“Stray,” Cinnamon said, quiet as a mouse. “Stray Foundling.”
Fremont’s head stayed frozen. “Is that another joke?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said, squeezing Cinnamon’s hand again. “Her former guardians aren’t bad folk, but they basically warehoused her. The only reason she has a name on record at all was a trip to the hospital when she was six. We’re petitioning to get it changed-”
Fremont kept staring at us, eyes hidden behind those half-moons, then she shook her head and began typing. “Is Cinnamon spelled like the spice?”
“Yes,” Cinnamon said eagerly.
“I hope you get it changed soon,” she said, smiling. “People really called you Stray?”
“Until Dakota,” Cinnamon replied, with a big toothy grin at me.
“Good for you,” Fremont said. But she didn’t look happy as she took the rest of the information we could give her. Finally she muttered, “no transcript… no transcript.”
“Is that really going to be a problem?” I asked. “Because I haven’t found one in my back pocket while you’ve been typing. I hope we haven’t all been wasting our time.”
“No, it’s just… this is a middle school. There are certain skills she’ll need coming in,” Fremont said, focusing on Cinnamon. “What books have you read recently, dear?”
“I hates reading,” Cinnamon shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I likes audiobooks.”
“You read audiobooks?” Fremont raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I dunno,” Cinnamon said sullenly. “Fuck, I didn’t knows it would be a test-”
“Cinnamon!” I said.
“We do not tolerate such language at the Clairmont Academy,” Fremont said. “And we have standards here, which you will have to meet to become a student.”
“What’s ‘standards’ means?” Cinnamon said, sharp and suddenly scared. “You don’t means cuss words. What’s ‘standards’ means?”
“Since you have no academic record, you will have to take an entrance exam.”
Entrance Exam
“But… but the letters, they swims!” Cinnamon said, eyes going wide. “How can you ask me to take a test before you teaches me to keep them still?”
Fremont’s brow furrowed when Cinnamon said the letters swam. “ Can you read?”
“Would you ask that if I was blind?” Cinnamon said. “That’s why there’s audiobooks.”
“You’re quite right, Cinnamon,” Fremont said, glancing at me. “So consider this the start of an aural test. What have you been reading? ”
“I-I-dunno,” Cinnamon said nervously.
“You don’t know because you don’t remember, or because you don’t read?”
“I do too reads,” Cinnamon said. She slipped out her iPod and began thumbing the wheel. “Magical Thinkin’,” she said. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Kafka’s Seashore-”
“You… have all those on there?” Fremont asked Cinnamon-but her eyes flicked to me, sharply. “You have all your books on there?”
“Not everything,” Cinnamon said. “Just recent stuff. It only holds thirty gigs.”
“May I see?” Fremont asked. Reluctantly, Cinnamon handed her the iPod; equally reluctantly, Fremont took it from Cinnamon’s long, clawed fingers. Once she had it, however, she clickwheeled like a natural. “ The Year of Magical Thinking? Kafka on the Shore? Really?”
“Yeah,” she said. Nervously, she grabbed an odd, numbered Rubik’s cube off the desk and began twiddling it with her bony claws. “I ran out of Mom’s books, but we knows this blind witch, and she gave me lots of books off her laptop. She says it was the ‘audible list’?”
“Witch isn’t a nice thing to call someone,” Fremont said.
“Unless it is accurate,” I replied. “Jinx-our friend-is a graphomancer.”
“Ah,” Fremont said. “How did you like Jinx’s suggestions, Cinnamon?”
“ Magical was sad, but I liked Kafka OK,” she said, scowling at the cube. “At first I was pissed ’cuz I thought it was a bio of the guy who wrote the bug book, but it reads OK.”
“Do not say ‘pissed’, say ‘upset,’” Fremont corrected. “What bug book?”
“ Meta-more-foe-sizz,” Cinnamon pronounced uncertainly, avoiding Fremont’s eyes, twisting the cube in her hands. “The guy becomes this bug and everyone freaks.”
“Mm-hm,” Fremont said, clicking through the iPod. “Who is Stephen Dedalus?”
“That writer dude?” Cinnamon said sullenly.
“That could be a lot of people,” she said. “Do you remember which book he was in?”
“Two,” Cinnamon said. “The portrait one, and the useless one.”
Fremont leaned forward, intent, scowling. “Who is Leopold Bloom?”
Cinnamon brightened. “The guy that likes the kidneys,” she said, half-glaring, half-smiling at me. “Sounded yummy, but the big square won’t get me none though.”
“I didn’t say never,” I said, surprised. “I just didn’t want, uh, kidney that night.”
“Good Lord,” Fremont said, staring at her. After a moment she seemed to notice the iPod in her hand and gave it back to Cinnamon. She seemed like she was weighing something. “Thank you, dear. Reading will clearly not be a problem. I’d still like to assess other areas, though-”
And then the glass door slid open.
“Doctor Yonas Vladimir,” a man said, smiling warmly as he limped inside. “So, you must be Cinnamon. The girl without a past.”
I smiled. I bet everyone tended to overlook the rumpled, chalkstained pants and the oversized Mr. Rogers sweater. I bet everyone ignored his bald dome and the clownish spray of brown curls beneath it. You just saw those eyes, sparkling behind his round glasses, and that smile, peering out from his trim goatee, and knew: this man was intelligent, and alive.
“I gots a past,” Cinnamon said, still fidgeting with the Rubik’s Cube, but smiling now. His grin was infectious-you couldn’t help it. “I just don’t gots an education.”
“Yonas,” Fremont said, half standing. “I’m so glad you could make it. Dakota Frost, Doctor Vladimir is head of the mathematics department.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Frost,” he said, extending his hand.
“Please call me Dakota,” I said, standing. He was my height, or a shade less-not as big as he looked, or perhaps that was the stoop. But what a smile he had.
“Of course,” he said. “Dakota… that’s quite an unusual first name.”
“Funny,” I said. “I was just thinking Vladimir’s an unusual last name.”
“I’m guessing my grandfather ran into a little confusion at Ellis Island,” Vladimir said, the warm smile sparkling into a deprecating grin. “It hasn’t been a common Russian surname for a thousand years. So, Katie, what did you need me for?”
Fremont smiled. “I hoped you could proctor young Miss Frost’s exam while I gave her mother a tour of the school. She’s got a reading disability, so it may need to be oral-”
That was great news, but Cinnamon wasn’t listening. It looked like she was stifling a sneeze-or a curse. Then her eyes seemed to widen, and she stood. Decisively.
“This is stupid,” she said. “A waste of time. Fuck! I can’t read for shit-”
“Cinnamon!” I said, as Fremont flinched and Vladimir just… chuckled?
“What? You cusses, in front of God, the police, everybody,” Cinnamon said.
“Cinnamon-” I warned.
“I can’t read enough to take a test,” she said, tossing the Rubik’s Cube, tail flailing about as she stalked back and forth in the room like a caged animal. “She just wants to get rid of me. You wants to get rid of me. You all wants to get rid of me. We should go. We gots to go-”
“Cinnamon Frost,” I said quietly, folding my arms. “ Sit. Down. ”
Cinnamon sat in the chair abruptly, eyes wide. It surprised Fremont, even Vladimir-but not me. She just sat there, hands clenched on her skirt, watching me out of the corner of her eye, frozen-except for her rapidly switching tail.
“What was our agreement when we started school shopping?” I said.
