Say That Again

by Sasson, Gemini

  “I’ll keep her in my bag,” Hannah said defiantly.

  “Suit yourself,” Maura snipped.

  The car came to a complete stop. Maura had jumped out and slammed her door before Hannah could even unclick her seatbelt. She was small enough that she still had to sit in a booster seat, but from her higher vantage point she could see all the other children in their new school clothes, swarming along the sidewalk, swinging their backpacks and lunch bags. They were all so much bigger than her. And when Maura opened the door, it was so noisy outside. All that talking. Feet stomping. Screaming with joy as they shouted to their friends. Busses rumbling. Cars honking.

  Hannah clamped her hands over her ears to shut it out. She closed her eyes. Her body swayed back and forth. Each time she came back, she hit the back of her seat harder. Thump, thump, thump.

  Her seatbelt loosened. Light hands brushed her bangs from her forehead.

  “It’s all right, sweetie. It’s all right.” Jenn leaned in to the backseat and hugged her, but only for a second. “You can take Faustine with you. I’ll text your teacher and let her know it’s all right. I’m sure she won’t mind. You’re going to be in a special class called a resource room. There won’t be as many students in there, okay? It’ll be quieter, I promise.” Then she inclined her head toward the sidewalk. “And your sister’s going to walk you in this morning. Then when school’s over, she’ll be waiting in the hall for you. Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”

  But her mommy didn’t act like everything was okay.

  “Maura!” Lindsey Yates weaved her way through a sea of kids going the other way to the front doors. “I thought we were on the same bus? I was confused when I got on and couldn’t find you.”

  “Hey, Linds.” Maura hugged her. “We can talk at lunch, okay? I have to help my sister this morning. It’s her first day of school.”

  “Oh, cool.” Lindsey peeked in the back of the car. “Hi, Hannah.” All smiles, she waved at Hannah, then started back in the other direction as she called to Maura. “See you at lunch.”

  Jenn helped Hannah out of the car, then Maura took her hand and pulled toward the double glass doors. Hannah stood rooted, every muscle in her body stiffening in resistance.

  “Just follow me, squirt,” Maura said with forced calmness. “I know this place inside and out. It’s not as scary as it looks from out here. I know. I felt exactly like you do my first day here.”

  Hannah doubted that. Maura talked to everybody. She always knew what to say and how to act. Hannah could never sort that out and was sure her sister didn’t understand how she felt. But she went with her anyway, even though her tummy was doing flips, because everyone expected it of her.

  All week long, her parents and Gramma Lise had been talking to her about school. Talking to her, because Hannah had nothing to say. She was only going because they told her she had to.

  The next thing Hannah knew, she was sitting at a desk staring at a big white board with lots of scribbles and pictures on it. The whole room was filled with pictures and letters and numbers. If she just focused on one thing at a time, some of them made sense. But mostly it was a whole lot of too much.

  She stared down at her hands, folded on the desk before her, so the other children wouldn’t talk to her. One came by, asked her the same question several times, then tapped her on the shoulder. Hard. Hannah screwed her eyes shut and laid her head down.

  Go away. Go away. Go away.

  Her teacher, Mrs. Ziegler, told the other student to take his seat and not bother Hannah anymore. His name was Patrick Mann, which Hannah thought was odd because he was a little boy, not a man at all.

  It wasn’t until snack time that Hannah looked up. While the other kids sat in a circle in the back of the room, eating their crackers and pretzels, Hannah took her backpack with Faustine inside and sat on a stool by the bookcases. Right next to the gerbil’s cage. It wasn’t Echo, but at least it was an animal and not a person. Mrs. Ziegler didn’t say anything to her about not sitting with the other kids.

  Her mother had packed eighteen crackers. Hannah arranged them in four rows of four and ate the two extra ones. When she wanted another, she had to reconfigure her pattern. The more crackers she ate, the more difficult it became. Odd numbers were more challenging, so she had to think ahead each time she put one in her mouth.

