by Sandra Evans
If I was gonna show the new kid around, I’d tell him how easy it is to figure out where everything is. See, I could say to him, from the outside the building looks like a castle with turrets and windows and fancy stone carvings. It looks like the kind of place where you’ll get lost. But don’t let the outside fool you. The outside of anything almost never tells you what’s inside. The building’s a rectangle with a wing at each end. Ignore the wings on the third floor because that’s where the girls are. Ignore the turrets because they’re full of stuff nobody uses anymore, and the doors to them are always locked. Classrooms are on the main hallways of each floor, and if you can’t find one then you just end up missing twenty minutes of listening to the teacher blab, and is that really so bad?
Here’s all you need to know. First floor, dining hall. Got it? Okay. Second floor, boys’ rooms in the north wing and boys’ bathroom in the south wing.
Eat, sleep, shower—what else is there to do?
And if you forget to shower a few days or weeks, you’re a boy, so it’s only expected.
And then, if I liked the look of him, I’d tell him the truth. The woods are all that matter, kid. That’s what I’d say. I wouldn’t mention woods magic. I wouldn’t tell him that the woods are alive with secrets. I wouldn’t tell him that you’ll find everything you’ve ever lost and everything that has ever lost you in them.
I’d just point him in the right direction.
My stomach informs me that food would be welcome. Now. My dad says only a fool argues with his vital organs.
On my way to the dining hall I hear the sound of breaking glass coming from the animal care room. Sparrow. If you hear something breaking in this place, nine out of ten times, Sparrow is involved. Then I hear screams. If you hear someone screaming in this place, ten out of ten times, Mean Jack is involved.
I trot over and look through the window set into the top half of the door.
Mean Jack is chasing Sparrow around the room with the business end of a pencil. Barking, squeaking, flapping, hissing—the animals are going wild. As I put my hand on the doorknob to go in and rescue him, Sparrow jumps up on a high table where the aquarium sits, with its fifty tropical fish.
“Do ya feel lucky?” Mean Jack snarls, jabbing the pencil at Sparrow’s feet. “Well, do ya, punk?”
Sparrow jumps. Mean Jack misses. Water sloshes out of the top of the tank. A red swordtail goes over the rim, flops on the table, and hits the floor. Gandalf the cat swallows and then stretches. Forty-nine fish.
Sparrow jumps again, and this time he grabs on to the pipe that runs along the ceiling.
Mr. Baggins the hamster is running in his wheel, tossing little looks over his shoulder at me. Get in here, man, he’s saying. Get in here and shut this crazy kid down.
I like to let Sparrow fight his own fights sometimes. I’ll go in when he needs me.
Then, as Sparrow’s swinging along the ceiling, one of his feet catches the latch on Gollum’s cage. Snake loose. His other foot rams Mean Jack in the nose, and the mobster takes the mouse tank to the floor with him. Ten little mice scamper toward freedom . . . and the fangs of Gollum.
I predict a bloodbath.
I’m turning the doorknob, when I smell cinnamon and honey. Mary Anne. She pushes me aside and opens the door.
“Put down the pencil, Jack. That’s a one-way ticket to juvie,” she says.
Mean Jack drops the pencil and puts his hands up. Sparrow lands on the high table with the aquarium. A rainbow fish flops over the rim and into Gandalf’s mouth. Forty-eight.
Mary Anne’s the same age as me and Mean Jack, but she has amazing power. I’ve never heard her say, “I’m telling.” She doesn’t need a teacher.
She pulls me into the room, shuts the door, and drops the blind over the window so that nobody can see in.
“Get to work,” she says.
I give her the What, me? look, and she says, “You too. Sometimes you must choose to observe and sometimes you must choose to act. You made the wrong choice.”
My stomach is growling, but I start sweeping sawdust and grabbing mice. I give Mean Jack a little shove every time I come near him. Mean Jack doesn’t mess with me. Nobody does.
Then Bobo the German Shepherd growls, low in her throat.
Tuffman opens the door. We all freeze.
He’s combed his toupee out pretty good, but there’s still one spot in the back that looks a little mangled.
I don’t think I’ll point that out to him, though.
