After school on Wednesday I’m in Kylee’s mother’s car with a plastic trash bag filled with a dozen neatly folded dog sweaters. I hope the animal shelter people like her sweaters better than the New Yorker people liked my poems or Ms. Archer liked my review. In a million years nobody could ever call Kylee mean. If there were a Nobel Prize for kindness to animals, she’d get it. The sweaters are adorable, with patterns she designed: sweaters with snowflakes, sweaters with dog bones, stars and stripes for the patriotic dog, pine trees with gold stars on top to get dogs into the Christmas spirit. Kylee is kind and creative.
“Ms. Archer didn’t pick my review to put in the paper,” I tell her, though I still haven’t made myself tell her about The New Yorker. Besides, Kylee will know anyway when the paper comes out next week and my review’s not in it. “I guess she agreed with Olivia.”
“Oh, pooh,” Kylee says, as if nobody could agree with Olivia. “She probably just didn’t think enough people were interested in a band that’s only played one gig at one coffee shop so far.”
That’s an excellent point, and one I hadn’t thought of when I picked Paradox to write about.
But I notice Kylee looks uncomfortable when she says it, glancing out the window so she won’t have to meet my eyes.
Maybe she didn’t love my review the way she loved my poems, or at least the way she said she loved them? Maybe she agrees with Olivia more than she wants to say?
Then I notice something even stranger: Kylee’s not knitting in the car. It’s the first time I haven’t seen her knitting since the fateful day I saw the sign.
“You’re not knitting.”
“I’m knitted out.”
“You? Knitted out? Never!”
Come to think of it, she wasn’t knitting in journalism today either. I hadn’t noticed because Cameron was writing haiku all during class again, rather than doodling. He let me read one of them, and I adored it.
Stones in the river
Hundreds of millions years old
Are used to waiting
I wanted to ask him if this poem had anything to do with his mother saying that his first love was rocks, but there is a limit to how much I can confess to secretly reading over his shoulder.
“I knit so much my fingers were starting to get numb and tingly,” Kylee confesses.
“Carpal tunnel syndrome,” says her mother from the front seat. “A repetitive stress disorder. The human body wasn’t made to knit ten hours a day. We’ve told Kylee no more knitting for a while.”
This is terrible! Poor Kylee!
“What will you do?” I ask her.
“I like all kinds of crafts,” she says with a cheerful shrug. “My aunt is taking me to a bead show down in Denver this weekend, and she’s going to teach me to make these really cool bracelets and necklaces. Forget I told you this: I want you to be surprised when I give you your Christmas present.”
Margo, the lady who gave Kylee all the knitting patterns that first day, isn’t at the front desk when we arrive at the shelter. Instead there’s an unsmiling man who might be in his midtwenties. I sure hope he’s good at admiring dog sweaters, after Kylee gave herself carpal tunnel syndrome knitting them nonstop for a month.
“May I help you?” he asks, suspiciously eyeing the bulging trash bag Kylee has carried in, as if it contains a dead animal whose death was Kylee’s fault.
“I made some dog sweaters. For the drive?” Kylee unties the drawstring on the bag and begins pulling out the sweaters and laying them on the counter.
“O-M-G!” the man squeals, clasping his hands to his chest.
Never have I seen anybody change so much so fast.
“These are adorable! They’re amazing! I can so see this one on Jennifer! And this one on George!”
Kylee flushes with pleasure. Her mother squeezes her shoulder in a proud hug.
Margo appears from a room in the back just as the man is holding up one of the dog sweaters—a patriotic one—and sighing with rapture.
“Oh, my!” Margo’s face lights up with pleasure at the sight of Kylee’s handiwork. “Jeff, this is the girl I was telling you about. Remember? The one who came back three times to get more yarn?”
I’m so happy for Kylee.
If I had to choose between Ms. Archer loving my review and the animal shelter loving Kylee’s sweaters, I might choose the sweaters. I really might.
But I wish the universe had given us both.
* * *
We’re doing more standard news-and-feature-reporting stuff in journalism for the next few weeks: the five W’s (who, what, where, when, why); getting the most important information in the lead; and organizing the piece so that if the editor needs to cut it for reasons of space, he or she can just chop off the end and not lose anything absolutely crucial. I hate the idea of having the ending of any story of mine just lopped off by an editor who happens to be in a lopping mood. I want to be my own lopper.
Our new assignment is a feature piece on someone at our school or in our community who is doing something fascinating. If only I knew something fascinating Cameron was doing and could write about him! Of course, I’d be too shy to ask for an interview, given that I can barely make myself say two sentences to him.
“You’re not knitting,” I hear Olivia whisper to Kylee in class on Thursday, the day after Kylee delivered her sweaters to the animal shelter. We’ve all gotten so used to that rhythmic clicking that it feels wrong not to hear it. Maybe even Olivia feels unnerved by the unexpected silence.
We’re supposed to be doing a freewrite on the most memorable person we’ve ever known—I’m doing mine on Cameron while making very sure he can’t see what I’m scribbling—but Olivia must be stuck on hers.
I hear Kylee whisper back that she got carpal tunnel syndrome knitting a dozen sweaters for abandoned dogs awaiting adoption at the animal shelter.
“Wow!” Olivia says, sounding nice about Kylee’s knitting for the first time.
“Girls,” Ms. Archer calls over to them, holding her finger to her lips with a smile.
I think Ms. Archer must miss the sound of Kylee’s knitting, too. It’s been the sound track for our class all trimester.
“That’s so cool!” Olivia whispers to Kylee before she picks up her pen and starts to write. Snarky thought from me: maybe she’s decided that the most memorable person she knows is herself.
* * *
That evening, Kylee texts me after dinner: You’re not going to believe this.
I text her back: What?
Olivia just called me.
You’re kidding.
She wants to write her feature article about me!
About Kylee?
Of course about Kylee.
Who else in our school, who else in any middle school anywhere, knit a dozen stunningly adorable sweaters for stunningly adorable dogs awaiting homes in an animal shelter? And gave herself carpal tunnel syndrome doing it?
This is the article I should be writing! Kylee is the memorable person I should be writing about! I’m Kylee’s best friend, not Olivia. Olivia didn’t even like Kylee’s knitting until Kylee stopped doing it.
Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? But I was so distracted by my crush on Cameron that I missed seeing the story of the century—well, at least a terrific piece for the school newspaper and maybe even for the Broomville Banner—right in front of my eyes. This is the kind of story the Associated Press might pick up, a heart-tugging human interest story with universal appeal.
Could I write it anyway? It’s not as if for every story in the world there is only one person who is allowed to write it. Just because Olivia thought of it first doesn’t mean I couldn’t write it, too, and maybe write it better, because I love Kylee more.
Except: Olivia did think of it first.
And she already talked to Kylee.
I have to face it: on the biggest story in our school this year, she scooped me.
That’s great! I text back to Kylee.
And it is great for Kylee, it really is, and it’s great for Olivia, who found the perfect article idea that was right under my oblivious nose.
The only person it isn’t great for is me.