Things Seen from Above

by Shelley Pearsall

  My brother refused to try them, no matter what. He made us promise he could have the house if we died of cattail fuzz poisoning.

  I didn’t die.

  Neither did my parents.

  The point is I could be insanely determined about certain things until I found what I was looking for—even if it meant reading fifty books or eating cattail pancakes. And I think this explains why I was so determined to find the answers about Joey.

  Today, my mom wasn’t really into listening, though.

  As I scrubbed my hands at the sink—whatever pen I’d used must have been semi-permanent—I tried to tell her about Joey. “He’s part of my fourth-grade Buddy Bench recess,” I explained. “And I think there’s something definitely wrong with him, but nobody else seems to be worried about it.”

  Putting a lid on the pan of rice, my mom turned and glanced at me. Her lips were pressed together slightly. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was wishing that I would spend my time on more normal sixth-grade problems.

  For some reason, I kept going—as if I could convince her to be as interested in Joey as I was.

  “Sometimes he walks around in circles outside. Like in spirals,” I said, demonstrating with my hands. “And other times he lies faceup on the playground all recess with his eyes closed. Supposedly, he’s having trouble in fourth grade—at least that’s what I’ve heard—so I’ve been wondering if maybe he’s autistic or something else like that….”

  At this point, I really wanted my mom to say how thoughtful—and mature—it was that I was interested in helping this kid. Or how wonderful it was that I’d noticed these significant things about Joey that nobody else had seen.

  Instead, she said: “Wow. Sounds like a job for the professionals. Why don’t you get Mr. Mac involved—that’s the name of your guidance counselor, right? Let him know what’s up with this boy. He definitely sounds like he needs some help—you’re right.”

  Then she handed me a colander of washed lettuce to chop up for tacos. Annoyed by her advice, I dumped the lettuce on a cutting board and started chopping without saying another word.

  My mom switched topics completely. “How about the kids in your class? Anyone you might want to have over this weekend? Maybe you could give Julie a call and do homework together? She hasn’t been here in a while.” Her voice rose hopefully.

  Ergh. I wanted to press my hands over my ears. Please don’t start about friends.

  We had this same conversation about once a week.

  No matter what I said, my mom never seemed to grasp the fact that girls today weren’t the same as what she remembered from school. She didn’t understand that being popular these days meant having long, swishy blond hair (with expensive salon highlights) and playing soccer (or some other team sport), and texting back and forth with your friends after your parents went to bed. None of which I did.

  “No,” I said in an irritated voice. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” my mom replied quickly. “Just asking.”

  I knew my mom worried a lot about my lack of friends—and how it didn’t seem to bother me. Back in the Julie Vanderbrook days, it wasn’t all that different, even though my mom thought it was. Nine times out of ten, Julie was the one who called me to do something. Most of the time, I was perfectly happy sitting at home by myself reading about the life cycles of starfish or whatever.

  I’m not saying I didn’t want any friends. What I wanted were friends who wouldn’t run off and get contacts and dye their hair pink and forget I existed. What I wanted were friends who would be there when you needed them…but you didn’t need to hang out together all the time—or spend hours texting each other about meaningless stuff.

  Did friends like that even exist?

  * * *

  —

  After supper that night, I spent a couple of hours on the Internet. I searched random things like learning disabilities and autism and how to teach someone to read—I know this probably sounds excessive, but it was interesting….

  Of course, while I was trying to concentrate, my brother kept tapping his drumsticks on something in his room. It sounded like a deranged woodpecker on the other side of the wall. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I went out into the hall, pounded on his door, and told him to shut up.

  This time, Luke opened the door (which normally he doesn’t do). In a half-awake voice, he said, “What? What’s the big deal?” He had a bag of Doritos in one hand and two drumsticks in the other.

  “I’m reading for school,” I shouted back.

  Tucking the bag under one arm, he leaned against the doorway, munching on a Dorito triangle. His fingertips were orange. It always surprised me how tall he was these days. And how he had this weird mustache of pale fuzz above his upper lip. “Reading what?” he asked. “War and Peace? Canterbury Tales? Shakespeare?”

  I glared. “I’m reading about how to teach someone to read.”

  “What?” He squinted blankly at me.

  “I’m reading about How. You. Teach. Someone. To. Read,” I repeated slowly.

  “Oh, that’s easy.” He grinned, licking the orange off his fingers one by one. “Ask me. I was the one who taught you how to read.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right.”

  “Seriously, I did.” Luke crossed his arms. “I was babysitting you one afternoon after school, and I opened up that Dr. Seuss book about fish. One Fish Blue Fish or whatever.” He shrugged. “And I started pointing to each word, making you repeat it after me, and by the time Mom and Dad got home, you could read. I’m telling you, I was a freaking genius at teaching—”

  “If you want to think that”—I squinted at him—“okay.”

  “Seriously, you should thank me for how smart you are. See, that big brain of yours—it’s all because of me.” He tried tapping one of his drumsticks on the top of my head, but I swatted his arm out of the way. Doritos scattered across the carpet.

