The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

  “Yeah,” said Zach. “The Tuck family is stuck living forever, but Jesse knows it’s not right. Everyone and everything is supposed to die at some point.”

  I felt a wave of concern surge through my body. I had chosen not to assign this book when I was tutoring Yuri because of the way the book touched upon the fragility of life and examined themes of mortality, and now those attempts to keep Yuri’s emotions safe and protected began to unravel.

  I quickly glanced over at Yuri to try to gauge how he was reacting to what the other kids had said, and saw his brow wrinkle, his eye dart to mine. But rather than appear sad, he looked angry.

  “How about another example of a metaphor from a book we read?” I asked the class, trying to redirect the discussion to a different book.

  “The stars in Number the Stars are not only the stars in the sky, but also the Jewish people of Denmark,” Rachel answered.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I had diverted attention from a book that might have upset Yuri, but I was wrong.

  After class, Yuri came up to my desk and leaned in close.

  “How come I didn’t get to read Tuck Everlasting?”

  I stammered for a second. “I . . . I thought . . .”

  But Yuri finished my sentence for me. “You thought ’cause I’m a sick kid, it wasn’t a good idea?”

  “No, Yuri . . . I just thought . . .”

  He shook his head and bit his lower lip. “It’s bad enough I can’t do all the stuff that other kids get to do, like baseball. But not letting me read the same books, that’s just mean. You never treated me like a sick kid until this.”

  My face felt like it was hot and on fire. I forced back my tears. I knew telling him I wanted to protect him wasn’t going to make him feel better. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I made a mistake.”

  “Can I have the book?” he asked, and he held out his hand. “I want to read it.”

  I reached over to the wooden bookshelf behind my desk and pulled out my paperback copy. “Here,” I said, giving it to him. “I hope you enjoy it. It’s a very special book.”

  He took the book from me, not even making eye contact, and walked out the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  “YOU need to forgive yourself,” Suzie counseled when I told her what had happened in class.

  She pushed a box of tissues in my direction so I could wipe away my tears.

  “Your impulse is to keep him safe, and he just wants to be treated like a regular kid.”

  “Now I have greater empathy for his mom,” I said, sniffling. “It’s like I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to open the world up to him but also struggling to protect him from getting hurt.”

  But there was a lot of truth in Suzie’s words, and I would quickly realize during Yuri’s weeks in school that I would never be able to control the words that came out of the other students’ mouths. One afternoon, I heard Anna Ling lean over and ask him if he was still lucky enough to not have to do gym class.

  Yuri’s face flushed red. “I wouldn’t exactly say ‘lucky’ . . .”

  Anna hated gym. She tried everything to get out of it. Lately, she had been asking to go to the nurse after complaining of “girl cramps” a few minutes before gym class. So today, when she said she had stubbed her foot on the way to school and didn’t think she could do scooter dodgeball, I felt a weak spot for her. I also thought it might be nice for her to stay behind in the classroom and keep Yuri company.

  “The two of you can help me rearrange the bulletin board for next month.” I pointed to the stack of colorful construction paper and the staple gun. I was happy to be on good footing again with Yuri and thought it was a good idea to give the job to someone other than Rachel, who was always the one I naturally assigned the crafty things for the classroom to. “We can make a checkerboard background.”

  Anna loved art, nearly as much as Lisa and Rachel did, so I knew she was going to leap at the chance to help decorate the board. Right away, she started making suggestions to Yuri about the different color patterns they could use in the background.

  Yuri moved slowly and carefully as he worked, while Anna was a ball of energy. She buzzed and blabbered the whole time, but I sensed Yuri also was enjoying having the chance to do something creative.

  Just before the other students returned to class, I saw Yuri walk over to one of the windows that overlooked the baseball field.

  “It looks like it’s not going to rain today, as they had predicted.” A big smile crossed over his face. “That means Finn’s team gets to play ball today.”

  I walked closer to him. “Those clouds do look like they’re on their way out,” I agreed. “It seems like a great day for a ball game.”

  “My mom said I could go,” he said, beaming. “You know, the thing is, Ms. Topper, it’s like what you told us in class today about how the imagination is one of the body’s most powerful tools.” He took a deep breath. “When I watch Finn play, I imagine it’s me up there at the plate. Like my mind is traveling into his body, taking that first swing. And it feels so good.”

  57

  THAT May, with things going smoothly, Katya agreed to let Yuri increase his time at Franklin to twice a week. She would always drive him to school and pick him up at the end of the day. Her car was often in back of Finn’s mother’s on the pickup line, their motors idling as they both waited for their sons.

  From the outside, it appeared as though Katya was taking her own baby steps with Yuri. She was learning to let go a bit by giving him a little more freedom and time with his new friends. She also spoke about maybe teaching ballet at a local dance school but hadn’t yet found the courage to introduce herself to the director. “You should do it,” I said, trying to encourage her. “With your background, you would have so much to offer the children.”

