Right away my dad leaned forward and said, “Are you pushing this problem back at me? Is that what you’re doing? We’re not talking about my job or our family life here. You people handed out almost a dozen Ds and you didn’t even know what each other was doing. No one stepped up to help a kid who clearly needed some. And now it’s somehow my fault? I don’t like the sound of that. Not at all.”
Mrs. Hackney said, “I’m sure Dr. Trindler didn’t mean to make it sound like this was anyone’s fault, Mr. Rowley. We’re certainly not trying to assign any blame here. We just want to understand what happened so we can make the right adjustments.”
My dad didn’t sit back, and Mrs. Hackney didn’t want to ask him if he had more to say because he probably did. So she kept talking and said, “Well, one person we haven’t heard from yet is Nora.” Then looking at me, Mrs. Hackney smiled and said, “Nora, is there anything you can tell us that would help us understand what happened at the end of the grading term?”
This meeting wasn’t something I had planned for. But it was an interesting opportunity. I had all my teachers and my parents together in one place. I could make a big impression on everyone, all at once. So I tried to stay calm and I decided I needed to say something . . . remarkable. I needed to find something surprising, something that would make everybody . . . wonder.
I said, “Umm . . . ,” because I was trying to think of something amazing.
And then I said, “Well . . . ,” because I was still thinking.
And then I found it—the perfect thing to say.
I said, “Um . . . I guess I didn’t do very well in my classes and everything. But I’m not mad about my grades. I like Ds.”
I felt my mom and dad stiffen.
Mrs. Hackney paused a moment. Then slowly she said, “You like Ds? What do you mean, Nora?”
“You know—Ds,” I said. “Ds have a pretty shape.” And I kept this blank, happy little smile on my face.
The room went dead silent.
And I realized another fact: When I need to be, I’m a pretty good actor.
Mrs. Hackney was the first person in the audience to come back to life. She said, “That’s very . . . interesting, Nora.” Mrs. Hackney glanced once around the table. She said, “Well. Perhaps we’ve all got enough to think about for right now. I know everyone here will be working to help Nora earn better grades in this new term, and I know all our staff will do their best to stay in touch with her parents.” She paused and then she said, “There is one other thing, something I talked about with Mr. and Mrs. Rowley this morning. I suggested that it might be helpful if we give Nora some additional evaluation, and they’ve agreed. That way we can know the best kind of help to offer. So this is a heads-up because Dr. Trindler might need to take Nora out of class now and then over the next few days.” Looking around the table with a smile, Mrs. Hackney said, “All right then. If no one has anything else, our little meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for coming.”
I looked at the clock. The meeting had only lasted nine minutes. It had felt longer than that. It probably had felt a lot longer to my mom and dad.
Out in the hall, my dad said, “Do you have all your things, Nora? I’m going to drop you two off at home.” I nodded, so we went out the door.
When we got outside, I had to trot to keep up with my mom. When we were halfway to the car, she said, “What in the world were you talking about in there, Nora? You like the shape of Ds?! What did you mean by that?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. It was just something to say.”
My dad muttered, “More like something that made no sense.”
There wasn’t much chitchat in the car during the ride home.
So I analyzed the situation, and here’s what I came up with:
1. I had a gang of grown-ups thinking about my grades.
2. Plus they were all convinced I was an idiot.
3. My mom was so upset she couldn’t chat.
4. My dad was ready to take a punch at someone.
5. The school was going to do some “additional evaluation.” Of me.
And I decided that, all in all, it had been a pretty good day.
eight
ROADKILL
There was a dead squirrel in front of the school on Tuesday morning. It had been there awhile, and a group of walkers were out on the sidewalk, cheering whenever it got run over again by a passing car or a bus. It was not a nice way to start the school day, and it didn’t exactly make me feel proud to be a human.
In homeroom Mrs. Noyes handed me a note: “Please report to Dr. Trindler’s office immediately after lunch and plan to stay there during sixth and seventh periods.” Which was lousy news. That was during science and music, two of my favorite classes.
And I knew what would be happening: evaluation. Of me.
We had free reading time at the beginning of first-period language arts, and Stephen came and sat beside me on the pillows in the reading corner. He held up his book and whispered, “I heard about your big meeting yesterday.”
“You did?” I asked. “How?”
“How?” said Stephen. “‘Cause it’s all over the school, that’s how. I heard that Jenny Ashton was in the nurse’s room after school. She saw Mrs. Byrne take you to the office, and she saw all the teachers. And your mom and dad. Everyone knows you got bad grades, too. I guess that’s kind of my fault. ’Cause I told Ellen and she told Jenny. Sorry about that. And I’m really sorry you’re in so much trouble. Did they yell at you and stuff?”
“Of course they didn’t,” I said. “And I’m not in trouble.”
Stephen frowned and said, “You sure? ’Cause my mom would put me in a military school or something if I even got one D, let alone a bunch of ’em. And Jenny said you were crying when you came out of the office, and your mom was dragging you by the arm.”