  “Great move,” my brother said, swearing.

  Although I helped him to pick up the Doritos, it didn’t matter. Our brief brother-sister bonding moment was over.

  Was my brother’s story true or not? I had no idea. (Luke tended to exaggerate his own importance in everything these days.) I did have some hazy memories of the two of us reading books together on long car trips, but I didn’t remember anything about my first book. Words just seemed as if they had always been there, surrounding me from birth. Like oxygen.

  Which made me wonder how Joey could survive without them.

  On Tuesday, Joey left another drawing in my Advice Box.

  I always checked the box on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This time, there were only two questions—and one wasn’t really a question. It just said: “My teacher gives too much homework” with five exclamation points after it.

  The other note was from a girl who wanted to know how to get invited to another girl’s birthday party. The usual stuff.

  Then, at the bottom, I spotted another spiral by Joey. This one resembled an exploding solar system. It was scribbled on a crumpled piece of black paper with silver crayon. Joey’s name was squeezed into one corner: JOEYBYRD. All caps. No spaces.

  As usual, I had no clue what the drawing was supposed to mean.

  * * *

  —

  Later that morning, I was coming back from dropping off some stuff in the computer lab when I spotted Joey in the hallway. He was sitting at a desk, which I assumed someone (his teacher? a substitute?) had dragged out of the classroom.

  His head was down on top of the desk, and there was a chapter book and some wads of notebook paper on the floor near his feet. I thought about asking him about the spiral, but I couldn’t tell if he was already having a problem or a meltdown or what.

  “Hey, Joey,” I kind of whispered as I walked by, since the classroom door was open.

&nbs
p; The fourth grader raised his head warily. His forehead was all blotchy, which could have been from crying or from having his face pressed against his arms. Or both.

  “Hey, is that your book?” I pointed toward the floor with what I thought was an encouraging smile. I’m not sure why I brought up the book, since I already knew reading wasn’t Joey’s strength. Did I think he’d suddenly confess he couldn’t read? Or ask me for help?

  Of course, he didn’t.

  “Yes,” he said in a flat, annoyed voice. “It is.”

  For some reason, I kept going. “So do you like the story? Is it any good?”

  There was a smiling golden retriever on the jacket. The title was Rescue! I thought the story looked kind of appealing. If you were a fourth grader, that is.

  Joey shook his head slightly.

  “Well, the cover looks really fun with the dog and everything.”

  “No,” he replied loudly. He folded his arms and flopped his head down on the desk again. “It isn’t.”

  And that was as far as I got.

  Joey hated reading.

  From above, most words were confusing and dangerous. They stretched across the page in endless rows of peaks and valleys. If you weren’t careful, you could easily fall into the narrow canyon of a V or the sliding valley of a U and never get out.

  Joey fell into these spaces a lot—which was why he didn’t like them.

  But the worst letters were T F E Z.

  They looked exactly the same from above, so Joey always had to turn them around in his mind to figure out which one was which.

  This was exhausting.

  Joey’s favorite letter of the alphabet was i because of the dot. From above, the dot reminded him of a smooth, round stepping-stone in a dangerous river. Often he could tiptoe across a word on those dots as long as a j wasn’t hiding somewhere in the middle.

  Joey knew other kids didn’t see words like he did. Letters didn’t pretend to be canyons or valleys or rocks in a river. They weren’t three-dimensional things. They stayed flat on the page. Almost anybody could figure them out—even stupid kids like the enemy boys who were in small-group tutoring with him.

  Joey had learned that hiding his problem was better than pointing it out—like, even if you think you have a booger in your nose, don’t pick it in public if you can avoid it.

  But sometimes, even with a lot of practice and concentration, he would still mess up in class. He’d forget to look at letters the way other kids did. Or he’d get confused and accidentally see an F instead of a T. Or E instead of Z. He’d say the completely wrong word.

  Then there would be loud hoots of laughter. Ha ha ha ha ha.

  To make it stop, he’d throw all the words and letters into a big heap on the floor. Then his teacher would get mad at him for not treating books with respect. Throwing things is not acceptable, she’d say, and she’d pull his desk into the hall for a time-out.

  The hallway tiles of Marshallville Elementary were tan-colored with lots of brown speckles, like the eggs of the great black-backed gull. The colors kept predators from seeing the eggs on the sand and eating them.

  Sometimes Joey wished he was the egg of a great black-backed gull.

  Veena finally showed up to work with me on Wednesday.

  I had just draped my coat over the Buddy Bench because it was warmer outside than I expected. When I turned around again, she was standing behind me with a polka-dotted lunch bag.

  “Hi,” she said, looking nervous. Her yellow Buddy Bench shirt was so long, it looked like a dress on her. I held back a smile.

  “Wow, you’re here! Welcome to your first day!” I said extra-cheerfully to set the fifth grader at ease. I moved my coat to one side to make more room.

  “Thanks.” The girl’s fingers rolled and unrolled the Velcro top of her lunch bag. She didn’t move. “I’m glad to be here.”

