Chapter 15 2004
The night before I returned to Gaines, Boodo and I had a good cry, and she gave me an orange beaded amulet with a small silver capsule that contained a verse from the Quran.
“To protect you from the evil eye,” she said.
The evil eye is anything bad—misfortune, natural disaster, bad people. It was too large to wear as a bracelet, plus jewelry was not allowed at the school, so I put it in my pocket.
“I’m sorry, Cielo,” Profe said as he loaded my bag into the trunk of the Lincoln.
He had called the tune-up place, hoping to convince Mother not to send me back, but unfortunately she’d taken a bad turn and could not be reached. And without her permission, he had no choice but to return me to the school.
I decided to use my second elephant-coin wish on Mother, for her to get better so she could come home. I hoped it would work as well as the first wish had worked in returning my voice. It turned out elephant-coin wishes were very powerful.
I held tight to the amulet in my pocket my first day back and prayed its magic would protect me.
During free time, I went to the library as I always did.
It was the single place, other than my room, where I felt safe.
Mr. Jeffries, the librarian, had become my friend.
He and I talked about books, and each day, he gave me small bags of jelly beans to enjoy while I was reading.
“Afternoon, Patch,” he said brightly when I walked in.
He’d nicknamed me Patch after the mischievous, heroic puppy from 101 Dalmatians. I had the sense that he’d gotten wind of my other less fortunate name of Poopface and was trying to change that.
“Hey, Mr. J,” I said, pleased when my voice rang out strong and bright.
Only when I turned toward the tables did I realize we weren’t alone. The boy with the flat face who stole my milk and dessert each day was sitting at one of the computer bays.
I sat as far from him as possible and took out The Life of Pi but didn’t open it. I was curious why he was there. He had a notebook open and was looking back and forth between it and the computer screen. Clearly frustrated, he dropped his face to his hands and rubbed roughly at his eyes.
When he pulled his hands away, he looked again at the notebook, then hurled his pencil across the room.
I startled and looked for Mr. Jeffries, but he wasn’t around. Mr. Jeffries liked to smoke and spent most of his time sitting on the back stoop of the library, puffing away and looking at the trees.
Profe once told me, “A clever man is one who does not show his cleverness to others.” But that did not mean that a clever man, or girl, couldn’t use their cleverness to make things a bit better for themselves. The idea that had popped into my head was simple, though fraught with danger.
Heart pounding, I put my book back in my backpack, retrieved the pencil, and carried it to the boy. I held it out to him like an offering, and he squinted back so angrily I thought he might hurl me and the pencil across the room.
Up close, I could see the details of his misshapen face, his large overhung forehead, flat nose, and sunken cheeks.
The orbs of his eyes were set so deep it was as if his pale eyes were dug into the back of his head.
And though he was only two grades above me, a thin mustache of pale hair sprouted above his upper lip.
“What ya working on?” I asked innocently.
On the screen I could see the title for a book report on Treasure Island, though some of the letters were mixed up, so it read: Traesure Ilsand, by Kai Peterson.
I knew about dyslexia, though at the time I didn’t know that’s what it was called.
Farts Often suffered from it and could not read.
The way Boodo explained it was, “His eyes deceive his brain. He thinks he’s looking at things one way when they are something else entirely.
” She said a good amount of Farts Often’s anger stemmed from that.
“Treasure Island,” I said with a nod toward the screen. “I really liked that book.”
Kai’s breath huffed through his wide nose.
“Would you like some help?”
I thought he’d tell me to get lost or do something worse like snatch my backpack and steal everything inside.
He squinted distrustfully.
“As a trade,” I said. “I’ll help you with your report, and from here on out, you let me keep my milk.”
I felt that asking to keep my dessert was too much.
“I’m not stupid,” he said.
I shook my head. I didn’t think he was. I’d seen him in PE. He was the best at nearly every sport, instinctual and quick. He had what Profe called street smarts. While I, on the other hand, thanks to Profe, had a great deal of book smarts.
“How about you tell me what you want to write, and I type it? That way it will go faster.”
I was a good typer. Profe said it was more important in the modern world than handwriting, so in addition to learning proper penmanship, he’d taught me to use a keyboard.
Kai scooted over to make room, and I pulled up a chair.
“I didn’t actually read it,” he mumbled.
“Oh,” I said. “Would you like me to tell you what it’s about?”
He didn’t so much nod as incline his head in a way that told me to go ahead. I did my best to recount the story, which Profe and I had read over a year before. Luckily it had been one of my favorites, and Profe and I had discussed it at length.
I must have been doing okay because Kai listened intently. He even interrupted a few times to ask questions. He especially cared about Long John Silver.
“He has different names depending on the circumstances,” he said at one point. “Like you.”
I thought about it for a second and realized he was right. To the coaches and teachers, I was Vivien. To Bart and his friends, I was Poopface. And to Mr. Jeffries, I was Patch.
“The names help him to be part of whatever group he’s with,” he went on. “It’s part of his camouflage.”
It was very perceptive and again revealed that, while Kai struggled with words on a page, he wasn’t the least bit dumb.
When I finished summarizing the book, he said, “Good story. Lousy ending.”
I was about to agree when he said plainly, “What’s wrong with your face?”
“What do you mean? Do I have something wrong with my face?” I acted flustered and patted my face all over.
He laughed, a gruff chortle both startling and endearing at once. It made me think of Shrek when he said to Donkey, “Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers.” Kai had layers.
Together we wrote his report.
At one point, he said, “Don’t make it too good. You need to mess up a little, otherwise the teacher will get suspicious.”
So I went back through, misspelled some words, and took out most of the commas.
The next day, when I sat at the misfit table, Kai not only didn’t take my milk, he left my chocolate chip cookie as well.