Things Seen from Above Read online

  As I passed the fourth-grade classrooms, I noticed that someone (probably Joey’s teacher) had printed out the picture of his star. It was taped on the door of his classroom with the words: Check out our amazing classroom star! written above it.

  I couldn’t help smiling. Almost overnight, Joey had gone from an outcast in the hallway to a classroom star. Maybe there was some justice in the world after all.

  Below the surface, I felt a little uneasy, though. I couldn’t help worrying: What would Joey do on the playground today? What would the other kids do? Would Joey make another star? Or something else?

  It was a Spirit Day, so I thought there was a small possibility he might think of trying another tiger. Imagine how impressed everyone would be with that, right?

  But I knew it was also possible he would do one of his spirals of sadness instead, and nobody would understand what it meant or how serious it was.

  Right before the lunch periods started, the loudspeaker crackled. “Happy Spirit Day, Marshallville Elementary!” Ms. Getzhammer began. “With all the rain we’ve had, I’ve decided the sports fields are too wet for the teams to use, so everyone will be restricted to the playground area for today’s recess,” she said. “Behave appropriately.”

  A loud chorus of groans echoed through the school.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by the news or not. Ms. Getzhammer’s decision meant Joey probably wouldn’t have enough space to work on anything because the playground would be full of kids. But it also meant the entire fourth grade would literally be watching every move he made.

  I got outside early to keep an eye on everything. Veena arrived a few minutes later. I think she still felt guilty about revealing Joey’s secret, even though his star had been a big hit.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she kept repeating.

  I kept saying, “It’s fine. Seriously, it’s fine. Joey loved the attention.”

  (Kind of a lie since he’d been upset at first. But Veena didn’t need to know that.)

  Surprisingly, nobody seemed to notice Joey when he wandered outside at the beginning of recess. No heads turned. Nobody spoke to him. Everybody kept hanging out in their own little groups. A bunch of boys kicked a soccer ball back and forth between the swings, making up their own game. Another group bounced a tennis ball off the outside wall of the gym.

  Keeping his eyes focused on the ground, Joey didn’t seem to notice (or care) that his space was more crowded than usual. Without looking up, he wove around the various groups like a psychic fish moving through a pond.

  I heard a couple of kids point out his clothes. His Crocs. The SpongeBob T-shirt under his coat. The short sweat pants with elastic cuffs that bunched above his ankles.

  “What’s up with your pants, dude?” someone shouted. A few kids behind me snickered.

  I turned around to give them a long stare, and they shut up.

  Ignoring Veena and me, Joey ambled right past the Buddy Bench. He stopped near the jungle gym in the corner of the playground and studied the compass around his neck for a few seconds. I could hear the whispers circulating among the groups: “What’s that gold thing?” “Is he going to make something or not?” “What do you think he’ll make?” “Has he started yet?” “What do you think he’s doing?”

  From somewhere in the middle of the playground, somebody suddenly shouted, “Hey, Joey! Make a tiger!”

  Veena’s eyes darted toward me, looking surprised. I grinned and shook my head. It was as if some random cosmic pieces just happened to come together at the right time. Spirit Day. Joey. Tiger.

  Slowly, the fourth graders picked up the idea and turned it into a chant.

  “Ti-ger! Ti-ger!”

  Joey’s eyes flickered once…twice…toward the crowd of kids closest to him. I could tell the noise of the chant wasn’t making him happy. Holding my breath, I waited for his body to begin its slow slide toward the ground.

  But it didn’t.

  Instead, Joey glanced at the gold disk around his neck again. Then he rummaged around in his coat pocket and eventually pulled out a red plastic soda cap, which he held up for everybody to see. The crowd of fourth graders on the playground grew quiet.

  “It’s a nose,” he announced to the group.

  “It’s a nose,” everybody repeated, echoing him perfectly.

  My scalp tingled. Was this really happening?

