She tapped her pencil on a pile of extra paper with a click-click sound, and asked Harry to help her carry the canvas bag to the beach. “Snacks, in case we’re hungry.”
We marched down the hall, circling Mrs. Ames, and sped out the door, everyone excited: a school day poor Mrs. Leahy would never have imagined.
Outside, it was windy. Leaves and grit blew across the schoolyard; my hair blew too.
“Whew,” Ms. Quirk said. “Fall is coming.”
I hugged my sweater around me as we walked down the path that led to the dunes.
“Freedom!” Harry yelled.
Conor was yelling too.
I took deep breaths, smelling the damp sand and the sharp scent of the sea.
Dog trotted toward me. He knew he couldn’t break into the line, so he fell in behind us, and I edged farther back so we could be together.
Sophie was in the middle of the line, walking fast, as if she wanted to catch up to Ms. Quirk. Mason’s seaweed sneakers were moving toward the back. A moment later he was next to me, his hand resting on Dog’s head.
Dog gave him a smiling look: his mouth open, his tail high and waving.
I tried not to mind.
“What’s his name?” Mason asked.
I pretended I didn’t hear.
It was almost as if Mason were talking to himself. “Rebel is a good name for a dog. So is John.”
John? I had to smile.
“But this dog?” Mason went on. “This is a terrific dog. I’d call him Faithful.”
Faithful was exactly right. I couldn’t help myself. I turned to take a quick look at Mason. Not a bait man’s face. It was a regular face with freckles dotting his nose; his eyes were green-gray. His scribble-scrabble shirt had a ripped sleeve. But his nails were clean, probably from being in the water last night.
Ms. Quirk stood at the edge of the sand. The reeds brushed against each other with a crackling sound.
She slipped off her sneakers. “You can take off yours too. But walk around the reeds. We don’t want to disturb them.” She tilted her head. “Besides, they’re sharp, and so are the shells.”
We left our sneakers in a jumbled pile, while Mason kept talking. “I never had a dog,” he said as Ms. Quirk called, “Spread out. Stay with your partners. What can you find here?”
She raised the silver whistle that hung around her neck. “I’ll let you know when it’s time to eat.”
I looked for Sophie, but she was standing next to Ms. Quirk, trying to get her attention. How was she going to tell the teacher that she didn’t want to be my partner?
I backed away then, and Dog and I wandered around the reeds, careful not to bend them.
I heard Ms. Quirk tell Conor about a shell she always looked for. “It’s called a junonia. It loops around itself with brown square markings. Maybe someday I’ll find one.”
My bare toe touched something. I bent over to see a messy ball of twigs with a piece of yellow candy wrapper and a few soft feathers threaded inside.
I picked up the nest carefully. One spotted blue egg lay in the center, cracked and empty.
The mother bird and her baby were long gone. I hoped they were together. Gideon told me once that daughter crows came back to their mothers’ nests long after they were grown. But this wasn’t a crow’s nest.
I edged the nest into my cardboard box, but before I could put on the cover, Mason touched my shoulder. “Look at that.”
I jumped.
The nest fell out of the box, and the wind picked it up. It flew, end over end, and disappeared into the tall reeds.
I ran toward it, the sand and sharp shells slowing down my feet, Dog crashing along next to me. But it was gone.
“It’s my fault,” Mason told Ms. Quirk. “I ruined her nest. It even had an empty egg. I never do anything right.”
We walked back, passing Sophie, who was bent over, looking at something with Jenna. Conor was picking up a shell, and Ashton called, “Maybe I found a turtle’s egg.”
But then, I’d found a nest with an eggshell; I’d run my fingers over the spiky twigs, the cracked shell. Maybe that was enough.
“There’s an encyclopedia of birds in the classroom,” Ms. Quirk told me. “You’ll be able to find out what kind of a bird it was.”
But I knew from the blue of its egg it was a robin’s nest. It must have blown far, because I didn’t think robins nested in the low dunes.
