Told by Pouya
The day Shady finally came back to school, things went bad fast. To begin with, he wasn’t talking to me. That might sound normal, since Shady never talks to me. But I mean he wasn’t even not talking to me in the usual ways.
“Hey,” I said when I met him by the coat hooks. “You’re back. Okay. Here’s what you missed.”
I’d been keeping a list in my head—not of homework or spelling words, just stuff I knew he’d like—and there was lots. We hadn’t seen each other in almost four days.
“The first day you were gone, Shushanna got hit in the head with a dodgeball, and it knocked one of her teeth out. It was loose already. But still…”
This wasn’t huge news. Somebody got hit in the head with a dodgeball at least twice a week, but I wasn’t about to lead with my biggest story. Normally, Shady would have asked a question with his eyebrows or by shrugging his shoulders. Like, Was there blood? How much? He didn’t, so I told him anyway.
I cupped my hands, then parted them to demonstrate how the blood had spilled through Shushanna’s fingers. “Blood everywhere. Mr. Nelson had to bring out the puke mop.”
Shady stared straight ahead.
I pressed on. “Also, I’ve been working on our Bar Graph of Butt.” I dug around in my backpack to find it. “Tuesday was a huge butt day. See?” I held up the paper he and I had been working on since October. Basically, we used little check marks to record the number of times Mrs. Okah said the word but during class.
For example: “Open your math books, but don’t start the problems yet.” We’d look across the room, smirk at each other, then make a check mark. At the end of the day we compared butt numbers, took the average, and plotted it on our graph. The beauty of it was that if we ever got caught, I could say it was educational.
So I brought out the most important news. “And the Apocalypse Preparedness Squad is doing great. We got some fourth graders to join. One of them is Jang Hu.”
I waited for Shady to look impressed, but he didn’t look anything at all.
“Her family owns Hu’s Convenience Store.”
Still nothing.
“Just think of all the canned goods she has access to!”
This was lifesaving information. According to the latest internet reports, Planet Q was still on course to crash into Earth on December 31, and when Gavin’s cat, Raven, had given birth to an entire litter of pure-white kittens, the final sign—The color shall be bleached from the creatures before the sun rises for the last time—had come to pass! Now, obviously, if Planet Q made direct contact with North America, we’d all be exploded, and canned fruit wasn’t going to help, but if it happened to hit another continent instead, having the right supplies could mean the difference between survival and certain death.
Shady didn’t look at all relieved though.
“Hey, Shady.” Tamille was standing behind us with her fingers hooked under her backpack straps. “Did you find your duck yet?”
Shady looked down. He started grinding the heel of one shoe against the floor.
“Not yet.” I answered for him, so she’d go away. But she didn’t.
Of course, I’d been looking everywhere for Svenri. Lots of kids had. Students had combed every inch of the schoolyard for days.
I’d even considered the possibility of foul play in her disappearance. First, I confronted Matt D. and Jeremiah, the two fifth graders who’d kicked in a snowman the Friday before she vanished. I figured they’d have a motive, since we’d gotten in their way and defended the underducks (a couple little kids who’d only been trying to enjoy the first packing snow of the year). They swore they were at a basketball tournament when she disappeared though, and their story checked out with Mr. Sadako, the gym teacher. My only other suspects were Pearl Summers (who hated Svenrietta with a passion) and her evil friends Monica and Rebecca, but they were all in the holiday play, and they’d been standing with me on the stage when it happened. They couldn’t have done it.
“I made you a card.” Tamille pulled a folded paper out of her backpack and tried to hand it to Shady, but he just stood there with his arms at his sides.
Obviously, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen Shady so upset that he’d shut down. It happened sometimes, like after this fifth grader named Carl came right up to his face and yelled, “Are you deaf?” Or on pajama days when he just dressed regular (because wearing pajamas makes people look at him, and he hates that) and kids bugged him about it. Or the time Mark complained to the teacher because he didn’t want to do group work with Shady because he never contributes to the discussion.
I’d never seen Shady quite this bad though.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the card from Tamille. It was glittery. The front said Sorry about your duk. “Come on, Shady.” He followed me into class, but as soon as he sat down, kids crowded around.
“Sucks about your duck,” Connor said with a shrug.
“My mom thinks maybe it just flew south,” Angela told him. “So, it might come back in the spring. Don’t give up, okay?”
“I miss Duck Tales reading club,” Tammy added. “Mrs. Patton brought a big dog stuffed animal to read to and changed the name to Dog Tales. But now it’s just stupid.”
Shady’s face was red. His shoulders were tight. He was hating every minute of this.
“Well, at least there aren’t feathers all over the classroom anymore,” Pearl said. For once, nobody agreed with her.
