“I’m hungry,” I said, this time a little clearer. I tore the plastic top off the fruit cup and dumped half of it into my mouth.
Nobody else said anything during lunch, which suited me. I didn’t need Luke doing his best to make me feel more like a nimrod about running away. Even as the few non-funding adults filtered in, eating whatever they had scraped together, the room stayed pretty quiet.
When I was done, I immediately set to clearing the dishes. I needed to get started on those idiotic lines.
“Hey!” Ethan yelled. “I’m not done!”
“Then eat,” I said, putting the little kid’s plate back down.
“You eat,” Ethan said.
“I did.” Shaking my head at the kid’s infantile behavior, I went back to work. These next two weeks were going to be really lame. I was going to have to clean up both morning and night, and still on my regular lunch days. Usually the girls and boys traded off on the clean up duties. This was the boys’ week for breakfast dishes and the girls had to do dinner clean up. Most of the time I preferred breakfast duty to dinner duty, since it seemed like there were fewer pots to scrub.
But two weeks of cleaning up after both meals was going to be lame, especially since the adults always made a bigger mess than the kids.
As I stood in the kitchen, I realized I would probably be alone for the next minute, at least. I darted to the pantry and sized up the shelves. One shelf held countless cans of cream of mushroom soup. I grabbed one and shoved it in a pocket. I grabbed a handful of crackers, their plastic wrappers crinkling, and shoved them in my other front pocket.
I pulled my shirt down to hide the bulges in my pockets. I would hide these in my backpack until I could get out to the cabin and store them there.
Step one: underway.
By the time Saul came in with plates, I had my sinks ready. It looked like he had piled every single plate into one stack. “Nice.”
His eyes darted to my face, confusion and surprise in his expression. “What?”
“Nice work. We’ll get out of here fast if you keep that up.”
“Exactly.” He grabbed a wet rag and took it out to the tables.
“Why are you being nice to him?” Luke stood next to me, rinsing.
“What are you talking about?” I preferred the washing. I could control the speed of the clean up by washing fast, and I always went as fast as I could. I figured the quicker I got done, usually the more time I would have to read or do whatever before school started up again. Of course, ‘whatever’ meant lines until Sunday.
“Saul’s a dummy who needs smacking.” Luke stacked rinsed plates in the drying rack.
“Sure, sometimes. But he’s going for it today.” I ignored his snort. A few minutes later, I was done. I had to admit it was also satisfying to be finished before the others. They were always stuck drying for a couple minutes after I was done.
“Headed back out to your girlfriend?” Luke said.
I turned a dumbfounded look on Luke. “What are you talking about?”
“You ran away to see your girlfriend, admit it,” Luke said.
“You’re a moron!” I said.
“You’ve got a girlfriend or something,” Luke said.
I stopped. “Luke. Think about it. Who would it be? Somebody here? Somebody in Cooperton?” I made a face at the dummy. “One question: How?”
Luke stood in silence, obviously trying to think of a good retort. Instead he shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Exactly,” I said.
I ran up to my room and emptied my pockets into my backpack, wondering where the two smaller boys were. They weren’t in the room, but they weren’t in the living room either. They must have been somewhere playing during the lunch break. Maybe they were with Gwen, their teacher. I wondered if Gwen was any better than Penelope.
Not that it mattered. I checked my duct-taped clock. I swore. Five minutes until English.
I trudged up to the attic. Maybe I could write one line before Penelope showed up.
Chapter 17
For once, Penelope was right on time. I had just gotten my notebook out to start the dumb lines when she showed up, followed closely by the others.
I liked history and literature, but Penelope’s droning lecture about the use of couplets and rhyme in The Iliad made me want to gouge out my eyes. All I could think about was getting started on the ridiculous lines. This needed to end soon.