Mary Anne looks at each of us and shakes her head slightly. Do not be a rat. We don’t need the warning. At One of Our Kind Boarding School we don’t tattle. We don’t point fingers. We. Don’t. Rat. It’s the single most important rule. Dean Swift calls it solidarity. Mean Jack punches his palm with his fist and calls it Stitches for Snitches. I call it keeping my mouth shut, and for me it’s pretty much SOP (standard operating procedure).
“Got a problem?” Tuffman asks.
“No problem,” Sparrow squeaks. “I’m cleaning the cages since it’s my week for pet care, and my friends are helping.”
Good cover, I think. It’s actually Mean Jack’s week for pet care, and he was obviously trying to force Sparrow, at pencil point, to do the work for him. If he’d just turn that graphite tip toward a piece of paper instead of some kid’s eyeball, Mean Jack could write a book on it: A Practical Guide to Extortion for Kids.
“No problemo, you say? Well, you lost one, pipsqueak.” Tuffman pulls a mouse from his pocket and dangles it by the tail.
Sparrow grabs the mouse. He strokes its head and says softly, “You gonna be okay now, little guy.”
“You didn’t say ‘thank you,’ short stuff,” says Tuffman.
“Fank you, Mr. Tuffman,” Sparrow says with big eyes.
“No fanks to you, that’s what Mr. Mousie says.”
Sparrow puts the mouse back in its cage.
“I’m still talking to you, so look at me. Look at me when I’m talking to you,” Tuffman says.
Sparrow’s lower lip starts to wiggle.
“When you clean these cages, it’s your duty to protect these animals. Do you understand the word ‘duty’? Do you? Answer me.”
Sparrow can’t say a word. He’s shaking, and I want to grab Tuffman by the throat and make him shake too.
If I met him one weekend in White Deer Woods—when the woods magic was happening to me—I could scare him pretty good. He wouldn’t even know it was me.
The idea of me pouncing on him in the woods must have made me smile a little.
“You hear something funny, weirdo?” he asks me.
His eyes paralyze me.
“Nothing about this is funny. I don’t like to see animals in cages. It ain’t natural. But you kids want your pets. You make an animal helpless, then you darn well better help it. You turned it into a baby. You’re its parents now.”
The room is so quiet.
“I can see why a kid like you wouldn’t understand.” His voice gets meaner.
My face burns.
“How could you understand how parents are supposed to act? What kind of mother walks out on her kid? And your dad sticking around was hardly better. I read your file.” He digs a finger in his ear. “Parental neglect. That’s what the state social worker called it. It says she found you eating on the floor like a dog. It says you didn’t know what soap was.”
I’m not going to cry. That’s all I can think. I’m not going to cry in front of Mary Anne. I pay attention to my mouth. As long as you keep your mouth straight, nobody can tell you’re sad.
“Is your old man still forgetting to come get you on weekends?”
“His dad comes.” Sparrow sticks up for me.
From the corner of my eye I see Mean Jack yank Sparrow back. “Let it go,” Mean Jack says in a low voice.
“That was a real pain for the dean, you know? All the other parents remember to get their kids on the weekends. Except your dad. How can a father abandon his son? That’
s what the dean would say.”
It’s funny. Words are air and spit. But they can hit you harder than any fist or belt or slap. They leave bruises in your belly and on your heart and in your mind that will never turn yellow and purple and fade. That will ache every time you remember them.
And he’s lying about the dean. I know he is.
“What kind of kid can parents like that make? You tell me, Raul. What kind of kid did your mom make?”
He’s not going to stop until I talk or cry. My mouth slips.
“We understand,” Mary Anne says. She steps in front of Tuffman so that me and Sparrow end up behind her. She looks him straight in the eye. “I know you’ll agree that we ought to finish our task here. If we were all to miss breakfast, I’m sure Dean Swift would expect a faithful account of every deed and every word.”
Tuffman’s eye twitches. Mary Anne’s playing hardball. Dean Swift wouldn’t like it if he knew someone was telling stories about my parents like that. Especially since they’re true.
Tuffman opens the door to leave and then turns back.
