Things Seen from Above

by Shelley Pearsall

  “The same colors,” she explained. “In India, things are painted much brighter than here.”

  I laughed. “That’s just Marshallville. We’re boring.”

  “No no no,” Veena rushed to say. “Just different.”

  But it was true. Our town was kind of like cereal.

  I’m not saying Marshallville literally looked like a bowl of Corn Flakes, but most of the houses had been built around the same time, so they had a similar appearance. Picture a lot of two-story houses with beige or white siding, and large front yards, and one or two trees. That was Marshallville.

  Most of our small downtown was the same style. Nothing was too colorful or noticeable.

  Even the dogs you’d see around town were usually beige. (Golden retrievers were very popular.)

  I wanted to ask Veena a few more things about India, but then chaos erupted around us. A couple of boys got into an argument over their Pokémon cards, and a kid with a bloody nose came limping from the soccer field.

  Veena said she would take the bloody-nose kid to the nurse. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to convince the three Pokémon boys to calm down and give their cards back to the right owners. And then the recess bell finally rang.

  After making one more jump and spin, Joey followed the other kids inside. He was the last one to leave the playground.

  It was a crazy recess, but good.

  Why was Joey the last kid to leave the playground?

  Because his favorite day of the week was Wednesday.

  Pizza Day.

  Mostly because of how fun it was to make the pepperoni.

  Things went downhill fast on Thursday.

  I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all. I had one of those upsetting dreams where you are lost and wandering around empty buildings trying to find people who keep disappearing. I think I might have been lost in India at one point, because everything was painted in neon colors, and I kept smiling at everyone, and people kept running away from me.

  Then my mom’s alarm didn’t go off, so she was late getting up for work. I didn’t realize she’d overslept until she came rushing downstairs while I was getting breakfast.

  “My alarm never rang. I don’t know what happened. It just didn’t go off,” she said in a panic. “My hair is a complete mess, and I don’t even have time to take a shower now.” She ran her fingers through her short, scrunchy hair in a desperate attempt to make it look better—which only made it look worse.

  Like I said, my mom is the kind of person who hates to be disorganized or unprepared. We were definitely alike in that way. As she smeared a giant glob of cream cheese on an untoasted bagel and frantically searched for her keys in her purse (they weren’t there), I could tell she was getting more and more upset.

  Then our cat, Sam, threw up his breakfast on our white living room carpet.

  I was trying to help clean up that mess and look for my mom’s lost keys when the school bus revved past our house, rattling the windows.

  Add “missing the bus” to the list of morning catastrophes.

  When we couldn’t find the keys (we found out later that they had fallen between the sofa cushions), my mom finally had to call my dad to come back home and pick up both of us. By then she was crying. I ended up being a half hour late to school and missed a quiz. And I forgot to bring my lunch, so I had to ask for permission to leave my language arts class early to buy one before my Buddy Bench time started. Luckily, my teacher didn’t care and let me go.

  Of course, it was cheeseburger-and-fries day—one of my least favorite days to buy. The fourth graders were still eating in the cafeteria when I got there.

  As I stood in line, I noticed Joey sitting nearby. You couldn’t really miss him—first, because he sat at one of the tables next to the line. Second, because his lunch didn’t look like anyone else’s. It was spread across the table in front of him, just the way the girl on the bus had described it.

  It looked like a food mosaic. One hamburger patty and two bun halves were arranged in a row on a brown paper napkin like this: bun, patty, bun. Six crinkle fries had been lined up below them. A carton of chocolate milk sat on one side of the napkin, and Joey’s cafeteria tray was on the opposite side. In each of the tray’s dividers, Joey had placed a different food item as if they were a museum display: a leaf of wilty lettuce, an onion circle, a pickle slice, and a paper cup of ketchup.

  What I wish I hadn’t seen was what happened next.