I could tell Shady was relieved when the national anthem came on, and then Mrs. Okah jumped straight into a math unit about 3-D shapes.
I saw her glance in Shady’s direction a few times as she talked, but she answered for him when she called attendance (instead of getting him to raise his hand like she’d been doing lately), and she knew enough not ask him any yes-or-no questions about prisms and spheres.
The real trouble happened at lunch.
As soon as the bell rang, I dragged my chair over to Shady’s desk to keep him company and hopefully to keep other kids from reminding him about Svenrietta—like either of us needed reminding!
“A lavash wrap,” I said sadly as I opened my lunch. I didn’t have to explain it to Shady. I knew he remembered. Lavash was the same bread I’d used that first day to lure Svenri into my backpack when she was just a duckling. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it, but I took a bite of a celery stick. Shady, on the other hand, didn’t bother to take out his lunch bag at all, which was why he was just sitting there with an empty space in front of him when the substitute lunch monitor came in.
She had flat gray hair, pale veiny skin, and ankles like tree trunks. I’d never seen her before, but she was wearing the red vest with the picture of an apple on it that all lunch monitors wear. Obviously, she was filling in for our regular monitor, Mrs. Bolhuis. But this lady had none of Mrs. Bolhuis’s knock-knock jokes or charm.
“You there. In the red shirt. Get down and pipe down,” she snapped at Connor, who’d been standing on his chair, yelling across the room for Gavin to open the window so he could try to throw grapes out it. “If I see any food being tossed, the tosser will be in the office so fast their head will spin.”
She pointed at a granola bar wrapper on the floor and used the fury in her eyes to make Jasmin pick it up. It looked like she was about to rain terror on another room, but she stopped, pivoted, and headed straight for us.
“Did you forget your lunch at home?” she asked Shady.
“I think he’s just not hungry,” I answered.
“He’s got a tongue! He can answer for himself.” The lunch lady tilted her head and stood there, staring Shady down.
“He doesn’t,” I explained.
“Doesn’t have a tongue?”
“Doesn’t talk,” I said.
“Isn’t this a fifth-grade class?” She pointed at the bulletin board, where Mrs. Okah posted the monthly calendar and spelling words. It clearly said at the top Room 9: 5th Grade, so I didn’t think she wanted an answer. “By the fifth grade you should be more than capable of answering when spoken to,” she told Shady. “Kindergarten babies can do that much!”
“He actually can’t,” Pearl said with a little smile, which, I think, is what really set Tree Trunks off.
“Oh, I see,” she answered, looking around the classroom. “You’ve got a substitute lunch lady, so you think you can pull a fast one. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was a combination of really hating her and really wanting to distract her from Shady.
“Uh…yeah,” I said. “Because you were born a hundred years ago.”
A bunch of kids laughed.
“Office!” She pointed to the door. Next, she zeroed in on Shady. “You too. Maybe you can find your tongue and explain to the principal why you don’t have an ounce of respect.”
As she said this, she reached down and plucked off his sunglasses. “You don’t need these inside.” She dropped them on the teacher’s desk.
Suddenly exposed to the room, Shady blinked fast and cowered in his chair like a trapped animal.
“You can’t send him to the office for not doing something he can’t do, stupid!” I said. “And he’s allowed to wear sunglasses if he wants to.”
“Watch. Your. Language. Young man.” The lunch lady’s voice was low and growly.
“It’s true,” DuShawn said. He smoothed out his skirt nervously. His voice was shaking a little, but he seemed determined to help. “Shady is allowed to wear sunglasses. And he doesn’t talk.”
“He never talks,” Arjana put in. “And you’re not supposed to force him.”
But the lunch lady wasn’t listening to anyone. She jabbed her finger toward me in the air.
“To the office. Now.”
“You’ll regret this,” I said, getting to my feet. I knew once I explained what had happened to Mrs. Mackie, Tree Trunks would be in trouble, not us. “Come on,” I said. But when I turned back, expecting Shady to be following me, he was still in his seat. And his whole body was shaking.
“Oh my God!” Pearl Summers yelled. “What’s wrong with him?” Everyone turned to look, which made Shady shake harder.
He started crying. Big, silent tears slipped down his cheeks. He had his arms hugged across his body, but they were vibrating madly too. So were his legs. He’d broken out in sweat on his forehead.
I’d seen it before—but only once. This time his mom took us to the trampoline gym in second grade. Big kids were pushing, and the music was way, way too loud.
“He’s having a panic attack,” I said. “Someone go get a teacher.”
“Nobody leaves this room,” the lunch lady thundered.
DuShawn and Arjana were already getting out of their seats. Then Jackson got up to help too. But to my surprise, of all people, Pearl Summers was the first one to reach the door. “It’s okay, Shady,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”