“Sparrow,” he says, “do you know what a loser is? A loser is someone who loses things. Things like games, or races, or mice. Try harder. Try harder not to be such a loser.”
The door slams. The room moves again. Mr. Baggins’s wheel squeaks. Gandalf stretches.
Mean Jack looks from me to Sparrow. “Forget about it, you two. The guy’s a schmuck, don’t know his head from his—”
The door opens again and slams shut. Before any of us can stop him, Sparrow has flown out of the room, sobbing.
Tuffman made Sparrow cry.
All my sad turns to mad. I must look like I’m about to charge after Tuffman and drop him. Mary Anne grabs my arm and pulls it down, like it’s a leash on a lunging dog.
“Whatever you do will just make it worse,” she says.
She keeps her hand on my arm, and I know she’s trying to say she feels bad about what Tuffman said to me. The tears jump from my throat to my eyes.
“Yo. Forget about the jockstrap. He’s just trying to get under your skin,” Mean Jack says. “We got bigger fish to fry here. Has anyone seen the snake?”
Mary Anne’s face goes white.
Mean Jack takes charge. “Me and Mary’ll finish up spring cleaning here. Raul, you go collar Sparrow. Last thing we need is this story getting back to the authorities.”
Last thing you need, you mean. But it’s hard to hate a kid who just saved you from bawling in front of your crush. And he’s right. Forget about Tuffman. It’s my fault anyway. I let him get under my skin. I let him see what I was thinking. I have to be careful. Words aren’t the only thing that can give my secrets away.
“Come on, Bobo,” I say.
She stands up and stretches. I hear her joints crack. As we head out the door, she puts her nose in my hand. Thank you, she’s saying. You always know what a dog really means. Did you ever think of that? A dog can’t lie.
There’s a drawer in my mind where I put things I don’t like. I shove everything Tuffman just said in it.
I know where Sparrow is, and I’m not gonna let him sit there and cry all alone in the dark.
When Sparrow feels bad he runs to Fort Casey. He’s stealthy. Nobody but me ever sees him go. He dashes across the big field in the middle of the fort and heads for a bunker built into the hillside. The Blackout Tunnel is the darkest, blackest, scariest place you can imagine. If by some freak occurrence a prehistoric man-eating, bone-gnawing dinosaur survived the asteroid, then that’s where it’d be living. Put your hand in front of your face. Now bring it so close that it’s almost touching your nose but isn’t. If you were in the Blackout Tunnel, you wouldn’t be able to see that hand.
I head out the front door. I take the path the new kid took, but nobody is going to call security on me because 1) I’m not what they call a “flight risk”—meaning I’ve never tried to run away—and 2) Dean Swift believes in what he calls “personal liberty”—which as far as I can tell is a fancy way of saying that kids should play outside a lot and grown-ups shouldn’t bug them much. Over the front door he had me carve a sign that says Silva Curat! which is Latin for The forest heals!
I’m warning you. Do not ask him about the forest and its wondrous ability to Heal children. His eyes will pop up round as boiled egg yolks, and he’ll talk until your ears bleed.
I agree with him, though. Only, I would’ve carved something different. I would’ve carved The forest has secrets. I should write Mary Anne a note and ask how to say that in Latin. But then she’d want to know the secrets.
I look around, remembering the feeling I had earlier this morning when the crows gathered. It’s gone but I know it’s near. Today’s Thursday. Woods magic happens Friday at sunset. Everyone likes the weekend. But I like it most of all.
Bobo lopes up ahead. The path drops off and she jumps down onto the driftwood pile. Her hind legs give way and I wince for her. She forgets how old she is. But a second later she’s at the water’s edge, barking at the waves.
A gleam down near Bobo catches my eye. It’s black and shiny. As I get closer I see it’s a helmet. It must have gotten knocked off the kid’s head when he got tackled.
I pick it up. Bobo sniffs it. Her eyes ask, Good to eat? I scratch her ears. You’ll break every one of your last five teeth on it, dog.
I set the helmet on a driftwood log so I remember to grab it on the way back.
Sparrow doesn’t want to come out of the Blackout Tunnel.