  As I stood there, one of the boys sitting a few feet away from Joey—a tank-sized kid with a buzz cut—suddenly slid toward him and smacked the corner of Joey’s tray with his fist. Hard.

  Instantly, everything went flying.

  Joey’s pants got hit with blobs of ketchup. The pickle and onion landed on the floor near his feet. The fries scattered across the bench. His tray landed upside down on the floor. The tank-sized kid started laughing and pointing out the mess. Pretty soon the whole table was a riot of laughter.

  Of course, I couldn’t let that go.

  “Save my spot,” I said to one of the fourth graders behind me. “I’ll be right back.”

  Walking over, I waved my arms and yelled at the tank kid. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Why did you mess up his lunch?” The rest of the kids at the table stopped laughing and stared at me.

  “Whaaaat?” The tank kid’s voice was shrill.

  “You dumped that other kid’s lunch all over the floor.” I waved an arm vaguely toward Joey and pretended not to know his name.

  “No, he did it himself. Didn’t you, idiot?” The kid’s hand smacked Joey’s arm. Hard.

  Joey stayed frozen in place, staring vacantly at the air molecules.

  “No, I was standing right over there.” I gestured at the cafeteria line. The line kids were all staring now. “I saw you reach over and hit his lunch. So you get up and get him a new one. Now.”

  I was surprised at how adult (and official) I sounded. Like I was channeling Ms. Getzhammer herself. Furiously, I jabbed one finger in the direction of the lunch line. “Seriously, go and get him a new lunch like I said. Tell the lunch ladies you ruined Joey’s lunch and he needs another one.”

  “What?” The stupid kid’s voice shrieked higher. “But they’ll make me pay for it and it isn’t my lunch. I didn’t do it.”

  “I said Get. A. New. Tray. For. Him. Or I’ll go and find Mrs. Zeff and tell her what you did.”

  I was pretty sure steam was coming out of my ears at this point. Usually I wasn’t the kind of person who would yell at anyone (even fourth graders). But seeing a defenseless kid get picked on—it made my whole body feel as if it had been set on fire.

  The boy slammed backward. “Stupid moron!” He swore at Joey as he barreled toward the lunch line. The kids at the table started whispering and eyeballing me to see my reaction.

  Smiling at Joey, I shook my head to communicate that I was on his side, that the other kid was completely out of line, but Joey’s face stayed blank and expressionless. I couldn’t tell if he was happy I’d helped him or upset by the tank kid’s words or anything. It looked as if he’d disappeared from his own body.

  “Keep your hands to yourselves and don’t touch anyone else’s lunch,” I warned the group in my new voice of authority.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Zeff and another teacher arrived after that. They supervised the cleanup and made sure the tank kid returned with a decent lunch for Joey—which he did.

  I figured maybe Joey would thank me later on, when he came outside for recess, but he didn’t utter a word to me—or show any emotion at all. Not even a grateful smile or a nod. It kind of bugged me. Especially with how crappy the whole day had been—a little appreciation would have been nice, you know?

  Joey did nothing except walk in a giant spiral for the entire recess. That’s all.

  One big
spiral.

  Joey started his spiral with the first thing that went wrong that day—the enemies on the bus snapping his good pencil in half and laughing like hyenas; then he added the second thing, which was getting a zero in science for forgetting his homework, then the boy with the spiky hair smacking his lunch tray and sending everything flying, then the word “moron”—

  The spiral got bigger.

  “Moron” made him think of other words—idiot, dork, loser, freak—and more things like getting his desk dragged into the hallway for not treating books with respect—and the substitute teacher yelling at him during the fire drill—

  He kept walking.

  The spiral got bigger.

  Yelling made him think of the gym teacher, who was mad about his Crocs on Tuesday—and nobody being his partner in gym class—and his mom who didn’t like the two Cs and one D and one F on his weekly progress report—and his dad who wouldn’t build Legos with him if he didn’t try harder this week—

  He kept walking.

  The spiral got bigger.

