrs Ringwood slammed on the brakes. “What’s the matter?” she cried. She stood up to look out her window. Behind me, all the kids crowded to the other windows to see what had happened. Traffic came to a halt.
“You didn’t use your indicator,” I said. “That’s against the rules.”
Mrs Ringwood sat down again. She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel. Then she turned around and said to me, “Are you freaking kidding?” After she parked Bus #7 she went into Hatford Elementary and spoke with the principal.
That’s why I don’t ride the bus any more.
8
In My Classroom
My classroom faces south-east and has windows along one side and 21 desks for students, plus Mrs Kushel’s desk, plus Mrs Leibler’s chair, which sits next to my desk and blocks the aisle.
There are eleven girls and ten boys in my class.
There are two gerbils in my class.
Our classroom rules are written on a sheet of paper, which is posted next to the door of our room.
Mrs Kushel smells of apples and has a husband and a girl who is six and has the prime number name of Edie (23).
Mrs Kushel knew last spring that she was going to get me as her student and she scheduled a conference with my father who said, “I promise Rose won’t be any trouble.”
When Mrs Kushel asked what my father does about my tantrums at home, he said, “Rose doesn’t have any tantrums at home, not while I’m around. She knows better.” And then he said, “Ha ha. Just kidding.”
I know this because I was sitting in the waiting room outside the school psychologist’s office and I could hear every word of the conference. I hear lots of things I’m not supposed to hear, and lots of things nobody else is able to hear, because my hearing is very acute, which is a part of my diagnosis of high-functioning autism. The clicks our refrigerator makes bother me, and so does the humming sound that comes from Mrs Kushel’s laptop computer. One day in school I put my hands over my ears and said, “I can’t concentrate! Please turn that thing off.”
“What? What thing?” asked Mrs Leibler.
“I want Mrs Kushel to turn off her computer,” I said clearly, in the way Mrs Leibler has taught me.
(“Tell me clearly what you want, Rose,” Mrs Leibler says when I’m out of control.)
“Why do you want her to turn it off?” asked 4’10’’ Josh Bartel, who sits in front of me.
“Because of the humming!”
“I don’t hear any humming,” said Josh.
“Rose, settle down,” said Mrs Leibler.
I hear clicks and humming and whispers. And conversations in the psychologist’s office when the door is almost closed.
Mrs Kushel has been my teacher for 25 school days now.
On the afternoon of day #25 she announces to our class, “I have an assignment that will be fun for you. You’re going to write a composition about a pet.”
“I don’t have a pet,” says Flo, whose name is easy to remember because of the homonyms flow and floe.
Mrs Kushel smiles, which is her way of saying that she doesn’t mind that Flo interrupted her. “That isn’t a problem,” she replies, “because you may write about any pet at all. If you don’t have your own pet, you may write about an imaginary one or someone else’s pet.”
Mrs Kushel passes out paper and I find my pencil and stare (stair) at the door for a while.
“Rose?” says Mrs Leibler.
“I’m thinking,” I say, without looking at her.
I start writing about Rain. I try to remember what Mrs Kushel has said about themes, and what Mrs Leibler has said about not working homonyms into every theme.
“Time’s up,” Mrs Kushel says after 21.5 minutes.
“Who would like to read aloud to the class? It doesn’t matter if your composition is finished. Just read what you have so far. You can finish your work at home tonight.”
Three girls and two boys raise their hands. Mrs Kushel calls on Flo, who reads about a pet she has made up in her head, called a chickapoo, which is a cross between a chicken and a poodle. Flo says her chickapoo doesn’t cluck or bark, it clarks. Everyone laughs, while I think about the clarking chickapoo just long enough to figure out that chickapoo is not a prime number word, but a word that is 81, which means it’s divisible by 3, so it’s not as good as a prime number, although it’s interesting.
The next person to read is Josh Bartel, who has written about his four neon tetra fish. “My mom picked out the first fish for my sister and I last summer,” he says.
I interrupt him right there. “Mrs Kushel!” I cry. “Mrs Kushel, Josh broke a rule. He wrote, ‘for my sister and I’ and that’s not right.”
“Rose, what have we said about interrupting?”
“But he was supposed to write, ‘for my sister and me’. Me. ‘I’ isn’t always correct.”
“Rose, that’s a comment you might make later, when Josh has finished reading,” says Mrs Kushel.
“And,” Mrs Leibler says quietly to me as Josh continues with his composition, “you might think about telling him something positive first, and then pointing out his mistake.”
I put my head down on my desk.
“Rose?” Mrs Leibler whispers.
I don’t raise (rays, raze) my head. “He didn’t pay attention to the rules!” I can feel tears in my eyes.
“Rose—”
“Mrs Kushel clearly told us about that rule on September 17th,” I say loudly into my arms.
“Do you need to step into the hall?”
I stand up suddenly and my chair shoots backwards and slams into Morgan’s desk.
“Hey!” she cries.
I hit the right side of my head with the heel of my hand. One, two, three, four times. Josh is still reading about his neon tetra fish, but most of the class is looking at me now.
