Finally, she stopped.
“I’m tired of sitting,” she said. “Let’s go play!”
“Play?” George asked. “Play what?”
She pointed to the playground. “Play! Come on!”
He shook his head. “That’s for little kids.”
“Well, I am eight. Seriously. Stop acting like you’re a teenager or something! You aren’t that much bigger than me.”
“I’m almost eleven.” He rolled his eyes at her. Okay, so by “almost,” he meant in ten months, but eleven sounded a lot older than ten.
“Then you’re ten! Ten is still a kid. Kids play. Come on!” She was pulling on his arm now. “Please?”
He considered. He hadn’t climbed on a playground in years. Not since he was maybe a first- or second-grader. At school, the bigger boys just played sports—George liked soccer—or hung out during recess.
Of course, she’d just read to him for quite some time. And she was a little kid. They always had all sorts of energy to get out.
“Fine. Just for a little while.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Come on!”
Half an hour later, he was exhausted. How in the world did little kids have so much energy? He played soccer all recess every day, and he could barely keep up with her.
“Elizabeth, I’m done,” he said, leaning back on top of the jungle gym. “You go play.”
She waved at him from her upside-down position hanging on a bar next to him. Her braids looked silly hanging down from her head. He almost laughed out loud.
Elizabeth’s face was turning red from staying upside down too long. She flipped herself right side up on the bar before responding. “That’s okay, it’s getting late anyway. I have to go home soon. Do you come here on school days, too?”
“When I can,” he said. “Sometimes I bring homework.”
“I’ll bring mine, and when we’re done, I’ll read more. Only one more week of school anyway!”
Third-grade homework, how cute. He grinned at the thought.
She made quick work of packing up the food containers, utensils, water bottles, and the book, then waved as she hurried off.
He sat back with a sigh. He had a full stomach, a tired body, and a full head. He’d have good dreams tonight.
July to September 2000
Elizabeth came to the park almost every day and stayed all afternoon, just like George. It seemed that neither of them had anywhere else they’d rather be. She once mentioned not wanting to go home, but he knew what it was like when people were nosy, so he didn’t ask. He could only be grateful that she was there as often as she was.
Every time she came, she brought him food. He didn’t know how she knew he was always hungry, but somehow she did. She never made mention of it, though. She’d brought him lunch “so he wouldn’t have to go home to eat” or something like that. After the first few times, she just handed over the food without comment. He appreciated it. He thanked her every time, but it was a relief not to have to make a big deal out of it. It got hard to have to be grateful all the time.
Sometimes she didn’t come. He missed the food, but he missed her company more. She was smart, he’d come to figure out. Two years younger than him, but actually only a grade behind in school. She read a lot and talked like it, using words that he didn’t know sometimes. He pretended he understood so she didn’t think he was stupid, but he didn’t think she was fooled.
They read the first Harry Potter book together, then the second, and the third.
“And that’s it!” Elizabeth said, closing The Prisoner of Azkaban.
George stared at her. “I thought there were four books?”
“I’m only allowed to read the first three right now,” Elizabeth said. At his raised eyebrows, she winced. “Dad says. He says the next one is written for older kids, and it’s kinda scary and violent and stuff.”
“Wait, for how long?” How long would she even keep meeting him here? He felt let down. He loved those books!
“Until I’m, I don’t know, a teenager or something, I think.”
He closed his eyes. It really was over.
“You can read it to yourself if you want,” she said. “Unless your mom and dad don’t let you.”
“Mine wouldn’t care, but...”
“I could get it from the library for you, if you want.”
He nodded, but inwardly he groaned. The books were long, and there had been lots of words in the earlier books that he wouldn’t have known how to read. There was no way he could read the next book on his own.
“I can probably help you. There were lots of magic words in the books, and you didn’t see how they were spelled. I can’t read it to you, but I can help you with words.”
Even she knew how dumb he was at reading, for all she pretended he wasn’t. He sighed.
“Um. Okay. Yeah, get the next one.”
September 2000
George threw himself down on his mattress and stared at the ceiling. He had tried, he really had. He had read the first couple pages of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and he’d asked her about two words. More than that seemed stupid, and he had begun to realize that he didn’t want to look stupid in front of this girl.
But those two words weren’t enough. There were lots of words he didn’t know, and even once she told him the words, it was hard to keep track of the story. He sorta understood what was going on, but not enough to get lost in it like he had with her reading to him. And the book was huge, probably twice as big as the other books were. He would have thrown the book in frustration except that it was Elizabeth’s library book and he would never want to get her in trouble. She was the best thing that had ever, ever happened to him.
It didn’t help that his mother and Mark had been arguing most of the evening. Sometimes they were hissing at each other, other times yelling at the top of their lungs. But in a one-bedroom apartment, it was hard to ignore. They’d stopped, finally, in the last half hour. But even with silence to read in, the book was too hard.