  The other kids were being so noisy. She didn’t understand why they had to shout so much. Mrs. Ziegler was constantly reminding them to be quiet and sit still. Especially Patrick Mann. So she told them if they could all be quiet for the next ten minutes while they finished their snacks, she would let them watch a movie. She didn’t even say what it was, but it was enough to make them stop talking and fidgeting.

  In that span of cherished silence, Hannah heard a voice. A very small, almost frightened voice.

  Tail. Tail.

  She snuck a look around her. There was no one within ten feet of her.

  Boy.

  Where was the voice coming from? It wasn’t from the back of the room. Her stomach rumbled; she decided to ignore the voice and eat. Three rows of three. To Hannah, this was the perfect arrangement. If she ate one more, then —

  Bad.

  This happened all the time to her. Sometimes she could never figure out where it was coming from. It also didn’t make sense most of the time. She picked up two crackers and with the other hand, rearranged the rest in three rows: two, three, two. This pleased her and opened up new possibilities. Not every row had to have the same number.

  Hurt!

  This time she turned her head toward the sound. Squatting next to the bars inside the cage was the class gerbil. Franklin, Mrs. Ziegler had called him. He wrung his tiny paws nervously, staring at her with eyes like black chips of glass.

  Tail hurt.

  “Who hurt your tail?” she thought. But to Hannah her voice sounded as clear as if she were speaking out loud.

  Boy.

  “Which boy?”

  For a while, Franklin didn’t answer. He began to groom himself, rubbing his tiny paws over his tongue, then parting his fur with them. After a few licks, he scurried over to an alfalfa cube and nibbled awhile before Hannah heard him again.

  Bad boy.

  “Of course it was a bad boy. Which one?”

  Just then, Mrs. Ziegler instructed the other students to take their seats, but to remain quiet. They scattered through the rows, some almost running to their desks, others taking their time. Patrick Mann bumped her stool, laughing. Hannah put her foot down just in time to keep it from overturning.

  That boy. Pull tail.

  Glaring at Patrick Mann as she went to her own desk close by, Hannah watched him bounce like a kangaroo. Once he was in his seat — halfway at least, because he never could quite sit still — he swiveled around to look at her. When she didn’t stop staring, he made an ugly face. Except it didn’t mean anything to Hannah. Was it supposed to be funny? Playful? Or mean?

  One thing she did know was that he had pulled Franklin’s tail. Franklin then told her more. That it had happened before the school day started, while Patrick Mann’s mother and Mrs. Ziegler were standing in the hall talking about his ADHD, whatever that was. He had reached inside the cage, lifted Franklin up by his tail, and swung him repeatedly. No matter how hard Franklin tried, he couldn’t get his mouth close enough to Patrick Mann’s fingers to bite him. And he wanted to. Badly.

  The whole time the movie was playing, Hannah stared at Patrick Mann. It took him awhile to notice, but when he did he made more faces. When that brought no reaction from Hannah, he started to get mad.

  “Make her stop looking at me!” he told Mrs. Ziegler.

  The teacher shushed him, because the movie wasn’t over. But she kept an eye on Hannah.

  Finally, when Mrs. Ziegler was putting the screen up and had her back turned to the class, Patrick Mann got up from his chair and marched over to Hannah. He bent over, his face just inches from hers. “Stop it, you freak!”

>   Mrs. Ziegler whipped around. “In your seat, Patrick. Now,” she said in a barely raised voice. As he scampered back to his desk, she approached Hannah, stopping in line of Hannah’s view to Patrick. “Eyes forward, Hannah. It’s not polite to stare.”

  All the other children, eight of them, were now watching Hannah. Instead of turning her head to look at the big white board at the front of the classroom, she laid it down on her arms and turned her face to the window to gaze outside.

  At lunchtime, the rest of the kids rushed to line up. Hannah didn’t move. When the others left, Mrs. Ziegler came over to her.

  “Is something wrong, Hannah?”

  Hannah didn’t answer. Everything was wrong. This place. The other kids. She wanted to go home.

  “Did Patrick do something?”

