Slug Days

by Sara Leach

  Dedication

  Copyright

  First published in paperback in Canada and the United States in 2020

  First published in hardcover in Canada and the United States in 2017

  Text copyright © 2017 Sara Leach

  Illustration copyright © 2017 Rebecca Bender

  This edition © 2020 Pajama Press Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.

  www.pajamapress.ca info@pajamapress.ca

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Leach, Sara, 1971-, author

  Slug days / by Sara Leach ; with illustrations by Rebecca Bender.

  ISBN 978-1-77278-022-2 (hardback).--ISBN 978-1-77278-032-1 (softcover)

  I. Bender, Rebecca, illustrator II. Title.

  PS8623.E253S58 2017 jC813’.6 C2017-900643-6

  Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S.)

  Names: Leach, Sara, 1971-, author. | Bender, Rebecca, 1980-, illustrator.

  Title: Slug Days / by Sara Leach, with illustrations by Rebecca Bender.

  Description: Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pajama Press, 2017. | Summary: “Lauren, who has Autism Spectrum Disorder (an umbrella term that has included Asperger Syndrome since 2013), navigates the ups and downs of school and home life. School friendships have always been a challenge, but Lauren finds she is exactly the friend a brand new classmate needs” — Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-77278-022-2 (hardcover) | 978-1-77278-032-1 (softcover) | 978-1-77278-128-1 (mobi) | 978-1-77278-127-4 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Asperger’s syndrome – Juvenile fiction. | Friendship – Juvenile fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / School & Education. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Special Needs.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.L433Slu |DDC [F] – dc23

  Cover and book design—Rebecca Bender

  Pajama Press Inc.

  181 Carlaw Ave. Suite 251 Toronto, Ontario Canada, M4M 2S1

  Distributed in Canada by UTP Distribution

  5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario Canada, M3H 5T8

  Distributed in the U.S. by Ingram Publisher Services

  1 Ingram Blvd. La Vergne, TN 37086, USA

  Original art created with pencil and digital media

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  I knew it was going to be a slug day as soon as I climbed on the school bus. Mike wasn’t there. The new driver didn’t know our secret handshake. He didn’t pretend to close the door before I was inside. He didn’t know the front seat was reserved for me.

  Dan and Sachi were sitting in my seat. I squished between them.

  “Hey!” Dan said. “Get out. Two to a seat, Lauren.”

  Mom told me when people look upset you should try to make them feel better. Dan had a frown on his face and he was using an angry voice, so I figured he must be upset. I gave him a kiss to make him feel better.

  He pushed me.

  I pushed him back.

  He pushed me harder.

  “Stop it!” Sachi said. “Lauren, go find another seat.”

  “No! This is my seat,” I said.

  “Brad!” Sachi called to the driver. “Make her move!”

  The driver pulled the bus to the side of the road. He put out the red stop sign, turned on the flashing light, and turned to face me. “You’re going to make everyone late for school. Find a new seat. Now.”

  Fine. I didn’t want to sit with Dan and Sachi anyway. I stomped halfway down the bus and found an empty seat. I ignored the other kids. I didn’t want to try to figure out what they were feeling.

  I curled up in the corner of the seat and pressed my cheek against the cool metal of the side of the bus. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the squishy ball Dad gave me. He said I could bring it to school to help me cool down so I didn’t flip my lid. He said that kids like me, kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder, didn’t always see the world the same way as everyone else, and that I needed some special tricks up my sleeve. Mom said I had trouble “reading social cues,” which meant I didn’t understand what other people were feeling. She said the ball might help me when I “missed their social signals” and got into “difficult situations.” Which meant not understanding what kids were thinking, and getting into fights.

  I didn’t keep the ball up my sleeve, but it did help sometimes. Usually I liked the way it slapped my fingers when I bounced it against my hand. But today, even the ball didn’t make me feel better. Today was a slug day. On slug days, I felt slow and slimy. Everybody yelled at me. I had no friends.

  Chapter 2

  When the bus arrived at school, I waited for everyone else to get off first. I didn’t try to high-five Brad like I did with Mike most mornings. I felt jittery. Like something was missing from my day.

  Instead of going down the metal stairs to the playground like everyone else, I crawled under one of the pine trees that lined the school by the bus loop. The damp dirt and pinecones under me smelled like a good place for slugs. A good place for me. The tree made a tent above me. I bent my knees so my boots wouldn’t stick out and give away my hiding spot. I liked the way the pine needles poked the palm of my hand. I tried wrapping my hand around a branch to see if I could get the tree to poke all five fingers at the same time.

  The bell rang. I ignored it. It was already a slug day. Why make it worse by going in to class? Dan would push me again, and I’d get blamed for it. I poked the needles some more.