Mason made a sound in his throat. A sad one.
It was a sound I might have made sometimes, if only I could have spoken.
I did something that really surprised me. I took a step toward Mason, who’d never had a dog, who believed he never did anything right.
I went close enough so he’d know I wasn’t angry about the nest. And I realized something: Mason would never have tried to hit anyone with a ball. His aim was probably terrible.
Ms. Quirk blew her silver whistle and we gathered around her. She gave out chicken sandwiches she’d made herself, and bottles of cool water.
We sank down in the sand, and she made sure there was a sandwich and water even for Dog.
On Wednesday, Ms. Quirk said, “I have the best news. Mrs. Ames loves the idea of studying wildlife. She’d be happy if we had an assembly later this fall, to let everyone know what we’ve been up to. We’ll talk about it soon.”
An assembly! In front of everyone! That was very scary.
I looked out the window at Dog snoozing on his blanket and smiled. But then I glanced across the classroom at Sophie’s empty desk. Of course she didn’t want to be my partner.
Ms. Quirk tapped a packet of papers on her desk and grinned at us. “I learned a lot from your weekend homework; the secret lives of animals, birds, and even”—she held up a yellow paper—“a turtle.”
She began to read. It was my paper!
I looked out the window, my hands trembling a little. Mrs. Leahy never read our compositions aloud.
Maybe no one was paying attention. But then everyone was laughing, even Ms. Quirk.
I couldn’t help looking up. It was a good laugh. She was showing everyone my turtle cartoon.
The door opened and Sophie came in, her face red, her hair escaping from a braid. She sat at her desk, and I watched her from the corner of my eye. She twisted her ankles one way and the other.
Was she worried about Travis?
I thought of his calling me No-Talk Girl. All his talking. His earnest face. His missing tooth. How he wanted to be my friend.
If Travis were my brother, I wouldn’t be sitting here twisting my ankles.
Ms. Quirk looked serious. “I’ve been thinking. I’m going to change some of the partners.” She waved my paper. “I think this turtle person should work with another turtle person. And two others wanted to work on squirrels.”
Sophie sat up and smiled.
Ms. Quirk turned to her desk to read another change or two.
I stood up quietly, circled the room, and opened the door, holding the knob tightly so a burst of wind wouldn’t give me away.
I glanced back to see Mason mouthing something at me.
I hesitated.
“Trouble,” he ended.
I figured out the rest: You’re going to get in trouble.
I peered into the hall. It wouldn’t be good if Mrs. Ames was blowing down the hall like the wind. I did see her legs, like large scissors, but they were going the opposite way.
Still, I’d have to walk in her direction to get to Travis’s kindergarten.
Instead, halfway down the hall, I went out the door, into the schoolyard. Dog looked up from under the maple tree, but I motioned him to stay, and took a few deep breaths of the late-summer air.
The fourth grade was having early recess, playing volleyball. One of the balls bounced near me. “Hey, kid, get that!” someone yelled, so I kicked it to him.
I ducked under Mrs. Leahy’s window and hurried around the side of the building.
Mrs. Benham had pasted red and yellow
cardboard leaves on some of the kindergarten windowpanes. I could almost hide behind them as I peered inside.
I saw feet under the tables. Girls’ sandals, boys’ sneakers. Knobby knees with round brown scabs. Travis’s knees. I ducked under a maple leaf so I could see his face. His blue eyes were swimming with tears and his cheeks were wet.
If only I could go inside! If only I could speak! I’d say, Hold on, Travis. You can do this. Be brave.
He looked up. I gave him a big wave and a huge smile.
He still cried.
I made a face, scrunching up my nose.
He wiped his cheeks.
I made a different face.
He began to smile.
There.
I ran inside again and stopped at the girls’ room, a good reason for being out of the classroom.
When I opened Ms. Quirk’s door, I could tell that no one even noticed I’d been gone.
No one but Mason.
He held up his partner note.
It said Judith.
