FOUR

SCHOOL IS THE SAME, day after day after long, boring day. Mrs. Funkhauser picks on me about everything. No homework, failing tests, daydreaming, drawing, reading library books in my lap. The trouble I get into is endless.

Mrs. Funkhauser calls Mrs. Clancy and makes arrangements to see us after school (Why can’t you do what you’re supposed to do? Are you stupid or just plain lazy? I am so fed up with your behavior).

While Mrs. Funkhauser recites my failures, I daydream about the woods. It’s June—two more weeks of school and I’ll be free to spend every day in my tree house. In the meantime I have to survive this day, and the wrath of Mrs. Clancy.

“What do you mean he has to repeat sixth grade?” Mrs. Clancy asks in a voice loud enough to get my attention (He’s even dumber than I thought).

I don’t want to give myself away, so I grin at the floor. No middle school next year—my wish come true. No, not completely true. What I wish is to be through with school and all that goes with it forever, safe in my tree house, deep in the woods, all by myself.

“I recommend summer school,” Mrs. Funkhauser says. “If he passes the tests before school starts in the fall, he can go on to seventh grade with the rest of his class.”

No. My smirk vanishes, wiped clean by the threat of summer school. I won’t go. They can’t make me. Summer is mine. Mine.

“That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Clancy says, suddenly all chummy with Mrs. Funkhauser.

“What do you think, Brendan?” Mrs. Funkhauser’s small brown eyes try to get inside my head, but I block them.

I shrug. “I’m not going to summer school.”

“Surely you don’t want to repeat sixth grade?”

“Maybe I like sixth grade,” I say.

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Mrs. Clancy tells Mrs. Funkhauser. “I’m at my wit’s end.”

Wit’s end, wit’s end. I roll the words around in my head silently, liking the sound of them. I live at wit’s end. It’s a place you go when there’s nowhere else to go. Mrs. Clancy knows nothing about it. Her wits were lost a long time ago.

“It’s very frustrating,” Mrs. Funkhauser says. “He’s not stupid, you know. I’ve seen his test scores. He simply doesn’t try. He reads, draws, and daydreams.”

Now they’re talking about me like I’m not sitting in the same room with them. Well, in a way I’m not. I’m down in the woods, far away from them, beyond the sound of their voices as tinny as insects talking on a telephone.

“He should be tested for ADD,” Mrs. Funkhauser says.

“ADD?” Mrs. Clancy echoes.

It sounds like a fatal disease. Something exotic transmitted by evil creatures who live deep in the sewer. If I have it, I’ll be dead in six months.

“Attention-deficit disorder,” Mrs. Funkhauser says.

Mrs. Clancy sighs. “When I was young, you were sent to the principal if you didn’t pay attention. You’d be paddled or kept after school.”

“I can set up an appointment with the school psychologist,” Mrs. Funkhauser says.

“Is there a charge for that?”

“No, of course not.”

“I’ll think about it. (It’s too much trouble, lazy brat, he’s not worth it, attention-deficit disorder my foot.) She gets to her feet, frowning. “Thank you for your time. I’ll enroll him in summer school. No matter what he says, I’m sure he doesn’t want to repeat sixth grade.”

That shows how little she knows me and what I think, but it doesn’t matter. I already have a plan for the summer and it doesn’t include school.

Mrs. Funkhauser stands up too. “Thanks for coming in, Mrs. Clancy. I hope you’ll reconsider the testing. I hate to see a smart boy waste his intelligence.”

“He wouldn’t be the first person to waste his intelligence,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Kids today have no respect for anything. They don’t care about school or making anything of themselves. They’re looking for the easy way out. Just look at all the young girls having babies and living on welfare.”

Mrs. Funkhauser looks puzzled. What do girls living on welfare have to do with attention-deficit disorder? Maybe that’s how they got pregnant? They weren’t paying attention?

Mrs. Clancy walks out of the classroom as if she has something important to do. Go home, have a cup of coffee, and watch TV, that’s what she has to do.

 

On the last day of school, Mrs. Funkhauser hands out our report cards. The other kids give each other high-fives. They’re going to middle school. Hooray.

Careful to shield it from the prying eyes of the girl behind me, I take a quick look at my report. I’ve flunked everything except art. As predicted, I’m not going to middle school next fall—unless I do well in summer school. Which I won’t, because I don’t plan to go.

When the dismissal buzzer sounds, I get up to run, but Mrs. Funkhauser stops me. “Not so fast, Brendan. I want to speak to you.”

