Best Kept Secret

  At ten thirty, the door to the room opened and a woman Francie recognized as the Resource Room teacher pointed to her and nodded. The rude boy snickered as Francie left her seat, but Kaycee just looked on curiously, offering Francie a smile. Francie spent the next hour working side by side with Mrs. Pownell, once again thrust into the mysterious world of letters and sounds.

  “We’ll be working together for an hour every morning and an hour every afternoon,” Mrs. Pownell told Francie. “Just on reading. You’re so smart in math and science that I want you in Mr. Ellis’s room for those subjects.”

  Smart? Francie hadn’t heard her first-grade teacher say she was smart. And certainly Mrs. Travers had never called her smart. Francie walked jubilantly back to her classroom just as Mr. Ellis said, “Class, please open your math books.”

  When math ended, it was finally time for lunch and recess.

  “Sit with me,” said Kaycee as Francie and their classmates, following Mr. Ellis two by two, made their way to the lunchroom.

  Francie saw some of her friends from first grade, but decided to sit at the end of a table across from Kaycee, several places away from three of the boys in their class, including the one who had laughed when Francie had left for the Resource Room.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” whispered Kaycee, jerking her head toward the boy.

  “How did you know I was thinking about him?” asked Francie.

  “I could just tell. Anyway, he’s mean and the best thing is to ignore him.”

  “But he laughed at me.”

  “So what? He’s a bully. The rest of them are, too. And Mr. Ellis knows it. That’s why he switched them around. He doesn’t want them sitting next to each other. I don’t even remember their names,” Kaycee went on (rather loudly, Francie thought), “and I’ll bet you don’t either. Their names aren’t worth remembering.”

  Francie giggled.

  “Our names are Jake and Jed and Antoine!” one of the boys called. “I’m Jake, he’s Jed, and he’s Antoine.”

  “Good for you,” said Francie.

  She and Kaycee ignored the boys and talked about Maine some more. When, at last, they finished their lunches, they tossed the crumpled paper bags in the trash. Kaycee took Francie’s hand and they ran to the playground.

  “The swings are free,” announced Kaycee. “Come on!”

  “But you’re wearing a dress.” Francie, who was wearing blue jeans, was horrified. There were certain pieces of playground equipment to be avoided if you were wearing a dress, and everyone knew it.

  Kaycee shrugged and said, “So what?”

  So Francie shrugged, too. “Okay!”

  She and Kaycee claimed adjacent swings and began to pump. Francie gripped the chain of the swing with her left hand and Kaycee’s hand with her right.

  “Did you know,” said Kaycee as they rose higher and higher, “that if you pump hard enough, you can go all the way over the top of the swing and make a full circle? That means you’re upside down —”

  Francie, eyes wide, was listening breathlessly to Kaycee, when from below she heard the sound of several voices chanting, “I see London, I see France! I see Kaycee’s underpants!” As the swings arced backward, Francie caught sight of the smug faces of Jake, Jed, and Antoine, and her cheeks began to flame. She was horribly embarrassed for her new friend.

  The boys whispered to one another for a moment and then, as Francie and Kaycee once more whizzed past them, Francie heard something new.

  “I see London, I see Francie! She’s not wearing underpantsies!”

  “Hey!” she cried. “I am, too, wearing underpants. You just can’t see them.”

  “Prove it,” said the rude boy.

  Kaycee let go of Francie’s hand and dragged her swing to a stop. Francie slowed down beside her.

  “Which one are you?” asked Kaycee, pointing to the boy.

  “Antoine,” he replied.

  “No, he’s not,” Francie said triumphantly. “He’s Jed. I remember.”

  “If you’re so smart, how come you have to go to the Resource Room?” asked Jed.

  “If you’re so smart, how come your shirt’s on backward?” Kaycee eyed Jed pityingly. When he glanced down, she cried, “Ha! Made you look!”

  Antoine and Jake laughed uncertainly at that. But Jed wasn’t about to give up. “Come on,” he said to Francie. “Show us your underwear.”

