Things Seen from Above Page 12

  Clenching his lips together, Joey gingerly placed his hands on the metal handlebars.

  “Go ahead—give it a try.” Mr. Ulysses smiled encouragingly. “You can do it.”

  After he pushed the machine forward and a bright line of white chalk appeared on the ground behind him, Joey’s face relaxed.

  He made a circle. Then a squiggle. Then a smile flitted across his face as he drew a big letter M for Marshallville.

  The fourth graders clapped. He gave a small bow—which was something I’d never seen him do before. Other kids lined up to try out the machine. Pretty soon, the wood chips on our part of the playground had turned totally white.

  Of course, the fourth graders couldn’t resist stamping their feet in the chalk. Somehow the powder ended up getting tossed in the air too. Clouds of chalk dust drifted around us. Kids laughed and danced in the sparkly-white air. It was one of those moments I’ll always remember from elementary school—seeing the fourth graders having so much fun dancing and spinning in the chalk-dust clouds.

  I remember hearing one of the fourth-grade girls tell Mr. Ulysses, “You know, you should invent a lot more stuff. This is so fun.”

  “You think so?” Mr. Ulysses replied, looking both surprised and proud.

  “Yeah, this is really cool.” A bunch of the kids who were standing nearby nodded. “You should definitely make more things.”

  “Maybe I will.” Mr. Ulysses gave a knowing smile. “Maybe I will.”

  As Homecoming approached, the surprises continued.

  On Wednesday, I was getting my books out of my locker during the usual chaos that happens in the morning before school starts, when a boy’s voice said, “Hey, April.”

  My heart jumped. I turned around cautiously to see who had said my name. Tanner’s friend Jacob and another boy named Noah Langley stood behind me with their backpacks slung loosely over their shoulders.

  I knew Jacob because he was in most of my classes.

  Noah was in my language arts class and homeroom, but I’d never talked to him that much. Like Jacob, he usually hung out with Tanner’s group. I’d heard some of the girls refer to him as Noah the Nose because he had a largish nose, although I didn’t think it was that noticeable. Unlike a lot of the boys in sixth grade, Noah was pretty quiet and he tended to wear hiker-type T-shirts and jeans instead of the usual Nike gear.

  “So, we were just wondering…are you going to the Homecoming game on Friday or not?” Jacob asked me loudly, while glancing sideways at Noah and smirking.

  “Why?” I replied cautiously.

  Although I was planning to help out with Joey at the pregame show, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to reveal that information to Jacob. I couldn’t tell if his question was a setup or not. Sometimes he could take jokes too far.

  Jacob smirked more. Noah seemed to be concentrating on something on his phone. “Because Noah wants to know.” He poked Noah with an elbow. “Don’t you, dude?”

  Blushing furiously, Noah looked up from his phone and glared at Jacob. “No I don’t. Just shut up, okay?” He gave Jacob a half-hearted shove.

  Grinning, Jacob shoved back. “Don’t lie, dude. Remember that letter you gave her?”

  What? My brain tried to catch up with what I’d just heard.

  “Shut the heck up.” Noah rammed his shoulder into Jacob.

  “Hey, you know you like her.” Jacob returned the shove.

  Then Noah’s heavy backpack started sliding off his shoulder, and he had to kind of catch the backpack and not drop his phone and not fall into me, all at the same time. Meanwhile, my head was spinning because I was still thinking about Jacob’s comment. Was he saying that Noah Langley was the one who had written the great-admirer letter to me?

  Anyway, there was this awkward, unbalanced moment when everything seemed to be sliding or falling. And my body was kind of frozen and my brain was trying to catch up. I remember reaching my hand out to keep Noah’s phone (or him) from falling, and I think I said, “Whoa,” which was a totally stupid thing to say, but that’s what I said.

  But here’s the thing—as Noah caught his backpack and straightened up, he smiled at me for one millisecond. (Like if you blinked, you would have missed it.) And I think Jacob must have blinked, because I don’t think he saw it.

