Pinned (9780545469845)

by Flake, Sharon

  Moving to the next bookshelf, I keep my thoughts to myself. Autumn does not really care to hear them anyway.

  Walking beside me, she picks at her hair. No feathers. I thought feathers were a silly look for a girl her age. She has not worn one lately, not since leaving the team three weeks ago. I am not sure I like this new look.

  She always seems to be thinking now. Introspective and quiet. That’s disconcerting. I never thought I would say that I’d rather hear her talking foolishness, saying nonsensical things. Laughing for no reason. At least I’d know what she was thinking.

  “Adonis.” She pulls a book from the shelf, not for any reason, though. “How many years it take to get from here to Jupiter?” She looks at the ceiling, like she can see the constellations. “See … that’s how long it seem like it’s gonna take me … to learn to … read on grade level.”

  Tears come. Plenty. Almost every day now.

  I look away. I do not know what to do when it happens.

  “I been reading like this for so long….” She sniffs, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, like the guys at practice. “Messing up in school since second grade …”

  Pushing past her, I feel my eyes water. Stopping, I realize that I cannot be around her anymore. I love libraries. Books are sacred to me, fun. I escape in them. Lately, before I come to volunteer, I worry: Will she cry today? Should I avoid pressing her to do her work? What if she crawls onto my lap? What should I do?

  I think I may switch my volunteer days. Or work at the public library instead. It all makes me furious. The world does not revolve around Autumn.

  “… Stuck.”

  I look over my shoulder, trying to understand what she means.

  “I’m stuck.” Pointing to a plastic palm tree in a pot, she says, “Like that … there.” Her parents thought they could afford to pay to get her extra reading help at night. It’s so expensive, they cannot afford it.

  She walks over to the tree, sticking her arms out like branches. She sits on the floor, knocking on the hard plastic pot. “Stuck.” She hasn’t been attending class, I know. Miss Baker came in one day to speak with her. Mr. Epperson, as well. It’s hilarious, I think, that a girl who hates books and libraries makes sure to volunteer twice a week. Even when she does not go to class.

  “Autumn …”

  “You ever feel stuck?”

  Swallowing, I sit up tall.

  “Adonis.” She walks over, kneeling at my wheels. “People be so fake.” Her head lowers, so I cannot see she’s crying. “Maybe I’m not smart. But I’m truthful.” Her mother says she tells people too much about herself. “I can’t read…. I say it. What’s wrong with that?” She keeps talking. “I been thinking … sometimes … in this chair …”

  “Autumn …”

  “Roberto say sometimes he feel like me … stuck …”

  I ask her why she is talking to a seventh grader about things that are personal to her. “It’s his business,” I say, “how he feels about being disabled, sitting in a chair. Quit asking people things like that.” She is holding on to my chair handles, crying again. How can I move? I’m stuck, too. “Autumn —”

  She thinks it’s a good question to ask and she apologizes if I think that it’s not. She has never apologized for anything she has done to me. And she has done a lot. “Why you don’t like to talk, Adonis?”

  Mrs. Carolyn calls us both.

  “You are talking about me.” I back up. “I am an excellent student with outstanding grades. You should be thinking about yourself, Autumn Knight.”

  Standing up, walking beside me, she informs me that she has been thinking of herself. “That’s why I ain’t been to class so much. To see what the right thing to do is, I gotta think.”

  I think all the time — at home in the den, at night in my bed, in the van on the way to school. Even on the toilet. My mind is constantly examining and studying the world and people around me. “Autumn, you are making your situation worse. Getting further behind in class will not help you to read better.”

  “I know.”

  We take the elevator to the second floor of the library. “Then why … oh, forget it,” I say.

  She is not a girl who thinks logically. She has me wasting my voice, my time.

  “If we got stuck in this elevator —”

  “Quit talking about being stuck!” I point to her. “Do what you are supposed to do!” She has me yelling. “And you will have everything you want in life!”

  I point at her again and again. “It’s your fault. Start there. Quit complaining. If you need to read better, get better. Get help. Ask someone. People want people to succeed. No one wants to see you fail.”

