Atticus had gotten his magical power. There was no denying it. So that meant that Pop-pop was right. This was our Infinity Year.
If it had been some other kind of power, one that didn’t help me find M, I might have been a little jealous. But I wasn’t jealous. I was curious.
What was my magical power going to be? Was it really talking to animals with my mind or was that a little silly? Atticus’s magical power definitely showed up when I needed it most. I wondered if mine would show up like that.
It felt like a big fat mystery.
M was doing much better. She had to stay at the vet on that first night, but then she came home and has been camped out on our bed ever since. Her new collar didn’t fit because she had lost so much weight. I have put my mind-talking experiments on hold while she is getting better.
Atticus and I have talked about what we think happened to M many times. We have decided on this version of the story:
Before I got up on that Friday before Christmas, Mr. Squirrel tapped on the window and woke up M. M got mad. This was the morning she decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore. When she heard Mom take up the garbage cans, M thought this was her chance. She would go outside—just for a few minutes—and take a swipe at that Mr. Squirrel. Show him who was boss and that sort of thing.
M snuck past the open door and tiptoed through the grass toward my window. Mr. Squirrel heard her, though, and turned around. Their eyes met. Mr. Squirrel has very taunting eyes. So when that squirrel took off through the neighborhood, M could not resist it. She chased after him—all the way to the water tower. Mr. Squirrel climbed up a tree beside the shed and jumped through a broken window that was way up high. M followed him up the tree and jumped through the window, too, but my fat cat couldn’t get back out. Mr. Squirrel could, though—and did—leaving my M alone, to die.
That Mr. Squirrel is one evil rotten rodent.
I didn’t like thinking about how M might have lost a piece of her ear, so we didn’t try to figure that part out. I was okay with that remaining a mystery.
Since the day we found M, Atticus and I hadn’t talked about his secret. Not one time. Whenever I wanted to bring it up, I got the feeling I shouldn’t. It was kind of like how Atticus never talked about my dad being in prison—unless I talked about it first. So I decided to be okay with it. If he wanted to talk about it, I figured he would.
School started back up and I geared everything in my life toward one thing. The spelling bee. Ever since the classroom bee, Isabel Fernandez had joined me and Mrs. Jackson on Monday and Wednesday afternoons for our spelling drills. Now that the school bee was only three weeks away, we started meeting on Thursday afternoons, too.
We learned a lot together in the three weeks before the bee. Mrs. Jackson really focused on etymology. That means the origins of words. She told us how most of the words we use today can be traced back to their ancient beginnings. They can come from old French words, old Greek words, even old English words. Our words come from everywhere and everyone.
Over the past couple of months, I had also learned some things about Isabel. Her grandparents live in Ecuador and she goes to visit them every summer with the rest of her family, which includes her parents, three brothers, and two sisters. She has a big family and they can all speak Spanish, so she is very good at spelling words with Spanish origins.
I don’t have a big family or speak another language, but I was starting to see that Isabel and I have a few things in common. First, we are both superior spellers. Second, we both have a cat that we absolutely love. Her cat is named Daisy and she showed me a picture of her while we were waiting for Mrs. Jackson one afternoon.
Last, we aren’t like the other girls. I’ve noticed that a lot of girls at school come in groups. There was Elena, Sissy, and Chloe, of course. Then there was Mae, Hannah, and their other friends, Courtney and Emma. Mae was nice to me and we were friends, sort of, but I wasn’t part of their circle.
Isabel is like me. We don’t hang out with other girls much. We don’t have girl friends. We have our spelling. We have our cats. And lucky for me, I have Atticus. I didn’t think there was an Atticus in Isabel’s life.
The Sunday before the bee, Atticus came over all afternoon to help me prepare. When he was reading the flashcards, sometimes he pronounced the words wrong but I could usually figure out what he meant and spell them correctly anyway.
M sat on my lap or his lap the whole time. She was gaining weight and starting to act like her old self again.