  “It’s been so long since I danced, though,” Katya added. “And sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. After my injury, I still danced in my dreams when I slept. I’d wake up and be confused about whether my fracture really happened or whether that was part of the dream. But after Yuri’s birth, I never slept long enough to have dreams.” She looked down at her hands. “Yet, it’s so strange . . . In the past year, I’ve started having dreams where I’m dancing again. The other night I had one where I was back in Kiev, performing on the stage of the National Theater.” She closed her eyes. “The choreography runs through my head like the scenes of a film. I wake up and my body feels tired, my muscles even feel sore.”

  I tried to imagine what it must be like to have trained so hard for something you always wanted, only to have it suddenly vanish. I knew my own path in teaching had its struggles, but there was room for mistakes and the possibility to learn from them. But Katya had worked basically her entire youth to dance professionally, and that dream had been shattered in an instant. Motherhood had not given her a free ride, either. From the moment Yuri was born, she’d had to worry about what most mothers took for granted. That her child’s lungs would take in air, that his heart would pump blood through his tiny body. I knew that Katya allowing Yuri to attend class twice a week was an enormous step for her and that she was subsequently relinquishing much of the control she had nurtured in order to keep him safe and healthy.

  I promised Katya that, during recess, Yuri would sit in the bleachers and not engage in any activities that might put stress on his heart. Yuri had not protested, as he realized that these precautionary measures put upon him by his parents and teachers were only meant to protect him.

  During the two days he came to class, I came out to keep Yuri company on the bench during recess before making sure he felt well enough to do one more period. Most of the time, we’d chat about who had the fiercest dodgeball throw, which he surprisingly attributed to Anna Ling. Some days, as the long fingers of sunlight warmed our faces, I’d try to playfully pry from him som
e class gossip—like if he knew who had a crush on whom. But one Thursday, I had a scheduling conflict. There was a mandatory department meeting that I knew would keep me from sitting outside on the bleachers with Yuri.

  “You’ll be okay without me, champ?” I asked, giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

  “Sure thing, Ms. Topper. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Great. Tomorrow, I’ll be there.” I smiled at him, watching as he zipped up his sweatshirt, grabbed his brown paper lunch bag, and headed toward the cafeteria with Finn.

  * * *

  • • •

  I eyed the clock all through the staff meeting. Mr. Nelson kicked his feet up on the table and started asking me and the other English language arts teachers to give feedback on one of the textbooks we were using in the classroom. Angela and Florence put in their two cents, and I agreed with them that I thought they were a good resource for the children. With eight minutes before recess ended, I headed outside to see how Yuri was doing.

  But the bleachers were empty. He always sat on the first tier, but now there was no one sitting in his spot. I saw Oscar throw the pink rubber ball toward Zach.

  “Hey, guys!” I hollered. “Where’s Yuri? I don’t see him.”

  Just as I said those words, my eyes scanned the school yard. I didn’t see Finn, either.

  “And where’s Finn?”

  The boys stopped in their tracks, the ball landing hard against the ground next to Oscar’s sneakers.

  “Uh,” Zach muttered. “I think they went into the woods to look for something.”

  “The woods?” I knew Zach was a terrible liar. I turned around to see the two lunch aides who were supposed to be monitoring the students outside.

  “Fabiola? Tina?” They had red shoelaces around their necks with whistles, their hair pulled back in high ponytails, but they were hardly holding up the yard like vigilant wardens. Instead, they were both hovering over a group of girls who were arguing about whose turn it was to bedazzle their matching denim jackets with fake gemstones.

  “Where’s Yuri?” I ran over to them, already out of breath. I pointed to the empty bleachers. “The boys say they saw him go off in the woods with Finn.” My heartbeat was escalating. I knew these boys. They weren’t rule breakers. Panic had already taken hold of me that something had happened to them.

  Fabiola whipped around. “Yuri? Yeah, I saw him sitting there just ten minutes ago. I swear.” You could see she was trying to remain calm but realized if something had happened to the boys, it was on her watch.

  I glanced at the time. There were five minutes left until the kids had to be back inside. I didn’t think twice. I started running toward the woods that separated the school from the main road.

  But before I had run even five yards, I saw the two of them emerging from the break in the trees.

  I was furious. Why on earth would they have gone to the woods?

  You could see their happy faces vanish instantaneously when they saw me standing there in the middle of the field, my black tulip skirt whipping around my knees in the wind.

  “Uh, Ms. Topper,” Finn said quietly. “We thought you had a meeting.”

  “I did. It ended,” I said firmly. “But where were the two of you?”

  Their eyes fell to their sneakers, but it was obvious that they weren’t looking at ladybugs in the forest.

  For several long seconds, no one said a word. The silence was painful as I dreaded one of them further damaging the now-broken bond of trust between us with a lie.

  But I was wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn said before Yuri could get two words out. “It was all my fault. I convinced Yuri to go with me to the mini-mart. They always get a new shipment of baseball cards on Thursdays, and I wanted to make sure we got the first dibs.”

  “Geez, baseball cards?” I said as I ground down on my teeth. “You know you scared the living daylights out of me!”

  Fabiola and Tina were blowing their whistles, sounding the alarm that everyone had to get inside to class.