And mine would say Mason.
It was my afternoon with Mr. Kaufmann. I peered in the door window to see if anyone else was there. But he was alone, working at his computer, chewing at his bristly mustache.
This office was a great place. On the wall was a picture of a magician with a white rabbit, and on the table was a bowl of grapes. He’d told me he’d hung the picture when he first came to the school a hundred years ago.
I went inside. He looked up and held out his hands, front, and then back. I had to smile.
“Hello, Ms. Judith.” He rolled his chair forward, lightly touching my ear. “What do you know? Here’s a quarter.” He held it up for me to see.
Sometimes it was a dime, sometimes a folded dollar. I never could figure out how he did it, but it made me laugh.
I liked the sound of my laugh, and he liked it too. “It’s like a stream that bubbles up,” he’d said once. “I think your voice will sound just like that. And I will hear it someday.”
Maybe.
He’d known what I was thinking. “I am right. Magicians always are.”
I was laughing again. I could almost picture a shiny top hat on top of his bushy hair. When I first met him, he’d told me he was the school psychologist, but he wasn’t crazy about that title.
That reminded me of the doctor I’d seen a while back. He wore glasses that kept slipping down his nose as he played games with me, and was almost as much fun as Mr. Kaufmann. “You have selective mutism,” he’d said. “You can certainly speak, but right now you’re afraid to do that.”
Selective mutism: a terrible title.
Today Mr. Kaufmann and I spent time leafing through my cartoon pad. It was his turn to laugh. He certainly didn’t sound like a bubbling stream; it was more like a truck going uphill, sputtering all the way.
“So what’s new?” he asked afterward.
I turned to a clean page. I have a dog.
He nodded. “That’s the best.”
I wrote again: Someone said that nobody wants me.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He shook his head. Then he turned the page over. “All right, Ms. Judith. Make a list of everyone who does want you.”
I began to write: Aunt Cora, of course, and Gideon. Dog. And Travis. Ah, and Ms. Quirk.
Could I add Mason’s name? I wasn’t sure. But why not?
“A decent list, to be sure,” Mr. Kaufmann said.
Then he reminded me of our take it easy plan. Amazing—the name of Gideon’s boat. But Mr. Kaufmann wouldn’t know that.
He took a breath loud enough for me to hear; he raised his shoulders and lowered them a few times. “Ah, so relaxing.” He popped a grape into his mouth and pushed the bowl toward me. “Every time I feel worried, that’s what I do.” He grinned. “Too bad I don’t always have the grapes.”
I could see it, a cartoon.
For the rest of the week, Ms. Quirk moved the class around. In math we even crawled on our hands and knees, measuring the classroom, the hall, and the front steps of the school.
Mason and I were partners. He did the ruler work; I did the writing down.
I began to notice things about him. No matter how neat he started out in the morning, he was a mess before the day was half over. He attracted dirt and spills like magnets attract metal.
I didn’t mind. It wasn’t important.
He was lucky. He lived in a house with a whole family: a mother, a father, a brother.
Another thing: he talked. Not just one word, not one sentence. He talked every other minute. And when he wasn’t talking, he was whistling.
“Shhh.” Sophie looked up from measuring with a yardstick. “I can’t think straight, Mason.”
I liked the sound of his talking, his whistling, his singing, the songs he made up. I looked in Sophie’s direction, but she blew her bangs off her forehead.
I realized something. Mason and I were probably the most unpopular kids in the class.
I sat back on my ankles.
It was true. I was a weirdo who didn’t talk. And he was Mason, a sloppy kid who talked too much.
But the weekend was coming up.
“Meet you tomorrow morning,” Mason said when the dismissal bell rang on Friday. “Nine o’clock.”
I remembered the shoe print at Ivy Cottage. Did he mean at the pond behind it? I nodded a little uncertainly.
The next morning, Dog and I turned up the road to Windy Hill when I heard a voice. “Where are you going, Judith?” Mason called from the path below.
