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ROLAND’S STOMACH SEIZED UP. A fifteen-year-old shouldn’t have to go through this, but any minute now it would begin.
Mrs. Kauffman sat at her desk next to the windows, the sunlight framing her smooth, shoulder-length dark hair. Whispers and murmurs traveled around the room. The teacher studied an electronic notepad, probably deciding who would go first. She lifted her head and looked out.
Roland tensed and turned to his friend Peter Brandt, who sat next to him, to see if he showed signs of fear or even mild apprehension.
Peter sat slouched with his legs stretched out, one in the aisle and the other under the chair in front of him. He cleaned a fingernail then bit a hangnail and spit it to the side. Didn’t seem to notice Roland’s glance. Didn’t seem concerned about anything. He could’ve been sitting in his own backyard on a lazy summer afternoon.
Mrs. Kauffman’s chair screeched as she scooted it back. She stood, tugged on her blazer, and flounced to the front of the sunny classroom. Younger than most teachers at River Run High, she always dressed professionally and in the latest styles. Today she wore a dark blazer over a turquoise blue top and tan dress pants. Dangling earrings drew attention to her cheerful face. Confident, approachable, and fearless—at least when it came to speaking to groups—kids identified with her. All the girls loved her, and all the boys tolerated her, probably because of her pretty face.
Her gaze traveled across the room, landing on every student in turn.
Roland shifted his eyes to the folder on his desk. No one could get out of this class, and no one would get out of this assignment.
“Okay, class . . .” Mrs. Kauffman grabbed the projector remote, tapped something on her laptop keypad, and turned to the interactive whiteboard.
Roland sucked in a breath and slumped down in his chair, four rows from the front of the classroom. He should’ve taken a seat in the back by the door.
Peter looked his way.
He saw it out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t get himself to meet his stare. Peter knew Roland’s terror of this class: speech class.
“In an effort to be fair and impartial, I’ve put all your names into a random winner generator to see who gets the honor of going first.” Mrs. Kauffman smiled, giving the same encouraging look she’d given from day one.
“The honor,” Peter mumbled and then chuckled under his breath.
Roland breathed again and finally glanced Peter’s way in a show of solidarity.
“Is everybody ready?” Mrs. Kauffman said with an extra note of cheerfulness.
“Yes,” half the class said in unison. Groans and muttering came from the other half. Silence from Roland.
No, no, no. The words bounced around Roland’s head. He sank down further, the top edge of the chair scraping his sweaty back through his polo shirt.
“Okay, here we go.” Mrs. Kauffman pressed a key on her laptop. Everyone looked at the whiteboard.
Roland cut a glance to Peter, who grinned knowingly as if completely aware of Roland’s fear. Holding his breath, Roland shifted his gaze to the folder on his desk, the folder that held his double-spaced speech typed in twelve-point font with one-inch margins.
Please, God. Please, God. Please, God. He should’ve stayed home sick. Why did every tenth-grader have to take speech class anyway? When in his life would he ever use this skill? He had no intention of becoming a teacher, a leader, or entering public life. He’d become a detective or something, a private eye who communicated via email and sneaked through the shadows.
“And our first speaker is . . .”
A hush fell over the class as the name appeared on the whiteboard.
“Brice Maddox.” Mrs. Kauffman smiled, her gaze sweeping from one side of the classroom to the other.
Roland exhaled, relief shuddering through him. Then the name registered in his mind. Brice Maddox, a new girl at River Run High, wasn’t in class today. Had she even come to school? He’d heard rumors about her this morning, something about her house being vandalized and other things he’d tried to tune out. He knew from first-hand experience that kids could be mean, especially to new students.
Mrs. Kauffman’s smile faded and the look in her eyes said she remembered something. Maybe she’d heard the rumors too. “Since Brice isn’t here today, we’ll pick another name.” She turned and tapped a key on her laptop.
Roland squeezed his eyes shut. Please, God. Please, God. Please . . .
Gasps of relief sounded from every corner of the room then laughter from a couple of kids and a few whispered comments.
“The voiceless one.”
“Does he even know how to talk?”
Ice-cold dread fell over Roland as he lifted his gaze. He knew before reading his name on the whiteboard, before hearing the teacher announce, “Roland West!”
“Oh, man,” Peter said with sympathy.
Roland spared him a panicked glance. His body turned to dead weight, his limbs to rubber. His hands trembled like dried leaves fighting to cling to a tree in a hot fall breeze. He couldn’t even visualize getting up from his desk, much less walking to the front of the room.
“I’ll introduce each speaker before they come up,” Mrs. Kauffman said. “Ready, Roland?”
He wanted to say “no” and beg her to pick another winner, but his eyes only flickered to her. He glimpsed her steady smile and hard look that said she knew his fear but he wasn’t getting out of this.
“Roland West is one of our quieter students, but you’ll soon learn he’s lived an incredibly interesting life of adventure. Let’s welcome Roland to the front of the room where he’ll tell us a bit about himself.” She clapped, everyone in the class following suit.
He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. In his peripheral vision he saw faces turning toward him, adding a hundred pounds to the dead weight that he couldn’t fathom lifting from his seat.
Peter leaned in and grabbed his shoulder. “You got this,” he whispered. He was probably the only one who really knew Roland’s fear, or who cared.
“Roland?” Mrs. Kauffman said with firmness in her tone as she continued to lead the applause.
Making the most of Peter’s vote of confidence, Roland latched onto the desk and forced himself to stand. A sharp pain in his knee made him wince. He’d had a leg cast removed three days ago, so he would need to concentrate on not limping. He slid his speech from the folder with a trembling hand. The applause continued as he strode forward with all the confidence he could muster—oh, God, I’m limping! —past three rows of desks to the front of the classroom and to the podium. He made a mental note not to lean on the cheap maple podium, noticing it had wheels.