  Still, I could tell, just from that one millisecond smile, that Noah Langley liked me.

  And I was one hundred percent sure he’d written the letter.

  “So are you coming to the game or not?” Jacob asked in a rush, as Noah yanked his backpack onto his shoulder and took off down the hall.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m going,” I said in this casual voice, even though I already knew I would definitely be there for the pregame show, along with Veena, Mr. Mac, and Mr. Ulysses.

  Why did I give such a vague answer?

  Maybe I needed time to think. Maybe I didn’t want to sound too desperate.

  “Great. We’ll be in Section E behind the high school band people. Noah will be waiting for you,” Jacob yelled over his shoulder as he plunged into the crowd after him.

  At that moment, it felt like a thousand wings were fluttering inside me.

  That same morning, Joey went on a tour of the high school football field. Even though he usually practiced his tracings in his mind, the high school football coaches wanted him to practice on the field. Practice makes perfect, they said.

  Joey didn’t mind leaving school, because he got to miss a quiz in math.

  The coaches who came to pick him up were called Coach Glen and Coach Baker. Coach Glen was thin with a stopwatch around his neck—which Joey liked. It reminded him of his compass. Coach Baker was large and smelled like garlic—which Joey didn’t like.

  Mr. Ulysses brought over the chalk machine.

  When Joey stepped onto the empty football field for the first time, he was surprised by how different it felt from the playground. First of all, it had very bright green grass. It reminded him of Christmas cookie frosting.

  Second, it crunched strangely under his feet. He wasn’t sure it was real.

  The coaches wanted Joey to practice making the tiger with the chalk machine. To see how it will work, they said. But Joey ignored them. He started pushing the machine across the crunchy green grass to make the scalloped feathers of an enormous eagle’s wing.

  Although Joey couldn’t hear their conversation, this is what the coaches said after a few minutes of watching him from the empty stands:

  Coach Baker leaned toward Coach Glenn and said under his breath, “That look like a tiger to you?”

  Coach Glenn mumbled that he wasn’t exactly sure.

  “It looks like a wing to me. What kind of tiger has wings?” Coach Baker said. He turned toward Mr. Ulysses, who was standing on the other side of him. “Do you know what in the heck the little kid is making?”

  “If I were making a guess,” Mr. Ulysses said slowly, “I’d say it might be a bird—possibly an eagle.”

  That’s when Coach Baker blew his whistle and hollered at Joey to Stop. Right. There. He ran down the bleacher steps and jogged onto the field.

  “What in the heck are you doing, kid?” he yelled at Joey, and waved his arms. “We’ve already got enough trouble this season. We don’t need a jinx, kid!”

  Joey had been called a lot of names in life, but he had never been called a jinx before.

  I was so lost in thinking about what had happened with Noah and Jacob in the hallway before school started—replaying it a million times in my head to remember exactly what was said and who said it—that I didn’t notice the fact that Joey was upset at recess. Veena was the one who had to point it out to me.

  “Look at what Joey’s doing today,” she said in an urgent voice, bumping my arm to get my attention.

  When I looked toward the swing sets, I could see right away
what she meant. The lines uncoiled from Joey’s feet in a tight spiral. His hands were clenched at his sides and his face was tense and pale. He was ignoring everyone and everything as he walked.

  “Should we go over and talk to him?” Veena asked, looking worried.

  Although I didn’t want anything to ruin my floaty feeling of happiness, I could see that something was wrong with Joey. Really wrong. He hadn’t made a spiral in weeks.

  “I guess we should,” I said with a sigh.

  Getting up from the Buddy Bench, we walked across the playground. When we got close to Joey, I called out, “Hey, Veena and I noticed that you seemed kind of upset today. Is something bothering you?”

  Joey stopped and stared past us. “No,” he said to the air molecules. “I’m fine.”

  I glanced at Veena. Why was he acting so oddly? “Well, that doesn’t sound very convincing,” I replied.

  Then Veena added, “Did something happen in your classroom today?”