“Come on,” says Mrs Leibler, and she steers me to the door and into the hall. “You need to settle down.”
I imagine that my father will read (reed) about this in Friday’s report.
9
Mrs Leibler, Who Sits Next to Me
Mrs Leibler is almost always by my side. She sits next to me in Mrs Kushel’s class, and she walks with me to the girls’ room and the playground. I’m the only student in fifth grade at Hatford Elementary with an aide. This leads me to believe that most fifth-graders don’t need aides. Even so, twice I’ve heard kids in my class say to Mrs Kushel, “It isn’t fair that Rose gets so much special attention.” The first person to say that was Lenora Tedesco. The second person was Josh Bartel.
Mrs Leibler sits with me in the cafeteria too, and we eat our lunches together. I buy my lunch, the same lunch every day – an apple and a tuna sandwich and milk. Mrs Leibler brings her lunch, which is not the same lunch every day. Sometimes she brings a sandwich, sometimes leftovers like noodles (Mrs Leibler calls them
pasta) or a chicken leg or salmon or rice and vegetables. Mrs Leibler always says, “Would you like a taste, Rose?” and I always say no because I don’t want to vary my lunch.
On Mondays Mrs Leibler chooses two kids from our class to be my Lunchroom Buddies for the week. She keeps a list of the Buddies so that everyone gets the same number of turns. Usually when she announces the Buddies no one says anything. In the cafeteria Mrs Leibler follows me through the lunch queue. When I have my apple and sandwich and milk we sit at a table, and pretty soon the Lunchroom Buddies finish getting their own lunches by themselves, and then they sit down with us.
Today is Monday and my new Buddies are Flo and Anders, one name that’s divisible by 3 – Flo (33) – and one prime number name – Anders (61).
Mrs Leibler nods at me. “Rose?”
I finish chewing a bite of apple and say, “I live in a house that faces north-east. Which direction do your houses face?”
Mrs Leibler is raising her eyebrows at me and I remember that I’m supposed to look at Flo and Anders when I talk to them. So I lean across the table and stare into their eyes and say again, “Which direction do your houses face?”
Flo shrugs her shoulders and leans away from me.
“Um, I don’t know.” She sees that Mrs Leibler is busy opening her container of pasta, and she turns to Anders and rolls her eyes at him.
Anders rolls his eyes back at Flo and says, “I don’t know either.”
I think for a moment. Then I say to Anders, “You don’t know which direction your house faces or you don’t know which direction Flo’s house faces?”
He stiffens his lips and I think maybe he’s trying not to laugh. He says, “I don’t know which direction anything faces.”
Mrs Leibler spills some of the pasta on her shirt, and she stands up suddenly and says, “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
“Why do you care which direction things face?” Flo asks as soon as we’re alone.
Mrs Leibler has not prepared me for this question, so I say, “‘You’, ‘yew’, and ‘ewe’ are homonyms.”
“Wow, that is fascinating,” replies Anders.
Flo starts to giggle. “Please tell us more about homonyms.”
I set down my apple. “I do not include abbreviated words on my list,” I inform them. “Do you think ‘incorporated’ is actually a homonym for ‘ink’?”
“Of course not,” says Flo.
Mrs Leibler returns to the table with a handful of napkins.
“Mrs Leibler, Mrs Leibler!” I say. “I’m telling Flo and Anders about the homonym abbreviation rule.”
Mrs Leibler looks at me over the top of her glasses and says, “Let’s steer the conversation in a different direction. Away from homonyms. Think about some of—”
I don’t want Mrs Leibler to say anything about conversation starters in front of my Lunchroom Buddies. I feel a little bit like crying, but I don’t, and I don’t bang myself in the head either. Instead I say, “I have a dog named Rain. I wrote about her in my composition.” I’m about to ask, “Do you have any pets?” when I remember Flo’s chickapoo. “Rain eats My Pet dog food,” I continue. “What does your clarking chickapoo eat, Flo?”
Flo starts to giggle again, but this time it’s a true laugh. “You remembered!” she exclaims. She thinks for a moment and finally she says, “Well…a clarking chickapoo eats chog food.”
“Chog food?!” exclaims Anders.
“Oh,” I say. “‘Chog’ for ‘chicken’ and ‘dog’.”
Anders starts to laugh, and then Mrs Leibler laughs too, and now instead of feeling sad, I’m happy about Mrs Leibler and her conversation starters. Just like my father is happy that Uncle Weldon can take me to school but he was mad that Uncle Weldon thought up the solution in the first place.
10
Anders Isn’t Following the Rules
On day #32 with Mrs Kushel, I finish two maths worksheets without saying a word about the buzzing I can hear, which is Mrs Leibler’s cell phone in her purse. When I solve the last problem I turn to Mrs Leibler and she says, “Excellent, Rose. You focused very well today.”
I glance at the clock and see that there are four minutes left of the maths lesson. “May I play with the pizza game?” I ask.
Mrs Leibler looks at the shelf where the maths games are stored. “Someone else is playing with it,” she says. “It isn’t on the shelf. What would you like to do instead?”