We finished the day with math, like usual. Today was algebra though, instead of geometry. Evil, useless algebra. It was like a code or a language that Penelope didn’t really understand herself. She had been warning us that the next year’s algebra would be even harder, which made me wish I had a time machine I could use to go back and strangle whoever invented coefficients.
I tried to stay focused on the explanations Penelope was giving, but the stuff didn’t make sense. Plus, sometimes her British accent grated on every nerve. Finally, with an audible sigh of relief, Penelope checked her watch and closed her book with a snap.
“Okay, that’s enough for today,” she said.
I closed my book quickly and stuffed it in the cubby under my desk. Time to see how fast I could write.
“Your homework is Exercise 54. The odd-numbered problems. We’ll check the answers on Thursday, so you have two days to get it done,” Penelope said.
Homework and lines. Joyous.
I would churn out as many lines as I could before dinner. As I watched Luke practically jog out of the classroom, no doubt to the island in the goose pond, I felt a pang of jealousy. Luke did terrible things but somehow never seemed to get in trouble. And Saul was constantly shouting and swearing, but he was never in trouble either!
Before I knew it, I was alone in the classroom. I had hoped that Mary would stay behind and chat, but she hadn’t. I tried not to be disappointed; it wasn’t like she had said she would, but the thought of the stupid number of lines in front of me made it worse. This was impossible.
I reached down and felt around my cubby for a notebook and pen. I opened the book at the halfway point and tried to remember the line Miriam had assigned me. Something about controlling my temper.
“I must control my temper at all times and in all places…” I whispered as I wrote. There was something else. Was it about respect? Then it came back to me. The ridiculous last bit would have made me laugh if I wasn’t about to break my hand writing it three thousand times.. “…so that I will represent God in a more perfect fashion.”
“How does God care about fashion anyway?” I asked, numbering the blank spaces in the notebook. This sentence was massive. It was going to fill two full lines in my notebook each time I wrote it. I’d be able to fit fifteen lines on each page. That meant I would fill—I did the math in my head—exactly 200 pages. This was like a medieval torture. I shook my head, writing “I” at each numbered line that I had already made. When I had a page of “I’s” I moved to the next word: “must.”
If I did a page in ten minutes, it would take me 2000 minutes to finish. That was something like 34 hours. Torture. I had to go faster somehow.
I sat back, mentally scrolling through soundtracks for this ridiculous afternoon irritation. Finally I came up with a song I’d heard during a commercial. Something about life being a highway.
After three pages, my fingers throbbed. I looked up, imagining Mary coming through the door to the classroom, her small mouth turned up in a smile and her green eyes glowing. She would walk up to me and…
And what? I let an image flash into my mind. My heart beat a little faster. Okay, that was dumb.
I looked down at the ink-filled pages. Three pages and I was only on number 46. And it was obvious I was writing the lines the efficient word by word way, instead of doing an entire sentence at a time. If Miriam saw that, she might make me do it again.
I decided to write the numbers for all of my lines. I bent to this task, forcing a bubble of irritation away. Just get it done. Halfway through, my mind had gone fu
zzy. I wondered if I skipped one or two here and there whether Miriam would notice. I decided she wouldn’t. So I skipped from 1054 to 1057. By the time I was in the 1500’s, I was skipping ten at a time.
With the numbering finished, I figured I had skipped over two hundred lines. I prayed Miriam wouldn’t notice. Most of us kids had seen her receive a set of lines before and glance at them before throwing them away in plain view of the person who had ten seconds earlier finished the punishment. So stupid.
Serve her right. She’ll never know.
Next, I wrote one complete sentence per page. This should break up the pattern of my word-by-word approach to the torture.
I looked up from writing line number 1895. A good year. I guess. I had the feeling that it was getting late, that the dinner hour was approaching. My stomach rumbled, long done with the two sandwiches I ate at lunch.
