Things Seen from Above

by Shelley Pearsall

  The tall girl at the front of the group spoke up first. Her name was Alanna, but I called her the Bossy One in my head. Despite her pushy personality, all the fourth-grade girls seemed to look up to her. I don’t know if it was because she wore designer clothes and stylish Ugg boots, but she had more friendship bracelets than anyone.

  “So we have a question for you, Veena,” she started out saying in this singsong voice.

  The other girls glanced at each other and giggled.

  “Yes?” Veena answered patiently. She was always way more patient with the fourth graders than I was.

  “Well, we don’t want to be rude, but…” There was an extra-dramatic pause. “We want to know…is Joey Byrd your boyfriend now?” The whole group dissolved into uproarious laughter.

  What? Veena looked shocked by the question. I was kind of shocked too. Where was this idea coming from? We stared blankly at one another for a second or so.

  Finally, Veena answered slowly, “No. Why do you say that?”

  “Well”—Alanna tilted her head coyly—“first we noticed you spent most of recess on Monday talking to Joey. When we asked him about it later on, he said he liked you a lot. I mean, like, a lot. He said he thought you were very beautiful.” More uproarious laughter. “So we thought you had to be boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  I could feel my irritation rising fast.

  If they had picked on Joey, or teased him in any way, I swear I would go straight to Ms. Getzhammer. I gave the Bossy One a withering glare. “Actually, both of us talked to him on Monday. That’s what we do for the Buddy Bench. We talk to fourth graders and help out when you guys need it. That’s our job. And I’m warning all of you”—I pointed at the group—“you better leave Joey alone and stop bothering him about stupid stuff like boyfriends and girlfriends. Got it?”

  Mouths open, the girls gawked at me, as if I’d come across as kind of harsh.

  Then Veena made the problem much worse.

  “Yes,” she added in this innocent voice. “Most people don’t know this about Joey, but he is quite talented at art. In other parts of the world, people who make designs like him are called circle makers.”

  What? My head snapped toward Veena.

  “What?” the girls replied, looking confused.

  Alanna pushed back her fur-lined hood and squinted in Joey’s direction. He was standing by himself near the swing sets. “Circles? What do you mean?” she said. “I don’t see any circles on the playground.”

  Without pausing, Veena reached into her coat pocket for her phone. “Here—I will you show you some pictures to explain,” she replied.

  Oh my gosh. What was she doing?

  I literally couldn’t get a single syllable out of my mouth before Veena had started passing around her phone showing off the same photos from Monday. I wasn’t sure if she was doing this to distract everyone from the boyfriend-girlfriend conversation…or if she was trying to impress the girls…or if she honestly didn’t realize the disaster she was causing.

  Of course, the girls oohed and aahed over the designs. They flipped back and forth through the pictures as they handed the phone around. “Wow, that is so cool,” they said. “That one is my favorite. I love the horse. How did an artist do that?”

  At some point, while all of this was happening, I think Veena must have realized that she had made a huge mistake. (Or maybe she caught the look of complete shock on my face.)

  She tried to make up a flimsy excuse.

  “Okay, I need to put my phone away now—thank you,” she said, reaching desperately for it. “I don’t want to run down the battery. Could you pass it back to me, please?”

  “So I don’t get it,” Alanna said as the phone made its way back around the circle. “Joey didn’t really make any of those designs you showed us, did he?”

  Glancing at me, Veena now looked absolutely terrified.

  Instead of answering, she just shook her head and tucked her chin inside her zipped-up coat. Her dark hair fell over her glasses, completely hiding her eyes behind a curtain of hair.

  That left me to answer the question.

  Alanna turned her pointed gaze toward me. “So did he make them or not?”

  There was literally no way out. The Bossy One would get an answer, one way or another.

  “No, he didn’t make the ones in the photos,” I replied carefully. “He usually does—well, uh, he does his own designs.”

  Alanna looked unconvinced. “Where?”

  “Sometimes here on the playground,” I admitted reluctantly. “Or other places,” I added, although I had no idea if that was true.

  Alanna gazed across the playground, surveying everything skeptically. The other girls followed her lead. “I don’t see him making anything,” she said.

  Joey was wandering near the jungle gym now, aimlessly scuffing at the dirt.

  “Well, actually, nobody can see what he’s making unless you are really high up.” I gestured vaguely toward the slate-gray sky. “And he doesn’t make a drawing every day. So you’ll just have to wait until he makes one again—and who knows when that will happen?” I shrugged.

  If I thought my vague and evasive answer would satisfy the girls and convince them to give up on Joey—it didn’t. Before recess ended, the rumors about Joey and his playground art were already spreading like wildfire.

  After recess I knew I had to track down Mr. Ulysses to tell him the whole story. We had promised to keep Joey’s art a secret—and we hadn’t.

  Surprisingly, he wasn’t as worried as I thought he’d be.

  I found him in the cafeteria sweeping up after lunch. Big mounds of lunch garbage were scattered everywhere. I didn’t want to interrupt his work, so I tried to talk quickly.