  After dropping the cap on the ground, Joey moved about twenty or thirty feet away from it. Kids backed up to give him enough space to work.

  “And this is a tiger,” he said, as he began to make a wavy circle—just like the larger one we’d seen from the rooftop with Mr. Ulysses.

  “And this is a tiger,” the kids repeated.

  After that, Joey never looked up again—just kept working with his lips pressed together and his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.

  The fourth graders started chanting “tiger” again, but the chant grew softer as Joey kept going. I have to give the kids credit, though: they kept it up the entire time.

  Once or twice, I glanced up to see if Mr. Ulysses was on the school roof, absorbing the great scene, but I never spotted him.

  I wish he had been there because there was one moment that felt almost perfect. The sun came out from behind the clouds and shone on the leaves of the 2003 Tree, turning them golden yellow. At the same time, everybody was chanting together, and Joey’s shuffling footsteps seemed to match the chant. In that moment, it felt as if all of us—the sporty boys, the popular girls, the bracelet makers, the Pokémon players, Mrs. Zeff, Veena, and me—were helping Joey bring the tiger to life somehow.

  Ten minutes later, it was finished.

  Joey stopped and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “Okay, I’m done,” he said loudly.

  Everyone burst into spontaneous applause.

  Veena pulled out her phone. “I want to take a picture of it so I can show my family,” she said.

  Kids took turns climbing up on the jungle gym and the slide (and anything else they could find) to get a better look at the tiger face. Joey stood off to one side, twisting and untwisting the strand of yarn that held the compass around his neck. A couple of the kids asked him to take their picture next to the tiger. He smiled nervously but said okay.

  Although the tiger was much smaller than the one we’d seen from the rooftop with Mr. Ulysses—mostly because the playground was too full of kids this time—it was still pretty impressive.

  Before recess ended, Mrs. Zeff texted Mr. Dunner about bringing the big ladder from the gym so he could take a photo from above to share with the rest of the school. (I know Mr. Ulysses could have done a much better job from the rooftop, but Mrs. Zeff didn’t ask us for our opinion.)

  Of course, the gym teacher had to make a big production out of carrying the ladder outside, setting it up, and climbing the rungs. He had all the kids chant for him. “Dunner. Dunner. Dunner.”

  When he got to the top, he gestured at Joey’s tiger and yelled, “Okay, so who did all this lousy graffiti all over the playground? They’re in real big trouble with me.”

  Joey didn’t get the joke at all. His face froze like a mask, and I was seriously worried he was going to start crying.

  But then the gym teacher pointed at Joey and said, “Hey, I’m just joking around with you, kiddo. Isn’t this an awesome display of Tiger spirit? Everybody give a big round of applause for Joey Byrd.”

  The fourth graders clapped and whistled, and Joey’s face relaxed a little.

  “Who knew we had a famous artist hiding in our school?” the gym teacher continued from his aluminum perch. “I’m gonna send this straight to Cereal News”—which is what everybody jokingly called our local television news station. Tugging a phone out of his back pocket, the gym teacher took a bunch of photos.

  And that was
the beginning of a month of surprises that no one in Marshallville, Michigan, would ever forget.

  The following week, you couldn’t go anywhere in Marshallville without hearing (or reading) about Joey Byrd. He was a major celebrity. On Tuesday, one of Mr. Dunner’s pictures appeared on the front page of the Marshallville Times with the headline: “Fourth Grader Brings Tiger Spirit to School Playground.” Parents and grandparents all over town shared it on their Facebook pages. The article got thousands of likes.

  On Wednesday, a reporter from Cereal News showed up to interview Joey during recess. Although the segment about Joey ended up being only about sixty seconds long—and most of it featured Ms. Getzhammer talking about school pride and community spirit—the story was picked up by one of the network TV stations in Detroit.

  They sent a satellite truck and a reporter to film another story about Joey. I had a dentist appointment on the day they came, which was really annoying, but Veena got to be in the background. She was part of a group of kids who pretended to be watching as Joey made a tracing for the news reporter.

