It was just like what had happened the last time he’d been skipped.
He’d stayed outside until the last possible second, and when he finally slipped through the door, hoping to sink unnoticed into a seat in the last row, Mrs. Schulze had spotted him and given him a too-bright smile.
“Well, here’s our little genius now,” she’d said. Josh cringed at the word, wishing he could disappear through a hole in the floor, but his wish came no closer to coming true than any of the other wishes he’d fervently sent out over the years to whatever powers might be looking after him.
If there were any powers looking after him, which he’d decided he doubted, despite what they told him in Sunday School every week.
He’d stared straight ahead as the rest of the kids, all two years older than himself, had turned to gaze at him. He hadn’t had to look at them to know the expressions on their faces.
They didn’t want him there.
They didn’t want him getting perfect scores on all the tests, while they could barely answer the questions.
It hadn’t been so bad until two years ago, the first time he’d been skipped a grade.
Back then — and it seemed like an eternity to Josh — the rest of the kids were his own age, and he’d known them all his life. He’d even had a best friend back then — Jerry Peterson. And no one seemed to care that Josh always got the best grades in the class. “Someone’s gotta be a brain,” Jerry had told him more than once. “At least it’s better that you’re it, instead of some dumb girl.”
Even then, when he was only eight, Josh had known better than to point out that if the smartest kid in the class had been a girl, she certainly wouldn’t have been dumb.
And then he’d gotten skipped the first time. By the middle of the next year Jerry had a new best friend.
Josh didn’t.
Nor had he found one, because when you’re nine, a year makes a big difference. All the boys in his new class already had plenty of people to pal around with. And they sure didn’t want a “baby” hanging around.
For a while he’d hoped that maybe someone new would come to school, but that didn’t happen either — people didn’t come to Eden; they went away from it.
Now he’d been skipped again, and the kids in his class were two years older than he, and the boys were a lot bigger.
Now, as his teacher’s voice penetrated his reverie, he could feel them watching him, feel their smoldering anger.
And hear their snickers as they realized he hadn’t been paying attention to the teacher.
His mind sped, instantly replaying Mrs. Schulze’s all-but-unheard question. “Come now, Josh,” she’d said. “Surely you remember the date of the attack on Fort Sumter?”
“April twelfth, 1861,” Josh blurted out. “Two days later, the garrison at the fort surrendered, and the Civil War began.”
The snickering died away, but Josh felt angry eyes fixing on him from all over the classroom.
What was so wrong with being smart? It wasn’t his fault he remembered everything he read, and could do algebra in his head. And it wasn’t as if anybody else had been able to answer the question. He hadn’t been waving his hand in the air like some kind of kiss-up! Besides, he’d spent most of the summer reading books about American history, and the questions the other kids hadn’t been able to answer at all had seemed pretty easy to him.
So it was going to be another endless year of being bored in class and lonely outside of class.
When the noon bell finally rang, Josh busied himself with his book bag until all the rest of the kids were gone, then slid out of his seat and started for the door. Before he could escape, the teacher’s voice stopped him.
“Josh?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. He could hear Mrs. Schulze’s heavy footsteps coming down the aisle toward him. When he felt her hand on his shoulder, he once again wished the floor would open and the earth would swallow him up.
“I just wanted to tell you how happy I am to have you in my class this year,” Rita Schulze said. “I know it’s not going to be easy for you—”
Before she could finish, Josh spun around and stared up at her, his stormy eyes brimming with tears. “No you don’t,” he said in a voice that trembled with emotion. “You don’t know if it’s going to be easy or hard. And you don’t care, either! All you care about is that I can answer the stupid questions!” His voice rose as he lost control of his tears. “And that’s what they are, too — stupid, stupid,
Five minutes later, his tears dried and his face washed, he emerged from the boys’ room and uttered a silent sigh of relief when he found the hall empty. He went to his locker, put his book bag inside and took out the brown paper bag containing his lunch. He was about to close the locker when he suddenly changed his mind and burrowed a hand into the bottom of his book bag, fishing out the copy of
Since he already knew he’d be sitting by himself in the cafeteria, he might as well try to read a few chapters.
In the cafeteria, he joined the tail end of the lunch line, silently moving forward until he was able to pick up a carton of milk, then edging toward the cash register. “Well, look who’s here,” Emily Sanchez said, smiling warmly as she rang up Josh’s purchase. “Seventh grade already. Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re headin’ for high school!”
Josh managed a slight nod of his head, and held out his hand for the change from the dollar bill he’d given Emily. As she put the coins into his hand, Emily leaned toward him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Any of them kids give you trouble, you let me know, okay? They ain’t so smart as they think they are, right?” She winked conspiratorially, but Josh didn’t see it, his flushing face already turned away as he hurried toward an empty table in the far corner.
No one spoke to him as he threaded his way between the tables, but he could feel them watching him.
He sat down with his back to the room, determined to ignore the rest of the kids, and opened his bag to pull out the peanut butter sandwich and small container of cottage cheese that invariably made up his lunch.
“I know it’s not interesting,” his mother had explained to him over and over again whenever he’d complained of the sameness of it. “But it’s good for you, and it’s all I can afford.”
And so he’d eaten it, day after day, through one school year after another. Today, though, as he contemplated the sandwich in the heat of the cafeteria, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to choke it down.
Indeed, as he took the first bite, chewed it, and attempted to swallow it, it stuck in his throat, and he was finally only able to dislodge it by taking a long swallow of the milk. Opening the book, he began reading, and soon was lost in the tale of Jean Valjean, who was just then stealing a set of silver candelabra from the kindly priest who had taken him in.
Josh turned the pages rapidly, his eyes skimming over the text, taking in every word as he felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the story. And then, with no warning at all, the book was snatched out of his hands. Startled, he looked up to see Ethan Roeder smirking at him, the book held just out of his reach.
“Watcha’, smart-boy?” Ethan’s mocking voice grated on his ears.
Josh shoved his chair back, rising to his feet. “It’s just a book. Give it back.”
“Why should I?” Ethan danced away, holding the book out of Josh’s reach. “Whatcha gonna do? Call a teacher?”
“Just give it to me,” Josh pleaded. “It’s not anything you’d like anyway!”
Ethan Roeder’s mocking sneer turned angry. “Says who? You think I’m too dumb to read it?” Keeping the book away from Josh’s frantic efforts to snatch it back, Ethan opened it.
For the first time, he realized the book wasn’t in English. “Holy shit,” he cried. “The little creep’s reading some other language.”
“It’s French, all right?” Josh wailed. “It’s what the book was written in. So give it back, okay?” He reached for the book once more, but Ethan was too quick for him.
The older boy grabbed Josh’s arm, squeezing hard, his fingers digging into the younger boy’s flesh. By now
