Gideon White was only really, really good at two things: playing with words and collecting turtles. Of the turtles, only one of them, Samson, was an actual living, breathing (*as much as turtles could be seen breathing) turtle. All the others were glass turtles or stone turtles or plastic turtles he’d gathered from gift shops, toy stores, and craft fairs.
As for the words Gideon played with—most of them were living and breathing too, but Gideon often felt he was the only person who noticed this.
Right now, it was Gideon’s job to feed the only living, breathing turtle in his room and to dust all the others. Gideon’s mother claimed to be allergic to dust, which Gideon thought was an exaggeration, since dust was everywhere and if she were truly allergic to dust she’d be coughing or sneezing or wheezing every second of every day. Instead, all she really did was complain about the dust, even when it wasn’t there.
Samson was not Gideon’s best friend, but he was definitely the friend Gideon trusted most. A lot of this had to do with the fact that Samson was a turtle and couldn’t talk. Gideon’s other two best friends, Joelle and Tucker, talked all the time. He couldn’t tell Joelle anything without Tucker finding out about it, and vice versa. Which saved Gideon some time, not having to explain things twice. But it was still annoying that he had to assume anything he said would echo beyond where it was meant to go.
Joelle and Tucker were both in Ms. June’s fifth-grade class. The alphabet had allowed them to sit next to each other while Gideon was banished to the back row. When Debbie Weiss had left class because her father got a job in Arizona, Gideon thought he’d at least be able to move up a row, which would have gotten him one desk closer to Tucker. But instead Ms. June kept the space empty. Gideon didn’t ask her why. He didn’t ask Ms. June anything, if he could avoid it.
Gideon spent most of his time in class finding new words within the ones Ms. June wrote on the board. So if she wrote history homework, he would scramble up its letters to find phrases like my stork or Who is more Thor? or He took my sow! He might even try to turn multiple words into one simpler word, like histomework. He’d do all of this in his head because early in the year he’d tried writing it all down and Ms. June had caught him doing it and instead of thinking he was doing something smart, she treated him like he was doing something wrong. That had put an end to writing it down.
Gideon was lost finding words in Benedict Arnold’s name (red coat, need cab, tied boar) when he felt the room around him pause, which meant he needed to pay attention. He raised his head and saw a boy standing next to Debbie Weiss’s old desk. The boy had shaggy hair and a bright green shirt, and looked at Gideon for a second before sitting down. Gideon had no idea who this boy was, and from looking around he realized that Ms. June had just introduced him to the class, and Gideon had missed it entirely.
For the next half hour, Gideon stared at the back of the boy’s head and tried to figure out his last name. Since Dana Wachtel was sitting in front of the boy, Gideon assumed the last name had to be alphabetically located somewhere between Wachtel and White.
Warner.
Watson.
Webster.
Weeble.
Westing.
Wheelmaker.
Whippoorwill.
Gideon tried to sneak a look inside the boy’s book bag, to see if there was a name on anything in there. But it was zipped closed.
The boy was sitting up straight. Paying attention to Ms. June.
Or maybe just appearing to pay attention. Because Gideon could see the top right corner of the boy’s notebook. He watched as the boy drew a cat. Then a bull. Then a rabbit. Then … a turtle.
Gideon wanted to warn the boy to hide the notebook from Ms. June if he didn’t want to get in trouble. But he also really liked the turtle and didn’t want the boy to turn the page.
When it was time for lunch, the boy shuffled his notebook into his bag and jumped out of the room as soon as he could. Gideon started packing up his own books and saw something on the board he hadn’t noticed before.
A new name.
Not someone from the Revolutionary War, like Benedict Arnold.
No. It had to be the boy’s name.
Roberto Garcia.