  He walked until everything spiraled and circled around him—until his sadness spun around the skinny maple tree, and around the playground, and around the school, and around Marshallville, and around the cereal factories, and maybe even around the universe itself—pulling everything with it, before it finally disappeared like water going down a drain.

  And then Joey felt better.

  Fortunately, Friday started out as a better day than Thursday. It was sunny when I woke up, and I could hear my mom making coffee downstairs, so I didn’t need to worry about another alarm-clock disaster with her.

  It was our third Spirit Day of the football season. As I pulled on my orange Tigers T-shirt, I felt more excited than I usually did. The shirts were brand-new. All week, the sixth graders had been buzzing about them. They had our school district’s mascot—a tiger face—on the front. On the back, the shirts listed our class graduation year with all our names in tiny white print.

  A lot of the sixth graders planned to wear them to the game that night.

  Last year, I’d gone to only two football games—one with Julie and her parents, and another with my parents.

  Of course, like everything else this year, things had changed. Going to the games had become a matter of national importance now. And you couldn’t sit with your parents any longer. That was very uncool.

  In sixth grade, you had to go to the football games with a group of friends. Which meant you actually needed to have friends. The bigger the group, the more popular you were. Trust me, the games and who-was-going-with-who were the only topics of conversation on Fridays.

  Normally, I dreaded Spirit Days and tried to pretend I didn’t care about any of it. But the new shirts made me feel a little more hopeful. At least they made us look like we were one big happy family even if it wasn’t true. Plus, I didn’t have to stress about what to wear, like I usually did during the week.

  When I stepped outside in the morning, the sky was the turquoise color of Lake Michigan. A beautiful cloud puff drifted overhead like a hot-air balloon. I swear you could even smell the faintest scent of sugary Froot Loops in the air—which usually only happened in the summertime when it was warm and the wind was blowing in the right direction from the cereal factories.

  I took a deep breath, feeling summery and hopeful.

  * * *

  —

  At school, my first class of the day on Friday was gym class.

  If it was a Spirit Day, Mr. Dunner, the gym teacher, usually gave all of us open gym—which meant you could do what you wanted. Read, study, play basketball, finish homework, or whatever.

  I’d already planned to work on my next advice column. It was going to be about a girl who didn’t want to be on a swim team anymore, even though her parents wanted her to stay. TELL ME HOW TO QUIT, PLEASE!!! she had written in all purple caps on her Advice Box note, so how could I ignore that, right?

  But the minute I walked into the gymnasium on Friday morning, my perfect day came crashing down.

  It was clear that we weren’t going to get a free gym day. Mr. Dunner had obviously planned some kind of awful obstacle course or relay competition for us. Giant truck tires, balance beams, hurdles, orange traffic cones, and various other obstacles had been scattered around the gym. Worst of all, the climbing rope now dangled from the ceiling to the floor.

  No way.

  I had hoped to get through sixth grade without ever facing it again.

  The rope had always been my nemesis. In third grade, I’d fallen flat on my face while attempting to climb it. Seriously. For some reason, I’d tried to make a running leap at the rope—maybe I thought the momentum would propel me upward—but I’d completely missed it and face-planted on the mats instead. The whole class had died laughing. Then I’d started crying, and the gym teacher had to call the school nurse to come and get me.

  It was one of my most embarrassing school memories.

  As Mr. Dunner started our class, I scrambled to come up with a good reason for being excused. Could I have a headache? Or a stomachache? Or say I felt like I was getting sick with the flu?

  The gym teacher began dividing everyone into groups. I was only half listening. Mostly, I was completely panicking. I didn’t realize I’d been placed in Tanner Torchman’s group until Julie Vanderbrook smacked my arm and hissed, “No fair, you’re in his group.”

  “Girls!” Mr. Dunner yelled, pointing directly at us. “I’m giving directions here.”

  I took a couple of steps back.

