Fish in a Tree (12 page)

P
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Working with Mr. Daniels gets easier because I am
happy. But the work is really hard for me.

He has written
cat
on the board and we talk about the sounds. I can only hear one sound—cat—but he says that the word
cat
has three separate sounds. It feels like he’s telling me the sky is yellow. As I say each of the sounds, he has me tap them out on my fingers. It does seem to help. It forces me to make them separately even though they are all one word. But it’s a tiny word, and I worry what I’ll do about whole books. Will I ever be able to do this?

When we are all done for the day, he leans back in his chair like Travis would. “So, you are doing great, Ally. You really are. How are you feeling about all of this?”

“I’m actually happy to do this extra work, and I never thought I’d ever say something like
that.
”

He smiles. “Good. I’m glad.”

“But . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I guess I still wonder if I’ll ever feel . . . if I’ll ever be able to read the same as other kids and be . . .
normal
 . . . and not to have to have all this extra help. It seems impossible.”

He becomes serious. Then he takes out a piece of plain paper and pulls the cap off of a marker with his teeth. He begins to write.

I M P O S S I B L E

“Do you know what that says? Remember to break it into chunks. This is a long one, though, isn’t it?”

I nod, trying to sound it out. “
Important
?”

“No, but that’s a good try. It says
impossible.
Like you just said. You told me you think it seems impossible to read as well as everyone else.”

“Yeah,” I say, wondering why he had to write it down for me. It’s not like I need a reminder.

Then he draws a red line between the
M
and the
P
and hands it to me.

I M
/
P O S S I B L E

“I want you to rip the paper in two pieces. Right where that line is.”

I do.

“So, now, Ally . . . that big piece of paper in your hand says
possible.
There is no
impossible
anymore, okay?”

I swallow and look down at it and I feel a little dizzy. The way he says it makes me feel like it could actually be true.

“Now, throw that little piece with the ‘I-M’ on it in the trash. It’s gone forever.”

I walk over to the garbage and drop it in. Watch it twist and spin as it falls. I look up and lock eyes with him and wish I had the words to tell him how grateful I am for his helping me. In this world of words, sometimes they just can’t say everything.

“All right, then.” He nods. “You head home. I have some homework to do or I’ll lose my recess.”

“Okay.” I laugh, but I’m still thinking of the word on the paper. “Thanks,” I say, looking down at it.

“My pleasure,” he replies, and takes a folder out of his briefcase.

I stare at that word, “P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E,” all the way down the hallway. I study the red color. I draw my fingers over the letters. I even smell the paper so I can take it in somehow.

I really want to believe.

B
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Keisha, Albert, and I walk to Albert’s after school.
Keisha and I asked if we could come over and see his house and he shrugged and said, “Okay.”

The whole time, my hand is in my pocket, holding on to that piece of paper.
Possible.

Albert’s house is big but dark and dusty when we enter. There are piles of things everywhere. Not papers like our house. I mean piles of things with tubes and wires. Things I don’t recognize.

His mom greets us. “Hey, Albert! You have guests?” Her tone tells me that this never happens.

“Yes, I do. These are my friends, Keisha Almond and Ally Nickerson. Ally and Keisha, this is my mother, Audrey Dubois,” he says, waving at each of us, and she comes over and shakes our hands.

“Can I get you anything to eat?” she asks, sounding nervous.

Albert pauses. “No, thank you. We’ll just go upstairs.”

His mom says okay as we are already following him up a skinny, twisty staircase.

“What kind of host,” Keisha begins, “doesn’t allow his guests to have food? Dang it, Albert! I wouldn’t have minded some!”

“It wouldn’t be logical to offer you something that doesn’t exist.”

“But she offered it to us,” Keisha says.

He opens his backpack and begins stacking his books on his desk like a pyramid. “I can assure you that the refrigerator is quite empty. In fact, it hasn’t been plugged in for a week.”

“Oh,” Keisha says, her voice getting quiet. “I’m sorry, Albert. I really am.”

Now I know why his mom’s voice sounded funny when she offered, and why he eats so much at school. “Yeah, me too,” I add.

He turns, surprised. “Why?”

Keisha scrunches up her face—the look she gets when she really can’t figure him out.

“Well,” I say, “because you don’t have food. Or a refrigerator. It must be terrible to be hungry and not be able to eat. And it’s probably embarrassing for you. Maybe. I mean, I think it would be. I guess.”