He set his papers down, and the clapping stopped. The room grew hot and quiet except for a whispered comment by troublemaker Foster Masson in the back row.
Roland stared at his speech until the words blurred. He was back in ninth grade, his first year in a brick-and-mortar school. He hadn’t found his name on any of the homeroom lists hanging on the wall. So, he’d had to go to every freshman class and ask if he belonged there, introducing himself over and over in front of every ninth-grader in school. He’d been the subject of gossip from the first day, the new kid who’d lost his voice and croaked out his name. The mute.
And then the spray tan incident a week ago—on the first day of this school year—had renewed all the gossip from last year and added a new dimension. Three kids who didn’t like his pale skin had dragged him, despite the leg cast, into an empty classroom. He’d dropped his crutches, trying to get away. He’d never felt more helpless, humiliated, or vulnerable in all his life. They’d pinned him to a wall and assaulted him with spray tan. His older brother Jarret found out and sought retribution, getting suspended on the first day of school.
Something inside Roland changed that day. All the confidence he’d gained over the previous year had left him.
A bead of sweat traced a path down Roland’s back, under his black polo shirt, bringing him to the present moment. He lifted his head and looked out at faces, most blank, a few sympathetic, and others smirking. He’d barely spoken two words to any of these kids, other than Peter. Thank God his friend Caitlyn wasn’t in his speech class. He’d hate for her to see this.
Roland cleared his throat. He squinted at his speech, trying to bring the first line into focus. He’d memorized the entire thing anyway, practicing it in the mirror every night for a week.
Now that he thought about it, that first line was lame. It was like a noose that would hang him. Was he really going to say it? Would the speech work if he skipped it?
He looked out at his classmates. Fiery yellow light messed with his vision, bright splotches appearing on faces. Too bad it didn’t hide them completely. He hated having all eyes on him.
“Roland?” Mrs. Kauffman sat behind her desk, practically invisible with the sunlit window behind her and the yellow spots in front of her. “You may begin,” she said, encouraging him to the noose that would soon hang him.
Roland nodded and planted his trembling hands on the podium.
He sucked in a breath and made himself do it, stick his head in the noose, read the first line. “There’s gold in them . . . them thar hills.”
Someone snorted, the sound a person makes when trying to hold back laughter. Was it Foster? Yeah. Then he let loose, throwing his head back and guffawing, and everyone else joined in. Even Peter? Peter sat face down on his desk, one hand sunk in his messy blond hair.
The trembling spread to Roland’s entire body. Mouth going dry, he tried to find his place. “In 1849, relatives on my, on my father’s side . . .”
He bit his tongue, hoping to activate his spit glands or at least draw a little blood to moisten his mouth.
The laughter subsided, but the fiery splotches increased. He couldn’t see the words of his speech, couldn’t see his classmates. Instead of comforting him, panic set in. His head grew light, and he couldn’t suck in a breath. Someone said something, maybe called his name, but it sounded far off.
Moving as if in a dream, he snatched his speech from the podium and bolted—with a limp—through the moving yellow splotches to the only thing he could see: the door.
~ ~ ~
SEVERAL THIN STREAMS of water arched into the old sink in the boys’ bathroom. Stomping on the foot pedal, Roland held cupped hands under the pathetic streams and tried to get enough water to splash on his clammy face.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked like an ordinary kid with average height, weight, and short dark hair. Okay, so maybe his skin was a bit paler than the typical white boy. And the overhead lights made it match the off-white walls so that a ghost looked back at him through the mirror. He wished he could disappear like a ghost or at least blend into the shadows.
Roland splashed onto his face the little water he’d managed to collect and rubbed his eyes. Lifting the hem of his polo shirt, he dried his face. Then he leaned on the edge of the curved sink and glared at himself in the mirror.
He sure didn’t feel ordinary. He felt like a freak. Couldn’t even blurt out the speech he’d spent two days writing and almost a week memorizing. Every kid in the tenth grade would end up giving a speech, several speeches. And his story wasn’t boring. His father was an archaeologist who had traveled all over, his grandparents, farmers in southern Arizona, a more distant relative had been a 49er . . .
Maybe he shouldn’t have started with that stupid line from Mark Twain’s novel The American Claimant. Or maybe he should’ve made a Power Point presentation to take the attention off himself.
Aggravation mounting, Roland turned and kicked in a stall door, making it bang against the metal partition. He’d kicked it with his good leg, but his bad leg screamed anyway.
An archaeologist, farmer, and gold digger. . . It wasn’t in his blood to stand up and talk before a group. It rubbed against every fiber of his being and tore at the threads holding him together, causing those fiery splotches that signaled his downfall. What was that about anyway? Low blood sugar? Panic attack?
He leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his hair, combing the wet strands into place.
Whatever. He wasn’t going back to speech class today, but he couldn’t really stay in the bathroom for an entire class period. Where could he go?
With a sigh, he strode from the bathroom, turned the corner, and crashed into a boy who must’ve been cruising down the hall.
The boy cussed and shoved him into the wall. “Watch it,” he said, his voice an octave too high. He wore an over-sized white t-shirt under a weathered denim jacket. Messy white-blond hair fell over his eyes, but Roland sensed the bitterness in them.
“Sorry.” Heart racing, Roland lifted his hands, palms out. At least he hadn’t run into a teacher.
The kid glared for a second then turned and lumbered away with attitude and haste in his steps.
As Roland watched him go, he realized with shock that he was a she. It was the girl everyone was talking about today: Brice Maddox.
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