  “We both got Ken Griffey Jr., though.” Yuri smiled, offering up his new stack of cards to me as a gesture of peace, with the Cincinnati Reds all-star on top. “What are the odds of that?”

  “Pretty slim,” I acknowledged, but gave them both a hard stare. I wanted them to know that what they had done was unacceptable and I was furious.

  “You know I have to tell Principal Nelson about this . . . and I’ll definitely have to call your parents.”

  The boys’ faces fell.

  “I know it’s hard for you to understand it at your age, but your parents trust me to watch over you when you’re here at Franklin and to keep you safe,” I told them firmly. And although it broke my heart, I marched them both down to the front office.

  * * *

  • • •

  AS the boys sat on the bench outside Principal Nelson’s office, we called both of their mothers.

  Finn looked visibly upset, his face pale. When his mother arrived, he lowered his eyes when she told him how disappointed she was in his behavior.

  “We expect more of you,” she said, shaking her head. “You should know better than to do something like this, especially with Yuri.”

  A look of shame washed over Finn’s face, and it gutted me.

  But when Katya stormed into the office, furious with Yuri—and, I suspected, also equally angry with me—I was surprised to see Yuri’s reaction. He didn’t look upset or ashamed, like Finn had. On the contrary, Yuri looked oddly defiant.

  Katya was shaking her finger, her face as pink as a grapefruit. “Why are you smiling, Yuri? I’m so upset. Something terrible could have happened to you!”

  Yuri looked at me, then at his mother, and sucked in his chest.

  “‘Life’s got to be lived, no matter how long or short,’” he said, quoting one of the lines of Tuck Everlasting. “And I’m smiling because this is the first time I’ve felt like a real kid.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I called Katya that evening, dreading the conversation as I hit the buttons on the phone. She had summoned all her strength to entrust me with Yuri for those two days a week at Franklin, and I knew, at a minimum, I owed her an explanation.

  When she answered the phone, I could hear in her voice she already knew why I was calling.

  “I’m mad at him, don’t get me wrong. But you promised me . . . you promised you’d always be watching him. What if he started having trouble breathing outside, and no one was there to help him?” I could hear her fear, made more desperate in the hypothetical world of what-ifs that she had lived in since Yuri’s birth, crackling over the telephone wire.

  I started to say Fabiola’s name, but she interjected, her voice like a bullet through the air. “Miss Fabiola? Miss Tina? I don’t know these women. I only know you. Not them.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t let it happen again, I promise you,” I apologized. “I will tell Mr. Nelson I can’t do any more meetings during recess when Yuri’s there. Only after school.”

  “I know my Yuri broke the rules. He says it was his idea to go get the baseball cards . . . that he wanted to have a little adventure at school.” She took a deep sigh. “But I’m still really upset, even if my husband says boys will be boys.”

  I closed my eyes on the other side of the receiver. This was a moment in the conversation when I knew better than to side with Sasha against her.

  “But I told him, our Yuri isn’t a typical boy.”

  “No,” I agreed quietly. “He isn’t that at all.”

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN I saw Finn in class the next day, I pulled him aside. “Yesterday was unfortunate, but I hope you learned from your mistake and we can move on from it.”

  Finn shifted one foot in front of the other and looked down when
he spoke.

  “When I told him about this place with the best cards . . . he got so excited. We really thought we could just get them and get back quickly.”

  “You just can’t leave school like that . . . As your teacher, I’m responsible for keeping you safe.”

  “I know and I’m really sorry, Ms. Topper. I guess at the moment I felt responsible for keeping Yuri happy at school, and it really backfired.”

  My hand squeezed his shoulder. “You make him happy, Finn. I know you do.”

  “He said those matching cards we now have were lucky. That his was going in his prized album.”

  Finn shoved his hand into his pocket. “I told him I didn’t have an album, but I’d keep mine on me at all times.”

  * * *

  • • •

  KATYA kept Yuri home from Franklin the following week. “He needs rest,” she told me on the telephone. “And who is this Ken Griffey Jr.?” she asked. “He told Sasha he would do the same thing just to get his card again.”

  I had trouble stifling my laugh. “He’s a really great baseball player, now on the Cincinnati Reds. The fans love him because it’s so obvious how much he loves to play the game.”

  That broke her iciness. She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay. He’ll be back at school next week.”

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and promised her that nothing like what had occurred last week would ever happen again.

  The next time I saw her, I brought along some tiramisu my mother had made the night before. “It means ‘pick me up’ in Italian,” I explained as I handed her the aluminum foil tray filled with clouds of mascarpone cheese dusted with cocoa powder.

  “Sounds just like what we need.” She smiled. I sensed she had forgiven me, and as I entered their familiar living room, I felt my body relax. The district would no longer pay me for a second session, since Yuri had started coming to class twice a week, but I sometimes felt the pull just to sit in the Krasnys’ living room and be with him. The baseball season was now in full throttle, and I found it immensely entertaining to hear Yuri’s take on the Yankees. He was hopeful Derek Jeter would lead the team to another World Series that fall.