He tilts his head. “Filling the refrigerator does not fall within the parameters of my responsibilities. Therefore, the lack of food therein would have no reflection upon me whatsoever.”

We are silenced. I don’t know about Keisha, but I couldn’t answer that for a million dollars. From the looks of her, I don’t think she can, either.

I finally lift my gaze from his face to look around his room. Just a bed, a desk, and an empty trash can. The carpet and his blankets are all dark green. But his walls have colorful posters, all science-related. There is one I like the most. A picture of outer space, but with every color you can think of all swirled together with an orange glow off to the side. It’s beautiful. I point at it. “Albert, what is
that
?”

“
That
is the birth of a star. The single most important thing that can happen in space. Well, the single most
positive
thing, anyway.”

“It’s beautiful!” I say.

He stares at it. “Indeed, it is,” he says, sitting down at his desk.

Keisha laughs. “You’re going to be a star one day, Albert. You’ll do something amazing.”

“I don’t like . . .” He shifts in his seat. “I don’t wish to be in the limelight.”

“Limelight?” I ask.

“I don’t like a lot of attention.”

“Well, you better get used to it, Albert,” Keisha says. “Because there is no way on God’s green earth that you won’t have boatloads of it when you go out and cure cancer or discover another planet or something.”

“That’s my hope. I want to change the world. Do something good.”

And then, all of a sudden, I feel sad as Keisha goes on about how famous Albert will be. How he’ll be written about in history books and stuff.

“Hey,” Keisha says, poking me. “Why so serious over there?”

I’m thinking about the things Albert and Keisha will do and how I can’t even read. I can’t tell them that, though. So I try to sound happier. “I’m not that serious.”

“Oh, yes, you are!
Dead
serious. You need to smile!”

“I
am
smiling,” I say.

“Well, someone better tell your face about it.”

I hesitate. “Can I tell you both a secret?” I ask, reaching into my pocket to touch my
possible
paper that I’ve carried since I got it.

“Yeah, of course.”

“And you won’t tell anyone?”

“Yes. Now, what’s the secret we won’t tell anyone because that’s what the definition of
secret
is?”

Albert is quiet, but his head is tilted to the side.

“I . . . I have never really told anyone this, but . . . I have a lot of trouble in school. With reading and writing and . . . well, everything but math and art.”

Keisha laughs. “That is
not
a secret!”

And then I feel terrible. And I feel my eyes beginning to sting. I start walking away, but she pulls my sleeve and pulls me back. Albert looks upset.

“No! That’s
not
what I mean. I mean that we
know
that. But it doesn’t
matter
to us.”

“However,” Albert says, “I do wish it was easier for you. We will not share your secret.”

“Mr. Daniels says I have something called dyslexia, which makes it hard to read letters. That’s why I’ve been staying after school, so he can help me.”

Keisha is wide-eyed. “Extra school after school? That’s terrible. I mean, terrible.”

I want to tell her I’d spend the night at school hanging upside down in the closet if I could just
read.
“I don’t mind. He’s nice to help me.”

“And we’ll help you,” Albert says.

“But I worry that maybe he can’t help me,” I say. And then I mumble, “It . . . it makes me feel like I’ll grow up to be a nobody.”

“How can you
say
that?” Keisha asks.

“Well, you’ll probably have some big successful baking company and Albert will . . . do whatever in the world Albert will do. And I’m just hoping to read a menu in a restaurant.”

Keisha steps up and puts her arm around my shoulders. “You say he’s going to help you, right?”

“You say”—Albert adds and then pauses to think—“that you’ll grow up to be nobody. But logically . . . if
nobody
’s perfect . . . well then, you must be perfect.”

“Perfect? Me? Uh . . . no,” I say.

“You are pretty perfect, Ally,” Keisha says, laughing. “Do like Mr. Daniels says. Be yourself. Be who you are.”

“You know,” Albert says, “I’ve wondered about that saying. And I can’t ever find an answer anywhere on the Internet.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“‘Be yourself.’ You always hear that.”

“So?” Keisha asks.

“Well,” Albert begins, “what if you don’t know who you are?”

I get what he means, I think.

“People ask what you want to be when you grow up. I know what kind of grown-up I want to be. But I don’t know who I am now.” Albert stretches his legs out. “There are always people ready to tell you who you are, like a nerd or a jerk or a wimp.”

I think how it’s hard not to believe the bad stuff.