“What?! That’s a lie!” and I said it so loud that Mrs. Noyes looked up from her book and frowned at me. So I pretended to read until the coast was clear, and then I hissed, “No one yelled at all, and no one even came close to crying, least of all me. Oooh!—that Jenny Ashton is gonna get it!”
Stephen needed more proof that I hadn’t been tortured in the meeting. He said, “So . . . if they didn’t yell at you, what did everyone say?”
“Nothing much,” I whispered. “My mom wanted to know how come she didn’t get any warnings about my Ds. And the teachers had to explain why I got the bad grades. It was all pretty stupid. I got bad grades because I did bad on some tests—duh. And now they want me to take more tests to see if I’m as dumb as they think I am.”
“But you’re not dumb,” Stephen said. “Even I know that, and I really am dumb.”
I pushed him on the arm. “Don’t ever say that, Stephen. I hate it when you say that.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one who always says you have to face facts. So face it: I’m dumb.”
I pushed him again, and that was one too many disturbances.
“Nora.” Mrs. Noyes was using her soft, reading-time voice. “Either read quietly or I will find you some other work and another place to sit. Final warning.”
I nodded and put my nose in my book. But I whispered to Stephen, “Bad test grades do not mean you are dumb, and I am not in trouble—and if you see that Jenny Ashton, you tell her to start fixing those rotten rumors before I fix her!”
When I went to my locker after first period, Charlotte Kendall came up to me. Charlotte wears a different colored ribbon in her hair every day, and she always holds her books and her notebook up tight against her stomach with both arms. She whispered, but Charlotte’s whisper carries about ten feet. So we had an audience.
“Nora—I heard about your grades. Your averages—they must be ruined! What are you going to do? Do you think you’re going to get left back? I couldn’t stand it if you got left back.”
I smiled as best as I could. “It’s okay, Charlotte. I won’t get left back, I promise.”
“Well,” she said, “if there’s anythi
ng I can help you with, just ask me, okay? Because I got almost straight As, and I really would help you if you wanted, okay?”
I looked hard at Charlotte, testing for acid in her face or her eyes. Not a trace—only sweetness. Charlotte meant every word. And she wasn’t bragging about her grades, just stating a fact.
So I smiled and said, “Thanks, Charlotte. That means a lot to me.” And it did. Charlotte truly felt bad for me. She helped me remember that as far as everyone else was concerned, I was going through a crisis, an ordeal.
Because for everyone else it was an absolute fact that fifth-grade grades mattered. My grades made me look like that dead Sciurus carolinensis on the road out in front of the school.
And in less than three hours, Dr. Trindler was going to get out his measuring tools and try to figure out just how flat this squirrel really was.
nine
CORNERED
It was raining at lunchtime, so I got a pass to go to the library. Indoor recess in the gym was always noisy and confused, and the library was always just the opposite.
I went to a table near the back wall to do my math homework. I was whipping through the sixth problem when a voice said, “Nora?”
I jumped a mile. I hadn’t heard Mrs. Byrne come up behind me. She smiled and said, “Sorry to startle you. Sometimes this carpet is almost too quiet. May I talk with you over at the front desk?”
“Sure,” I said, and I got up and followed her.
She said, “Back here,” and she motioned me behind the desk to the long work counter. “I want you to read something I printed out yesterday.” Then she handed me ten or fifteen pieces of paper that were stapled together.
I knew instantly. I knew what I was holding. I pretended to read the first sheet, but I hardly saw the words. My thinking had kicked up into overdrive. I was in trouble. I needed a way out. I needed a major distraction—something like a fire drill, or maybe an earthquake.
It took a lot of effort not to start breathing fast, and I was afraid my cheeks would turn bright red. I turned to the second page and then the third, barely reading, just stalling for time.
Finally I had to say something, so I said, “It looks like a list.”
Mrs. Byrne said, “Turn to page five, Nora, and read some of the entries out loud—but please keep your voice down.”
I skipped ahead and started to read. “‘MIT Internet Registration home page; Issues in light wave theory; JaneGoodall.org home page; Fuel cell technology comes of age; Hybrid vehicles find new homes; Cold fusion anomalies; Field Museum Egyptology Department; Richard Feynman’s lecture on—’”
Mrs. Byrne interrupted and said, “Thank you, Nora. That’s enough. Can you tell me what you’ve been reading?”
“Something from the computer, right?” I looked into her face.
She wasn’t buying my innocent act. Not even a little bit.
Mrs. Byrne shook her head. “It’s more like something from your computer, Nora. More precisely, that information is stored under your login account on the media center’s main server. When I began to back up the system yesterday afternoon, one terminal was still active—the one in the corner. I went to shut it down, but something on the Internet browser caught my eye, something about the Connecticut Mastery Tests. I didn’t remember any teachers using that terminal, so I checked the login name, and it was you, Nora. You forgot to log out when you went to the meeting in Mrs. Hackney’s office. I know you might think I was prying, but it’s part of my job to monitor the Internet activity of all student accounts. So I looked around a little.”
