by Anna Kerz
“And from the principal’s office: A reminder for teachers about the meeting for primary staff in the library at noon today.” He stepped back to let Aaron move forward.
“Allissa, in grade one, has lost her library book,” Aaron began. “If anyone finds a copy of Buttercup’s Lovely Day, please take it to room 113 and Allissa will thank you.” When he was done, Jeremy pointed to the power button and Aaron turned the pa off. He sighed. Everything had gone well.
They were on their way out of the office when two little girls arrived, holding hands and giggling. On their heads they wore the kind of paper crowns Miss Chang always gave kids on their birthdays. One of them carried a piece of paper. As Aaron stepped back to hold the door, the secretary said, “Aaron, wait. Miss Chang has sent this last-minute announcement.”
So Aaron went back. He read the message, then pushed the button that turned on the speakers. “Here’s a late-breaking announcement,” he said. “There are two birthdays in the kindergarten. Kathryn and Fiona are both five years old today. Happy birthday, girls.”
The girls giggled again, and Aaron felt good. He had done everything right. He hadn’t repeated any of the words, not even the ones for the last announcement, which he hadn’t practiced.
While he was smiling, an older woman came into the office. She was small and thin, and her gray hair hung down her back in a long braid. She was wearing what looked like a blue sari under her winter coat.
“I am bringing the lunch for my grandson,” she said, passing a brown paper bag to the secretary. “That foolish boy. He forgets everything. He must stay to play volleyball at noon today, but he does not remember to bring his noonday meal.”
“What’s your grandson’s name?” the secretary asked.
“Tufan. His name is Tufan.”
“Do you know his teacher’s name?”
The woman shook her head.
“Mr. Collins. Tufan is in Mr. Collins’s class,” Aaron piped up.
“Yes. Mr. Collins,” the woman said. “I fear I am forgetful too. Like my grandson.”
“I’ll have Aaron take your grandson’s lunch upstairs,” the secretary said as she passed Aaron the bag.
The woman smiled. “You are in Tufan’s class?” she asked. “Remind him to eat slowly. It is better for his digestion.”
Aaron felt his face heat up at the thought of talking to Tufan about his digestion. He wanted to say, No way, but Tufan’s grandmother said, “You are a very helpful boy. Thank you.”
The words made Aaron feel proud, and what came out of his mouth was, “I’ll…I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him to eat slowly.”
The woman smiled, and then she left.
“Well done,” the secretary said. Aaron beamed as he turned off the speakers.
When Aaron reached the upper hallway, Mr. Collins was talking to Karen, the school counselor. “Can you make time for him?” he was saying. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but something’s not right in that boy’s life.”
“I’ll fit him in,” she said. Then she looked up and smiled. “Good job, Aaron,” she said.
“Yeah. Great job,” Mr. Collins said, and Aaron bounced with joy the rest of the way to his classroom.
When he walked in, kids began to clap. Aaron almost took a bow, but a voice said, “Don’t forget to remind Tufan to eat slowly.”
“It’s better for his digestion,” someone else called out.
“That foolish boy forgets everything,” mimicked a third. Then they laughed.
Aaron looked around. They heard, he thought. He was going to laugh too. It was pretty funny. Everybody hearing Tufan’s grandmother talk about his digestion.
But all thoughts of laughter ended when Tufan stood up. “Shut up,” he growled.
The class fell silent. Tufan’s eyes narrowed until his brows made a dark V on his forehead. His nose twitched. Aaron had seen that once on the Nature channel when a tiger was stalking a deer. The tiger’s nose twitched; then it pounced and the deer died.
Hand shaking, Aaron held out the paper-bag lunch and braced himself. Tufan came closer.
“Come on, Tufan,” Jeremy called out. “Forget about it. It was no big deal.”
Tufan paused, and Aaron held his breath.
That’s when Mr. Collins walked into the room. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Let’s get started.”