  “No.”

  The boys began a new chant. “Francie, Francie, Francie! Not wearing underpantsies! Francie, Francie, Francie! Not wearing underpantsies!”

  Francie took a step back and raised her fist.

  “Wait!” said Kaycee, catching Francie’s arm. “Don’t. That’s just what they want. Come on. Let’s go play princess.” She turned to the boys. “And don’t follow us. Because in our kingdom, the princesses are in charge.”

  The boys backed away, muttering things about underwear, and Francie allowed Kaycee to lead her across the playground.

  It felt good to be a princess in charge.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Mrs. Pownell once again arrived at the door of Mr. Ellis’s room and nodded to Francie. Francie glanced at Jed and saw that he had opened his mouth, probably to say something about the Resource Room, but he closed it abruptly when he saw Kaycee glaring at him from her seat. Francie grinned and followed Mrs. Pownell down the hall.

  * * *

  When school ended, Francie said good-bye to Kaycee and waited by the front door of the school for Amy. After a few minutes, Amy sauntered out, followed by Connie and Polly Horan, all carrying very full book bags.

  “Guess what our homework is tonight,” said Amy. “We have to cover our books.”

  “We have a reader and a math book and a social studies book,” added Connie.

  “And we have to make covers for them out of paper bags,” said Polly.

  “Oh,” said Francie, who had a pile of workbooks, but nothing that required covering. Still, she now had a folder for her special homework from Mrs. Pownell, homework she was certain she could complete all by herself.

  The girls walked to Vandeventer. When Francie reached her house, she peeked into the third-floor studios and found both her parents absorbed in their artwork. She wondered how grown-ups could concentrate like that.

  By dinnertime, her homework was finished. Francie proudly showed it to Matthew and Dana.

  “That’s wonderful,” said her father as he set a bowl of pasta on the table.

  Dana looked thoughtful. “We’ve been talking about something,” she said.

  Uh-oh. Alarm bells rang in Francie’s head. “What?” she asked.

  “We were thinking that, this year, you should take lessons of some kind.”

  “Or join a team,” added Matthew.

  “Give ballet a try. Or piano. Or soccer. Something.”

  Francie sighed. “Maybe.” She fiddled with her napkin. “Can I go over to Amy’s after dinner? It’s still light out.”

  Dana heaved a sigh of her own. “Sure.”

  Later, Francie escaped across her lawn, ran to the Foxes’ house, and rang the bell. She was greeted by the barking of Amy’s dog, Hank.

  “Hank, Hank! It’s me!” Francie called.

  The barking stopped and Amy opened the door. “Guess what!” she exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “Come in and I’ll show you.”

  Amy, followed by her little brother, Max, led Francie into the living room. Leaning against an armchair was what looked like an enormous violin.

  “Ta-da!” said Amy. “That’s my dad’s cello. I’m going to start taking lessons.”

  “Wow,” said Francie in a small voice. Then she added, “I might take lessons, too.”

  “What kind of lessons?”

  Francie shrugged. She had no idea.

  But she didn’t want to be left out again.

  Francie sat at her desk, paging through her reader. It wasn’t the same reader Kaycee had been given on the first d
ay of third grade. But still, it was a reader, an actual reader. More important, Francie could read the words in it all by herself. Most of them anyway. And when she didn’t immediately recognize a word, she knew ways to figure it out. She could read the rest of the sentence for clues, or she could think about her letter rules, such as what a tricky silent E at the end of a word could do to a vowel in the middle.

  “Francie,” Mrs. Pownell had said on the last day of second grade, sounding very serious, “we’re not going to be seeing each other next year.”

  Francie’s breath had caught in her chest. She loved Mrs. Pownell. “Are you moving away?” she’d whispered.

  Mrs. Pownell had smiled at her. “No. I’ll still be here. But you won’t be my student. You don’t need the Resource Room anymore. You’ve outgrown it.”

  Francie hadn’t known whether to be pleased or terrified. “Are you sure?” she’d said finally.