The big bee was on Thursday evening, and Atticus had promised to be there. I didn’t know about my mom yet. She had to work and hadn’t been able to find someone to cover her shift. She was going to try to get off early but couldn’t be sure.
So much for my cheering section.
On Wednesday afternoon, Isabel and I sat across from Mrs. Jackson for the very last time. Mrs. Jackson quizzed us for about an hour by calling out words from her big spelling book. After Isabel spelled graffiti correctly, Mrs. Jackson closed her book and looked at us.
“I think we’ve done enough,” she said.
“Are you sure? Because what if we get asked a word we don’t know tomorrow?” I asked, rather nervously.
“That will very likely happen,” she said. “But you two have tools now. If you don’t know a word, ask the questions about it. That will help you figure it out.”
Mrs. Jackson was going to be the moderator at the big bee, so we would be asking her all the spelling questions, just like we did during our drills.
She suddenly smiled. “Just remember to breathe,” she said, looking at both of us. “And have fun. Spelling bees are supposed to be fun.”
Right.
* * *
The Grover Cleveland School-Wide Spelling Bee started on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m.
I had gone to Isabel’s house after school and we kept studying our flashcards until it was time to go back to school for the bee. At 6:15 p.m., we put away our flashcards and gave each other a high five. Isabel Fernandez and Avalon James were ready.
At 6:50 p.m., we entered the Grover Cleveland Lunchroom and Auditorium. It was already starting to fill up with parents and kids in the audience. Isabel’s mom took us backstage to join the other spellers. There were thirty-eight of us altogether.
I looked around. There were some really big seventh- and eighth-grade girls and boys we would be competing against. They looked at me and Isabel like we were little kids who were crashing their big-kid party. We sat down together on the stairs that led up to the stage.
That’s when Mrs. Jackson showed up. She walked into the backstage area like she was the queen bee herself. Get it? The Queen … Bee …
She started lining us up to go onstage. The fourth graders were up front, followed by the older grades. I saw Hari Singh run in. Mrs. Jackson saw him, too, and tapped her watch.
“You’re late, Mr. Singh,” she said, and everyone turned and looked at him. “I was starting to get worried.”
Hari smiled and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “No need to worry, Mrs. J,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. W-O-R-L-D.”
All the kids laughed. To the spellers of our school, Hari Singh was like a rock star.
As Hari got in line, we heard Mr. Peterson at the microphone on the stage. “Parents, students, guests, can I have your attention, please?”
Everybody in the lunchroom and auditorium got quiet. Mr. Peterson continued. “Welcome to the Sixty-Eighth Annual Grover Cleveland School-Wide Spelling Bee.”
We heard clapping and some of the big students behind us in line started stomping their feet.
“As you know, great spelling is a tradition here at Grover Cleveland. Over the years, we have had four spellers from our very own school make it to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. Last spring, our own Hari Singh placed twenty-seventh in the national bee.”
There was more clapping and foot stomping. From my spot on the stairs, I could see some of the audience. I saw Hari’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Singh, in the front row. The Singhs are from India. Hari’s mom wears colorful dresses called saris that wrap around her all the way down to her feet. She has long black hair and a red dot on her forehead. His dad wears regular clothes and thick black glasses. They both speak with accents because they both grew up in India. Hari grew up here.
I heard Mr. Peterson introduce Mrs. Jackson, the spelling bee faculty sponsor. Then he invited the fourth-grade spellers to the stage.
There were rows of chairs on risers on the stage, each row for a different grade. The fourth graders sat down in chairs on the front row as the audience clapped for them.
Then Mr. Peterson called us, the fifth graders. As I walked onto the stage, I felt for the lucky acorn Atticus had given me that was buried in my pocket. I looked out and was surprised how full the auditorium was. All those applauding people made it suddenly more real.
Then came the older grades. When Hari appeared, there was the biggest roar from the crowd yet. I watched him leap up the risers to the seventh-grade row and sit down. I saw him look at his parents, for just a second, and smile. Then he went back to being cool again.