Tufan snatched the bag from Aaron’s fingers. “This isn’t over, Cantwait,” he muttered. “You’re dead meat.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, thinking about the tiger’s muzzle buried inside the deer’s belly. “Dead meat.”
THREE
“Let’s trade jobs,” Jeremy said on Tuesday morning. “You start the announcements today and I’ll finish them.”
“You think I’m gonna mess up again,” said Aaron.
“I just want to make sure.”
“That I don’t mess up.”
“That you…yeah…that you don’t mess up and get into more trouble. Tufan’s still mad. I know leaving the mike on was no big deal, but he didn’t like it. Don’t talk to him. He’ll get mad no matter what you say. Just stay out of his way till he gets over it.”
“Okay. I’ll go first. And you remember to switch off the speakers so nobody turns you into dead meat.”
“Okay,” Jeremy said. But that morning, nothing went wrong, and Mr. Collins said that for the rest of the week they wouldn’t have to come in as early. “Just come to the office a few minutes before the bell rings to read over the announcements,” he told them.
* * *
Jeremy was right about Tufan. He was still mad. “Stay out of my face,” he told Aaron in the hallway as the class got ready for recess.
Aaron wanted to say, You’re a bully and you don’t scare me. That’s what Mr. Collins had told them to say when he talked to the class about bullies. He said bullies don’t hurt people who stand up for themselves.
Aaron stared at Tufan’s dark hair, gelled to stand in spikes, and at the fine hairs sprouting on Tufan’s upper lip. Then Tufan’s nose twitched, and Aaron shivered.
“C’mon, Aaron. Let’s go,” Jeremy said. He walked between them, breaking the spell, and Aaron was able to turn and follow Jeremy out.
In spite of Tufan’s threat, Aaron felt good as he scrambled down the stairs. Jeremy was watching out for him. My friend. My friend, he thought. But as soon as they passed through the outer door, Horace called, “Hey, Jer, wanna be on my team? You can play first base.”
Jeremy looked out to the field, then back at Aaron. “You wanna play soccer baseball with us?” he asked.
Aaron was going to say yes, but before he could say anything, Tufan brushed by and raced toward the diamond. In the field the boys were already organizing teams. As he watched, Aaron realized not one of them would want him on their team. They would complain. They’d yell every time he dropped the ball and when he didn’t kick hard enough. He shook his head. “Not today,” he said.
Jeremy shrugged and hurried to join Horace’s team.
For a while Aaron stood alone. Around him, kids were skipping or tossing tennis balls against the wall. Little kids were laughing and playing tag. Everybody was playing with somebody. Except him. There was nobody for him.
He walked to the side of the yard. There he followed the wire-mesh fence until he reached a tree surrounded by a drift of leaves. They were damp with the morning dew. When he marched through the pile, kicking his feet to make them fly, they rose, then plopped back to earth in wet clumps. It was no fun.
He moved on. Beside the fence he found a thin branch that he whipped back and forth. It made a whistling sound. “I’ll get you this time, Darth Vader,” he said, lunging the way he had seen Luke Skywalker do in the movies. When he tired of that, he dragged the twig along the fence to make a different sound. He lurched along, across the back of the yard and down the far side, so busy listening to the sound of the branch he forgot everything else. A soccer ball rolled across his path and stopped beside him.
“Ge
t the ball!” a voice called out.
Aaron looked around.
“Get the ball!”
Grinning, he picked it up.
“Throw it!” the voice yelled.
Other voices yelled too. “Throw it! Throw the ball!”
Aaron heard the words. He looked toward the baseball diamond.
“Throw, Aaron!” Jeremy shouted. So Aaron threw, but with the twig in his hand he didn’t have a good grip. The ball dribbled through the grass and stopped, not two feet away. The boys laughed. Aaron laughed too, until he saw Tufan coming for it. He wanted that ball to be away from him when Tufan reached it, so he pulled back his leg to give it a kick. Some kind of magic must have happened then, because his toe connected and the ball hurled forward, hard and straight.
