Fish in a Tree

  He laughs a little.

  I hold the box in front of me with the long side almost touching my stomach. I tilt the box front to back and then side to side. This doesn’t make sense.

  “What are you thinking, Ally?” he asks.

  “Well,” I begin, “if I tilt it front to back, the object hits the long sides of the shoe box. But if I tilt it side to side, the object doesn’t hit the short sides.”

  In my mind, I see the object must be the size and shape of a magic wand. Because it moves a lot when tilted in one direction but not when tilted in the other.

  “What?” Oliver asks.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. I look down at the box and shake it side to side hard. I can’t get the object to hit the sides of the box. The more I shake side to side, the more it hits the top and bottom of the box. Confusing.

  I look up at Mr. Daniels and his half smile and scrunched eyebrows.

  “Waaaait a second.” I smile. “Would you trick us?”

  “What do you mean, trick you?”

  I shake it again. Tilt it some more. “The object hits some sides but not all sides. Did you tape it or tie it or something?”

  His eyes widen quick and he smiles. And then he laughs. He laughs loud, bending over and resting his hands on his knees, and then he swings his head to the side to look over at me. By this time, the whole class is watching him.

  “Wow, Ally Nickerson. That’s amazing. I have done this with over a hundred kids and no one—in all of those times—has ever been able to figure that out.”

  He reaches over and takes the box. Taking the elastic bands off, he opens the box to show us all what’s inside. It’s two glue sticks tied together with string, and then the ends of the string are taped to the sides of the box, leaving the glue sticks hanging in the middle.

  He comes over and does something a teacher has never done even once in my whole life. He high-fives me.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ungreased Gears

  For homework, Mr. Daniels said we have to write a paper describing how we feel about a short story he read today. He says there’s no right or wrong answer. He just wants to know our thoughts.

  Part of my brain knows that this shouldn’t be that hard. I would be able to tell him in two minutes how I feel about it. But I’ll be celebrating another birthday by the time I get it written down. And when I do, he probably won’t be able to understand it anyway.

  Travis comes in the back door, drops his bag, and takes off his steel-toed boots. “Hey, squirt.” The smell of a garage fills the kitchen. But I like it.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to get the thoughts floating around in my head to land on the paper. I don’t know why the things in my brain get lost on the way down my arm.

  Travis takes a carton of orange juice out of the fridge and drinks from it.

  “Hello, Travis? Gross.”

  He laughs at me.

  “No one else will drink that now, you know.”

  “Good.” He smiles. “My plan is a success.” He walks away, taking the whole carton with him.

  “Travis?”

  He stops in the hallway after taking another swig. “Yeah?”

  I know what his answer will be, but I ask anyway. I’m desperate. “Can you help me?”

  “With that book stuff you’re doing?” He points using the carton.

  “Yeah. I have to write something . . .”

  “Whoa, Ally. I can give you new spark plugs. Change your oil. Even rebuild your carburetor. But the writing? No can do. When it comes to that, my brain is like gears with no grease. Parts grinding together. Seriously. It ain’t pretty.”

  “Please? You have to be better at it than me.”

  He takes a deep breath. “Can’t you wait until Mom gets home?”

  “She left a message saying she’s closing, and I can’t tell her I need help that late. She’ll be mad.”

  “Look. You know I’d love to help you out, but the whole school thing . . . It’s like asking a blind man to drive a bus. Besides,” he says, sipping again, “I’d rather eat a bag of hair.”

  He’s trying to make me laugh and the picture in my head is funny. And kind of gross. But I can’t laugh. I can’t. I’m too desperate.

  I must look sad because his voice is sweet. “Seriously, Al. I would help you, but I’m no better at it than you. I’m really not.”

  • • •

  The next morning, I am trying to decide if I should turn in my paper, knowing Mr. Daniels will probably think I spit it out in two minutes. The truth is that it cost me my whole night and a headache that was so bad, it reminded me of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland always yelling, “Off with her head!” Just because I thought that would be a relief.

  I worry what Mr. Daniels will say about it. For now, he’s in the hallway with another kid.

  “Good morning,” Keisha says. “I have something for you.” And she holds out a cupcake.

  “Cupcake!” Max says.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, Max. This is not for you,” Keisha says.

  “Me want cupcake!” Oliver says, flailing about a bit. “Me love cupcakes!”

  “You’re such a freak,” Shay says. “That’s Cookie Monster who talks like that.”

  Oliver gets dead serious. Not a single thing on him is moving except his mouth. “If I’m talking like that, then I’m the one talking like that. And besides, do you really think that Cookie Monster would turn down a cupcake? I mean, it isn’t broccoli or nuclear sludge or something. You could tell him it’s a big, tall cookie with frosting on it. He’d suck it down like a vacuum cleaner. I bet you he would. You want to bet me? Do you?”

  Jessica begins to speak, but Shay cuts her off with a look. “No. I won’t bet you. I don’t bet on anything. Ever. And especially not with you.”

  Shay spins on her foot and leaves. Jessica scurries after her.