I looked out at the audience for my mom. I couldn’t see her. I saw Atticus, though. He was sitting with Caroline and Will in the second row. He smiled and nodded at me, which should have calmed me down but it didn’t. I forced a half smile back at him.
Farther back in the audience, I saw Elena sitting with her family. Her older brother, Mark, was in the bee, too. Mark was in eighth grade. I’d never really met him but he seemed nicer than his sister.
I saw an empty seat at the end of one row in the audience and imagined it was reserved for my dad. What if he was somehow magically invisible and sitting there right now? If I needed help, he could secretly mind-talk to me how to spell any word. It felt like an Infinity Year wish that was too good to be true.
The spelling bee was soon underway. It was a lot like our classroom bee—only bigger. When it was your turn to spell, you had to walk up to a microphone at the front of the stage and spell your word to the audience. There were two microphones at the front of the stage. One was higher for the bigger kids and the other was lower for the littler kids.
Mrs. Jackson sat in front of another microphone at a table to the side of the stage and moderated. That means she really ran the whole show. She was there to give us our words, answer our questions, and smile at us encouragingly. She was also the one who would be ringing the bell.
Mrs. Jackson had explained that in this bee, when you got a word wrong, the bell would ring and you would have to leave the stage. In the end, there would only be two spellers left on the whole stage together.
The eighth graders were each called up first. Mrs. Jackson planned it this way so that the younger kids wouldn’t be so nervous. Then there were the seventh graders and Hari Singh, who, of course, spelled his word right. By the time the sixth graders were spelling, my palms were sweaty. When the first fifth grader, Aubrey Izurieta, walked to the microphone, my mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow.
Aubrey spelled her word correctly and sat back down again. Then it was Isabel’s turn. She walked to the microphone and was asked to spell the word conundrum. Isabel asked all the questions we were supposed to ask and then spelled conundrum right. Suddenly, her ponytail swung around and she was bouncing back to her seat.
I wasn’t ready.
“Avalon James,” Mrs. Jackson said over the microphone.
I didn’t move. I sat there staring out at the audience.
“Go, Avalon,” I heard Isabel whisper in my ear.
“Avalon,” Mrs. Jackson said again. She said it nice, though. I looked at her and she smiled at me—like it was all going to be okay.
I took a breath and got out of my seat. And walked to the littler kid microphone.
“Scrupulous,” Mrs. Jackson said.
I cleared my throat. “Scrupulous,” I said quietly into the microphone. I looked out at all the faces in the audience that were looking back at me. I couldn’t remember the questions to ask. I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t even see the word in my head.
I looked at Atticus in the second row. He looked really concerned—like he was afraid I was going to throw up or something. Maybe I was going to throw up. Then I couldn’t help but look at Elena. Her eyes were all squinty and happy. If I threw up in front of everyone right now, it would make her year.
Finally, my eyes settled on Hari’s mom. I wondered why she had a red dot on her forehead. I wondered why she dressed different from the other moms. And I wondered why she was looking at me that way.
It wasn’t a mean look or a nice look. It was a firm look. It said, “Get yourself together, kid. You can do this.”
It reminded me of Hari.
That’s when something wonderful happened. I remembered what Hari told me after the classroom bee in October. “It’s all about you and the words,” he had said. “Don’t let anybody else get in your head.”
I felt myself starting to smile inside. Because I realized I had let the whole audience inside my head. With all of them in there, my word was impossible to see.
Hari was right. It has always been about the words and me. Other than M and Atticus, the words were my best friends. They were always with me.
And just like that, the audience got out of my head. It was like I was standing alone on that stage.
Just me and the word.
“Scrupulous,” I said. “S-C-R-U-P-U-L-O-U-S,” I spelled. “Scrupulous.”
“Correct,” Mrs. Jackson said. I had forgotten to ask any of the questions, but I spelled the word right anyway.