  In the broadcast, the reporter started out by saying, “I’ve heard you can draw anything on the playground, Joey. Is that true?”

  Joey shrugged and didn’t look at the camera.

  “How about Michigan? Can you draw our entire state?” She held her microphone toward Joey with one hand while trying to hold down her windblown hair with the other. “That’s a tall order for a fourth grader, isn’t it?”

  Then Joey replied, “No, not really.”

  Which totally cracked me up when I watched it that night.

  A few seconds later (in TV time), the giant mitten outline of Lower Michigan had appeared, as if by magic, in the middle of the playground. The reporter stood with Joey in the spot where Marshallville was located and waved at the cameraman, who must have been on the roof of our school.

  “So that’s a bird’s-eye view of Michigan from our own Picasso of the playground, Joey Byrd!”

  After a brief hesitation, Joey waved too.

  Following the news broadcasts, things began to change even more for Joey. And for us.

  In the hallways, Joey still stopped traffic—but in a good way. Younger kids wanted to wave at him. Boys in the older grades greeted him with high fives and “Hey, dude” when they saw him. Kindergarten kids pointed out his classroom on their way to specials and whispered reverently, “That’s Joey’s room. He does big art.” Some teachers started affectionately calling him Picasso.

  As each day passed, I swear Joey looked happier and more permanent. It was almost as if his outlines were getting bolder and more filled in. His clothes fit better. His hair was combed. His fists unclenched. He stood up taller, straighter.

  My Advice Box got a lot more popular too.

  I started getting all kinds of questions about Joey, like how to get his autograph and suggestions for what he should draw next. Some kids sent me their own drawings with notes like: “Do you think I can be a famous artist?”

  After I wrote about Joey’s spiral of sadness for my October advice column, I got a ton of spiral drawings with more serious questions, such as: “I’m a lot like Joey—how do I make friends?” “What should I do about bullies?” “How can I stop being lonely?”

  I had no idea how to choose which ones to answer in the newspaper, so I ended up writing individual notes back to a lot of kids with my advice—decorated with sparkly stickers. Sometimes Veena would help me out.

  I’ll admit that it was a lot of pressure to write replies to every question I got, but I think it helped some kids feel like someone was listening to them, at least. And—let’s put it this way—it felt a lot better than just focusing on grades,which used to be the only thing I cared about in school. It also meant that I got a few Bs and one C on an assignment that I completely forgot about because I was so focused on everything else.

  Joey’s popularity also seemed to pull other forgotten kids out of the shadows. It was as if he shone a bright light on anyone who was hiding in a corner or standing against a wall alone. The outcasts started getting noticed. The excluded were included.

  Veena and I witnessed this firsthand.

  One recess, a couple of the sporty kids walked over to the boys in the Pokémon group and invited them to play soccer. We were shocked to see the boys leave their precious boxes of cards behind as they galloped eagerly toward the fields with their new friends.

  Another day, the bracelet-making girls added someone new to their group—a shy, stringy-haired girl named Margaret who usually sat by herself on the swings with a stuffed unicorn. At some point, the unicorn got its own beaded necklace.

  In sixth grade, Wally Rensbacher suddenly became a topic of conversation.

  I overheard a couple of boys asking him questions about Asperger’s syndrome. They wanted to know what it was and how it felt to have it. A petition for hosting a special contest for Wally was circulated around the sixth grade. It would be a Presidential Quiz Competition, so Wally could test his skills against other schools and find more kids who liked presidents as much as he did.

  What made me really happy was the fact that the petition wasn’t even my idea. A group of boys and Wally started it. Our social studies teacher agreed to be the competition’s advisor.

  In the meantime, Joey’s designs kept getting better and better. Every recess, he seemed to come up with something more spectacular than the day before. There was no way of guessing what might appear next in the wood chips.