  “Seriously, you don’t have to stand the whole recess.” I pointed at the bench. “You’re allowed to sit down on this really comfortable piece of blue plastic too.”

  The girl sat down on the far end of the bench and put her lunch beside her. Then she took about five minutes to tuck the extra fabric of her shirt underneath her pretzel-thin legs. I felt like a giant next to her.

  “I think the shirt might be a little big,” she said.

  “Just a little.” I grinned. “But maybe you can use it as a blanket when it gets cold. Or—a tent.”

  Both of us laughed, and Veena finally seemed to relax a little.

  Motioning toward the playground, I gave her a quick overview of the fourth-grade recess before things got too crazy. I pointed out the various soccer and kickball teams on the big field beyond the playground. And the Pokémon boys who hung out by the side of the school and often got into arguments about their cards. And the clingy bracelet-making girls who were sitting in the meager shade of the 2003 Tree nearby.

  “They’ll definitely come over and offer you a bracelet before the end of recess,” I whispered. “I already have about fifteen of them.”

  Friendship bracelets were the current obsession in the fourth grade. I was surprised that Ms. Getzhammer hadn’t outlawed them yet, but I had a feeling she eventually would. Most of the fourth-grade girls had, literally, stacks of them on their arms. They were made of plastic string and colored beads, and they were always coming apart in the hallways and scattering beads everywhere. The sixth-grade boys loved crushing them under their shoes when they spotted them.

  I pointed out Joey last.

  Today he seemed to be trudging around the outer edges of the playground. He wore a pair of army-green Crocs instead of sneakers. Every so often, he had to stop and dump the wood chips out of the holes as he dragged his feet through the dirt.

  “He is the person you spoke about at the meeting, right? The one who you thought might be autistic, right?” Veena shaded her eyes to look in his direction. She had a precise, almost British way of speaking.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why is he doing that, do you think?” she asked, still squinting at Joey.

  “Seriously, I have no idea. I’ve tried talking to him and he won’t really communicate—except for pretty much telling me to go away.”

  “He seems to be making a large circle.”

  “It could be.” I shrugged. “But every recess he does something different.”

  The girl glanced upward. The sun glowed butter-yellow above us. “Perhaps he is pretending to make a big sun?”

  “Maybe…”

  Almost as if he sensed he was being watched, Joey suddenly stopped and began shuffling through the middle of the circle toward us. He passed right in front of our bench, ignoring us completely, and kept going in a straight line to the opposite side of the playground, making a groove in the wood chips.

  “Apparently not the sun,” I joked.

  “No,” Veena said, still watching him curiously. “I guess not.”

  Joey crisscrossed back and forth a couple more times, making more grooves through the middle of his big circle. Then he started doing these odd jumping moves—jumping to an open spot and turning around in a small circle. He repeated the same movement again and again. Jump, spin. Jump, spin.

  It was hard not to laugh. As Joey hopped from place to place with his face scrunched together and his hands clenched, he reminded me of an obsessed rabbit. I was amazed that nobody else on the playground had noticed what he was doing.

  Veena asked me if I thought it could be a dance—which had been one of my first theories.

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  “Forgive me,” the girl apologized, as if she was worried that she was getting on my nerves. “I ask too many questions.”

  Veena began to unpack her lunch, and I was surprised when she took out a bag of carrots and an ordinary peanut butter sandwich on whi
te bread. Maybe I expected something more unusual because she was from India—which wasn’t really fair, I guess. She could eat whatever she wanted.

  I started unpacking my own lunch and tried turning the conversation in a different direction. “So, Mr. Mac said you moved here from India this summer, right?”

  “Two summers ago,” the fifth grader said. “We came to Detroit first. Then we moved here in July.”

  “So, um, why did your parents choose Marshallville, of all places?”

  There were some kids from other countries in our school, but not many. There was a new boy from South Korea in sixth grade and two girls from Romania who had come in fourth grade. I think Veena was the only person from India, though.

  Of course, I should have guessed the answer before she said it. Cereal.

  “My father was hired by Kellogg’s,” the girl replied matter-of-factly.

  “Oh—mine works there too.” I grinned. “So which department is your dad in?”

  “Product marketing. Bringing breakfast cereal to the world,” Veena said in a singsong voice.

  I laughed. For a fifth grader, she was pretty entertaining. And she was a lot more talkative than she’d been at the first Buddy Bench meeting.

  “So…what are the biggest differences between living here and in India?” I asked, just because I was curious.

  Veena quickly covered a laugh. “Smiling.”

  “Smiling?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “At first I did not understand why everyone here in America smiled all the time. Or how big they smiled. All those teeth.” She pointed to her tiny teeth. “Why was everyone smiling at me when they didn’t know me and I didn’t know them?” she said, shaking her head. “It made me quite nervous at first.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Veena nodded solemnly.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Well,” she added hesitantly, “I was also surprised by how alike everything looked here.”

  “Alike?”