  When the door opens, with her rushing out, I think I will never see Autumn Knight again. Good.

  Leaving the library, she is so close that her jacket button taps my chair. Classes are changing. It’s very crowded in the hall. She sprays on perfume, the same scent she wore the day she sat in my lap.

  “Adonis Einstein Anderson Miller.”

  Only Ma uses my full name. “Yes, Autumn.”

  Taking a deep breath, she says, “Will you help me learn to read better?”

  I know the people around us must have heard her question, especially my honors English teacher, who is walking just ahead of us. She looks over her shoulder at Autumn and me, and smiles. Of course Autumn doesn’t care. She believes that everyone is exactly like her, waving their lives in front of the whole world like dirty laundry.

  How can I say no, without my honors English teacher thinking less of me?

  Me and Peaches cooking. Arguing over math, too, and the cheat sheet she tried to give me recently. “But I ain’t ask you for it.”

  “Well —” She puts sticks of butter in the pot, stirring. “I was helping you out anyhow.”

  I stop rolling out dough. “You thinking I’m stupid, too? Everybody thinking that, huh?” I rush across the kitchen, pulling open the drawer. Poor Grades Take Down Star Wrestler, the newspaper article say. “It’s not right. Schools should keep a kid’s private stuff private.”

  Peaches look at me for a long time. Before she say anything, I’m telling her, “I fail on my own. Pass that way, too.” I open the window. Tear up the article, let the wind have it.

  We both go back to work. Sweating like we in the oven baking with those apple pies. We cooking for the lady up the block. She got book club today. Twenty chicken potpies. Six apple pies. Plus lemon berry ice cream. Everything from scratch, even the ice cream.

  Pressing out the dough, I think about Adonis. He shoulda said yes, I’ll help you read better. Two days passed already. Why ain’t he say nothing?

  Peaches walking over, blowing a spoon filled with veggies and chicken. I open my mouth, wide. “A little more pepper, this much salt.” I show her with my fingers. I take the top off the pot. Watch the chicken pushing past the peas, the carrots sitting on top the string beans while I think about that article. They used to write good things about me.

  Getting back to the table, Peaches start up with school again.

  She and me never talked about her cheating. Not the first time. Not the second time after she tried to pass me that paper. Then she did it again yesterday. Like I didn’t already show her that’s not something I do. “Do you want to pass ninth grade?” She rolling a piece of dough in her hand, eating it. “You getting further and further behind.” If I just catch up on a few tests, she saying, I’ll feel better about myself.

  I yank open the cabinet. “So cheat. That’s what you want me to do?”

  I got some nerve acting high and mighty, she saying, when I’m practically flunking school. I wanna know how she can cheat and talk about wanting to be the twelfth-grade valedictorian when the time come. Three times don’t make her a cheat. She telling me that without laughing at herself.

  I’m at the cabinet, pushing boxes and cans around, looking for vanilla and lemon extract for these pies. That’s when I see it written on a can. Big and red. All the
letters capitalized. Evaporated. It’s how I feel. Invisible, almost gone.

  Running upstairs, holding on to the can, I open my jar. Spelling the word out in pearl-gray crayon. I stuff the paper in the jar and put the lid back on.

  Peaches calling me. I’m Google searching, looking for a definition for evaporate. Vanish. Fade, one site says. I like those. “No, this the one I like.” I mix my definition with theirs, like grits and butter. Evaporate is … when all the moisture in you or something else is dried out and nothing’s left behind but the solid stuff. Everything else done vanished.

  “Autumn! I can’t make pies!”

  My mother calling me now, right along with Peaches, like I been up here forever.

  Walking downstairs, I’m thinking. This how I been feeling — like my body is here but the inside of me is fading. Evaporated. Sucked away. Gone, like wrestling.

  “Dad!” My father’s got a spoon dipping in the pot, sampling our food.

  “You gonna get that restaurant, I do believe.” Kissing my cheek, he reminds me I gotta save some of the money I make for the books I threw away. They wasn’t free to the libraries that bought ’em. So I have to pay ’em back.