  It takes three quarters of a second for Oliver to be onto something else. “Wait! That reminds me,” he says. “During our class party, I hid a Halloween cookie somewhere in my desk.”

  “The Halloween party?” Keisha asks. “That was weeks ago.”

  “Yeah!” He starts digging for it, things falling to the floor as he searches. If it’s there, it’s probably as hard as concrete.

  Keisha turns back to me. “What is it with this class? They lose control over food.” She shakes her head and then pushes the cupcake toward me. “For you!”

  “For me?” I ask. Nobody ever brings me anything. Except trouble.

  “Yeah! Of course it’s for you!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m still cracking up over what you did with those flowers, that’s why.” She cuts the cupcake in half and shows me that it says Wow inside.

  I’m happy.

  Mr. Daniels walks back into the room. “Okay, my Fantasticos! Good news! All homework assignments have been passed in today. That’s worth five extra minutes of snack time.”

  The boys are as excited as if they’ve heard there would be free pizza delivered, too.

  I hear Keisha kind of laughing to herself. I figure it’s because of the boys all going nuts. But then she turns to me and says, “You’ve got guts, Ally. I respect that.”

  I like that, too. But mostly I like that she likes it.

  “Hey,” she says. “You want to sit together at lunch? I’ve been sitting with some people, but I don’t talk to them and they don’t talk to me. And you sit alone, so . . .”

  A mind movie shows us sitting at the table talking and me being happy.

  “Ally? What do you think?”

  “Oh! Yes, that would be great. Thank you.”

  • • •

  After the best lunch and recess I’ve had in a long time, Mr. Daniels waves me up to his desk. He has my homework and my journal.
He’s trying to look all happy and light, but I can see the seriousness underneath.

  “Hey, Ally. I’m glad you turned in your homework and it’s more than you usually write. That’s great.”

  I stay quiet.

  “I’m just wondering how long it took you to do your homework. I’m not going to ask you to make changes or anything. I’m just wondering.”

  This feels like a trap. I know it isn’t good, so I wonder if it would be better to say I did it fast on the bus or if I should tell him that I worked really hard.

  “Ally?”

  “It took me . . . kind of a long time, I guess. I mean, I tried to do my best on it.” I look at it. “Is it wrong?”

  “It’s got some good ideas and that’s what the assignment was all about. No worries, okay?”

  No worries? That’s easy for him to say.

  CHAPTER 16

  What I’ve Got

  I like Mr. Daniels, but he’s got a thing for reading. Always talking about books and how great they are. Personally, I’d rather have the flu.

  The last thing Mr. Daniels said yesterday was that we were going to write stories today and that it would be our chance to show him what we’ve got.

  The only thing I’ve got is a plan.

  With a big piece of cloth and a safety pin, my writing arm hangs in a sling. How can he ask me to write like this? I’m feeling pretty proud, I must admit. All I have to do is remember not to move it. I wish it really did hurt; it would be easier.

  He sees me when I walk in and it isn’t long before he comes over to ask me what has happened. I have practiced the story all the way to school. About how I tripped over my cat on the stairs and fell.

  “You have a cat?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He nods. Then he glances down at my sling. “Is it a new cat?”

  “No, we’ve had that cat forever. A regular member of the family,” I say, feeling like I’m starring in a commercial for something I’d never eat in a million years.

  He has a weird look on his face when he asks, “What’s its name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “Your cat.”

  I panic. “Pork Chop” pops out of my mouth.

  He laughs. “Pork Chop the cat, huh? I bet the dogs in the neighborhood like that.”

  I’m nervous and embarrassed. Wondering why I have to be so weird. Wondering why I now have to watch the mind movie in my head of a furry, meowing pork chop with a tail.

  But when the rest of the class sits down to do their writing assignments, he says I can read a book. I stare at the letters and watch them dance and move on the bright white page. My eyes ache and my head hurts.

  Mr. Daniels watches me, so I look down at the page and remember to turn it every once in a while. With my eyes closed, I watch bright movies of me flying—one of my favorite movies. In this one, I’m flying just above the water—my stomach almost touching it. Racing toward a castle filled with blue light.

  I open my eyes a bit to watch the others write. I look at the page again. I even try to read some. I really do. But I can’t help wondering why Mr. Daniels keeps looking over at me.

  CHAPTER 17

  Misfit Lunch

  I watch Albert sit at his desk and stare at the pages of a book. I know he’s not reading. His eyes don’t move at all. I see he has a new bruise on his jaw and decide I’ll go over and talk to him.

  “Hey,” I say.

  He looks up.

  Then something comes out of my mouth that I don’t expect. “Do you want to sit with Keisha and me at lunch?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you sit alone and we sit alone—but together, too—so I thought that we could all sit alone together.”

  “That isn’t a logical conclusion. Clearly, if we are all together—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupt. “I know. It was a joke. So, you want to?”

  “Well . . . I suppose so. I guess I’ve got to eat somewhere,” he says.

  • • •

  Albert leans his chair back as he shakes his empty carton of chocolate milk to let the drops fall on his tongue. “I wonder who decided that a half pint of milk was enough.”