  “Lauren? Are you out here?” Mrs. Kelly, the duty teacher, called my name over and over. I tucked my knees in tighter to keep my boots out of sight.

  She saw me anyway. I heard her breathing near my tree, and saw the tips of her shoes as I peeked toward the parking lot.

  “Lauren. The bell rang. It’s time to go in. Stop wasting everyone’s valuable time.”

  I sighed and scooched out from under the tree. I didn’t know what the big deal was. There were two hundred kids and a whole bunch of teachers in the school, and she was only one adult. I wasn’t wasting everybody’s time. Just hers. If she didn’t want to waste her time, she should stop looking for me.

  She held my hand all the way downstairs to my classroom in room 163. Her hand was sweaty and warm, and kind of slippery. I tried to pull my hand away, because I wasn’t a baby anymore, but she just gripped tighter. Like a Venus flytrap.

  Chapter 3

  “Good morning, Lauren,” Mrs. Patel said when Mrs. Kelly finally let go of my hand.

  I wiped my hand on my skirt and walked to my hook. The custodian had put my gym bag on my hook again. He did it every night. I lifted the gym bag off the hook and put it on the floor. Then I put my jacket on the hook, followed by my backpack. I lined my boots up underneath my backpack and made sure they were centered. I pulled my shoes from their cubby and was tying them—I didn’t like it when the bows were uneven—when Mrs. Patel came and stood beside me.

  “Lauren, you’ve already missed ten minutes of reading because you were late. Please hurry.”

  I sighed. If she’d stop interrupting me, I’d get my bows done properly. Now
I had to start all over again. When I had them perfect, I went to get my book for reading. Mrs. Patel chimed the bell. “Please put your books away, class, and return to your desks.”

  I wanted to slam my book on the counter. Reading time was one of my favorite parts of the day.

  But I remembered the last time I’d done that. I slammed the book so hard, all the other books slid off the shelf. They landed on Abdel’s head, and he had to go to the secretary to get some ice.

  I had to go to the principal, and Mom and Dad were both there. Everyone told me again how I think differently from other kids and that’s what makes me special, but I still have to be fair to my teacher and the other kids in the class. We had to make a plan for my safety and the safety of the kids in the class.

  I suggested maybe Abdel shouldn’t sit under a shelf of books. It probably wasn’t safe, because we lived in an earthquake zone. And Mrs. Patel shouldn’t make me stop reading until I was done. But the adults came up with a plan of their own. I’m not sure why they bothered bringing me to the meeting if they weren’t going to listen to any of my suggestions.

  Mrs. Patel must have remembered the plan, because before I could slam the book on the counter, she put a hand on my shoulder. “Here’s your eraser,” she said. “Squeeze it.”

  She gave me my favorite eraser, and I squeezed so hard my knuckles turned white. They looked like four mountaintops on my hand. Mrs. Patel must have taken the book from me, because when I stopped looking at the mountaintops, my other hand was empty.

  Chapter 4

  Tuesday was a butterfly day. I didn’t flip my lid at school once, and Mrs. Patel put a sticker in my agenda. That was my sixth sticker, which meant Mom took me to get ice cream.

  Mrs. Patel thought I listened at school to get the sticker. Mom thought I listened to get the ice cream. They were both wrong.

  When we arrived at the ice-cream store, I ran to the counter. Mom thought I took a long time deciding on my ice-cream choice because there were so many flavors. She was wrong about that too. I loved the ice-cream store because of the goo on the counter.

  There was a groove at the ice-cream counter where people’s ice cream dripped and they couldn’t clean it out. I ran my fingers through the gooey bits while I pretended to decide on a flavor. The bits were squishy and stretchy, like rubber bands. I loved to see how far I could stretch them.

  “What’s it going to be, Lauren?” Mom asked. “Cookie dough?”

  “No,” I said, pulling my fingers through the goo.

  “Double-chocolate chip?”

  I shook my head and moved down the counter, dragging my fingers in the groove.

  “Time to decide,” Mom said.

  I moved another step down the counter, but this time my fingers stayed behind. “Uh oh,” I said, tugging at them.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

  “My fingers are stuck.”

  Mom closed her eyes and breathed in and out through her nose. Once I told her huffing like a bear wouldn’t solve her problem. She didn’t like that very much. “Pull harder,” she said.

  I tried. “They’re still stuck.” My insides started to go all wobbly. “What if I can’t get them out?” I didn’t want to live in the ice-cream store forever. It smelled good, and there weren’t any teachers or mean kids, but I wouldn’t be able to eat any ice cream because my fingers were stuck.

  Mom yanked my arms. My fingers popped out of the groove. “Ow!” I yelled. But the hurt didn’t last long. Long, stretchy gobs of pralines ’n cream dangled from my fingers.