  “No,” Joey said. His mouth tightened into a line. Under his breath, he added, “I wasn’t in my room today.”

  “Okay…,” Veena asked, “where were you?”

  “I was on the football field practicing.” Joey waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the high school. “But I’m NOT making a tiger,” he blurted out fiercely.

  Veena gave me a confused look. I had no idea what Joey was talking about either. How could he have been on the high school football field during school? What did he mean about not making a tiger? Was he trying to tell us he wanted to quit Homecoming?

  “Why can’t you make a tiger?” I asked carefully.

  Joey gave the wood chips a hard kick with one sneaker, sending bits of bark flying. “BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO MAKE ONE!” he yelled at me.

  Veena and I both took a step back, pretty shocked. We’d never seen Joey yell at anything before. Tears welled up in his eyes and started flowing in bright, shiny streaks down his cheeks.

  Looking stricken, Veena rushed toward Joey and gave him a quick hug. “It’s okay,” she said, patting his shoulder lightly with her hand after she stepped back. “No matter what happened, we will help you.”

  At least Joey didn’t shove her away.

  After giving Joey a couple of seconds to calm down, I tried again. “When you said you don’t want to make a tiger, do you mean you don’t want to be part of Homecoming anymore—that you want to quit?

  “No,” Joey replied, glaring at me through his tears. “I’m not making a tiger because I don’t want to. I’m making an eagle instead. It’s the best bird ever. I already have everything planned right here.” He jabbed a finger toward his head. “It is going to be my best tracing ever. I don’t need help from anybody. I already know what I’m doing.”

  “Ahhh,” I exhaled. Now the problem was becoming clear.

  Joey wanted to draw an eagle because it was his favorite bird, I guessed. Maybe he pictured himself being like an eagle—or maybe he just liked eagles in general. Who knows?

  However, our biggest rivals were the Eagles. We had been rivals for years. For obvious reasons, he couldn’t draw an eagle at our Homecoming game.

  It was Tigers vs. Eagles. Only in art instead of football.

  I scrambled to come up with an easy solution.

  “How about this idea? Maybe you could use this week’s game to practice what it’s like to draw on a big field,” I suggested. “Since you’ve already done a tiger and you’re really good at it, you could draw a tiger this week. Then you could draw something more elaborate for the next game, like a big eagle, and impress everyone.”

  Joey’s expression didn’t change.

  So I tried explaining more about Homecoming—how it was the day when people who grew up in Marshallville would come back to root for their home team. “It’s a big honor to be part of it. And you’re a Tiger because you live here in Marshallville. It’s your home team. You can’t draw an eagle, because that’s the mascot of the other side.”

  Joey kicked the dirt. “No, I’m on both sides,” he insisted.

  I told him that was kind of impossible—that the point of a sport was choosing a side to be on…to root for. “You know, the other side is like the enemy,” I said.

  “I know. That’s why I invented my own sport at recess,” Joey insisted. His voice rose higher, and he seemed to be on the verge of crying again. “Because it doesn’t have sides. It’s just making tracings.”

  I was starting to feel like pulling my hair out. “But people will think you’re cheering for the other side if you make an eagle, because that’s their mascot.”

  “But I’m not cheering. I’m making my tracings,” Joey retorted.

  I sighed loudly and looked over at Veena, who was shaking her head. Joey kept kicking the ground. We were getting nowhere. I was losing my patience.

  “Look,” I said finally. “If you make an eagle, nobody is going to understand it. Everybody in our stands will boo and yell. The high school kids will probably throw things onto the field and mess up your tracing and be really rude. And you’ll get called a traitor and probably a bunch of other bad things. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  I knew it was a harsh thing to say, but I didn’t know how else to get through to him.

  Without saying a word, Joey suddenly bolted toward me. For a half second, I was afraid he was going to plow right into me. But he stopped a few inches short of pushing me over.