Yeah. That was it for today. I figured that I’d written about two hundred of the ridiculous sentences. I was saving Davy from being a dummy! I closed the notebook on the curling pages I’d been working with and put the pen inside the coil. Maybe I could try to get up here early in the morning to do some more. I had to do something, because I couldn’t see myself getting another 25 hours or more to finish these things by Sunday.
I wandered out of the classroom, the plywood cool and smooth under my bare feet. I might get some time after dinner, but my hand hurt too much to write anymore tonight. No, first dinner and then reading.
I had thumped down the top step before noticing who was coming up.
Mary looked up, surprise in her eyes. I stopped, my heart suddenly beating fast. My mouth felt like leather.
“Hi,” Mary said.
“Uh, hi,” I said.
“I was coming to tell the little ones that dinner’s ready. I didn’t know you were up here,” Mary said. “Did you tell them?”
“No. Um, I had work to do. So I was in the classroom.” I sounded like a moron.
Mary made a face. “Homework?”
“No, stupid lines.”
“Lines? For what?”
“For shouting at Davy. He was gonna break his leg and I stopped him. So of course I got in trouble,” I said.
“How many?” Mary asked.
I wondered if her neck was hurting from looking up for so long, like my own had hurt this morning in the cabin. Was that really only this morning? “Three thousand.”
“What? Three thousand?” Mary smiled, then laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Yes, it is.”
“You got three thousand lines for shouting at Davy?”
“Yeah!” I realized that this didn’t make any sense, so I confessed. “Okay, well, I was threatening to break his arm or leg or something. And Abraham heard. Then I yelled at both of them. Then I ran away and got brought home by a cop.”
“Yelled at both of who?”
“Oh. Abraham and Miriam,” I said.
“You yelled at them?” Mary asked.
“Yeah,” Shame and pride fought in me. Defiance was good, right?
Mary looked at me in silence, the light from the single bare bulb overhead throwing soft shadows on her face. “Do you want help?”
“Help?”
“With the lines?”
Warmth hit me when I realized what she was saying. I’d never imagined she would offer to help me write lines! “Oh. Uh, that would be cool, but I think Miriam would see the difference.”
“But she doesn’t even look at them. She throws them away,” Mary said.
“Well, she does look at them for like a second,” I said. “Besides, I skipped like a couple hundred of them in my numbering. She’ll never notice. It’s almost two hundred pages.”
“That’s as long as a book!”
“I know.”
Silence stretched.
“Well if you want help, tell me,” Mary said and smiled a little. “Maybe I can imitate your handwriting.”
My face felt sunburned again. Why did her smile do that? But I smiled back. “I don’t know; I’ve got pretty bad handwriting.”
“Me too,” Mary said.
I wondered what I was supposed to say next. “Well. Um. I guess it’s dinner time?”
“Oh yeah,” Mary said. “I have to tell the little ones. They usually play in their classroom.” She started up the stairs again.
I stepped down a few stairs. I pressed myself to the wall to let her by. She turned and eased by me, her shoulder brushing my chest.
“Sorry,” she said.
I couldn’t speak. My throat felt like it was full of paper. As she went up, I turned and headed down, sweat breaking out on my forehead. So that’s where Davy and Ethan are during the day. Mystery solved. Then I smacked myself mentally. I could have told them. She didn’t have to go all the way up; I was already there!
I shook my head. Sometimes I could be a real dummy. The next thought brought me up short. Then she wouldn’t have touched me. Maybe I’d been smarter than I thought.
I stopped by my room to grab some socks and put on my shoes on my way down to dinner.
After a noisy meal, I wasted no time in getting to the dishes. Finally, after what felt like hours scrubbing pots and adult plates, I dried my wrinkled hands and head toward my book. But when I got to the room, freaking Ethan and David were in the middle of some ridiculous game of pretend. Ethan was imagining his finger was a motorcycle, jumping all over the room, and David was a bad guy chasing him.
I picked up my book and headed back downstairs.
