by Linda Benson
One of the cool things about having Ms. Cordilini for a teacher is that she lets us walk the track every afternoon. Stretching our legs helps us stretch our minds, she says. The whole class goes outside, and Ms. Cordilini punches a hole in our track card every time one of us completes a lap. Some people run as hard as they can, collecting punches, trying to fill up their cards and trade them in for prizes. Some kids do a lazy jog along the track, and some never get out of a walk. But all of us like to get out in the fresh air after being cooped up in the classroom all day.
As we head out across to the field I see the back of Sophie’s yellow-white hair floating out in front of me. Head down, kicking rocks out of the way, she doesn’t even look up. You’d think some of the girls in our classroom would try to make friends with her. But they act like she’s poison or something.
Maybe Sophie needs somebody to talk to. I jog to catch up with her and then slow to the same pace that she’s walking. “Hey, what’s up? How come you were late this morning?”
“You taking a survey or something?”
“Geez, I was just trying to be nice. What’s the matter with you anyway?”
“Nothing.” She puts her head down again, watching the ground as if she’s going to find something fascinating down there.
“So how do you like it around here so far?” I say. Maybe she’s just having a bad day.
Sophie shrugs her shoulders. “It’s all right, I guess.”
“Where’d you live before you came here?”
She hesitates, likes she’s trying to decide whether to answer. “Sacramento,” she says. “Me and my mom decided to move up here—just to get away.”
“Get away from California?” I ask. “That’s like the coolest place there is. Why would anybody wanta leave?”
Sophie’s lip trembles.
Did I say something wrong? “But you didn’t like it there or something, right?”
She picks up her pace, and I actually have to hustle to keep up with her. We’re nearly around the track, so we each run up and get a punch on our track cards. Corey passes us at a fast jog as we start our second lap and gives me a funny look over his shoulder.
What? I can’t walk with a girl?
I stumble around in my mind for something to talk about. “Hey,” I blurt out. “Check this out.” I turn my face sideways and point to my left cheek. “Can you see anything there? Like a scar?”
She pauses and scans my face for a minute. “I can see a little line.”
“Wanta know how I got it?”
She doesn’t answer, so I figure that’s a yes. “On my fourth birthday my mom baked me a double-layer birthday cake. She set two hot pans, right out of the oven, on a board that pulls out from the counter. I was so excited to see them, I squeezed right up close to check them out. Too close. Burned my cheek big time, and my parents rushed me to the emergency room. The scar’s almost gone now. You can only see it once in a while, like when I’m worried. Math test or something like that.”
Sophie still doesn’t say anything, so I plow right ahead.
“I was wondering,” I say, “how’d you get that scar on your eyebrow?”
Sophie’s face freezes up. I can’t tell if she’s gonna answer me or not. It looks like she’s concentrating really hard, trying to hold her brains together so they don’t come tumbling out of her head.
“I fell,” she says.
“Fell?”
“Against the wood stove.” Her mouth is pinched in a tight frown.
Ouch, I think, swallowing hard. “Well, at least we’ve got something in common,” I say, trying to lighten things up. “We’ve each got a scar.”
Sophie gives me a strange look, one I haven’t seen before. Like halfway between I hate you and You’re a total idiot.
I’m never quite sure where I stand with this girl. I shrug and sprint away, trying to get a couple more laps in before Ms. Cordilini blows the whistle.
“You don’t know anything, Jared Westin,” Sophie hollers after me. It sounds like she’s mad or something. “You don’t know anything at all about me.”
Chapter 5—Lester
BY MAY, IT’S GETTING really hard to concentrate on school. We squirm in our chairs like worms at the end of a fishing line. Every afternoon the sun streams in the west side of Ms. Cordilini’s room, and we wipe the sweat off the back of our necks. We’re just counting down the days till it’s over.
Today we have Art. We’re making posters for the Name the New Therapy Dog contest. Brad, Kayla, Sophie and me are chosen by the teacher to make a big poster announcing the contest. Everybody else in the class will draw smaller posters with pictures of the new puppy.
Mr. Gannon gives us a list of names to use on the poster. The name that gets the most votes will be the winning name. We take turns printing the choices neatly on a huge piece of white poster board. Unbelievably, one of the names is Lester.
As we’re putting blue goo on the back of the poster to stick it against the wall in the hallway, Mr. Gannon comes by with the pup to check on our progress. He brings that squirmy little Lab to school about three days a week. It doesn’t seem like the dog’s learning anything, but Mr. Gannon says that Labradors take a long time to grow up.
Mr. Gannon holds the pup on the end of a leash, but the dog strains against it when he sees us in the hallway, wagging his tail so hard he almost falls over.
Sophie hunches over and ruffles the dog’s ears. “Hey, little guy. How’s it going, Lester?”
Kayla wrinkles her brow. “Don’t call him that. Nobody’s going to pick that name. It’s a stupid name for a dog.”
“Well, that’s why we’re having a contest,” says Mr. Gannon, in a smooth-things-over voice. “The dog’s name will be chosen by all the students, fair and square.” Mr. Gannon squints at the poster. “He’s not really a therapy dog yet,” he says. “He’ll have to grow up and pass his training first.”