  “YOU TOLD ME I’M THE ARTIST AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME WHAT ART TO MAKE!” he shouted in my face. Then he ran toward the back doors of the school and disappeared inside.

  I was convinced Joey would quit.

  After the scene on the playground, I couldn’t sleep that night. I felt awful about how I’d yelled at him. It wasn’t like me at all. What I should have said was: “Do whatever you want to do at Homecoming—be original, be creative, don’t worry about what other people think—make a tiger with purple spots if you want to—draw the biggest, baddest eagle anybody has ever seen—and make it fly over Marshallville—be yourself—”

  Why had I gotten so upset with Joey? Was it because he couldn’t see things the way everyone else did?

  Or was it because I couldn’t see things the way he did?

  Had I yelled at him because I was frustrated with myself, not with him?

  That idea made me feel even worse.

  I decided to talk to Mr. Mac or Mr. Ulysses first thing in the morning and tell them the whole story. If they thought Joey should pull out of Homecoming—or do something else—then maybe they could figure out how to handle it.

  But I couldn’t find either of them. Mr. Mac’s door was shut and his office was dark. I searched the hallways for Mr. Ulysses and knocked on the boiler room door twice, but he didn’t answer.

  I had a math test and a project to work on in language arts that morning, so I couldn’t leave to search for them again. Then something else happened with Joey during the fourth-grade lunch.

  Lunch had just started when I noticed a bunch of high schoolers walk out of the school office with Ms. Getzhammer and head toward the cafeteria. I was on my way to the library to get some books for my language arts project.

  There were two girls in cheerleader outfits and four enormous football players in their Tigers jerseys. They were talking and laughing loudly among themselves and seemed to be pointing out things they remembered in the school.

  What was up? I wondered.

  I picked up my books and took a detour past the cafeteria. By the time I got there, the entire room was silent and only Ms. Getzhammer was talking. I caught the tail end of her speech. “And now the high school spirit squad has a very special gift to give to Joey for the big game tomorrow night. Come on up here, Joey.”

  Oh no. My heart started to pound. What was happening?

  As everybody in the cafete
ria clapped, Joey’s classmates urged him forward. His face was expressionless as he got up from his lunch table—which I knew was his totally panicked look. He made his way toward the front at the pace of a turtle.

  When Joey finally reached the group, Ms. Getzhammer handed the microphone to the largest football player, who was about three times the size of Joey.

  “Yeah, hi, everybody—whoa, that’s loud,” the football player bellowed into the microphone, making the whole room crack up. Joey’s face looked more panicked.

  The player kept talking. “Well, yeah, uh, I’m Carson Taggert, defensive lineman for the Tigers. And we wanted to bring a gift for Joey because we heard he needed some new spirit gear for the big game tomorrow night. So…”

  The lineman looked toward one of the cheerleaders, who stepped forward with an orange coat. It was one of the expensive letterman-type coats made of black wool with orange leather sleeves. Usually the high school sports players were the only ones who owned them.

  The entire room of fourth graders gasped.

  “Go ahead, try it out,” the football player said as the cheerleader helped Joey to pull it on.

  The coat was so large it could have wrapped around Joey twice. His body seemed to sway under the weight of it.

  “Well, I guess it’s a little big,” the football player joked. “But look at what it says on the back.”

  Joey craned his neck around to see the back, which he couldn’t. Finally, the cheerleader turned him around, so all of us could see the white letters ironed on the black wool. They spelled out:

  JOEY BYRD, TEAM ARTIST.

  “It says Joey Byrd, Team Artist,” the football player announced. “So you’re, like, one of our team now. Isn’t that cool? Let’s everybody give Joey a big round of applause.”

  I was really surprised when Joey held out his bright orange sleeves and turned around to show off the coat again. The room went crazy.

  But I have to admit that there was something about the moment that bothered me too.

  As everybody cheered, I could see how easy it would be for Joey Byrd to lose who he was. All it took was a coat to begin to transform him into us. How long would it be before we changed everything about him and he stopped being who he was? What would happen then?