  A superhero could emerge. Or a dragon spouting fire. Or Ms. Getzhammer’s cat—yes, she actually asked him to draw her cat. Or a college basketball or football logo. (Sports seemed to be a frequent theme, and I had a feeling the boys in Joey’s class had something to do with that.)

  Another recess, Veena showed Joey some of the geometric art made with colored powder in India. They are called rangoli designs and they are created on the floor outside a doorway or hall for special occasions. “Maybe you could try something like this someday,” she told him.

  A few days later, he made one that looked like a giant sunburst for her. I honestly thought Veena was going to cry when she saw it.

  My all-time favorite Joey creation was Yoda with the Tree Ear. One afternoon at recess, Joey did a huge outline of Yoda from Star Wars—only he drew it with the 2003 Tree growing out of Yoda’s left ear. It was a huge hit. I don’t know where Joey got the idea, but the 2003 Tree became known as the Yoda Tree from that day on.

  Drawing Yoda with a tree in his ear was Joey’s idea. His teacher was reading a book called The Strange Case of Origami Yoda to his class. It was a very funny story, and Joey really liked it. It was the first book he’d ever liked—partly because it made him laugh and partly because he didn’t have to read it himself.

  In science, they were learning about trees.

  Somehow, the two ideas came together in his brain.

  Trees. Funny Yoda.

  Luckily, there was a tree on Marshallville’s playground already.

  All he had to do was draw Yoda around it.

  Joey wasn’t the only source of surprise and wonder. During the second week of October, two more things occurred that were both surprising and unexpected.

  The first one happened to me.

  Someone put a note in my Advice Box sometime between Tuesday and Thursday morning when I checked the box. The note was written in blue ink on notebook paper—and I thought the handwriting kind of looked like a boy’s writing because of the small, squarish printing.

  It said: Dear April, I am a sixth grader who admires you greatly, and I hope that one day we can be friends. Sincerely yours, Anonamous

  Although Anonymous was spelled wrong, I was convinced the letter wasn’t a joke. The handwriting looked too neat. And nobody would write something as polite and formal as I’m a sixth grader who admires you greatly if they were j
oking.

  But who had written it?

  (Okay, I will admit that part of me hoped it was Tanner Torchman—although I knew that was crazy. He had plenty of friends and a girlfriend.)

  So, who had left it? I wondered if it could have come from someone in one of my classes. Or Wally Rensbacher, perhaps?

  Then we got our next surprise: a freak snowstorm on October 10.

  Of course, nobody was prepared. We were only supposed to get a few flakes, but then a couple inches of snow fell overnight. We woke up to everything being covered in a beautiful blanket of white. A lot of kids thought it should have been a snow day, but it wasn’t.

  That morning, Ms. Getzhammer called for indoor recess because so many kids weren’t dressed for the weather. “Tell your parents to dig out those gloves and hats and coats for you,” she said during morning announcements. “Tomorrow I’ll be sending everyone outdoors, no matter what. No excuses. Be prepared.”

  Sometime during lunch or indoor recess, Joey managed to slip outside without being noticed. I have a sneaking suspicion Mr. Ulysses may have helped him. I saw the janitor carrying around his Polaroid camera and—oddly—a pair of kid-sized snow boots.

  Word spread quickly after lunch.

  Three giant snowflakes had appeared in the snow on our playground.

  Joey had never made his tracings in the playground snow before. Usually he didn’t get outside until after the snow was already trampled.

  Now it stretched in front of him like a smooth sheet of white frosting.

  It was Mr. Ulysses’s idea to make the snowflakes and surprise everyone. Joey wasn’t sure he liked working in the snow. Everything on the playground seemed different than what he was used to. The Buddy Bench had turned from blue to white. The tree looked as if it was covered in wet cotton balls. The boots that Mr. Ulysses had found for him felt weird. They were too big. But the janitor told Joey that he couldn’t wear his Crocs. It was too cold.