  “Quite sure. You’ve made great strides. As long as you work with Mrs. Travers at home a couple of times a week, you’ll be fine.”

  “But … but …”

  “I’ll always be here if you need me,” Mrs. Pownell had gone on. “But I don’t think you will. Come by and say hello, though, anytime you want to visit. I’ll miss you.”

  Francie, who had taken several tests with Mrs. Pownell during second grade, knew now that she had a reading condition called dyslexia.

  “See? I’m not stupid,” she had said triumphantly to her parents on the day Mrs. Pownell had discussed the test results with the Goldbergs.

  Her parents had looked shocked. “Francie!” Dana had exclaimed. “We never thought you were stupid.”

  “No, but Jake and Jed and a lot of kids in my class think I am.”

  “The truth is,” Mrs. Pownell had said seriously, “you’re probably one of the smartest kids in your entire grade — but you have to work twice as hard as anyone else because of your dyslexia. It’s hard for you to process what you read and to remember the sequence of things you read. It’s even hard for you to control your eye movements across the page as you read. You can do all those things, but it takes extra concentration.”

  Francie had sighed. “Will it always be like this?”

  “Will it always be so hard? Maybe, but probably not. I think it will get easier as you get older. You’re going to have to remember your tricks, though. Read slowly. Make sure that what you’re reading makes sense. Use your Magic Window card to see one word at a time if you’re getting confused —”

  “And my ruler to focus on one line at a time,” added Francie.

  “Exactly. And you’ll always have to remember to —”

  “Check my work!” Francie finished for her. “I know, I know. Check it once, then check it again.”

  Mrs. Pownell had smiled. “It will be worth it.”

  Now third grade had begun, and while Francie worked with Mrs. Travers every Tuesday and Thursday after school, she no longer went to the Resource Room. She held her head high in Ms. Annich’s class. More important, she had finally found a talent. A real talent.

  Francie Goldberg was a storyteller.

  She could make up the best stories of anyone in her class. Writing them down wasn’t always easy, because in addition to struggling with her reading, she was a horrible speller. Which made sense, if you thought about it. Francie had neat, precise handwriting — but her spelling was atrocious. So sometimes when she had a particularly good story that she needed to get down on paper, she would dictate it to Dana or Matthew.

  “And to think that you discovered your storytelling talent because of the piano,” Matthew would say to Francie with a smile.

  This was a family joke. After Amy Fox had decided to take up the cello, Francie had consented to start piano lessons, if for no other reason than because the Goldbergs already had a piano. But she had hated the lessons, she had hated practicing, and she had hated her piano books.

  “See?” she’d said to her father one rainy day, several months after the loathsome lessons had begun. She’d waved one of her piano books in his face.

  “See what?” Matthew had asked. He’d set down his paintbrush and given her his full attention.

  “See how stupid these lessons are? Listen to this song I’m supposed to learn to play.” She’d opened the book. “These are really the words: ‘Porcupines have prickly quills. Don’t go near their favorite hills. If you do, you’ll have bad luck, ’cause you surely will get stuck.’ ” Francie had rolled her eyes. “That is so lame. What’s a porcupine hill anyway? Porcupines live in trees or dens. Whoever wrote that song just used hills because it rhymes with quills. That is not good writing. It’s lazy.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sing the song,” Matthew had said. “You just have to play the tune.”

  “I know but … I could write better than that.”

  “So write better than that.”

  A week later, the piano lessons had come to an end.

  * * *

  “Francie!” Dana called now from downstairs. “Get a move on!”

  “I want to finish my homework first. I’m almost done.”

  “I’m glad you’re eager to finish your homework, but come on! We’re supposed to meet Kaycee and her family in fifteen minutes.”

  Francie closed the reader, which she had meticulously covered with a paper grocery bag, and looked at it fondly. She had a real reader, and plenty of real homework that she could complete without help.

  “Coming!” she called back.

