Chapter 4
A SOCIAL WARTHOG
Skylar sat down, then stood up to check the tuck on her shirt. Still good. She sat again, stacked the papers on her desk more neatly, then opened her lesson planner and read over it. Yes. Fine. She got up and straightened some chairs, then came back and sat down again.
Maybe she should go to the toilets and put on more makeup, since she actually had a working mascara now.
No. Get a grip. She’d already fussed too much with her clothes today. For one thing, she’d considered wearing her just-above-the-knee yellow dress, which made no sense at all. A Year One teacher was on the floor much too often to wear any dress remotely like that.
By the time she’d finished choosing an outfit, she’d had a pile of clothes on her bed that would have done justice to a seventeen-year-old with a date for the school dance.
She’d finally settled on skinny navy trousers, a white shell, a tailored pale-purple jacket, and her prettiest pointed-toe flats.
To meet with a parent. A parent who wasn’t even going to like her!
She’d been like this ever since Zane had emailed, last Wednesday night, Can I get a meeting next Monday with you and Georgia? She’s got some worries. We can be there by 4:30. Too late, or OK?
Of course it was too late. She should have told him so. She hated to turn down a parent’s request to meet, that was all.
No, it wasn’t all. The thing at the bar had been embarrassing.
And the fact that he hadn’t known it was her?
Well, he’d known it was her. She hadn’t used a fake name.
But he hadn’t known she was Georgia’s teacher, which she should have told him first thing, instead of whatever it was she’d done.
Teasing? Flirting? Her face burned even to remember it.
She had to meet with him and set the record straight, or the dread would only increase. And when she did …
Pity it was so many hours since she’d fixed her hair.
She was up again, sharpening pencils, when she heard the voice behind her. “Ms. Fairburn?”
She jumped a mile and uttered a sound. She was afraid it was a squeak. “Yes,” she said, turning to face him while trying to pretend that the squeak had come from somewhere else. Like the rats. “Hello. Hi, Georgia. Come and have a seat.”
She smiled. Cheerily. She hoped.
Zane wasn’t generally lost for words. Now, he stood, his hand on Georgia’s shoulder, and thought, Fuck my life. And since those weren’t words he could say, he was, yes, lost for words.
He said, “Cheers,” and sat across from her—from Sky? Was that her actual name? Should he be narky about that? He’d used a fake name, after all. But then he remembered what she’d said about his wife and was narky again.
On the other hand, she looked prettier than ever with those red-gold corkscrews of hair bouncing on her shoulders.
Also, he’d only seen her sitting down before, and standing up …
The woman had a shape. And she still had that voice.
That voice kept sounding like an invitation.
Or possibly a check he was never going to cash. Which was it?
“Well done on Saturday,” she said, sounding perfectly poised, while he was seriously off-balance. But then, she’d known who he was. “Of course, you’re probably tired of hearing that, and that’s not why you’re here, so shall we start with you, Georgia? Why did you and your dad come to see me today?”
Georgia looked up at her, then down at her hands, twisted in her lap, then up at Zane. He said, “Go on and explain. I’m right here with you.”
Georgia said, “That I can’t read.” Looking down again.
Ms. Fairburn—was her name Sky?—said, her voice gentle, “Is it that you can’t quite read yet, and that makes you feel like you’ll never be able to?”
Georgia nodded, still looking down. “And maybe I shouldn’t …” She trailed off.
“You can say,” Zane said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be in Year One,” Georgia said. “Maybe I’m too thick for school.” She gulped.
“Here’s a secret I know,” Ms. Fairburn said. “But you’ll have to look at me so I can whisper it.”
Georgia looked up.
“Everybody learns to read at different times,” the teacher said, not whispering at all, but leaning forward in a confidential way.
“Brains don’t all work exactly the same.
You know that already, don’t you? There’s doing puzzles, and remembering facts and making jokes, and reading, and understanding numbers, and being able to ride a bike and pump your legs on the swings …
so many things our brains can do. Who would think that that funny wrinkly pink thing inside your head could learn so many things so fast, when five years ago, you couldn’t even hold your own head up, and you didn’t know how to say a single word?
You were like a baby bird, and look at you now.
Remember the baby birds in the video we watched? ”
“Yes,” Georgia said. “They were all bare and wrinkly and floppy, because they are …” She frowned hard, concentrating. “Al-trish-all.”
The teacher clapped her hands once and smiled, and Georgia smiled back.