“Brenda flunked,” a kid shouts as he dashes out the door. “He’s too dumb to leave baby school!”

Mrs. Funkhauser frowns. “Come here, Brendan.”

I approach the dragon’s lair, a desk piled high with grade books, textbooks, and papers. If there’s any treasure, it’s well hidden.

She pulls a sheet out of the pile. “This is your enrollment form for summer school. Please give it to your mother—your foster mother, that is—and have her fill it out.”

I take it.

“I warned you this would happen,” she says.

I nod. Does that mouth know how to smile, I wonder.

“You’re a smart boy, Brendan,” she says in the fake voice adults use when they’re pretending to be sincerely concerned about you. “I don’t understand why you refuse to do your schoolwork.”

I shrug.

“You can’t spend your whole life drawing and daydreaming.”

Why not, I wonder.

“Look at me when I talk to you, Brendan.” Her voice is the dragon’s now. No more pretending. She hates me.

“Can I go now?”

She sighs. Not sadly. She’s angry. “I don’t think I’ve taught you anything this year.”

She’s right. I back away from the desk. “I have to go,” I mumble.

“Suit yourself.” She stands up, her face flushed.

Without looking back, I leave the classroom. Next year I’ll have a different teacher, but Mrs. Funkhauser is sure to give a full report on me, enumerating my faults, which I don’t need to repeat here, since everyone, including me, knows them already.

No need to stop at the house today. Mrs. Clancy’s at work. She has a part-time job at the card shop in the mall. I watched her there once. She didn’t see me. It’s amazing how nice she can be to strangers. I guess that’s how she talked the social worker into giving me to her (Biggest mistake I ever made, the boy never appreciates a thing I do for him. He won’t even call me Mom).

As soon as I cross the train tracks, I leave the ordinary world behind. The trees close in around me, deep and green and thick enough to hide me. I walk silently, a warrior’s walk disturbing nothing, attracting no attention, slipping from one dapple of sunshine to the next. A crow calls once, twice, three times. I stop and listen. Is it warning someone I’m here? I stand still, testing my hearing, my vision, straining to glimpse the Green Man.

The crow caws again, farther away now, making its dark way through the woods.

I climb to the platform and get my carving knife. Last week I found a fallen branch that hid a face in the twist and grain of the wood. Now I’m trying to free the face, to reveal its eyes, its nose, its mouth almost hidden by its beard and mustache. I think it’s going to be the Green Man.

After a while, I notice the shadows are lengthening. The ground below me is darker than the branches over my head. Mrs. Clancy is home now, fixing dinner and fussing to herself about me (Where is that boy, he knows it’s dinnertime, if his food is cold he has no one to blame but himself).

Reluctantly I put my knife and my carving into a hollow in the trunk and climb down. As soon as I step away from the tree, I sense someone nearby. A smell, maybe, a soundless movement, a stirring in the underbrush. I freeze and wait. Am I afraid? Maybe. Am I excited? Maybe. Should I run? If I do, will it chase me? Maybe maybe maybe.

At last, I whisper, “Who’s there?” Immediately I feel stupid for asking such a silly, unoriginal question.

Of course there’s no answer. Whatever I sensed is gone. Alone in the early summer twilight, I walk slowly through the woods, cross the tracks without looking back, and climb the hill toward the house.

The first thing Mrs. Clancy wants to see is my report card. I make an elaborate search of my pockets and shake my head. “I don’t know what happened to it,” I tell her. “It must have fallen out on the way home.” Fallen into the trash can by the school steps, I think but do not say.

“Did you pass?”

“Of course I did.”

She looks at me sharply (Little liar, do you expect me to believe that?). “I’ll call the school tomorrow,” she says.

After dinner, I retreat to the safety of my bed and read The Hobbit until I’m too tired to follow the words. Then I lie awake in the dark and think about the Green Man. Was he hiding in the shadows watching me? Surely he’ll make himself known to me soon. I’ve treated his woods and his creatures with dignity and respect. He must see I’m worthy.

But in my head, I hear Mrs. Clancy: Worthy? You think you’re worthy? Worthy of what?

She’s never actually said this, or, for that matter, most of the things I imagine her saying. It’s what she thinks, though.

What, you can read my mind? Don’t make me laugh.

I wish I could turn off her voice. It’s like a radio without a volume control. It plays on and on in my head, one terrible song after another. You can’t, you’re not smart enough, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re selfish and inconsiderate, and all you think about is yourself. What’s going to become of you?

I pull the pillow over my head, but it doesn’t silence Mrs. Clancy. Nothing silences Mrs. Clancy.