Dog moved before I did. He bounded back to Mason, jumping and welcoming.
I walked toward them slowly.
“You’re going the wrong way.” Mason handed Dog a bacon strip.
What was he talking about? I followed him. He wasn’t going anywhere near my pond.
We took the long walk along Shore Road, around to the tip of the island. We stopped at a narrow strip of beach, empty and windswept.
I’d forgotten the old wooden pier that jutted out across the water. It was falling apart, with planks missing and pilings leaning against each other.
Mason didn’t stop. He walked carefully, raising one foot at a time, holding the railing that looked as if it might give way any minute.
He didn’t go far, though; only a few feet.
Dog was too smart to follow. He sat on the edge of the sand, whining.
Yes, it looked dangerous. Aunt Cora would be shaking her head, warning me.
Mason lay on his stomach, yelling, “Come on!”
He wasn’t looking at freshwater turtles, not in that salty sea.
“Judith!” he called again.
There was no help for it. I put my foot on the first plank, and then the second. I went one step further, and crouched down to see what he was looking at.
Dog was barking, taking a few running steps along the sand.
“I was never going to tell anyone about this.” His voice was loud above the sound of the water as it swirled underneath us. Dozens of creatures, one on top of another, grasped the pilings. They were the color of metal and looked like tanks.
A filmy jellyfish floated nearby.
And fish! Dozens of fish, a few small as my pinky nail, others fist-sized, swam around a wooden plank on the seafloor.
Mason pointed to a sea star.
He leaned on his elbows. His dark hair was damp and curled from the sea wind. “I’m not telling you because you can’t tell anyone. It’s because you’re…” He hesitated. “…my partner.”
Just for a second, I glanced at his gray-green eyes.
I looked down at that world of ocean creatures.
Mason hadn’t meant to say partner. I was sure of it.
He’d meant to say friend.
He must have known I’d never had a real friend.
And maybe he’d never had a real friend either.
For that moment, I didn’t care about speaking, or that everyone thought I was a weirdo.
I
was reminded of something Ms. Quirk had said a couple of times. When you get to know something, you appreciate it. It’s the same with people.
Mason said, “It’s a whole world down there. Why should we just write about turtles? Why not all of this?” He swept his arm around and I felt the plank beneath me tremble.
Why not?
We grinned at each other.
“And you”—he pointed—“can draw all of it.”
I nodded.
“It will be spectacular.” I almost laughed. Aunt Cora liked to say spectacular too. We crept off the pier to the sand. Then Mason pulled out paper from his pocket and bent his head to write down some of what we’d seen.
Later, we walked back along the Shore Road, the sun warming our heads.
We saw Sophie on the way.
“I guess she didn’t see us,” Mason said as she passed, her face turned away.
On Monday at school, Harry howled so loud it made me jump. And Conor was laughing, almost like a donkey.
“Sounds like a hyena project for the two of them,” Mason whispered under his breath. “Fits, doesn’t it?”
But whoever heard of a hyena on our island?
Mason and I were keeping our project a secret. He bent over his paper, writing, scratching out, writing again, as I drew cartoons of sea robins, those fish with wings, chirping.
Mason wanted us to find a leatherback turtle. He kept talking about it.
“Listen, Jude…” That was what he called me now. “They’re huge, the largest of all the sea turtles. Sometimes they’re six feet long, and they can travel a thousand miles in a couple of months; one even traveled almost three thousand miles in four months.”
I nodded a little, surprised that he knew so much.
He kept whispering. “They’re amazing. I’ve seen pictures, dark gray to black, with white speckles. We need to keep our eyes open. They’ll be on the lookout for jellyfish. They love jellyfish the way I like Oreos.”
I gave a sideward glance at the remains of an Oreo on his shirt.
Cold-blooded. I wrote.
He glanced at my paper and hesitated. “Leatherbacks aren’t as cold-blooded as freshwater turtles. Their temperature is a little higher than the water they swim in.”