“Yes!” Aaron shouted, punching the air.
His short celebration ended when the ball crashed into Tufan’s middle. A kind of HUH! sound came from his mouth when it hit, and he leaned forward, gagging.
“You okay?” boys called as they hurried to his side.
Tufan’s arm brushed them away. “You’re de—,” he started, his words interrupted by a cough. “You… really are…dead meat,” he said, as he staggered toward Aaron.
Aaron saw Jeremy come running. Saw Jeremy’s hand grab Tufan’s arm. “Come on,” he heard Jeremy say. “It was an accident. You know he can’t kick. He didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Your team’s up, Tufan,” Horace called. “You coming?”
Tufan paused. He pointed at Aaron. “Stay away—” He coughed again. “Stay away from me unless you have some kind of death wish.”
“Go, Aaron,” Jeremy called out. “Just go.”
So Aaron jogged away. He didn’t stop until he got to the school doors. When he looked back, the guys were playing as if nothing had happened.
FOUR
Every Tuesday before lunch, Aaron went to see Karen, his counselor. Karen had a teacher name. It was Mrs. Matthews, but right at the beginning she had said, “You can call me Karen when we’re working together.” So he did. He liked her name because it rhymed with his. Sometimes he said the two names over to himself. “Karen, Aaron.” They sounded good together.
Lately Karen had been helping him to do something she called reading faces.
“It’s like reading a book,” she had told him, “but instead of reading the words on a page, you read the expressions people wear on their faces. Their expressions give you clues about what they’re thinking or feeling. When you know how someone’s feeling, it’s easier for you to say and do the right thing.”
“It would be better to read minds,” Aaron said. “If I could read minds, I would know everything people are thinking.” He closed his eyes, pressed his fingers against the sides of his head and pretended he could hear Karen’s thoughts.
“Like, right now you might be thinking, ‘I wish I had a double-fudge ice-cream sundae,’ and if I could read your mind, I’d say, ‘Let’s blow this joint and get a double-fudge ice-cream sundae,’ and you’d say, ‘Wow! Aaron. You knew exactly what I was thinking!’ And then we’d go to the ice-cream store to get one.”
Karen laughed. “Let’s blow this joint?”
“Yeah. Sometimes they say that in the movies. Let’s blow this joint.”
Karen laughed again. “Wow! Aaron. You knew exactly what I was thinking!”
Then Aaron laughed too, because he knew she was joking. But when Karen stopped laughing, he kept on until she put up her hand like a stop sign and said, “Enough already.”
He stopped. “Wasn’t it funny?”
“It was,” Karen explained. “But it’s not anymore. Jokes get old fast. That joke is so old now, it’s dead. Besides, we can’t blow this joint until we’re finished today’s exercise, so let’s get to it.”
Aaron wasn’t ready. “I read your mind!” he said. “I read it. I did.” Then he hooted and said, “Ya wanna blow this joint?”
Karen moved to stand behind him. She put both her hands on Aaron’s shoulders and turned him to look into the mirror hanging on the wall of her small room. “Aaron, look at my face,” she said.
Aaron studied her face in the mirror. Her eyebrows were scrunched together and her mouth was a tight line, the ends pointing down. “You’re making a mad face. Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you, but you’re right. I’m making a mad face. Can you think of something to do if someone makes a mad face at you?”
Aaron’s shoulders drooped. “Probably I should run, ’cause they might turn me into dead meat.”
Karen’s frown deepened. “Has someone been hurting you?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Aaron said.
“Someone threatened to hurt you?”
“Only if I keep acting weird. But I’m gonna stop.”
Karen took her hands from Aaron’s shoulders. “Aaron,” she said, “if someone has threatened you, we should know. Mr. Ulanni suspends students for that.”
“Suspended from the neck until dead!” Aaron said. “Like in the pirate movies.”
“No! Of course not. They’re suspended from class.”
“But then…then they come back, right?”
“Yes. They come back. But the school works with them, and with their parents, to improve their behavior.”
