Trouble was waiting for me inside the classroom. During recess, Ms. Miller had gone around to each desk and looked over our essays. “Lincoln,” she said, and wagged a finger for me to follow her outside.
As quiet as she’d said it, the whole class knew I was in trouble. And as hard as they tried, their sly-eye watching me go was nowhere near sly.
“I thought you loved to write,” Ms. Miller said when the door was closed.
I stared at my shoes.
“Lincoln? Look at me.”
I looked up, then went back to my shoes.
“Lincoln, you can write about anything. Anything that happened over Thanksgiving break. It doesn’t have to be about the dinner.”
I nodded.
“Lincoln?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you celebrate Thanksgiving?”
I nodded, which seemed to send relief streakin’ through her.
“Well, then, what’s the problem? I thought you would love this assignment! You are my very best writer, did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“You have a wonderful way with words. I always look forward to reading your essays.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She stood lookin’ at me for an endless minute. Finally she said, “Is everything all right at home?”
I nodded.
“Lincoln?”
She had a look on her face that was all parts doubt, and it set a wave of panic crashing through me. “No!” I said, lookin’ straight at her. “Things at home are fine. They’re great. Actually, they’ve never been better!”
“So…?”
I shrugged and went back to looking down. “So there’s no explainin’ the Thanksgiving I had.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand this. You love to write, everything at home is fine, you celebrate Thanksgiving—”
“Well, I don’t know if you’d call it celebratin’.”
She gave me a curious look. “So what would you call it?”
I thought about that. “Surviving? I survived it?” Then, under my breath, I added, “Which is more’n I can say about some folks.”
She crossed her arms. “Okay. Now I am completely confused.”
“I know, ma’am, see?”
“No! I don’t see!”
“Exactly! There’s no explainin’ it.”
“Well.” She studied me hard while I did the same to my shoes. Finally she said, “How can anyone understand if you don’t at least try to explain?” Then she softened up and said, “I know you’re new here, and I know that’s not easy. I have no idea what you’re going through or why your vacation was…difficult. But I can see that you have a story to tell, and your story matters.”
I peeked up at her.
“I promise you, Lincoln, it matters.” She gave me a little smile. “Can you please just try?”
“I have tried, ma’am. I don’t know how to start.”
My not knowing how to start seemed to make her very happy. Her eyes popped wide and her finger popped up. “Ah!”
“Ma’am?”
“Start anywhere! In the middle. At the end. It doesn’t matter. Just start. And once you start, weave your way back. Or forward. Don’t worry about where—just start.”
Ms. Miller made it sound so easy, but it was Kandi who made me think I should actually figure out a way to do it.
“Lincoln! Lincoln, wait!” she called, catching up to me on my way to Brookside.
It was a little strange to be happy to see her. Might’ve had something to do with the way she’d brought Isaac and me into playing four square again at lunch and made sure no one cheated us. I’d made it to first square for three whole serves, something that qualified as a miracle.
And a happy one at that.
She got straight to the point. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think you should know—Colby showed around your essay while you were out with Ms. Miller today.”
“What?”
“She said you must be too embarrassed to write about your Thanksgiving.”
“What?”
“I told her to shut up and mind her own business.”
I felt like I’d been put in an alternate universe, what with Kandi tellin’ someone else to mind their own business and all. But before I could get my bearings, she said, “Are you blocked?”
“Blocked?”
“You know—when a writer can’t figure out what to write, they call that being blocked.” I didn’t say anything, so she went on. “I’d be blocked, too, because I had the worst Thanksgiving ever. But you know what? I’m not writing about that. I’m writing about a made-up Thanksgiving. The decorations are great, the food is delicious, everyone’s happy and having a good time….Fiction is fun, and I totally see why you do it.”
“You been readin’ up about bein’ a writer?”
“How’d you know?”
“Well, you know way more about it than I do.”
We walked along until what I was thinking finally popped out. “Isaac told me about your ma. I’m sorry.” I slid a look her way. “I’m guessin’ that’s why you had a bad Thanksgiving?”
She nodded, and her eyes got all glassy. “I’m just trying to do what she said: keep my chin up, remember that life is precious, and be a force for good in the world.” She burst into tears. “But it’s so hard! Sometimes it’s just so hard.”
Talk about unexpected. I stopped walking and stared.
Kandi wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sat down on a walkway step, her arms propped against her legs, her head sagging like she was just too tired to carry on. “People don’t know what it’s like,” she choked out. “They just don’t.”
I sat beside her. I couldn’t claim to know what it was really like, but just the thought of losing my ma put a rock in my throat. And it was coming to me clearer now that all this time I’d figured Kandi was one thing when it was turning out that she was another.
Finally I ventured, “Maybe you’ve been workin’ so hard at hiding what you’re going through that folks have no idea, and no way of understandin’ it.”
She turned her weepy eyes on me. “Isn’t that what you do?”
The truth in that was undeniable, but I denied it just the same. “No!”
She stared at me, then shook her head and wiped away her tears. “Never mind. Sorry.” She stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
She was already hurrying off. “Wait!” I called, chasing after her.
“It’s okay, Lincoln. I had a little breakdown. Sorry. I’m fine.”
“But—”
“Look, you don’t want to talk about yours, I don’t want to talk about mine. And even if I did, the truth is, nobody really cares.”
My mouth shot open. “I do!”
The words stunned me, but there they were, stopping Kandi in her tracks while they shot a bolt of fear through my heart.
“What did you say?” she asked.
I wanted to run.
Hide!
My heart was galloping in my chest. My mouth was dry. But I could see now that being brave—truly brave—was about more than facing off with Troy, or derelicts at the Laundromat, or even Cliff.
It was about facing off with the truth.
So I stood by my words. “I do,” I said, then looked at her square-on. “Writing about some phony Thanksgiving isn’t gonna make anyone know what you’re goin’ through. And you’re right—I’ve been doin’ the same thing as you.” I took a deep breath. “I love writin’ stories, and I’m gonna keep writin’ stories. But I’m starting to see that there’s a time for stories and there’s a time for truth, and I’m thinkin’ this is a time for truth. So how about we make a deal: you write about your real Thanksgiving, and I write about mine.”
She looked at me for an endless minute. “You’re serious?”
I was sweatin’ bullets, but I held my ground with a nod.
“Deal,” she said. Then she stuck out her hand.
And I shook it.