3

Everything in the kitchen now had a yellow sticky tag with a word written on it.

Refrigerator. Stove. Sink. Counter. Table. Clock. Towel. Wall. Coffeemaker. Vitamins. Knives. Ladle. Spatula.

Jared found it creepy. He was ten years old, and all kinds of things were now driving him crazy. Of course Riddle couldn’t read. That made sense. But why was Jared’s mother spending every minute of every day trying to make up for lost time?

The way Jared saw it, Riddle didn’t need a tutor three times a week. And he certainly didn’t need the world labeled. Jared wasn’t going to wear a tag that said Brother, even if they paid him.

The whole house was starting to look like it was part of some kind of estate sale, only there were no prices on the big labels.

And then his big sister made a discovery. “Mom… have you noticed that Riddle has to get up really close to your stickers to see the letters? And he squints a lot.”

Debbie Bell glanced across the room. Riddle was drawing a picture of a pot roast on his new art pad. His nose was almost touching the paper.

Debbie Bell had taken Riddle and Sam for physicals, and Riddle was being treated for asthma. Now she looked puzzled. “Dr. Howard didn’t say anything about his vision.”

Emily shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t check it.”

Two days later, Riddle was diagnosed as being nearsighted, with extreme astigmatism in his left eye. Because Debbie Bell had to work that day at the hospital, Emily, Sam, and Riddle went to the optometrist’s office together to pick out glasses. They asked Jared to come, but he’d made it clear that it was the last thing he wanted to do.

Emily headed for the section marked Juvenile Boys. But Riddle had his own ideas. There was a photo of a redheaded girl wearing rectangular orange glasses. He pointed to the image. “I want those.”

Sam looked from the photo back to his little brother. “Riddle, I think those might be for girls.”

That made Riddle laugh. “How can there be different glasses for girls and boys?”

Emily whispered to Sam with concern: “He’s never experienced peer pressure.”

Sam and Emily tried to talk Riddle into at least looking at the other choices, but when the kid set his mind to something, there was no changing it.

A week later they returned when the glasses were ready. Emily stared at Riddle’s reflection in the mirror. He suddenly looked like he was from the punk-rock scene in London in the late 1970s. He was now somehow the hippest person in any room.

When Riddle spun around from the optometrist to face them, he could see Emily and Sam, and his eyes lit up as a smile stretched across his face. “I see you guys! Everything is so much bigger!”

Riddle’s head swung in all directions. “I see all the little things. I feel dizzy because I can see so much.”

He was laughing now. He turned back toward Emily and Sam. “Guys—I really see you!”

Sam shut his eyes and tried not to feel anything. But when he glanced over at Emily, he could see that she, too, had a wobbly grin on her face.

Happiness.

The emotion that frightened him so much.

Summer officially started two days later.

Sam began a program at Baine College designed to acclimate students with learning differences who would be new in the fall. He wasn’t dyslexic, like the majority of the other kids in this summer class. He had his own unique issues.

Sam had no formal training or instruction from a teacher. He’d followed no curriculum. He had no experience as a student since grade school.

Emily’s father was a music professor at Baine. So obviously the place was making allowances. That put Sam even more on edge.

He now sat in the very back of the classroom, convinced that the twenty-two (he counted them) other students could see that he had not been in school since he was seven years old.

He was certain they could tell that he had no idea what to say, when to write something down, or even how to listen.

It was torture.

A woman came in and, with a marker, wrote DR. JULIA HUNT in block letters on the whiteboard. Sam kept his eyes glued to her as she spoke about the requirements for the class. He could see people typing into computers that they’d suddenly pulled from backpacks and placed on their desks.

It was impossible for him to listen to what the woman said and at the same time try to take down notes. And he didn’t have a computer. Even if he did, he had no idea how to type.

He could see other students tapping rapidly. It was as if they were playing an instrument. Their wrists stayed planted on the keyboard while their fingertips bobbled up and down.