He’s going to need a whole lot of training, I think.
It’s so hot inside the building it feels like we’re baking in an oven. My shirt sticks to my body. The secretary has opened the doors at the end of the corridor to let a breeze blow through. All the classroom doors are open, and we can hear restless kids shuffling around.
Kayla holds the poster up against the wall. “What do you think? Is it straight?”
Brad and Sophie and me step back to look.
“No, up a little on the right,” I say.
Mr. Gannon drops the pup’s leash, just for one second, to hold one end of the poster.
I’m not exactly sure what happens next. The pup lets out three shrill barks. “Shshh,” says Mr. Gannon in a sharp whisper. I glance down the hallway to see what the pup’s barking at. A scrawny, gray cat waltzes past the main doors leading out of school.
Before Mr. Gannon can grab his leash, before he can say “Stop that dog,” the pup hightails it toward the end of the building, scraping his sharp nails against the tile floor and barking as loud as a half-grown puppy can.
Kids jump up from their desks and run to the doors of their classes. More of them push and shove from behind, not listening at all to the teachers trying to keep them in their seats. “What’s going on? Is that the new dog?” There’s such a commotion some girls even scream.
But the most amazing thing is Sophie. Like some commando in charge of the whole operation, she takes off down the hallway and sprints out the front doors before anyone realizes what is happening. I charge after her, even though we’re never supposed to run in the corridor.
As I reach the end of the hallway, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. The black pup darts across the parking lot, hot on the heels of the frightened cat and right toward the street. A red minivan is headed directly toward them.
Sophie charges after the pup, not even looking left or right. Does she even see the car?
My gut squirms. It’s like history repeating itself. I remember darting across the street on my bike with my brother Pete racing behind me on
his. I can sense the speeding car closing in on us quickly. I hear the squeal of brakes. I look back, and—
Sophie’s voice brings me back to the present. “Stop!” she screams at the van, running toward it and holding her hand up in the air like a policewoman directing traffic. Like a miracle, the driver of the minivan slams on his brakes, coming to a stop directly in front of Sophie. I can see the runaway pup nosing around the flower bed on the other side of the street, trying to figure out where the gray cat went.
Mr. Gannon lurches up behind me, breathing hard. He stands in the doorway watching, trying to catch his breath.
Sophie is kneeling down on the opposite side of the street, not acting the least bit panicked or excited. She opens her arms wide. “Come here, Lester,” she says in a calm voice.
The dog recognizes Sophie. They’ve had lots of friendly visits in Mr. Gannon’s office. He clambers into her waiting arms. Sophie scoops him up, holds him tightly against her, and carries him safely back across the street. She waves to the driver of the van, as if it’s all in a day’s work.
I breathe deeply and feel my insides settle back down.
Sophie walks across the parking lot, comes up the steps toward the building, still holding on to the squirming pup. Mr. Gannon, the principal, the secretary, and a bunch of kids who should be in class crowd around the doors to see what happened.
Sophie walks over to me first. She has a goofy smile on her face—the biggest one I have ever seen.
“Wow,” I say. “Good job.”
The principal, however, is not amused. “You must never leave the school grounds,” she says. “Not even for a dog. That was very dangerous. What if the car hadn’t stopped in time?”
But nobody is listening. All the kids by the door start clapping. Sophie has saved the new dog from being hit by a car—right in front of the entire school. She is a hero, at least for this moment.
“Boys and girls,” says Mr. Gannon, taking the pup from Sophie. “Excitement is over. Everyone back to class. Our renegade dog is under control and still in one piece. Now everybody get their votes in today for a new name for this pup. Maybe if he knows his name, he’ll learn how to behave better.”
“Lester,” I say, loud enough for everyone to hear. It echoes down the long hallway. “Sophie called him Lester, and he came to her.”
“Lester…Lester…Lester…Lester.” The chant goes forward down the long corridor. Kids are hanging out of the classroom doors, and from first grade all the way down to sixth grade at the far end of the hall, the sound goes on and on. “Lester…Lester…Lester…”
Chapter 6—Falling
MR. GANNON COUNTS THE VOTES the next day. He announces the results over the loudspeaker. “By an overwhelming majority, our new dog’s name will be…Lester.”
Loud cheering can be heard up and down the hallways. You’d think Sophie would act excited, but her face shows no expression.
“And we have one more announcement,” Mr. Gannon continues. “Sophie Best has been chosen as the student who will be responsible for walking Lester during his break times. She can see her teacher to work out a schedule, and she may pick one helper to go with her.”
I look over at Sophie. Her mouth crinkles up in a sly grin, and she glances sideways at me. The loudspeaker is quiet again, and it’s just our class listening now. All kinds of hands shoot up. Everybody wants a chance to get out of class.
But Sophie points at me. “I pick Jared,” she says.
“All right, Sophie,” says Ms. Cordilini. “You and Jared will be Lester’s official dog walkers for what’s left of the school year.”
“No fair,” whines Kayla. “How come they get to do it? We should all take turns.”