The living room looked like a good possibility—until I got to the bottom of the stairs at the same time that Saul showed up from the hallway with his guitar and a notebook. I glared at him. “Are you gonna play in here?”
“Yeah,” Saul said, sitting on the corner of one of the soft-cushioned chairs.
“Do you have to?”
“Yeah.”
Punk. The porch it was. The light wasn’t really strong enough, but it would do.
In the pale yellow light of the porch lantern, I saw two people talking not far from the porch. Luke and Mary. He looked like a giant when he stood so close to her. I couldn’t hear what Luke was saying, but I heard Mary’s laughter.
What were they talking about? Were they talking about me? Were they talking about the moron who had three thousand lines? I tried to shake the thoughts away, knowing that there was no reason for the two to be talking about me. I also knew I shouldn’t be angry that they were just talking, but I was. Luke’s boring. Why would Mary even want to talk to him?
I decided the best place for me to be was on the porch, in plain sight of the other two. That should keep things under control. Whatever that means. I grabbed one of the five white, wood chairs that were arranged on the wide porch. I hauled the rocking chair closer to the porch rail, not caring about the noise I made. I noticed, without looking at them, that Luke and Mary looked over at me when I was moving the chair. Good. Now they know I’m here.
As casually as possible, I sat down and leaned back, putting my feet on the rail. This wasn’t too bad. Not as cozy as my bed, but it would do. The chilly air on my skin felt refreshing.
I cracked my book open, picking up with the flame-colored horse thundering down a mountain. Loose dirt flew from its flying hooves.
Movement made me look up. Luke walked past me, going into the house. Mary was stepping from the gravel walkway onto the porch.
“Hey,” I said, my dumb anger from before long gone at the sight of her smile.
“Hi,” Mary said.
I noticed that in the illumination of the porch’s lantern, her small nose seemed almost pointy. She looked a little like an elf.
“Which one’s that?” she asked.
I held up the book, showing her the cover. “It’s a good one. You’ll like it.”
Mary smiled, one hand wrapped loosely around the smooth, round post connecting the porch to its ceiling. “Good.”
I smiled back at her, wishing I could think of something else to say.
“Did you finish?”
“Finish what?” I asked.
“Those lines,” Mary said.
“Oh. No way. I had to do the adults’ dishes too. Between the lines and the dishes, I’m gonna be at it all week.”
“Are you sure you don’t want my help?”
“I wish!” I said. “But she’d see. She’d know I didn’t do it. Girls have different handwriting.” I caught myself wishing she would offer to help with the dishes. But she wouldn’t be able to anyway; this was the girls’ week for the kids’ dinner dishes. How nice would it be if the adults cleaned up after themselves?
Mary looked away for a minute, out into the deepening dark of the Pennsylvania night. Her profile was even more elf-like, despite her soft, round features. She looked so delicate! “What if you asked Luke?”
I sat up straighter, gripping the book tighter. “What? Did you tell him?” Did she really betray me like that?
“No! Of course not,” Mary said. She looked back at me, her brows furrowing. “It’s not his business.”
Angry at myself for suspecting her, I smiled quickly. “Oh. Good. ‘Cause yeah, it’s none of his business.”
“I don’t know if Luke would help anyway,” Mary said. “He lives in his own little world.”
“No kidding.”
She looked into the dark beyond the porch. “Did you know he wants to play football?”
“Who?”
“Luke. All that time on the island. He heard about how you can get a scholarship to college if you get on the football team.”
“What?” Where had Luke heard that? “That’s—interesting.”
“I hope it works out.” Mary glanced at me. “Don’t tell him I told you. He’d be embarrassed.”
I nodded, a little hurt at the secret they shared. Dummy. She just told you.
Nobody said anything. I wished, again, that I could think faster. It dawned on me that I’d never really had to take part in a conversation. Mal was always the one who kept our conversations going, and I’d never really cared about talking to anyone else. Mostly I’d been happy if people would leave me alone.
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