“You mean, like you work with me?”
“A little like that, but probably not the same.”
“When my dad comes, are you gonna work with him? ’Cause he’s my parent, right?”
“When he comes, I’d like to meet him.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said. He stared into the mirror. There was a worried look on his face. What would she tell his dad anyway?
“Aaron? Are you there, Aaron?” Karen asked.
He turned to her.
“Every time you’ve talked about your dad coming home, you’ve been excited. Aren’t you excited anymore?”
He scrunched his eyebrows together, tightened his lips and made the ends turn down. “See that?” he said. “Does it look like a mad face?”
“You’ve got it. That’s a mad face all right. Did something I said make you mad?”
Aaron got up and walked around the room examining the posters on the walls before he came back. “Tufan made a mad face,” he said.
“At you? Did he make a mad face at you?”
Aaron shrugged.
“When someone is mad at you, there are things you can do besides run away. Can you think of any?”
He shook his head, no.
“If they’re mad because of something you did, you might say ‘sorry.’ It never hurts to apologize.”
“Okay. I can do that. Maybe. I guess.”
A bell rang.
“Lunchtime,” Aaron said.
“Yes,” Karen said. “Lunch.” She sighed. “Remember now, if someone is hurting you, or threatening to hurt you, we’re all here to help. You can tell me, or Mr. Collins or even Mr. Ulanni. Okay?”
Aaron nodded.
“What are you going to remember?”
He huffed. “I hate when you ask me to repeat stuff. It’s like you think I’m stupid or something.”
“We both know you’re not stupid,” Karen said. “So why don’t you tell me why I ask you to repeat some of the things I say.”
He groaned. “You think I’m gonna forget, or maybe I’m gonna try to weasel out of it, or something.”
“Or something,” Karen agreed. Then she smiled. “Go have your lunch.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said. “And I’ll try not to be dead meat,” he mumbled as he stepped out of the room.
FIVE
When Ms. Masilo, the music teacher, came to the door on Tuesday afternoon, she told everybody to line up for a concert rehearsal. Aaron lined up with the rest of the class, even though he hated rehearsals. All that standing and singing. Over and over. The same words. The same songs. And Ms. Masilo. She was the other thing about rehearsals Aaron didn’t like.
Ms. Masilo’s mouth opened wider
than any mouth he had ever seen. And she always smiled. At least her lips always smiled. Big. So you could see all her teeth. He found her smile a little scary because it almost never left her face. It made her look happy even when she talked mad. It made her look nice, even when she was being mean.
Ms. Masilo didn’t like him either. He could tell. “Aaron, you can go to the library,” she always said when she came to pick up the class for choir practice. She said it like she was doing him a favor, but he knew it was because she didn’t want to hear him sing. “Somebody sounds like a car in need of a muffler,” she said once when he stayed. Then she looked right at him and wrinkled her nose as if something smelled bad. And all the time she kept smiling.
For a long time he was happy to read in the library and miss choir practices, but this year he wanted to be in the concert. Well, not really. He didn’t want to rehearse and he didn’t want to sing, but last week when Gran saw the announcement in the school newsletter for the Voices of Winter concert, she said, “Your dad will be here to see that.”
“He’s gonna come to the concert?” Aaron asked.
“Of course he’ll come,” Gran said. “He’ll be proud to see you on the stage.”
And that’s why, when Ms. Masilo came to get the class for the rehearsal and said, “Aaron, you can go and read in the library,” he said, “I-I don’t want to read. I want to be in the concert.”
Ms. Masilo’s smile never left her face. She stood tall and straight with her head so perfectly balanced on her long neck that she had to look down her nose to see him. She turned to Mr. Collins. “Perhaps he can stay with you?” she said, as if she hadn’t heard.
Mr. Collins looked at Aaron.
“I-I want to be in the concert,” Aaron said.
“He-he wants to sing,” Tufan mimicked. Some of the kids snickered.
“Enough!” Mr. Collins warned.