Not much, but she did. “There,” Ms. Fairburn said.
“Altricial is exactly right. There’s one way your brain works very well.
Remember how you got a sticker during that lesson for paying such good attention?
You remember facts and words, don’t you? ”
Zane said, “I didn’t know that word, so there you are.”
Georgia said, twisting to look up at him, “Heaps of birds and all of people are born altricial, Daddy. Kangaroos, too. When they’re first born, they’re very tiny and pink. They don’t even have eyes yet, and they have to grow forever and ever in their mother’s pouch. But some animals are pre- pre-”
“Precocial,” the teacher said.
“Yes,” Georgia said. “They can walk straight away. Like a baby horse or a baby elephant, so they can run away from a lion or a wolf, but not a kitten, because its eyes aren’t even open yet.
And baby chicks and ducklings can walk straight away, and they have feathers, so they’re pre— precocial, too.
Because they live on the ground or swim in the water instead of being safe high up in a nest, so they have to be able to run. And swim.”
“Hmm,” Zane said. “Seems to me that anybody who remembers all that can’t be too thick.”
“But I still want to read,” Georgia said. “I know all the letters, so why can’t I read?”
“You know the sounds the letters make, too, don’t you?” the teacher asked.
“Yes,” Georgia said. “When they’re big. But when they’re little, like in a book, they just look squiggly, and I can’t tell.”
“Hmm.” Ms. Fairburn sat back. “Why don’t you go sit in your own seat for a minute? I’m going to try something. An experiment.”
Georgia brightened. “Like seeing which things sink and float?”
“A bit like that. Go sit there, will you?”
Georgia did. Zane assumed the teacher wanted to say something to him—probably that he should’ve encouraged Georgia more, or worked with her more at home—but she didn’t even look at him. She got up and walked to the blackboard, where she held up three fingers. “How many fingers do you see, Georgia?”
“I don’t see any fingers,” Georgia said. “Just your arm.”
“Good,” Ms. Fairburn said. “Come back here again now.” As Georgia obeyed, she went to a cupboard and took out a wooden alphabet puzzle, then grabbed a book from a shelf and came back to the desk, where she put the puzzle in front of Georgia and said, “Show me the A.”
Georgia looked offended and pointed. “And the R?” Another pointed finger.
“And the Zed?” When Georgia found it, the teacher opened the book—it was one of those simple ones, with a couple of large-print sentences on each page—held it up from the other side of the desk, and said, “Show me all the Ns here.”
Georgia said, “I can’t tell.” Looking anxious again.
The teacher handed the book to her. “Now can you tell?”
Georgia held the book close, squinted, and said slowly, “Here’s one, and here. And this one is a capital N, I think, because it’s pointy in heaps of places. But it could be an M instead.”
“Excellent.” Ms. Fairburn took the book back, closed it, and perched on the edge of her desk, her curls bouncing and her curves … curving. “You know what I think?”
“What?” Georgia asked.
“I think you need to go see the eye doctor. I think that you can’t see the words in the books well enough to read them. It’s not your brain at all. It’s your eyes.”
“Wait,” Zane said. “How? She went for her check when she was four, and they said she was fine.”
Ms. Fairburn—Sky—said, “Vision often deteriorates slowly enough that a child isn’t even aware that she used to see better than she does now.
She literally doesn’t know what she’s missing.
When you get some specs, Georgia, the world is going to look so different.
You’ll be like a kitten whose eyes have just opened yourself.
And I’m guessing you’ll be reading soon, too.
Even if it takes a good wee while, though, I’m not worried.
I know you’ll get there. Does that help? ”
“Yes,” Georgia said.
“Say ‘Thank you,’” Zane said.
“Thank you,” Georgia repeated dutifully.
“You’re very welcome,” the teacher said. “Now, how about playing in the bricks corner for a minute while I talk to your dad?”
“OK,” Georgia said. “But can I watch the rats instead, please?”
“You certainly may. They’ll be happy to see you.
I’m sure they remember how well you cared for them.
Rats are very clever, you know. They can recognize human faces and rat faces.
More clever than we are, maybe, because I certainly can’t recognize rat faces.
” Georgia giggled, and Sky smiled. “There’s another fact for you to remember, and once you can read, you can learn all about them for yourself. ”
Zane said, once Georgia had skipped off to the corner of the room, “That’s brilliant, Ms., uh, Fairburn. I had no idea.”