Mrs. Byrne looked me right in the eye. She said, “What you’re holding there are the first thirteen pages of a 159-page document that lists the Web pages you have visited or accessed since the beginning of this school year. Your files are using five gigabytes of storage space on the server. Do you know what that means, Nora? I think you do, but I’ll tell you anyway. It means that so far this school year you have gathered more information for access and retrieval than all the rest of the fourth- and fifth-grade students combined. Just glancing through the Web pages of the links you have in your hands there, it appears that you have done extensive research on alternative energy sources; you have been trading e-mails with a primate expert at the Jane Goodall Institute; you have a keen interest in educational theory; and apparently you have been enrolled in a college-level astronomy course over the Internet at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
Again she paused. Then, speaking slowly, Mrs. Byrne said, “But the most interesting thing to me is the fact that you are the child who failed her basic Internet research project three weeks ago—and therefore got a D in library skills. So, Nora. How should I be thinking about all this new information?”
Mrs. Byrne had me. I was trapped.
When an animal gets backed into a corner, zoologists say the animal will usually choose one of three instinctive responses. But I’ve never considered myself an animal. I wasn’t going to fight, or run away, or play dead. This was not the time for instincts. I had to think my way out of this corner.
It’s not a coincidence that cartoons show an idea as a lightbulb. Because when an idea hits, it feels like someone has flipped a big switch.
And an idea blasted me, right there in front of Mrs. Byrne—instant light. Yes, I was certainly in a corner. But it wasn’t a small corner, and I didn’t really have to get out of it. There was plenty of room in the corner for someone to join me.
In fact, I decided that it actually might be good to have someone else in my corner.
ten
FOR NOW
I had seen Mrs. Byrne almost every school day since the beginning of first grade—more than seven hundred school days. A lot of those days I had spent more time in the same room with Mrs. Byrne than I had with my mom or dad. So I’d had plenty of time to form a clear opinion about her. And in my opinion, Mrs. Byrne was one of the best people in the whole school. I had never seen her lose her temper, and she always seemed fair and open-minded. Which makes sense—why would a narrow-minded person be a librarian?
And now Mrs. Byrne was standing in front of me, waiting. She wanted me to explain why a kid who just got a bunch of Ds was exploring so many challenging subjects on the Internet.
One of the first things I learned at school was how to read a teacher’s face. It’s a school survival skill and all kids become experts at it. But as we stood there face-to-face in the library—me looking up, her looking down—I could not figure out what was going on behind Mrs. Byrne’s greenish brown eyes.
So I started off cautiously. I said, “I like to read about a lot of things.”
She smiled slightly. “I already know that much, Nora. I want to know about your grades. It’s perfectly clear to me now that you are not a below-average student, or even an average student. Far from it. And you’ve been hiding that from me and everyone else at school.” She paused with her head tilted as she figured out something else. Then she said, “And your parents don’t know how bright you are either, do they?” I shook my head. “So why have you been keeping this a secret?” she asked.
I told her the truth in the simplest way I could. I said, “I didn’t want to be different all the time. I mean, I am different, and I know that. I just didn’t want everyone else to treat me that way. Because it’s not their business.”
Mrs. Byrne nodded slowly. “I can understand that, I think. But why the low grades?”
I had to trust her. I had no choice. I said, “I did that on purpose. I’m trying to do something . . . about grades. Everyone makes way too big a deal about them.”
Mrs. Byrne’s eyebrows scrunched together above her nose. She shook her head and said, “But why get Ds? How can that help?”
“Well,” I said, “those Ds already have my teachers and my parents and the principal thinking and talking about grades, right? And I hope they’re going to think a lot more about grades. And tests, too. Because I’ve got sort of a . . . a plan.” Then I looked her right in the eye and
said, “Except if you tell on me, I don’t think it will work.”
No expression. “What are you trying to accomplish with this . . . plan?”
“Nothing bad,” I said quickly. I almost started to tell about Stephen, but I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone to think he was involved. So I said, “Most kids never talk about it, but a lot of the time bad grades make them feel dumb, and almost all the time it’s not true. And good grades can make other kids think that they’re better, and that’s not true either. And then all the kids start competing and comparing. The smart kids feel smarter and better and get all stuck-up, and the regular kids feel stupid and like there’s no way to ever catch up. And the people who are supposed to help kids, the parents and the teachers, they don’t. They just add more pressure and keep making up more and more tests.”
Mrs. Byrne’s eyes flashed and she shook her head sharply. “But the teachers don’t like all this testing either. And I was not happy when they made me start giving grades in library skills. That’s not what the library is for. So don’t think it’s only the teachers. It’s the school boards. And the state. And the federal government, too.”
Then her pale cheeks colored, just a hint. Mrs. Byrne tried to hide it, but she was embarrassed by that outburst. She hadn’t meant to show me what she was feeling.
But she had.
I pretended not to notice. I said, “Well, anyway, we have to have the tests and the grades, and of course the grades are going to be used to sort us into different levels in sixth grade—the smart kids and the dumb kids. And I don’t like the way it’s done and I want to try to change some things.”
Mrs. Byrne said, “Isn’t this dangerous? For you, I mean. Getting such bad grades?”