Mr. Berman visits each table, so I pretend to look busy by scribbling down numbers on my paper. When he sees that I’m actually doing something, he nods and makes a move to pat down his gray hair that sticks up in all directions. It bounces right back up as soon as he walks away. Seriously, this guy is old as dirt and I wonder if his jacket is, too. It’s one of those weird professor-y ones with leather patches on the elbows. He wears the same thing every day: tan pants, dark brown loafers, and that jacket—this one is “fall colors” but he’s also got an almost identical one that’s all different greens and one that’s like Easter threw up on it—over a collared white shirt.
I shake off the thought and look back to my paper.
The first week of school, at Mr. Berman’s request, Erin and Jason had tried to include me in the problem solving: “What do you think, Dragon?” But after a couple days of me staring blankly at them, they pretty much gave up. I actually saw them glance at each other, shrug, and then give up on me.
I’ve seen that look a lot, from grownups and kids alike. So now I just sit and watch and occasionally copy down the problem so it looks like I did something, anything.
Can we just pause and take a good long look at my name for a second? I mean Dragon? What am I, a reptilian flying monster? Who names their baby Dragon?
I know my mom was slightly obsessed with Harry Potter when she had me, but come on. Even the name Harry would’ve been an upgrade, and you know how many “Harry/hairy” jokes mean kids could come up with.
Plus, I bet people who hear my name before meeting me expect to see some hardened criminal, not a slightly-larger-than-his-classmates seventh grader with a floppy mop top, a scar running down one side of his face, and a chip on his shoulder.
Oh yeah, the hair. We’ll get to that later, too.
That scar though? We probably won’t get to that later. Sorry.
Back to math. I’m not dumb, exactly. It might look like I’m dumb, but it just takes me a little longer to get things. The problem is, by the time I get it, everyone else has moved on. Even Mr. Berman apologized once: “I know we have to move very fast. I wish it wasn’t this way, but it is. We’ll just have to bear it together.”
We get through today’s math lesson, a short review of multiplication and division—something even I can do—and then my stomach starts to grumble. Loud. I scrape my chair on the ground to cover up the noise. The bowl of stale cereal from the cafeteria this morning wasn’t exactly a hearty meal. And once I’m hungry, you can forget about me paying attention. It’s like a monster erupts inside me, and I cannot think about anything else until it’s fed.
Everyone else is hungry too, I guess, because they pull out these cute little sandwich baggies full of sliced oranges or mini-boxes of for-real Pringles, not the knock-off “potato crisps.” A blonde girl named Becca even has a little Nutella package with these stick cookies to dip in it. I mean, that’s basically chocolate. I’d trade my own sister for some basically chocolate.
I sink down into my chair, hoping no one will notice I don’t have anything to eat.
Official snack time disappeared after elementary school, but our teachers are pretty cool about us snacking during class as long as it’s not distracting anyone. The thing is, once one kid gets out something to eat, so does everyone else, like a ripple effect.
My classmates are all munching happily while they work on their math papers. Mine is blank. I can do it, probably, it’s just that I know it’ll take me forever so I don’t want to start. I fumble in my backpack for another pencil—mine broke—and see the Cheez-Its. Yes! I pull them out and scarf them. I try not to think about whether Ms. Luna has any more while I lick the salty cheese dust off my fingers.
I get started on my math paper, but by the time I finish the second problem, it’s time to do something else. Erin and Jason finished their work a while ago and are playing a math game together, whispering and giggling. I crumple my paper a little to make it look like I at least worked on it. I barely even write my name, just a scribble “D” at the top (he’ll figure it out), and throw it in the turn-in basket even though it’s not done.
On my way back to my desk, Travis Beaker, my sworn enemy and Reason Number One that I hate math, slams his shoulder into me so hard I stumble a little. He must be sad to have missed his chance to slam me into a locker earlier when Ms. Luna held me back in homeroom.
“Oops, didn’t see you there, Smokey.”
I grimace at the nickname he gave me last year. He shows his teeth in a way that might look like a smile from far away, but close up looks like an I’ll actually kill you kind of sneer.
My eyes search for Mr. Berman, but he’s talking to someone else. Denzel takes a protective step toward me, and Travis backs off. He’s dumb, but not dumb enough to cause a big scene in class.
The bell rings and I grab my backpack and head toward English, where thankfully, Travis will not be.
The way Piney Woods Middle works is that everyone has a group of ten kids that they stay with all day. There are a few exceptions, of course, but for the most part, we start in homeroom together and go to each class after that as a group. My Core Ten is made up of me and Denzel, Kyla and Jolie, Jason and Erin, Millie and Gavin, and Caden and Marisa. The idea is that we will get to know our Core Ten really well and feel like a “family.”
I already have one of those, and it’s not so great. I don’t feel like having another one.
The good news is, though, Travis only shows up in my math class and sometimes my PE rotation.
In Mrs. Parkman’s English class,
my eyes
stay glued
to the cold desk.
* * *
Who sits next to me?
I don’t know,
haven’t seen.