Dr. Julia Hunt was talking now about the books they would read and the papers they would write. And in the end, there would be a final. But she didn’t say a final what.

Just a final.

And she said that the final would count for 50 percent of the grade. She looked very serious. She was the judge and the jury and the executioner.

Then Dr. Julia Hunt began to call names. Like a lineup. Like a firing squad.

Sam watched as the other students answered. They said only, “Here.” A few names were met with silence. And then the woman said:

“Sam Border.”

Sam felt like the temperature in the room had risen ten degrees in a matter of seconds. But he was able to open his mouth and get out a single word.

He said, “Yes.”

No one laughed, and the woman was on to another name as he shut his eyes.

Against all odds, he had survived.

On Sam’s first day, Emily had her second shift as a bus girl at Ferdinand’s Fine French Restaurant on Oak Street.

Like Sam, she felt as if she were on another planet.

Because she also had no idea what she was doing.

In the restaurant’s kitchen, Emily was responsible for sorting the dirty dishes and cutlery in order for the two dazed-looking guys (with the steamy water hoses that slung down from metal arms on the ceiling) to load up the forever-chugging dishwashing machines.

She had to keep the water glasses topped off in the dining room. And a constant supply of warm bread going out in the wicker baskets that all the diners got when they first sat down.

It was her duty to reset each table and deal with the linens and all of the garbage after every shift.

It didn’t sound like that big a deal when she’d first heard the duties, but she quickly learned that there was a lot more going on in a restaurant than meets the eye.

And on her second day on the job, she had the biggest screwup anyone could remember happening at Ferdinand’s.

The restaurant was in an old brick building, and while it had been renovated, there were things that dated back seventy-five years, to when the place had been some kind of beer hall.

Emily had been told multiple times to hit the switch by the entrance before she went inside the walk-in freezer. The toggle activated a red light over the heavy metal door, signifying that someone was inside the cooler.

The door was tricky. Sometimes it was accidentally left partway open, and the cold air escaped. But when it was closed hard, the mechanism that released from the inside had been known to malfunction.

And on that fateful day, in the middle of lunch service, Emily was in a hurry when she entered the walk-in to get more butter. Natalie, the daytime hostess, passed through the kitchen. She saw that the red light wasn’t on and assumed that the freezer door had been left open.

So she put her shoulder to the metal and shoved hard until it clicked.

Inside, the vacuum seal of the door made a sucking sound. Emily shouted: “Hey!”

It was so cold in the walk-in that she could see her breath as a white puff.

The “hey” now lingered in the air. Emily put the butter tray down and went to the metal door and pushed. Nothing. She then beat on the only exit with her fist.

“I’m locked in here! Help!”

The ceilings and walls and door in the freezer were six inches thick, made from insulated foam covered in stainless steel. The floor was a sheet of aluminum. A heavy plastic curtain hung in front of the doorway.

It was an extremely cold, sealed, metal box lit by a single weak lightbulb.

The temperature inside was negative two degrees Fahrenheit.

After Emily pounded on the door for what seemed like an eternity but was only eighteen seconds, she knew that she was in trouble.

The whirling fans of the cooling units made such a racket that she could barely hear her own knocking on the inside, so forget anyone hearing on the other side of the metal.

Emily’s uniform consisted of a sleeveless white shirt and a wraparound black skirt. Her legs were bare, and on her feet she wore gold ballet slippers.

She had been inside the walk-in icebox for less than a minute and she was already freezing. Emily felt her breath turn shallow as she realized that she was light-headed. It was possible, she suddenly realized, that she might faint.

There was a box of frozen imported anchovies behind her, and Emily sank down onto it, taking a seat in the dark corner as she folded her head down into her knees.

And then suddenly the freezer door was flung open. Emily opened her eyes to hear a voice say, “She’s not in here.”

Emily tried to get to her feet, but it was too late.

The woozy feeling returned as the room swirled, and she had no choice but to drop back down to the anchovies as the freezer door slammed shut.