  If she didn’t tell Mrs. Ziegler, he’d probably do it again. She nodded.

  “What did he do? Did he call you a name? Hit you?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  Mrs. Ziegler crouched down beside her. “I know you don’t like to talk, but you’ll have to tell me.”

  Crooking her finger, she beckoned Mrs. Ziegler in close. “Patrick Mann pulled Franklin’s tail.”

  Her teacher’s forehead creased. “Ohhh, I see. That is bad. So you saw him do this?”

  “No.”

  “Someone else did and they told you?”

  “No.”

  “Then, how do you know?”

  “Franklin told me.”

  And just as soon as she said it, she remembered what her daddy had said to her, that she shouldn’t let other people know that she can hear animals.

  Mrs. Ziegler stood. “You are imaginative, aren’t you? Animals can’t talk, Hannah. Even as much as we’d like them to. Heaven knows I’d love to know what my cat is thinking when he starts racing around the house at three in the morning.”

  Somehow Hannah made it through the rest of the day. But what a terribly long, awful day it was. She waited until all the other children had left the classroom before she gathered her backpack up and unzipped it partway. There was Faustine, looking up at her. Mrs. Ziegler wouldn’t let her take her backpack with her when she had to go to the bathroom. So she’d spent the rest of the day holding it in, not wanting to leave Faustine, but afraid someone had stolen her the one time she did leave her.

  Maura was in the hallway waiting for her. When they got outside and were standing by the curb, waiting for their mom to pull up, Hannah told her sister about how Patrick Mann had dangled Franklin by his tail and that Franklin had told her this. She figured it was okay to tell her sister.

  “He did not, Hannah. Animals don’t talk.”

  “I didn’t say he talked, exactly.”

  “Then how did he ‘tell’ you, huh?” She flashed the air quotes before her.

  “I don’t know. I guess I just heard it inside my head.”

  “Right. ESP. Now I know you’re lying.”

  Maura’s words were like a slap to the face. Hannah felt their sting. “I’m not lying!”

  “Then tell me what I’m thinking.”

  “I can’t.” Backing away, Hannah’s voice grew smaller. She should never have told Maura, or Mrs. Ziegler. Her daddy was right. No one would understand. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  Maura wagged a finger at her. “You can’t tell me because you make stuff up, that’s why.”

  Heat crept up Hannah’s neck. She was angry and hurt. Why was it so hard for people to believe her?

  When Jenn pulled up to the loading area and the girls got in, they were both silent. Maura slammed her door, then immediately put her earplugs in and cranked the music on her iPod. In the back, Hannah was doing all she could to keep the tears in.

  “Well,” Jenn began, looking from one girl to the other, “you both made it through the first day.”

  Neither answered.

  “That good, huh? If either of you want to talk about it later ...” Jenn slipped the gearshift into drive and pulled out onto the road.

  Hannah wasn’t going to say anything. What was the point when no one was going to believe her?

  —o00o—

  Hannah couldn’t lie. Lying was just wrong. Every morning after that, she would lie in bed, thinking she’d tell her mommy that she didn’t feel well, but when her mommy came by to wake her up, she couldn’t do it. And whenever she tried to tell her outright she didn’t want to go back to school, her mommy said she had to. It was the law. Hannah didn’t want to break any laws.

  So she went. And almost every day, Franklin told her something that Patrick Mann had done to scare or hurt him. But if Hannah told Mrs. Ziegler this, she wouldn’t believe her. Somehow, she had to get Franklin away from Patrick Mann for good.

  On Thursday, Mrs. Ziegler said Franklin needed to go home for the weekend with someone who would feed and care for him. Hannah volunteered. The next day, she took Franklin home in his cage. That night she set him next to her penguin picture. Echo, tipping his head from side to side, watched him go around and around on his wheel.

  Maura stopped in the doorway. She always wore an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of shorts to bed, which didn’t make sense to Hannah because they weren’t pajamas.

  “Why did you bring a rat home?” Maura said, pulling the ponytail holder from her hair and combing her fingers through it.