“Come on!” I yell. Even if I didn’t have Bobo, I wouldn’t go in there. It reeks. My nose sniffs. I don’t want to but I do, because that’s how my nose works. I smell wet cat, reptile cage, park toilet, and something else—something familiar. After a few more sniffs I smile.
“Get out already, Sparrow,” I yell. “It smells like Tuffman’s breath in there!”
Sparrow’s sputter of a laugh echoes off the walls and pings toward me like a bouncy ball. That’s all it takes with Sparrow. Make him laugh and his worries are over.
He races out, drops to his knees. and throws his arms around Bobo. She licks his face like it’s the most important thing she’ll do all day long.
“What took you so long?” he asks.
All the way back to the school he won’t stop talking. It turns out it wasn’t just my joke that got him to come out. He’d also found an awesome bone.
“Is it human?” he asks me for the fiftieth time as we head down from the fort to the beach. “I fink it’s someone’s pinkie finger bone. Maybe the monster ate all of someone but was too full for the pinkie. This is all that’s left. Poor guy. In heaven with no pinkie.” He looks at me and grins. “It’s a monster that only eats PE teachers.”
We could use a monster like that around here.
I think it’s the jawbone of a raccoon that a coyote must have dragged in there, but I let him ramble on and on about the very exclusive diet of his monster.
Why burst his bubble? I’ve seen some things in White Deer Woods that nobody would believe.
In fact, I am something that nobody would believe.
I shake that thought away. It’s best to keep my worlds separate, even in my head. Look what happened with Tuffman. Just thinking about woods magic can get me in trouble.
On the way up the zigzag path Sparrow wears the new kid’s helmet. He’s so small, it covers his head and rests on his shoulders.
“I’m Darth Vader,” he says. He holds the bone like a lightsaber and waves it in front of me. “Raul,” he says in a gravelly voice. “I am your father.”
I smile but I must look sad, because he takes the helmet off.
“You wanna hold the bone?” he asks after a second.
I nod. Of course I wanna hold the bone.
Chapter 3
WHERE YOU DISCOVER PART OF THE FIRST SECRET AND LEARN ABOUT LOVE
After I drop Sparrow off at the dean’s office to find out about the bone, I look at my watch. Twenty minutes left before the dining
hall stops serving hot food.
But to get to the dining hall you have to walk by the wood shop. Every day I do the same thing. I take one step into the wood shop, just to breathe in the smell of sawdust, and I’m hooked. I get busy carving or sanding, and before I know it an hour has slipped by.
Dean Swift told me once about the scientific method.
“Everything you need to know is in front of you, Raul,” he said. “You have to figure out the design. When a scientist wants to come up with a theory and prove it, he reads and wonders and observes. The truth is there all along, sitting hidden in the facts.”
It’s the same with a carving. The carving is in the wood, waiting for my knife to free it.
The fishing pole I’m making for Sparrow is almost done. This is my favorite part, where I take the fine-grain sandpaper and rub the birch wood until it’s soft as sugar.
My mom’s hands felt that way when she would rub my back before I fell asleep. I miss her. It makes me feel bad to say that. I bet it makes you feel bad to read it. I don’t want my story to make anyone sad.
So I’ll tell you part of my secret: I miss her a whole lot less now than when I first got here.
Tuffman can talk all he likes. They all can. The words burn, but they’re smoke, not fire—just the ashes of the truth, just what’s left of it.
The truth about my mom is beyond words.
I finish sanding Sparrow’s new pole. It’s a beauty, way better than the last one I made for him. He broke the last one using it as a drumstick.
Do you want to know what the other drumstick was?
A lightbulb.
Did I mention I was hungry? I am ravenous, famished, voracious. Give me food, woman, I feel like yelling, except the cook is Patsy and she is very nice.
“Hey, Raul,” she says as I grab my breakfast tray, “will you give me a smile if I give you this?” That’s Cook Patsy’s favorite joke.
Usually, though, it’s more like “Hey, Raul, will you give me a smile if I give you a bowl Little John didn’t sneeze into?” Or “Hey, Raul, will you give me a smile if I give you a spoon the chemistry teacher didn’t use to mix sulfuric acid?”