  Mom’s behind him, mentioning Miss Baker. She called late last night. I skipped her class all week and would be on punishment, but the book club asked us to cook three months ago. We can’t let ’em down. And what else my parents gonna take away from me? Cooking?

  Miss Pattie walking into the kitchen, dressed in all red, talking about school. She got this idea. She will work with me on my reading. “Four hours every Saturday. That’ll do it.”

  We arguing, ’cause my parents like what she saying. Peaches and me yelling ’cause that’s our cooking day. Plus I’m thinking Miss Pattie gonna give me eczema like she gave Peaches, bugging me about school all the time.

  When Peaches’s father walks in using a cane, everybody gets quiet. If wrinkles was wings, he could fly to Paris, I think. “Peaches.” He walks over to her. “Studying time.” Looking at his watch, he say they need to leave.

  Miss Pattie got to remind him that we cooking. “Running a business.” Then she whispers, “He getting old.”

  She take him back to the living room and then comes in reminding the two of us. “Study. Do well in school. A girl needs that.”

  I wonder sometimes, with all her talk, if Miss Pattie don’t feel like she evaporating, too.

  Ma knows my secrets. For instance, I sleep in the nude. I like the food in our refrigerator to be in nice, neat rows: pickles, mayonnaise, apple juice. They must be lined up one behind the other. Not alphabetically — mentally ill people do that. There is one more thing about me. I do not like to fail at anything.

  I could never teach Autumn to read. Not that I’d want to. If I did, it wouldn’t work out. Autumn is … Ma says I might want to quit calling her lazy. The other day I also used the D word. That disappointed Ma. I hate to disappoint her.

  I think Autumn knows that I will not — cannot help her. She came into the media center today, and barely spoke to me. Mrs. Carolyn is meeting with her now. You cannot volunteer at the library and skip classes. Or come to class late and neglect to hand in your homework. I know what she’s been up to. Miss Baker is in here a lot, discussing Autumn’s behavior. Mrs. Carolyn defends Autumn. “A library is a sanctuary,” she told Miss Baker the other day. “The students who come here … don’t need to be perfect.”

  Autumn is enjoying herself a little too much, Miss Baker said. That is funny to hear. Autumn is sad a lot. But she comes, even when she isn’t volunteering.

  The two of them are in the back room. I am watching the front desk, eavesdropping, which is something I don’t normally do.

  “People have been extremely patient with you….” Mrs. Carolyn wants Autumn to keep volunteering. But that’s impossible, she says, if she refuses to participate in her own education. “It’s not like you….” She’s asking her over and over again, what she or Miss Baker or anyone here can do to get her back on track. “We’re afraid, sweetie … your grades next semester will be even worse.”

  If Autumn is talking, I cannot hear her. But it’s unfair. A girl with her grades and habits has everyone chasing after her, begging her to be better and to do better.

  Ralph walks over, carrying books. “I can check you out,” I say. He hands me books to return as well. A biography of George Washington and Manchild in the Promised Land. I rush him off. “Return them in three weeks.”

  Mrs. Carolyn asks her again, what is going on? “Do you think this behavior will get you back on the team? Are you striking?”

  Autumn laughs. “I think, Mrs. Carolyn … I ain’t volunteering here no more.”

  Mrs. Carolyn is not expecting that. She follows Autumn into the main area. “I hate to see you go … but …” She hugs Autumn and lets her know that she may use the media center whenever she likes. Autumn asks if she may stay the period. “It’s your lunch period. Come every day during this time and read or —”

  Autumn walks away. Taking a seat beside me, she explains everything I’ve heard.

  “You gonna miss me?”

  Is she asking or telling me?

  Leaning on one elbow, she stares into my eyes. It’s been a long time since she has done that. “Firstly,” she says. “I still remember what that means.”

  I’m surprised.

  “Firstly …” She reaches past me, picking up the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and sits it back down. “That’s a movie, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Shaking her head up and down, she asks how many hours I study a day. “As many as I need to.” Swallowing, I think about her question. I hope she does not ask me again to help her read.