  “He’s a gerbil. And Mrs. Ziegler said I could.”

  “Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. Franklin paused on his wheel to gaze at Maura, then began spinning it again. The little wheel made a low whining sound. “Is he going to make that noise all night?”

  Hannah watched Franklin intently, his tiny legs churning. She liked the sound. As long as it wasn’t too loud. It meant that Franklin was busy and happy, not cowering in fear from Patrick Mann’s abuse. She’d bring him home every weekend if her parents would let her, although she knew that other kids in the class wanted to take him home, too. Then it struck her: What if Patrick Mann wanted to take him home?

  No, she couldn’t allow that. Who knew what would happen to poor, frightened Franklin?

  As she lay in bed that night, she began to plot. She’d make sure Patrick Mann never hurt Franklin again.

  chapter 19: Hannah

  The next morning, Hannah told her mommy that she wanted to go to the pet store in Somerset to get Franklin some treats and a new bone for Echo, because he had lost his favorite one. She was pretty sure it was under the couch, but she didn’t mention that. Technically, it wasn’t a lie, because Echo couldn’t find it, so to him it was lost. Since they had to make a trip to the big grocery store anyway, Jenn agreed.

  Right before it was time to leave, Hannah hurried up to her bedroom, saying she’d forgotten Faustine. Just in case Maura walked by, Hannah shut her bedroom door. She put on her purple hoodie and then took Franklin from his cage. He yawned, having been up half the night spinning, munching on seeds, and burrowing through his cedar shavings. She slipped him in her front pocket, then grabbed Faustine off the bed and hurried downstairs.

  Every once in a while during the drive to Somerset, Franklin would shift from one side of her pocket to the other. Once, he even poked his head out. Hannah was afraid her mommy would look in the backseat at her just when he was doing this and figure things out, but she didn’t seem to catch on at all.

  When they arrived at the pet store, Hannah stuffed both hands inside her front pocket to keep him inside. While Jenn was busy picking out a squeaky toy and a bone for Echo, Hannah snuck away to the small pet section. There were three banks of glass cages and aquariums. The first and biggest of these was full of fish. Hannah tried to listen, but they didn’t have much to say except, ‘Food, food’ and ‘Get out of my way’. The second held a row of lizards, turtles, and snakes. She could hear nothing at all from them and was glad for it.

  The last section was where the mice, rats, hamsters, and gerbils were. Hannah looked in each one, searching for gerbils that looked like Franklin. Finally, she found some. What Hannah
couldn’t figure out was how to open the cages.

  “Would you like to hold one?” A young woman with blue-streaked hair and a nose piercing stood next to her. She had on a blue polo shirt and a name tag that said ‘Bella’. Hannah could read that much. Last year, she’d taught herself on the computer how to sound out letters. She could read much better than anyone knew, even her parents. She just didn’t see a reason to make a big deal out of it.

  Turning away, Hannah shook her head and continued to stare at the cage before her. She hoped that Bella would go away, but for several minutes the woman poked around in the cages, adding cubes of alfalfa and refilling water bottles. Hannah watched her flip a latch and pop the screen top open, then reclose it.

  It took forever for Bella to leave. The whole time, Hannah kept checking to make sure Franklin was still in her pocket, then looking down the rows, expecting her mommy to come and tell her it was time to go.

  It was now or never. She flipped a latch up. Just as she dug her hand in her front pocket, Jenn came around the corner.

  “There you are! You ready to go? I’ll let you pick out your favorite cereals today. I can never remember which ones you —”

  “That’s not the right kind,” Hannah said softly, hoping there was no one else nearby who could hear her. She didn’t like people listening to what she said. “Echo likes peanut butter.”

  Jenn glanced down at the package of mint-flavored bones in her basket. “Oh, I didn’t think it mattered. Anyway, I thought these would make his breath smell better. Kind of like your toothpaste.”

  “Peanut butter,” Hannah repeated.

  “Okay, then.” Jenn took the bones from her basket. “Peanut butter it is. Maybe you should show me.”

  “I’m busy.”