“Nothing. I’ll wait for the pizza game.” I always play with the pizza game if I have spare time during maths, which Mrs Leibler knows.
I wait patiently at my desk for a few moments. Then I stand up and look around the room for the game. “There it is!” I cry. “Mrs Leibler, it’s on Anders’s desk and he isn’t playing with it. He’s talking to Martin.”
“Calm down,” says Mrs Leibler. “Why don’t you ask Anders if you can have a turn now?”
“He was supposed to put it back on the shelf if he wasn’t using it!” I point to Mrs Kushel’s rules, the ones posted by the door. “Look! Rule number six. ‘All games, supplies, art materials and books must be returned to their proper places when not in use’. He broke the rule!”
“I don’t think he broke it on purpose,” says Mrs Leibler.
“He should have a consequence,” I say.
“Mrs Kushel will talk to him about that later.”
Anders is watching me now. So is most of the class. He holds the pizza game out to me.
I don’t take it. “It isn’t fair,” I say to Mrs Leibler. “I was waiting for the game and now maths is over.”
“I’m sorry, Rose,” says Anders.
I pick up my worksheets and dig my nails into them.
“Rose, please give those to me,” says Mrs Leibler.
I start to cry. “I was waiting patiently.”
“I know, but don’t ruin your worksheets. Give them to me and then we’ll go into the hall so you can calm down.”
Mrs Leibler places the worksheets on Mrs Kushel’s desk. Then she leads me to the hallway. As we go out the door I jab my finger at the list of rules. “Number six! Number six!” I cry.
11
When Rain Went to School
On school day #33 Uncle Weldon pulls his black Chevrolet Montana into our driveway at 8.16 a.m. He sees Rain and me sitting on the porch and he waves to us by sticking his left hand out the window. Then he sticks his head out the window.
“Rose!” he calls. “Bring Rain. I don’t have to go into work today. Rain can spend the day with me.”
This is not part of the routine. I stand on the porch for a moment and look at Rain/Reign/Rein.
“Come on!” my uncle calls. “Rain and I will have fun together. And she won’t be lonely.”
“Okay.” I lock the door behind me since my father has already left for the garage, and I lead Rain to the truck.
Rain sits between Uncle Weldon and me while we ride to Hatford Elementary.
“Is ‘build’ and ‘billed’ on your homonyms list?” asks Uncle Weldon as we drive past The Coffee Cup on Route 28. “I thought of that one last night.”
“Yes,” I say. “I really like that pair.” Rain puts one of her paws in my lap and I stroke her toes. “What are you and Rain going to do today?”
“She can run around the yard while I stack firewood. Then maybe we’ll go for a walk.”
“Okay.” Even though this is not the routine, I’m glad Rain will have a nice time with Uncle Weldon.
We reach School Lane and my uncle says, “I hope you have a good day, Rose. Rain and I will see you at 2.42.” He turns into the drop-off lane and reaches across my lap to open the door.
“Bye,” I say. Before I hop out, Uncle Weldon and I touch our hearts with our crossed fingers.
I run to Mrs Leibler, who is waiting for me at the front door.
“Good morning, Rose!” she says.
We hurry along side by side through the corridors to Mrs Kushel’s room. I have already hung up my sweater and am t
aking my homework out of my backpack when Flo says, “Hey! A dog!”
Flo is pointing to the doorway, so I turn around and look at the doorway.
There’s Rain, standing under the list of class rules.
“Rain!” I exclaim. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that your dog?” asks Josh Bartel.
Rain sees me and trots across the room to my desk.
“Yes,” I say.
“Is that the dog from your composition?” asks Anders.
“Yes,” I say.
“What’s she doing here?” Flo wants to know.
I shake my head. “I guess she followed me.” Rain must have jumped out of the truck before Uncle Weldon could close the door.
“But how did she know where you were? You’d been here for, like, two minutes before she found our room,” points out a girl named Parvani.
“She followed me with her nose,” I tell her.
I sit on the floor and put my arms around Rain. She licks my forehead and then she sits down too.
“She’s so cute!” cries Flo. She joins us on the floor.
“Can I pat her?”
“Yes.”
Flo runs her hand down Rain’s back, and Rain makes her smiling face.
“How old is she?” asks Josh. He sits down with us, which makes three humans and one dog sitting on the floor of Mrs Kushel’s room.
“I’m not sure. My father found her one night in the rain. We don’t know how old she was then.”
“So she’s a rescue dog?” asks Anders.
Before I can answer him, Parvani says, “How did she follow you with her nose?”
“She has a very sharp sense of smell. All dogs do. But I think Rain is special.”
Everyone is crowded around us now, even Mrs Leibler and Mrs Kushel. Five people are patting Rain at once.
This is when I hear Uncle Weldon say, “Excuse me?” and then, “Oh, thank goodness. Rain, there you are!”
My uncle is at the door of our classroom.
“She found me,” I say.
“Did she ever. She wanted to follow you after you got out of the truck. I held her back but when I finally let go of her to close the door she jumped out.” Uncle Weldon turns to Mrs Kushel. “Sorry about this,” he says. “My fault. I was the one who wanted to bring Rain along this morning.”