  “Pralines ’n cream it is,” I said. “Two scoops.”

  Chapter 5

  On Wednesday, after I tied the bows on my shoes, I reached inside my desk to feel the sticky spot where my orange juice had spilled one time. Every day the spot changed a little bit. The day it spilled it was as sticky as slug slime. Each day after that it felt dustier and more slippery.

  But today all I felt was smooth, cold metal. I ran my hand on the other side of the desk. Maybe I’d made a mistake? No. I checked the outside of the desk. Maybe I’d sat in the wrong one? No, my name was still taped to the front of it. I pushed my chair back and stuck my eye up to the inside of my desk. It was clean.

  “The custodian cleaned my desk!” I called.

  “Raise your hand, Lauren,” Mrs. Patel said.

  I raised my hand. “Someone cleaned my desk!”

  Mrs. Patel pressed her lips together. “Wait until I call on you. That’s a warning.”

  I clamped my hand over my mouth. Three warnings in a day meant no sticker in my agenda.

  We did language arts until recess. I tried to hurry and let my thoughts flow like Mrs. Patel wanted me to. I tried not to erase my words too many times. But my g’s and p’s kept staying above the line, and I knew they were supposed to dip below. I wasn’t a baby anymore and didn’t want my printing to look like a preschooler’s, so I erased the words until I got them right. I erased one word three times, and my eraser made a hole in my paper.

  I thought I might flip my lid, so I pulled out my squishy ball to help me calm down. It was part of my plan, and Mrs. Patel wasn’t allowed to tell me to stop. Squishing the ball against my hand helped me feel better, so I did it some more. I started tossing it from hand to hand, because it felt really good when it landed. And then I started throwing it up in the air and catching it with both hands, because it felt good when it landed in both hands at the same time. And then I started saying, “Whoosh, whoosh,” each time the squishy ball went up and down.

  Mrs. Patel caught the ball when it was in the air.

  “Hey! Give it back. The ball is part of my plan!”

  Mrs. Patel took a deep breath. She looked right in my eyes. I looked around the room. The other kids were all staring at me too, so I looked back into her eyes.

  “Squishing the ball is part of your plan. Throwing it is not. Can you make a good choice?”

  I wanted to flip my lid and rip up my paper. Throwing the ball was a much better choice than that. Couldn’t she see how grown-up and responsible I was being? Before I could explain, she asked again, “Can I trust you with the ball?”

  “Yes.”

  She put it back on my desk and I grabbed it, but it didn’t feel as good anymore.

  “I wanna ball too!” Dan said. “How come I don’t get a ball?”

  Mrs. Patel stood up and pinched her nose between her fingers. She was like my mom that way. She thought it would make her feel better. She needed her own squishy ball. “No, Daniel, you may not. Get back to your writing, please. The recess bell will be going soon.”

  By the time the bell rang, I had written two beautiful sentences. Mrs. Patel looked at them and sighed. “Your printing is lovely, Lauren, but I know you have a head full of great ideas. Why don’t you try writing those ideas down?”

  She didn’t understand. I wanted to write them down, but those g’s and p’s kept getting in the way. I could have written a story with no g’s or p’s. But then I couldn’t write about going anywhere or doing anything and I couldn’t write about penguins or dogs or elephants. And I didn’t like cats.

  Mrs. Patel didn’t make me stay in at recess to write more today. I think she wanted to get upstairs and have a coffee with the other teachers.

  Chapter 6

  After diNNer, Dad took the baby for a walk to get her to sleep.

  Mom said, “The dishes can wait. You and I need to spend some time on Insectia.”

  Just like that, my day turned into a butterfly day. I ran to the craft closet and threw open the door. Mom slid Insectia off the top shelf and carried it with two hands to the kitchen table. I put the supply bin beside it.

  “What should we work on tonight?” Mom asked.

  I considered the question. We’d made pod houses for the caterpillars, a swimming pool for the water striders, and a spittlebug res
taurant.

  “Maybe we should make something for spiders?” Mom asked.

  “Spiders aren’t insects; they are arachnids. This is Insectia, not Arachnia.”

  “How about honeybees?” she asked. “They’re insects. And important to have around.”

  I nodded. “Bees. But no wasps. They sting. And they don’t make honey.”

  “I’m sure they have a purpose in our world,” Mom said. “But I haven’t figured out what it is yet.”

  “No wasps in Insectia. They don’t have a purpose here.” I pointed to an empty corner of our world. “The bees can live here.”

  “Will we build them hives?”

  “Houses,” I said. “Each room will be a hexagon. A hexagon has six sides. That is the shape of the cells inside a beehive.”

  I pulled a piece of cardboard and a box cutter out of the supply bin.

  “What are the rules?” Mom asked.