“George!” his mother called in a high-pitched voice. He heard a giggle as he stood up. “Georgie-Porgie pudding... how did that go again?”
“Georgie-Porgie pudding and pie, something...” Mark’s deeper voice rumbled.
George opened the door to their bedroom and peeked in. The room was a mess, as usual, but there was no new mess that he could see and nothing broken, so that was something.
“Georgie!” his mother cried, arms open wide for a hug. “There’s my precious baby. Go down to the store and get Mama a pack of Gatorade, okay?”
He looked at Mark.
“There’s some money in my wallet,” Mark said. “Get the woman her drink.”
George nodded and went to get the money. Mark was really one of Mom’s better boyfriends. He fought with George’s mom a lot, but they always made up, and he had never, ever hit her.
He never yelled at George or counted the change when he gave him money, either. He’d taken a quarter from another of Mom’s boyfriends once, back when he was really just a little kid and didn’t know any better, and he’d gotten a rather memorable spanking. Mark wasn’t like that. But he’d never steal anyway, not now that he was old enough to know what it was.
The store was only at the gas station on the corner, so he was back in ten minutes with a six-pack of his mom’s favorite flavor.
“Thanks, baby,” she said, giving him another hug. Apparently she wasn’t ignoring him today. “Want one?”
He nodded eagerly and tried to twist the cap off. It didn’t budge, but Mark took it from him and opened it, then handed it back.
“Thanks,” he said awkwardly, then backed out of the room. It smelled like old laundry, and it was always a mess. It felt dirty, like the apartment building. He kept the living room as clean as he could and tried to imagine he lived in a real house, with parents like Hermione Granger’s or Ron Weasley’s.
He drank his Gatorade quickly. It was a rare treat, and he didn’t want to
risk something happening to it.
Raised voices disturbed the silence suddenly. Mom and Mark were back to arguing. He went to put the bottle in the trash, and when he came back, they’d stopped. But it worried him. Would she break up with Mark?
He went back to his mattress, but this time he wasn’t thinking about Harry Potter. He wasn’t even thinking about how hungry he was. He’d convinced Mom to let him do the grocery shopping for her, so there was at least some food in the house, even if there were no cooked meals. At least he could go get more.
No, his worries were more about his mom and Mark. They’d been together for a while now. He’d even wondered if they might get married. But now with all the fighting, he didn’t think he’d want that.
He sighed and tried to think about Harry Potter instead.
Charity
October to November 2000
“It’s too hard,” George confessed to Elizabeth. “I don’t really read much. It’s probably written for older kids.” He could barely bring himself to hand Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire back to her without having read it. He wished desperately that her father wasn’t quite so controlling of what books Elizabeth read.
“It is,” she said. “It’s harder than the other books. And my dad says it’s darker, which is why he won’t let me read it yet. I bet somebody dies. For real.”
George sighed. “It’s frustrating, though. I don’t want to stop reading.”
“What about another book?” Elizabeth said. “How about I’ll read to you while we’re here, and then you can take a different book home that you can read on your own.”
Like that was gonna work. But sure, she could read to him.
“Okay.”
She opened the book and started to read. “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.”
“What are air-raids?” George asked. “And what war?”
“World War II,” Elizabeth said. “The air-raids were when the Germans were bombing London all the time. Everybody had to close their curtains and turn out their lights so the German planes couldn’t tell where stuff was, but I guess it didn’t work or something because the Germans dropped lots of bombs and people died. So people who couldn’t leave because they had to work in the city sent their kids to live with other people in the country to be safe.”
“Like foster homes,” George said, his stomach sinking. “I don’t think I like this book.”
“You haven’t given it a chance. It’s a good book. It’s got a witch in it!”
He frowned. That sounded better. Maybe.
“And centaurs!”
“Like from Harry Potter?”
“Yep!” She’d had to explain what centaurs were when they read the first Harry Potter book. But if they weren’t real, why were they in other books?
“Okay. We can try it.”
“Thank you,” she said with every ounce of sarcasm a small freckly eight-year-old could manage.
Edmund pretty quickly reminded George of a kid named Nick at the group home. Nick didn’t hit people, but he was always lying to get them in trouble, and George was pretty sure Nick’d stolen the duck feather that he’d been keeping in his dresser.
By the time they stopped reading for the day, George was willing to admit that it was a good book. “Is this part of a series, too?” he asked Elizabeth.
She nodded. “There are seven. And this series I’m allowed to read all of.”
“Good.”
“Oh!” She was digging in her backpack again. “I almost forgot. Here’s your book!” She shoved a book into his hands.
“The Boxcar Children?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s about some kids who live in a boxcar, you know, like from a train?”
So they were homeless. He wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or not. Had she picked it thinking he was homeless? Or was it a coincidence?