* * *
I don’t listen much;
my page stays blank,
my pencil untouched.
* * *
Then Mrs. Parkman says
it’s time for a story.
* * *
A what?
* * *
A story
she says.
* * *
We aren’t babies,
someone mutters
to the delight of his neighbors.
* * *
Oh but this isn’t a story for babies,
she says.
* * *
This is a story for you.
3
My House
It took me two whole weeks to realize I was in English class with all the smart kids. My Core Ten is in here with me, and some of them are way smarter than I realized at first. And the other kids? They should be in high school or something. I’ve heard rumors that Duke, this new super skinny kid, is so smart he has to leave school to go to a hard enough math class.
Obviously, me being put in this class was some kind of mistake, but I said nothing. I actually kind of like my Core Ten and don’t want to get switched.
As far as teachers go, Mrs. Parkman is… different. She has bright silver hair that is cut short and spiked up. On the first day of school, Kyla asked her, “Why do you have gray hair?” and Jason said, “Kyla, you can’t just ask people why they have gray hair. That’s like asking someone why they’re fat.” Jason usually says whatever he’s thinking.
Mrs. Parkman just smiled and said, “Well Kyla, this is the color of my real hair, and I was tired of coloring it, trying to look like someone I’m not. So I stopped.” Like it was that simple.
Kyla, maybe to make up for asking such a rude question in the first place, said, “Oh. Well, I think it makes you look like a rock star.”
Suck up.
“Okay guys, get excited because today we are going to add even more ideas to our writing journals! So get them out, find something fun and inspiring to write with, and get your brains into writing mode.” As she walks by, her high heels click and I notice for the first time that she has leg tattoos—for real! There’s a hot-air balloon, machine-looking
tattoo on one shin and a huge flower on the other. Maybe she is a little bit like a rock star.
So far, Mrs. Parkman hasn’t asked us to write much of anything yet. Our journals are supposed to be full of lots of ideas, but besides my scribbled poems, I don’t write anything in class.
It’s a personal rule of mine.
Another one is that nobody sees my poems.
So of course, my English journal is blank.
The way I’ve survived this long in school is by letting my teachers know that I’m slow and don’t do my work right off. This way, they only make me do half the work and they sometimes help. Or, they let me play on the computer to teach me stuff I don’t know. Sometimes I get it, and sometimes I don’t. And usually then, the teacher just leaves me alone. Like I said, I’ve seen the giving-up face before.
But I have a feeling Mrs. Parkman is different. Every day when she walks past and sees my blank journal, she smiles. It’s a real smile, not a forced grimace-y smile, but a smile that says, go on, you can do this! I know it!
And, as if that’s not enough, she keeps giving me this look, like she’s trying to figure me out. It’s not pity, exactly. I know that look too well. It’s not fear or defeat, either. It’s more of a questioning kind of look. Like she actually wants to know how to help me. But it’s her eyes that get me, that make the look feel significant. They are bright blue, almost turquoise, and she looks me right in the eye, not afraid of a bad attitude or a bad kid.
That’s new.
Mrs. Parkman starts by reading us a short story about a little girl who finds treasures in her very old house and imagines what the people who lived there before her were like.
“I want you to close your eyes and think of a place that’s very special to you. Picture what it looks like in your mind and why it’s so special to you.” She pauses, giving us a second to think.
Mrs. Parkman really loves to teach writing. You can tell it’s her favorite because her voice gets all high-pitched and she practically bounces while she’s teaching it. She takes a big sheet of paper and hangs it on the board for us to see. Then she draws an outline of her own house and labels the little rooms.
“Now think of some special memories that happened in that place. They can be big, important memories, or small ones like a smell or a sound. For example, in my backyard there is a playhouse that I helped my husband build. We spent eight hours on it only to find that we had done the whole thing backward!”
Kids laugh, and she continues to jot down memories in each room. I mean, not the bathroom. That would be gross.
Okay, so this is sort of cool.
I might try this one.
But only the one time.
Erin passes a large sheet of construction paper to each person, and everyone gets busy with their rulers and pencils sketching out their houses. It takes me a while to get started, mostly because I have to ask the skinny kid, Duke, if I can borrow his ruler. A ruler is the one thing the backpack from Ms. Luna was missing. When he’s done drawing, he hands it over without looking at me.
My house is easy. It’s a perfect rectangle, so I start with that.
I add a little porch, if you can call a couple pieces of rotting wood a porch.
Then I don’t know what to do next. To tell the absolute truth, I live in a craphole. It’s okay, I can say that; it’s my house. But if anyone else says it, I get mad. Most of the fights I’ve been in have started with someone calling me “trailer trash” behind my back or directly to my face. I never understood the name calling, though. did they think I actually wanted to live in such a dump? I guess I’ll have to fudge the truth for this assignment. Otherwise it could get pretty embarrassing.