  Taking paper from her pocket and unfolding it, she shows it to me. “Stuck.” It’s her new word. If she tells me something, can I keep it to myself, she’d like to know.

  “Yes.”

  She has a jar — at her age — with words in it. Only a few. She whispers words into my ear. Quandary. Quibble. Quaint. Who doesn’t know what those mean? I ask, feeling uncomfortable.

  Walking over to the dictionary, turning pages slowly, she says, “Come here, Adonis.”

  I am working. She calls me three more times.

  “I like this meaning … it fits me.”

  “Definition. You mean you like the definition.”

  Sitting beside her, I read in my head while she reads aloud. “Stuck. Jammed. Im … mov … able.” She runs her finger under each word. “This problem’s got me completely stuck.”

  She’s brought this word up before. Stuck. It’s not as if I’d want it to happen, but other words pop into my mind as well. Trapped. Wedged. Pinned. In the pond, I couldn’t escape. Not on my own. Later they found my chair, wedged between an abandoned car and vacant house. Smashed with hammers.

  She folds and slides the paper into her pocket, walking to a table to sit down. Then jumping up, riffling through magazines, she carries a handful over to her seat, humming. Then I get a text.

  U gonna teach me 2 read better?

  It takes me a minute to decide to delete the message. Afterward, I go back to work.

  Teachers here depend on me. I cannot be distracted by every single little thing. Autumn Knight should know that.

  I quit the library ’cause. I just quit, that’s all.

  Loving him is in me forever and always, like the blood in my veins. It’s just that I’m all mixed up. Baffled. Stuck in places nobody can see. It ain’t just wrestling that got me this way. I’m stuck in love with Adonis, who don’t care ’bout me not one bit — even me reading better.

  I’m stuck back on a sixth-grade reading level, while everybody else is moving ahead fast as Harry Potter on that train.

  “Keep this up,” Mom said this morning, playing back messages from my teachers, “and you won’t never graduate.”

  Six weeks done passed. How many times I been to vice principal’s office?

  People see me at school
laughing on the phone. Inside I am on the mat. Squashed. Not able to get up. Teachers, what do they know? Opponents ain’t all in the circle or sitting next to you in class. They inside you, slowing you down. Some days I think — I should drop out.

  Looking over my shoulder. Staring at Adonis. I put my head down so he don’t see me spying.

  Seeing Peaches’s father again the other day, finalized my mind. Married when you don’t want to be. Forced to stay when you wanna go. Stuck. Me making Adonis stick to me when he don’t want to. Fourteen years old used to be easy, I bet.

  “Zup, Autumn.”

  I make room for Jaxxon. “Hey.”

  “You not working?” He plucks my magazine, leaning over, laying his head on the table. He staring up, smiling. “Oh, I forgot. You got fired.”

  He works, he says. Doing a little something something for a teacher after school. But I shouldn’t ask, Jaxxon say, ’cause he not gonna tell who he is. He so stupid, I gotta laugh.

  “You dropped out?” he asking, like I’m not in school right here, pushing his arm off my shoulder. “Mr. E. got people looking for you, Autumn.”

  “What?” I was in his class yesterday. This morning … I had a headache.

  Jaxxon got his hands on my wrist. “He told us … bring her in … anyway … anyhow.”

  Laughing, pulling my hand loose from his, I ask if he crazy.

  Adonis pass by. Jaxxon following him with his eyes. “That dude don’t never have any fun.” He bending back the ends of my magazine. Sitting quiet, sitting close, he asking me to the movies.

  I’m laughing, ’cause I don’t like him like that. Me and him too much alike. He say, “Peaches and you. Y’all both cute. Let me see your cell phone.”

  He not calling her from my phone, I say. Then right before I leave, I remember the B he got in math the other day. “How you do it? Cheat? I won’t tell…. Sometimes you just gotta do that, I guess.” I think about Peaches. We got our third-quarter midterm grades. She got a A in math so far this quarter. Maybe I really am stupid. Everybody else in that class cheating. Honest Autumn, failing every test.