  I told Mr. Ulysses how Joey’s secret had come out accidentally—putting most of the blame on the bracelet girls rather than Veena. I knew she already felt guilty enough—she’d run inside the school without saying a word after the conversation with the girls had ended.

  “Hmmm.” The janitor gazed up at the ceiling after I finished. “So it seems that the cat is out of the bag now, isn’t it?”

  I winced. “I guess.”

  “No way of putting a cat back in, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then it seems that all we can do is wait and see what happens next.” Mr. Ulysses pushed a loose candy wrapper into a nearby pile with his foot. He smiled. “Who knows? It could turn out to be a good thing after all.”

  His optimism surprised me. “How?”

  Mr. Ulysses shrugged. “You can never tell where a simple line may lead. The greatest things have often come from the simplest lines.”

  I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well.” He glanced upward. “Take something like poetry. That’s all made up of lines. Or think about art. Or the maps of epic journeys. Or strands of DNA. Or the span of human history. You name it”—Mr. Ulysses waved one hand in the air—“all of them started with a single line.”

  I’ll admit I’d never thought of this really interesting idea before.

  Like I said, sometimes Mr. Ulysses notices things that absolutely nobody else does. It is another one of the qualities I like best about him.

  Pushing his broom toward one of the garbage piles again, the janitor winked at me. “Don’t panic. I think everything will turn out fine for Joey.”

  “Okay,” I replied, not entirely convinced it would.

  But all the way back to class I kept thinking about what Mr. Ulysses had said: You can never tell where a simple line may lead….

  And I hoped he was right.

  The next day, Joey could tell that something had definitely changed at recess. And not in a good way. He did the only thing he could think of to protect himself.

  He lay down flat on the playground and
closed his eyes.

  Revealing Joey’s secret to the bracelet girls definitely didn’t lead to something positive at first, despite what Mr. Ulysses had predicted. Even before I reached the playground on Thursday, I heard the commotion. Two fourth-grade girls passed me in the hallway.

  One said to the other: “I told you it was a lie.”

  The other replied, “Yeah, I knew that story about him was fake.”

  The first girl shook her head. “What a dork.”

  My stomach gave a sickening lurch. I knew they were talking about Joey.

  I’d planned to get outside early. I had a feeling some of the bracelet girls might pick on Joey, or bug him about drawing something, and I’d already decided to keep an eye on him for the entire recess to make sure they left him alone.

  But we had a substitute for language arts, and he’d kept us for an extra few minutes past the lunch bell. By the time I pushed open the glass doors to the playground and charged outside, it was already too late.

  I saw it all in one sweeping glance: Joey lying on the ground with his eyes closed. Mrs. Zeff and another teacher shooing a big group away from him. “Stop bothering Joey or we’ll give all of you a detention,” they were shouting. “Go somewhere else and play. You’re wasting your own recess time.” As the kids took off toward the sports fields, I could see some phones reluctantly disappearing into coat pockets. Usually the fourth graders didn’t have phones or bring them outside for recess, so I knew they’d done it to capture whatever Joey was doing.

  I felt horrible. Literally, I felt sick to my stomach seeing Joey on the ground and all the kids running away like a pack of wolves. Although I had no idea how to fix the mess, I forced myself to walk over to where Joey was lying. The least I could do was to apologize.

  “Hey, Joey.”

  Even though the ground was cold and damp, I sat cross-legged on the ground right next to him. “It’s April—I’m the one who made the spirals with you on Monday,” I added, because Joey’s eyes were still closed. They weren’t clenched shut, just peacefully closed—the kind of creepy dead look he often liked to do.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Joey’s head nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Do you want me to help you get up?”

  His head shook back and forth emphatically. NO.

  “Is it okay if I sit here and talk to you for a couple of minutes?”

  No answer.

  By now Mrs. Zeff had moved to another part of the playground. Except for a few stragglers, most of the fourth graders were playing on the sports fields. Nobody else was around. I zipped up my jacket because it felt like it could pour at any minute. Angry clouds scudded across the sky. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Confession wasn’t getting any easier.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “I know you are probably confused about what happened today and how everybody knew about your tracings.” I swallowed hard. “I have to be honest that I think it was my fault and Veena’s fault. Some of the fourth-grade girls asked about your tracings yesterday, and we made a big mistake and told them more than we should have.”

  Joey didn’t open his eyes or give any sign that he was listening.

  I sighed loudly. “I know it was a really, really stupid thing for us to do. I’m mad at myself because I know you trusted us, and we should have just shut up. And I’m really sorry if all the kids swarmed around you today and made you scared—or if they were mean to you. We had no idea it would get out of hand like this.”

  I paused because my voice was starting to wobble. “After recess is over, I promise I’ll talk to Mr. Mac or Ms. Getzhammer, and I swear I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Joey’s eyelids fluttered a little, but he didn’t answer.

  “Do you accept my apology?” I had to ask.

  His chin bobbed up and down slightly.

  “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  This time his lips moved. One word came out: “Yes.”