  “Why don’t you just buy two?”

  He puts his chair down and stares.

  “Can’t you just ask your mom for extra money in the morning?” I say, readjusting my fake sling. This thing is a pain.

  “I don’t have to ask for money. It’s kind of prepaid.”

  And then I realize all at once. Of course. How stupid can I possibly be? Albert doesn’t have many clothes and he gets a ticket from Mr. Daniels every morning. I guess I never thought about it before. He must get one of the free lunches. I hope I didn’t upset him, so I say, “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, about . . . well, you know. That you get the free lunch.”

  He shrugs. “There are worse things. Than a free lunch, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “It disturbs my mom, but my dad says he wants to leave his mark on mankind with one of his inventions, and she says he should get a real job. They fight about it a lot, actually.”

  I’m really surprised he told me that and I decide to never tell another soul about it.

  “Hey,” says Keisha, sitting down.

  “Hey,” I say, and Albert nods.

  “So, Albert,” Keisha says. “I watched Star Trek because you are always spouting off about it. The special effects are not that special. Kind of pathetic, actually. Like a first-grade puppet show.”

  Albert looks horrified.

  Keisha laughs as she unwraps her sandwich. “Yeah, I knew that would getcha.”

  Shay’s voice arrives before she does. “Look, Jessica,” she says as they walk by. “It’s the Island of Misfit Toys.”

  “Yeah,” Jessica says. “It’s like a six-legged freak.”

  Shay laughs and Jessica looks proud of herself.

  “Uh, those girls are like walking pricker bushes,” Keisha says, taking a bite of her sandwich. “Don’t let them bother you.”

  “They don’t bother me,” Albert says.

  “It doesn’t bother you at all that she called us misfit toys?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Keisha says. “That girl can flap her gums about me until the sun rises and sets again. I really don’t care.”

  I wish I didn’t care. And I wish I wasn’t jealous of Shay and all that she has.

  Albert is wide-eyed. “But why are the toys all misfits? Square wheels on a train can be fixed easily enough.” Albert has his most serious voice turned up to high. “And what’s wrong with the doll, anyway? Why is it a misfit? It seems to adhere to the standards of a typical doll.”

  Wow. He is in full professor mode.

  “The Charlie-in-the-box,” he continues, “is just like a Jack-in-the-box in every way but his name. Something is not a misfit simply because it has a different name.”

  “That isn’t true,” I blurt out.

  He looks shocked. I suppose he isn’t used to being corrected.

  He holds up his milk carton. “Suppose I say this is orange juice. Doesn’t change what it is inside.”

  “That’s different,” I say, thinking that the milk will feel like it’s orange juice if it’s told that enough.

  “It is the same principle.”

  I think of words like dumb and baby and think how wrong Albert really is.

  “What about the cowboy?” Keisha asks. “He rides an ostrich instead of a horse. That has got to make him a misfit.”

  “It is illogical to say he is a misfit just because he chooses to ride a different animal, provided he can carry out his cowboy duties.”

  “Albert!” Keisha says. “How can you possibly say ‘cowboy duties’ with a straig
ht face?”

  “I don’t understand,” he says.

  Keisha’s forehead touches the table, and he continues, “Especially when you consider that ostriches run faster than horses, require less water to drink, and can use their legs and feet as weapons. They are fierce kickers with sharp claws. I, for one, would trade a horse for that. That’s just logical.”

  And then I think that if someone hung a sign on me that said anything, having that sign there wouldn’t make it so. But people have been calling me “slow” forever. Right in front of me as if I’m too dumb to know what they’re talking about.

  People act like the words “slow reader” tell them everything that’s inside. Like I’m a can of soup and they can just read the list of ingredients and know everything about me. There’s lots of stuff about the soup inside that they can’t put on the label, like how it smells and tastes and makes you feel warm when you eat it. There’s got to be more to me than just a kid who can’t read well.

  CHAPTER 18

  Truths and Untruths

  Keisha drops into her seat, annoyed that Mr. Daniels has asked her to do a paper over because he knows she can do better. I’ve always hated hearing that from teachers. And then I realize I’ve never heard it from Mr. Daniels. And all of a sudden that bugs me.

  Since the day of the mystery boxes, I keep thinking about how good it felt to do something right. To fit in.

  That’s what I want. To feel like everyone else. To be told that the work I know is terrible isn’t good enough. I want him to tell me I can do better and see it in his face that he really thinks so.

  And then I remember that it is the best I can do. I haven’t written in class since I had the fake sling on my arm. After three days of wearing it, Mr. Daniels told me he was going to have the nurse call my mom about my injured arm, so I figured I’d better lose the sling.

  So now I’m stuck. I don’t know who to be: the one who admits that I can’t do it, or the pretender.

  Finally I decide I’ll give Mr. Daniels something so, so terrible that he’ll have to ask me to do it over.

  I don’t even try to spell anything correctly like I usually do. I just put a whole bunch of letters together that even I know make no sense.