“That is Mr. Gannon’s decision. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it,” says Ms. C. “Everybody get out a plain piece of paper. We’re going to have a quiz on placement of decimal points. I hope you did your math homework.”
Everyone groans. I look outside at the blue sky. The heat of the day is beginning to penetrate the wall of windows in our classroom. Only a few weeks of school left, and we all relish any time we can spend outside. I have a really hard time remembering how many places to the left or to the right you move the stupid decimal point. And I wonder how soon Lester will need to be walked.
We hang out in the shade of the cedar trees at the end of the field, Sophie and me. It’s like having extra recess, only no one else is around. We watch Lester nose up and down the fence—waiting for him to “do his business.”
Sophie reaches up and swings from a big cedar limb. You can see where the bark is worn off at the spot where kids have wrapped their hands around the branch.
“Do you ever dream about falling?” Sophie says. The sleeves of her shirt have dropped back. The skin at the top of her arms is smooth just like the tree.
“Sometimes. Do you?”
“Don’t you ever wonder why you never dream about hitting the ground?”
“No,” I say. I watch her hang there, rocking back and forth, just inches above the bare dirt. “Never even thought about it.”
“Well, I have a theory,” Sophie says.
“A theory?”
“Yeah. Say you were swinging through the trees, like our ancestors the monkeys did—”
“I didn’t come from monkeys,” I snort.
“I don’t mean real monkeys, Jared. Just something from the past that might have been our ancestors—early humans, maybe.”
“O-kaay…” But I don’t really see where this is going.
“Well, if you were swinging through the trees and you fell, you’d probably crack your head open or break something or even die, you know? So you wouldn’t be around to have memories of falling.”
“Yeah…” I say.
“So,” Sophie continues, “if you caught yourself, like if something broke your fall, or you grabbed a branch at the last minute, you’d still be alive. And you’d have memories of falling and of being saved in the nick of time. And you’d pass those memories down to your kids, over and over, all the way down to us. And that’s how come we’re born with dreams of falling. What do you think?” She looks at me real serious, like it’s important that I understand her.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Maybe I fell out of the crib when I was little.”
“No, falling out of the crib doesn’t count.” Sophie shakes her head. “It’s not scary enough.”
I’m trying to get what she’s saying. “So one of my ancestors had slimy fingers from eating bugs or something, and they were swinging through the jungle when crash—they fell a long, long ways, and landed on a carpet of leaves. But it totally freaked them out so next time they held on really tight, but they still had the memory and passed it all the way down to you and me. Is that your theory?”
“Sort of,” she says.
Lester’s getting restless. He barks at a crow that alights on the fence behind us.
“Come on,” I say. “We better take him back. We’ve been out here a pretty long time.”
“His name was Jack,” says Sophie. “My mother’s boyfriend.”
I look over at her. Sophie’s face has changed—it’s taken on that blank look. She’s talking about something completely different now. Or is she?
“He lived with us for a while. He used to do things.” Sophie stops moving. It’s like she’s turning into a statue.
“What kind of things?” I say, but I don’t really want to know. I want to go back inside. I don’t want Sophie to talk anymore. Don’t say it. Don’t say.
“He did things to me,” Sophie says. “That he shouldn’t have.”
I feel all frozen up inside. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do. Isn’t she supposed to tell Mr. Gannon this kind of stuff?
“Mr. Gannon has a word for it,” she says. “Inappropriate.”
I shudder. I don’t even want to think what this means. “Is that why you moved to this school?”
“To get away from him. Because now
I’m never gonna see him again. Not ever…ever.”
“He’s a long ways away from here—right?” I say.
“He’s in Sacramento,” says Sophie. “I hope he stays there.”
“Me too. I hope he stays there forever.” I feel like I want to do something to make Sophie’s face light up again. Like jump up and down in front of her, make faces, anything to break the spell that’s come over her.
But Lester beats me to it. The goofy dog grabs the leash in his mouth and starts pulling like he’s trying to take himself for a walk. Sophie laughs. We take off toward the school building at a dead run, while trying to keep from tripping over Lester as he darts back and forth between our legs.
Now I know why Sophie’s face goes blank sometimes. She’s tripping over those bad memories.
Chapter 7—Spoiled
MY LITTLE BROTHER’S a good kid, but sometimes I wish he knew when to keep his mouth shut. At dinner, he has to announce what me and Sophie have been doing. “Jared goes out on the playground every day with the new girl to walk the dog,” he says.
My mother’s eyebrows rise. “What dog?”
“Mr. Gannon’s new dog,” says Pete. “He almost got run over by a car, like me, only Sophie saved him. Now Jared and her get to walk the dog together every day. All by themselves. They get out of class and everything.” Petey grins so big you can see all the way back to his tonsils.
“The girl’s name is Sophie?” asks my mom.
“Yeah. Sophie Best,” I say.
My dad frowns. “How much do you know about this girl?”
“Not much.” I squirm in my chair. “She just moved here from California. With her mom.”
My parents exchange glances across the table.
“And why are you out on the playground with her?”
“We’re just walking the dog.” Why do I have a weird feeling in my stomach?
My father turns his serious look on me. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to be alone with this girl.”