  I was still panicking about how to get out of class as the gym teacher toured us around the gym, showing off the different stations. When he got back to the climbing rope, he pointed at the orange flags tied on the rope every three feet or so. “At this station, the team captain will record the height each person reaches,” he said. “We’ll add up the heights at the end to get a team total.”

  I knew I wouldn’t make it to the first flag above my head.

  “So do we have a volunteer to demonstrate this activity?” Mr. Dunner asked.

  Of course, the class nominated Tanner Torchman. He was the undisputed king of everything athletic at Marshallville, including rope climbing. Nobody else came close. Nobody even tried to come close.

  And of course I had to get placed in his group.

  Shaking his head and smiling in this half-embarrassed way, Tanner stepped onto the mats. He ran his hands through his perfect swoosh of hair. Then he rubbed his palms on his gym shirt as if they were sweaty—which I’m sure they weren’t—and took a deep breath. Everybody started chanting as he reached for the rope.

  “Tan-ner! Tan-ner! Tan-ner!”

  He began to climb. In just a minute or two, he had shimmied effortlessly all the way to the top of our gymnasium. I’ll admit—it was kind of amazing to watch. After high-fiving one of the orange-painted beams, Tanner stayed there—at the top of the gym—surveying his kingdom like a golden-haired Tarzan.

  “Hey, what can you see from up there?” someone yelled.

  “The tops of everybody’s heads,” Tanner shouted back. “And Mr. Dunner’s big bald one.”

  The gym teacher rubbed his shaved head and bellowed, “THAT’S IT. A BIG FAT F FOR YOU, TORCHMAN.” The class laughed.

  “Jacob,” Tanner shouted to one of the popular kids in his group. “Dude, I swear it’s like I can’t even see you now. It’s like you’re invisible.”

  Jacob West was a skinny, freckle-faced kid who spent most of his time goofing around with Tanner in class. I think he must have owned every Michigan State jersey ever made. They were the only shirts he ever wore except for our Marshallville ones.

  Just showing off, Jacob flopped down on the mats and stretched out his arms dramatically. “Hey, moron, can you see me now?” he yelled.

  In that instant, something clicke
d in my mind. I pictured Joey lying faceup on the playground just like Jacob. Arms out. Eyes closed. I thought about how he’d stared, transfixed, at the helicopter that had passed overhead at recess one afternoon. I remembered the giant spirals he’d made in the wood chips with his feet.

  As Tanner and Jacob continued shouting insults back and forth to each other, my eyes kept shifting between the two of them. Was it possible that Joey was looking at things the same way? I wondered. Was he picturing himself like Jacob on the ground? Or like Tanner above? Was he imagining things the way a helicopter would see them? Or like a bird flying over?

  Oh! Another jolt of realization hit me. Joey Byrd—Bird.

  I think I might have gasped out loud, because some of the kids who were standing nearby turned around to stare at me as if I’d just done something weird.

  I was so caught up in thinking about this bizarre idea—Joey as a hypothetical bird—that I completely missed my chance to get out of class. By the time I realized what was happening, Tanner had come back down to earth and all the groups were moving to their stations. Of course, Tanner’s group had to start with the rope.

  “Okay, everybody on my team, get in line,” he shouted, and waved his arms.

  Standing at the very end of the line, I tried to tell myself I’d probably never get to the front. If I was lucky, we’d move to a different activity before my turn ever came up.

  While everyone around me went crazy cheering and rooting for each other, I kept thinking about the possibility of a fourth grader who saw the world like a bird because his last name was Byrd. Was it a ridiculous idea? Could it explain why Joey acted the way he did? How could I figure out if I was right?

  Suddenly, someone pushed me from behind. “April, you’re next.”

  I looked around thinking there had to be some mistake. Everybody in my group couldn’t have taken a turn already. The line couldn’t have gone that fast.

  But Tanner was waiting next to the mats with his clipboard. He nodded at me. “Okay, go ahead,” he said.