“Look at it this way,” Albert says. “If you had to be in a tank of water with a killer whale or a stonefish, which would you choose?”

“Well, duh. Who is going to choose a killer whale?”

“Well, in the wild, killer whales never attack people. Like never. A stonefish is way more dangerous with its thirteen venomous spines. It’s the words. If the killer whale were called the friendly whale, no one would be scared.”

And I think of words. The power they have. How they can be waved around like a wand—sometimes for good, like how Mr. Daniels uses them. How he makes kids like me and Oliver feel better about ourselves. And how words can also be used for bad. To hurt.

My grandpa used to say to be careful with eggs and words, because neither can ever be fixed. The older I get, the more I realize how smart my grandpa was.

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We have a sub. This is bad news.

Then it gets even worse. We begin with an assignment to write about a person that we know who is brave.

I start to come up with reasons to get out of the assignment. Go to the nurse? I haven’t yet met a sub who says no to a trip to the nurse when you tell them you’re going to throw up on their shoes.

I put on my “sick look.” Just as I’m about to raise my hand, the sub turns to the class. “Where is Ally Nickerson?”

Huh?
Freaky.

I raise my hand.

“Oh, I have a note here that says that you don’t have to write, so you can just draw a picture of
your
person.”

My face gets hot.

“Well, that figures,” Shay says. “She can practice her coloring. And then there will be Play-Doh and nap time.”

My toes curl in my sneakers and I slide down into my chair. The sub looks at Shay and shakes her head, but kids are already laughing, so what’s the difference?

The sub gives everyone else a piece of lined paper and she gives me a plain one.

I sit, stunned. Wondering why Mr. Daniels would do this—betray me. Now I feel like I really am going to throw up.

I stand and have to concentrate on walking to move toward the door.

“Where are you going?” the sub asks.

“Out.”

“You come back here and do your picture.
Now.
I mean it.”

“I’m finished.”

“What are you talking about? It’s blank.”

“No, it’s not blank. I drew a ghost in a blizzard.”

As the door slams behind me, I hear kids laughing at my answer.

• • •

Soon I am keeping Mrs. Silver’s chair warm.

“So, Miss Nickerson. I must admit that I have enjoyed not seeing you lately. Things seem to be better with Mr. Daniels as your teacher. He’s keeping you in line?”

“Yeah. He’s a
peach,
” I say with cut in my voice. “Are you going to call my mom?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I want you to call her. Please call her.”

“Why?”

“Please?” I ask. I don’t even know why I’m asking exactly.

She looks surprised but is silent. She dials the phone and talks for a bit. Tells her that I’ve had a tough day. Then she hands the phone to me. “She would like to speak with you.”

I take the phone from her.

“
Ally.
What in the world is going on?”

I try not to cry, I really do, but the tears leak from my eyes. Everything is so tight inside and I’m so tired of it being this way. It’s not like I wake up every day planning to be a failure. And I thought I had finally found someone to help me. And then Mr. Daniels pulls this . . .

“Ally? Did you hear me?”

“Mom?” is all I can get out, but it’s squeaky and filled with longing to pull her through the phone wires to sit with me.

I hear it in her voice. She feels as upset as I do. “Put Mrs. Silver back on the phone.”

Mrs. Silver listens for a bit and finally says, “Oh. Okay, Mrs. Nickerson. We’ll be in touch, then.”

I head to the bathroom and sit in a stall long enough for the evidence of crying to go away.

When I get back to class, I ask Keisha to help me write a note so I’m sure it’s all correct. I leave it on Mr. Daniels’s desk: “I’m never reading after school or playing chess with you ever again. Not ever.”

• • •

That afternoon, I drop onto my usual spot at Petersen’s. I wonder what my mom will say about the call from school.

When she comes over, she kisses the top of my head. Which says it all.

“So, a ghost in a blizzard, huh?” She smiles at me.

I half smile. “Yeah.”

“Pretty funny, I think.” She leans over and puts her hand on my cheek, and it’s everything I can do not to cry right there in front of everyone.

“I trusted him,” I tell her. “He was the first teacher who . . .” And I stop because I can’t say the words.

“You know, honey, I bet there’s an explanation for this. I bet Mr. Daniels didn’t mean for this to happen. Give him a chance, okay?”

I nod. I hope she’s right, because I want to think that Mr. Daniels doing something mean to anyone is like a fish swimming upside down and backward.