  I swallowed again, feeling even worse, if that was possible.

  “Okay. I’ll go ahead and stop bothering you. But I just want to apologize again for what happened. Veena and I think you are a really cool person who does amazing drawings—or tracings, as you call them. You’re like…” I searched my mind for the right words. “A star to us.”

  No reaction. Joey’s eyes stayed closed.

  Sighing loudly, I stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of my jeans. Shoving my hands deep into my coat pockets, I started walking toward the far end of the playground. I just wanted to be alone for a while.

  Once I reached the edge of the playground area, I stood there for fifteen minutes probably, arms crossed, staring at nothing and being mad.

  I was sick of Pokémon and plastic friendship bracelets and Buddy Benches and recess—and just all the stupid stuff in elementary school.

  I wanted to be somewhere else. And older.

  It took me a while to calm down. When I finally did, I turned around again. Of course, nothing much had changed. Marshallville Elementary was still there. Recess was still going on. I was still a sixth grader.

  But I was relieved to see Joey had gotten up. He seemed to be back to his usual routine. He was making something in the middle of the playground. As I watched him, he walked in a diagonal line toward the 2003 Tree.

  Nobody seemed to be bothering him. One small group of boys watched him from near the jungle gym. Two girls stood on the swings to get a better view of what he doing. Joey didn’t seem to notice them or care.

  When he got close to the tree, he pivoted and walked in another diagonal line. Then he stopped and pivoted again, walking in a straight line that crossed over his first one.

  The boys near the jungle gym began climbing the rusty rungs for a better view. As one boy reached the peak, I heard him shout to the others that it looked like Joey was making an arrow. The words drifted toward me on the wind. “I’m pretty sure it’s an arrow. That’s what I definitely think it is.”

  Joey kept walking and pivoting, walking and pivoting, until he returned to the spot where he’d started. The jungle gym group figured it out before I did—

  “It’s a star!” came the triumphant shout from the boys on the jungle gym.

  I felt this warm glow of surprise. Had Joey made the star because of what I’d said to him—because I’d called him a star? Was it his way of making up to me and saying that everything was okay?

  Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to take a picture or get a better look at what Joey had drawn. Before I could walk over to see his tracing, the skies suddenly opened up and it began to pour. Heavy sheets of rain pummeled the playground. Yanking my coat over my head, I dashed toward the playground doors with everyone else.

  Of course, all of us got totally soaked.

  Once I got inside, I turned around to make sure Joey had come in—because you could never be sure what he would do. After I spotted his familiar jacket in the crowd, I headed back to my locker to dry off and hang up my things.

  I’ll be honest, I didn’t really give the star a second thought. I had a quiz coming up in science, so I was kind of focused on that.

  But then something unexpected happened.

  Word of Joey’s star started to spread after recess. A blurry photo of a large and impressive star began circulating through the school. On phones. On laptops. It was posted on our school district’s Facebook page and Twitter feed sometime in the afternoon.

  Oddly, the image in the photo seemed way more detailed than what Joey had been working on. When I first saw the photo, I wasn’t convinced the star was the same one. How would Joey have had the time to make something so elaborate before the rain started?

  I thought it was possible that Mr. Ulysses had posted the picture—and maybe he’d substituted a star that Joey h
ad drawn on another day. Just to amaze people. That was only a guess, because I couldn’t find the janitor to ask him.

  All I can say for sure is that the rumors about Joey’s star continued to grow as the afternoon went on. Opinions about it varied greatly, depending on who you talked to and what grade they were in.

  Among the sixth graders, the star barely got noticed.

  In the lower grades, it became a wondrous spectacle: Someone had made the most beautiful star in the world on the school playground at recess!

  The real photo didn’t really matter to the little kids. They had their own ideas of what the star had looked like: It had eight points, or twelve points, or—if you asked a kindergarten kid—“a hundred million points.” It had rays like the sun. It had this bizarre—possibly magical—sparkle when it was finished. It was magical. Joey was magical. He had made the star with magic. Then he had made the rain to hide the magic….

  Okay, you can see how the story got a little out of control in the lower grades.

  Regardless of the details, Joey’s star took on a life of its own. By the time the buses arrived at the end of the day, the star had become a star.

  Not surprisingly, my mom spotted it on Facebook.

  When I got home from school, the first thing she said to me was: “Hey, I loved that picture the school district posted on its Facebook page today. The big star. What a creative idea to make giant pictures on the playground like that! I didn’t know you could draw in wood chips. Did you get the chance to see it before the rain started?”

  I had to stop myself from saying, “Yes, Mom, I’ve been trying to tell you about the kid who does them for, like, weeks now. And yes, as a matter of fact, I was there.”

  On Friday, the hallways of Marshallville Elementary still buzzed with excitement about Joey.

  On the way to my locker in the morning, I overheard a lot of speculation about what Joey would do next. Two little kids behind me decided it would definitely be something from Star Wars, although I thought it was pretty unlikely that Joey would re-create Darth Vader or the Millennium Falcon in wood chips.