“I’ll try it.”
She convinced him to walk down to the pond for a bit before she left. They watched the ducks nibble on whatever it was they were eating for a while, then he gave into her begging for a game of tag. It was pretty stupid playing tag with just two people, but he didn’t really want to get other kids from the park to join them, and he thought he should be a good sport about it. After all, she’d spent most of her afternoon reading to him and brought him books. For all she knew, he could steal them. So he figured playing tag was a fair trade-off, even if all the running around made his long walk home hurt his feet more than usual.
She finally let him rest when it was her time to leave, and since there was still plenty of daylight and nobody cared when he got home, he opened up the book and began to read.
He realized pretty quickly one of the reasons she must have chosen it. It was a much easier book than the Harry Potter books. Much easier even than the Narnia series. He wasn’t sure if he was more insulted or relieved.
It was pretty good, though. A little babyish, and the kids were way too excited about every little thing they got for their boxcar. Sort of like kids playing house instead of really being homeless. He guessed it wasn’t so bad being alone in the woods, not like being in a dangerous part of the city. Bunch of kids like that wouldn’t last long if they didn’t have that boxcar.
Best of all, he could read the entire book himself. He wasn’t very fast, but he could do it. Four days later, he handed it to her.
She had a new book all ready for him, called Henry and Ribsy. And she was still reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe aloud.
They talked a little before and after reading. Not much, as he was never much of a talker, and neither really wanted to talk about their families. She did tell him a bit about her sister, Jane, who was in fifth grade like him. According to Elizabeth, Jane was the best person in the world.
He told Elizabeth about some kids at school who were okay, mostly because he was pretty tall for his age and good at sports, but they weren’t really friends. But he made it sound as if they were, though, because he didn’t want to sound lame by telling her he didn’t really have any.
They talked about the books sometimes. In school, he almost never read whole books, just stories that were written for textbooks. He just had to read the story and then answer the questions. He was supposed to get books from the school library on his reading level, but he had never bothered before.
Elizabeth knew lots of books. She had told him once that her dad was always giving her new book suggestions.
“He says that half the stuff kids read these days is twaddle. And he doesn’t want me to read it. So he tells me all sorts of really good books I should read.”
“Is it? Twaddle, I mean?” he asked. He guessed that “twaddle” must mean junk, like the stuff some of the boys laughed over at school. Toilet jokes and stuff.
She shrugged. “Well, he doesn’t say I can’t read it. So sometimes I do. One time I read these fairy magic pebble stories. They were fun to read, but afterward I didn’t remember anything about them. I guess that’s what he means. I’d feel silly reading them aloud, anyway.”
“And I’d feel stupid listening to you read fairy magic pebble stories,” he said with a laugh. “Narnia is better.”
Elizabeth’s dad did seem to know lots of books. Henry and Ribsy was good. And he read some of the author’s other books next, which he liked, too.
Elizabeth finished reading him the Narnia series, which gave him all sorts of wonderful things to dream and think about when he was alone. Then she started a new series about dragons.
When he finished the Beverly Cleary books, she had something new for him to read next. And with every book he read, it got easier. He reread the Narnia books on his own, and then she started bringing him several books to choose from. He had never imagined reading so much in his life, but other than homework, at least during the school year, there wasn’t much else to do.
<
br /> I Want to Go Home! was funny, and he couldn’t help laughing aloud one day in November when he was reading to himself while she ate her own sandwich.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Well, there’s this camp counselor, and he just hit the table and . . . never mind. I don’t know how to explain it.”
She smiled at him. “Read me the scene. I’ve read the book, I’ll remember it.”
“Um... okay.” He skimmed the page to decide where to start, then he started to read aloud.
“Can you slow down?” she asked. “And maybe read a little louder?”
He glared at her, but he did as she asked. When he got to the comment at the end, she laughed, so apparently he’d read well enough.
“You should read to me sometimes!” she said. “Maybe you could read No Coins, Please! It’s by the same author and just as funny.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t read aloud very well.”
She laughed. “Neither does Jane. But it’s not because I’m smarter or have a better voice or something, it’s just that I practice more. You just need practice. Oh, and you should do the voices.”
“Voices?” He was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Was she laughing at him?
“Yeah. Like, you make girls’ voices a little higher, and boys’ voices lower. And you can make some people talk faster and some talk slower, or you can give some a Brooklyn accent.” She demonstrated, making him grin.
“But they’re all Canadian boys in this book,” she went on, “so just make them all say ‘about’ like ‘aboot’ and you’ll be good.”
He laughed.
“I’ll try,” he said finally. “No promises.”
December 2000
Elizabeth wanted to play Boxcar Children in the woods by the pond. He thought it was kinda silly, since there were only two of them and no boxcar. But he’d started to find her games were fun, and it wasn’t just because he owed her that he wanted to play.
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 2