The audience clapped. There was a loud roar from the second row. Atticus let out a whoop and Will whistled through his fingers. Relieved, I walked back to my chair.
By the fourth round, Isabel was out. She misspelled the word insouciant. Her shoulders jerked up when she heard the bell ring. Sadly, I watched as Isabel walked away from the microphone. She exited the stage where her mother suddenly appeared and gave her a hug.
Hari was good at all the questions. He asked about word origins and definitions and parts of speech. Somehow he always made the audience laugh. I looked at his mother every time he spelled. She seemed to hold her breath until he finished every word. I could tell she would never miss one of his spelling bees.
By the tenth round, the stage was getting empty. There were only three of us left. Hari Singh, a sixth-grade girl named Sierra Ghassemian, and me. We all sat in the front row now. There were no fourth graders left in those chairs. There was only us.
By the time the eleventh round started, it was just Hari and me. He was spelling at the microphone for the bigger kids and I was spelling at the microphone for the littler kids. After he spelled his eleventh-round word, we passed each other on my way to the microphone. He grinned at me and stuck out his hand. I slapped his palm and everyone in the audience laughed.
It went on like that, slapping each other’s hands in between words, until we got to round eighteen.
It was a silent-letter word that did me in. The first h in diphthong is silent. Who knew? What’s crazy is that diphthong is a word about words. It’s a word that I had seen before. It’s a word from the Greek to the Latin to the French to the English. It’s a word I should have known how to spell.
But I didn’t.
The bell rang and I took my seat. The only way I could win now was for Hari to spell his word incorrectly. There was very little chance of that.
I looked at the empty chair in the audience—the one my invisible father was sitting in. I was feeling so happy, even though I knew I was about to lose to Hari, and I realized two things. First, that my dad would be happy for me, too, if he were here. And second, that he wasn’t here and it was no use pretending that he was. So I had a little mind-talk with him. I told him I hoped he was proud of me. I told him I was sorry I didn’t win. And I told him I wasn’t going to write him any letters anymore. I knew he probably liked getting my letters, but it hurt too much that he stopped answering. It made me feel bad and I didn’t want to feel bad anymore. I wanted to feel like I was feeling on that stage all the time.
I watched my invisible dad disappear as Hari walked to the microphone. His word was doppelgänger. He spelled it correctly.
Hari Singh won the bee.
Everyone started clapping. Hari was once again our spelling champ. As the whole audience yelled for Hari, I walked off the stage. I missed my word. It was time for me to go.
From the side of the stage, I watched Mr. Peterson give Hari the winning spelling trophy. Hari held it over his head and smiled like he had just won the homecoming football game.
Mr. Peterson finally put up his hands to quiet down the audience. He leaned into the microphone and said, “And now I’d like to congratulate our runner-up, fifth grader Avalon James.”
He turned around and saw I was no longer on the stage.
“Avalon?” he said. Everyone began murmuring. I saw Mr. Peterson look at Mrs. Jackson and then I saw Mrs. Jackson point toward me.
“There you are,” Mr. Peterson said with a big smile. “Come back up here, Avalon.”
As I walked back onto the stage, the audience started clapping. I looked out at all the people and couldn’t help but smile. Suddenly, everyone in the auditorium (except probably Elena) was standing up and cheering for me.
It was so weird. I didn’t understand at first. I had been so busy spelling, I had forgotten what coming in second place meant.
“Avalon,” Mr. Peterson said. “There’s only one person I know who did as well as you did in their first spelling bee, and that was Mr. Hari Singh. You should be very proud of your achievement today.” There was more clapping.
“Go, Avie,” I heard Will yell. Then I looked at Atticus. He was on top of his chair cheering for me. Then I saw my mom. She was standing next to them. She had made it. She was there.
“Avalon James,” Mr. Peterson continued, “I present you with our second-place plaque and am proud to announce that you and Harinder Singh will be representing Grover Cleveland K–8 School at the Regional Spelling Bee in April. Congratulations!”
It was really happening. Hari and I were going to the regional bee.