On a gloomy late autumn day, Toddy came sprinting into Sasha’s classroom. The new classroom assistant, Miss Islip, was right behind him, poking her head in with an apologetic smile at Ms. Terrywater.
“Come on in. The boy’s right there.” Ms. Terrywater pointed toward Sasha’s desk before turning back to the blackboard.
“Thank you,” Miss Islip whispered. Ms. Terrywater ignored her.
Miss Islip tiptoed further into the room and squatted down next to Toddy’s chair. “Hey, Tod,” she said. “Want to come back to class with me?”
Toddy didn’t look at the teacher but kept on coloring the tulip fairy that Sasha had drawn that morning.
“He told me the other day that he likes it here,” Sasha said. “He doesn’t think he’s learning enough in your class.”
“Oh,” Miss Islip said. “I didn’t know he felt that way. He must be very smart.”
“Toddy’s very smart.” Sasha frowned. “Where’s Mrs. Flint?”
“Mrs. Flint will be gone for a few weeks. She tripped over one of her cats and fell down her porch steps and broke her hip. She’s having a hard time getting around right now. I’m going to help Toddy in his class while Mrs. Flint is gone.”
“Oh,” Sasha said. Then she sat quietly while Miss Islip glanced anxiously at Ms. Terrywater, who was turned back to the class now and shooting looks full of irritated sparks their way.
“Toddy and I should get back to class. Maybe I can do the same math with him that you’re doing here? Or we could color.”
“Do you have fairies and pixies and tiny dragons and pirates to color?”
“I’m sure I can find something.”
Sasha squeezed Toddy’s hand. “Toddy will go with you, but he’d like a walk in the courtyard first.”
“We can do that.” Miss Islip moved closer and lowered her voice even more. “Sasha, does Toddy talk very often? He hasn’t spoken to me. But the reason I’m here is to help him overcome anything that might be keeping him from talking.”
“Toddy talks all the time.”
“Liar,” hissed a voice from the desk behind Sasha’s. Kirk Stoddard leaned forward. “She’s lying. That kid never talks. Ever. To anyone. He’s retarded. But Sausage thinks she’s a magician or something. She thinks he talks to her. All the Cirque kids are stupid, so don’t believe nothing any of them says.”
Sasha flinched when Kirk called her a magician. Miss Islip gazed at Kirk Stoddard steadily with those deep-lake eyes until Kirk’s face turned pink and he scrunched back in his seat. Then she looked at Sasha with a different look, something softer and not just a little curious.
“I believe he talks to you,” she said, and the way she said it created a flutter of hope in Sasha’s belly. “Communication takes trust, and it sounds like you’re a good person to trust. But he still needs to go to his own classroom.”
Toddy rose from his seat, quietly returned the chair to its place against the wall, and took Miss Islip’s arm. Once they’d gone and Ms. Terrywater had turned back to the blackboard to write out another problem, Kirk Stoddard leaned forward and flicked Sasha on the back of the head with his pencil.
“Ow!” Sasha rubbed the sore spot.
“You think that’s bad, Sausage Brown? Wait and see what I’ve got planned for you after school.”
• • •
At the end of the school day, Sasha packed her things under the watchful eye of her teacher, Ms. Terrywater, then went to the other side of the school building to pick up Toddy. Her stomach had ached ever since Kirk Stoddard had talked to her, but seeing Toddy made her feel better.
In the days before Mrs. Flint fell over her cat, Toddy would sit in a chair facing the narrow, dirty windows that looked out onto the courtyard. His teacher sat at her desk, face buried in a book or filing her nails. Mrs. Flint would ignore Sasha as she walked in and stood next to Toddy, looking out over the weed-filled courtyard with him. She spoke only when she got tired of looking at the two motionless, scrawny backs.
“Go home,” Mrs. Flint would mutter as she shaped her pinkie nail to a sharp tip.
The brand-new assistant teacher, Miss Islip, would poke her head up, a guilty expression softening the timid lines of her face. Sasha had always suspected that Miss Islip was very nice, but the teacher was too intimidated to ask Mrs. Flint to not speak so cruelly to the children. But today the room seemed bigger and more airy. There was a sweet, lemony smell drifting by, and giggles from the corner by the window.
“Sasha,” Miss Islip said, waving her over. “I was just pointing out the pixies to your brother.”
Sasha ran to join them. “We do that all the time too. But Mrs. Flint always says there’s nothing out there and to stop being ridiculous and to go home.”
Miss Islip’s eyes were sad, two emeralds that had lost their shine. She played with the long silver chain around her neck. At the bottom was a cone-shaped rainbow pendant. “I know. I’m sorry she always said that. Since she’s not here, we can look until we get tired of looking. Until our eyeballs fall out!”
Sasha shivered and giggled at the same time. It would be so horribly funny for their eyeballs to fall out and roll around on the floor. But there wasn’t time to see if that was even possible. “We have to catch the bus home.”
“Oh, of course.”
As they left the classroom, Sasha glanced over her shoulder. Miss Islip seemed different. It was as though she could see Toddy’s magic, now that Mrs. Flint wasn’t around to cast a shadow over it. Sasha wished she could change everyone on that side of the island. She thought it was awful that they didn’t have a Light in their lives.