I decide to draw in where the rooms are. We only have two bedrooms, and I sleep in one with Maya and De-vine. De-vine is Uncle Carlos’s three-year-old daughter. Her momma ran off when she was three weeks old, and Uncle Carlos used to say all the time that he got stuck with her. I don’t know if he even likes De-vine. But De-vine is my favorite. She is small and cute and thinks I’m cool. Probably the only person in the world who will ever think that.
I sketch one nice, big bed in the bedroom of my picture, like I have it all to myself. In reality, I sleep in a recliner that’s maybe a hundred years old. It smells funky and sometimes I wake up with little red bites on my arms and legs from who-knows-what. I figure it’s better than the floor though. Maya and De-vine share a twin mattress that’s on the floor and is covered with just one sheet that I think used to be a light blue color; now it’s more like a gray-brown. It’s only been washed a handful of times. It’s not like we have a washing machine.
Because of this craphole, all three of us got lice a couple years ago. Well really, Maya got lice and gave it to the rest of us. I know it was her because I saw her fourth-grade class lined up outside the nurse’s office one day, waiting to get The Lice Check.
To deal with it, Uncle Carlos decided to cut our hair, and he thought it would be funny to shave my head in a really short buzz. He left a nice long rat tail down the back, which prompted some pretty unoriginal Dragon Tail jokes. But after a while, I found that it made kids at school leave me alone. Whether it’s because they thought I was a huge dork or scary, I don’t know.
Whatever it was, it worked.
But then Travis Beaker got a hold of some scissors in art class and snipped it right off when the teacher went to the bathroom, and I haven’t cut my hair since, so it’s really curly and shaggy. The mop top is ugly, but it’s kind of my thing now. Well, that and the puffy pink scar that runs from my right eye down to the middle of my cheek. That usually makes kids rub their own cheeks and then turn away without a word.
I label the other bedroom “Mom.” When Uncle Carlos was here, he slept on the couch, but I leave him out of my sketch.
I label the bathroom next. When the water’s on, we all share one bathroom. When it’s not, we have to make sure to do our number two business at school or else we have to beg old Mr. Reeves next door to use his toilet and he lets us, but it’s kind of embarrassing. We can do our number ones out back, so we only ask him if we really need to go. We’re lucky that someone from the neighborhood church keeps us stocked with clean drinking water. Or we would’ve all died of thirst a couple times by now.
The kitchen is small and rarely gets used, but even still, I draw in a fridge and an oven. Sometimes Mom will get it together enough to make us some ramen or mac-n-cheese if it comes home in our Friday food bags from school, but otherwise we eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we make ourselves or a can of beans or a bowl of knock-off Lucky Charms. I always make sure De-vine has some food. If I didn’t, I don’t think anyone else would. And don’t even ask about the time I tried to microwave the beans in the can.
Spoiler: we don’t have a microwave anymore.
I’m glad Mrs. Parkman didn’t ask us to draw the neighborhood. Our trailer is so close to the neighbors’ trailers that it feels like we’re on top of them. From my bedroom window, I can hear every argument, every fight, every parent screaming at their kid, every dog bark, every broken bottle that gets thrown into every front yard.
I look at my sketch and decide it’s pretty good. Not exactly truthful, but how do you tell the truth about such a place?
Mrs. Parkman didn’t ask us to tell about the outside of the house or even what it really looks like inside, but if she did, I’d probably have lied about that, too. The only person who’d know I was lying is Denzel, and he’d never rat me out. So I’m safe.
Mrs. Parkman shows us how to fold our paper so that it looks like a little house—a real house, not a trailer—and I glue it into my writing notebook. When she passes by me and sees that I did the assignment today, I swear she has to contain a squeal. She flashes me a big smile though, and I feel a little proud of myself.
Mrs. Parkman asks for volunteers to share their house blueprints and a favorite memory. Erin’s hand shoots up first. She unfolds her paper and holds it up for us to see. Her house has
two stories and a ton of rooms in it. She talks about cooking with her mom in the giant kitchen.
Jason has an actual batting cage in his backyard and talks about playing with his brother out there.
Others share, their hands waving wildly in the air, but my house stays firmly in my closed journal. Sure, I did the work today, but there’s no way anyone’s going to see it. It’s pretty apparent by now that everyone in this class either lives in a mansion or is straight up lying. Even Denzel exaggerates the size of his house. He knows I won’t rat him out, either.
The only other kid who doesn’t share is Duke. Like me, he’s been silent for the last couple of weeks. Unlike me, he’s a new kid at this school. Today, I start to wonder about him. He’s a mystery for sure.
Our English class is cut in half by lunch and free time, and after we get back inside, Mrs. Parkman reads aloud to us. Besides free time, this is my favorite time, mostly because I don’t have to do anything but listen.
Also, I love leaving the confined space of my desk. I take a spot on the carpet and try not to notice that no one sits close to me. I sprawl out on the floor to try to make the empty space feel smaller.
Mrs. Parkman is reading a mysterious book about an orphan boy named Hugo. He lives in a train station and has to steal food to stay alive. I kind of know what that’s like, although I don’t know for sure if I’ve ever eaten stolen food. I just don’t know exactly where it comes from all the time.
My Storied Year Page 2