  Fifteen minutes later, she and her parents were pulling into the entrance to Marquand Park. Francie waved out the window to her best friend.

  The four doors of the Nobles’ station wagon opened all at once, and out climbed Kaycee, her older brother, George, and their parents.

  “Ah, the perfect autumn day, Denise,” Dana said to Kaycee’s mother.

  Francie stood still and breathed in deeply. She could smell fallen leaves and wood smoke. The trees in the park smoldered orange and golden and scarlet. The air was chilly, just chilly enough for sweatshirts, and Francie and Kaycee had agreed to wear their matching sweatshirts, the ones that said LEWISPORT, MAINE across the fronts.

  “We’re twins!” Francie exclaimed, even though she and Kaycee looked nothing alike. (Francie was slightly jealous of Dana, who actually was an identical twin.)

  George Noble ran ahead of everyone, down a paved path through the park in the direction of the ball field. Francie watched him. George was two years older than Kaycee, and his legs looked impossibly long and skinny. It was like watching someone run on stilts.

  “Play ball!” George called from the pitcher’s mound on the baseball diamond. He smacked a baseball into his palm.

  Francie was pleased to see that the ball field was deserted. They could have their very own baseball game on a real diamond.

  “Nobles versus Goldbergs!” cried Kaycee.

  “No fair!” Francie protested. “There are more of you.”

  “How about kids versus adults?” suggested George.

  Kaycee considered this. “But there are only three of us, and four adults.”

  “Yeah, but we play better. Have you ever seen my dad run?” asked Francie. “Look, he isn’t even wearing sneakers. We’re way faster than he is.”

  “Okay. Kids versus adults!” called Kaycee.

  George appointed himself pitcher for the kids, and he threw the first pitch to Dana, who hit the ball with a loud thwack, causing Francie’s eyes to widen before she made a dash into the outfield.

  “Surprised?” panted Dana as she rounded home plate several moments before Francie threw the ball to Kaycee.

  “Adults, one; kids, zero!” Kaycee’s father declared.

  The game continued until a group of children who were at the park for a birthday party showed up with their bats and balls and asked if they could play.

  “Sure,” said Mrs. Noble. “I think it’s time for us to stop anyway.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re still b
eating us,” said Kaycee, but she was smiling. “Come on, Francie. Let’s go to the Fairy Tree.”

  The tree that Francie and Kaycee had named the Fairy Tree (they had now forgotten why) was nearly a hundred and fifty years old. They liked to lie under its ancient branches, look to the sky, and imagine a world that was a hundred and fifty years younger.

  “Are you girls just going to lie there and make up stories?” George called as they ran along a path toward the tree.

  “Yes,” Kaycee replied.

  “Boring.” George and his father and Matthew walked off in the direction of the arboretum, while Dana and Mrs. Noble began to unpack the picnic baskets they’d brought.

  “A hundred and fifty years ago,” Kaycee began as she and Francie settled themselves on the ground beneath the Fairy Tree, “do you think we would have been best friends?”

  “Did they have best friends a hundred and fifty years ago?” asked Francie.

  “Well, let’s say they did.”

  “Did we get to go to school together?”

  “Yes. In a one-room schoolhouse.”

  “But we could only go to school when we weren’t working on our farms,” added Francie.

  “What kind of farms did we have?”

  “Pig farms.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Yes. Jed, too. Only his pigs smelled worse, which meant Jed smelled worse, so at school the kids called him Hog Boy. And even though Jed was very mean to us all day long, we stuck up for him. He never said thank you, but we knew he meant to. The end.”

  Kaycee grinned. “Make up another story about when we lived in Princeton in eighteen twenty-eight.”

  “Hmm,” said Francie. “Okay. Well, the teacher in our one-room schoolhouse was Mrs. Pownell. And one day, Jed came to school with a flying squirrel in his lunch pail. A live flying squirrel, and —”

  “Kaycee! Francie!” George called from across the park. “Lunch is ready. Come on!”

  “Food!” cried Francie. “I’m starved.”