Sum reached over and pulled Early’s head against her body. “Well, who knows. You never give up, do you?” she said, and hugged her daughter so long and hard that the zipper on her sweatshirt made a little print on Early’s cheek.
That evening the three Pearls ate without talking, even Jubie. After dinner, as happened every Thursday evening, the shelter showed a movie against one wall in the main room. Anyone who wanted to watch could sit at the tables in the eating area. It was Peter Pan, an old version.
The audience was quiet, happy to watch Tinker Bell, the flying lesson, and later on, the pirates. The story of Peter, the spunky boy without a home. The Lost Boys. It seemed like everyone in the shelter had come downstairs.
And that night, after the three Pearls had gone to sleep and a rising moon slipped rosy light between broken slats in the shelter blinds, Early had a bizarre dream.
Crimp
“Psst! Early, wake up!”
Dash is leaning over her in the bunk, his fingers to his lips. She startles awake and reaches to hug him, a sob rising in her throat, but he steps back. Smiling, he says, “I’m setting you and Sum and Jubie free, out of reach!”
“But how, Dash? Oh, I’m so glad you’re home!”
“That’s the problem. I can’t come home, not yet. We don’t have one. Gotta figure that out. Have to research rhythms.”
“Oh, but you know we will, Dash, you know one day we’ll all head home, like you always promised. You know we will!”
“You can do it. You got everything you need.” He takes another step back.
“Why can’t you stay here with us, Dash? Please! You can’t leave us again!”
As Dash melts into shadow, his finger to his lips, Early realizes the four of them are suddenly outside the shelter and standing in the street. She isn’t cold. Turning her head with an effort, as if against pressure, she sees that Jubie and Sum aren’t really awake; they don’t know where they are and can’t see Dash.
Dash is speaking. “I’m going to show you how to fly. Raise your arms, and you’ll feel the strength come from a bright circle right in the center of your body. I’ll see you at H-O-M-E. Just say the O in the middle, and up you go. O … O …”
Suddenly the three are up in the air, arms out in front, and Early can feel the lift, the hope, and the wind. Somehow, she knows that Sum and Jubie are with her and that she’s doing what Dash wants her to do.
The city below twinkles, hums, and grinds. Here a car is honking; there, an ambulance speeds through a red light. As they fly, Early can see lights inside a few windows, a yellow curtain, a patch of stained glass, pigeons asleep on sills, people shuffling along a sidewalk. Heads are tucked against the cold. One figure pulls a cart. No place to go. Still moving, though, whispers an unfamiliar voice. Early wonders if she is overhearing strangers’ thoughts.
She knows they’re heading home, as Dash said. And that the home they will land at will, oddly, have a brick-red roof and a broken chimney. An ember of worry glows inside her as she flies, worry that Dash won’t make it. The moon shines huge and bright.
Dash had told her what to do. But what did research rhythms mean? Re-search rhy-thms … re-search rhy-thms …
Early jolted awake, feeling Sum’s hand on her shoulder. “Did you see Dash?” Early asked. “We were flying!”
“Early, baby, you were having a bad dream.” Sum was up on one elbow, her voice groggy.
“No, no! A good one. And I know what to do,” Early whispered. Sum said nothing, but rubbed her daughter’s back until her breathing leveled into sleep.
Crimp
The moment Early’s eyes opened in the morning, she wrote down her dream. First she underlined research rhythms in black, counting the fifteen letters — 1 + 5 = 6, but then what?
As she washed her face, she ran the two words through her head, noticing the re-rhy sounds. She brushed her teeth, the syllables foaming along, and wondered if Dash also had sounds run through his head in a steady beat, an invisible rhythm that kept time with everyday life. She was pretty sure he did.
Mrs. Happadee walked them to school again, but without Aisha, who had a bad cold. Early missed walking next to her new friend; they might have talked about last night’s amazing dream. Instead, Early said good morning to each of the people she passed on the street who were asking for money. She looked up at the cool, oyster-shell sky and smiled; she knew now what it felt like to fly. It was like you could be friends with the wind, which whistled in a silvery current along the side of your body. You could steer simply by rolling one way or the other.
She wondered if her dream was only from seeing Peter Pan. But no, Dash had visited them last night! He had shown her how to leave the shelter with Jubie and Sum, and how to head home, wherever that might be. He had spoken to her, and she knew that wasn’t imagined. It felt as real as the buildings and people around her now. She walked into fifth grade that morning with her back straight, feeling almost like her old self.
The class was huge and noisy. The teacher, Ms. Chaff, a nervous young woman with a buzz cut and a little-kid voice, had barely noticed she had a new student this week. Early didn’t mind. Less attention was a relief. Ms. Chaff’s teaching seemed mostly about handing out work sheets, seeing the work done quietly, and collecting the results. So far, they’d studied a list of spelling words that all began with dis (dissatisfied, dismay, dismiss, dismantle), which caught Early’s attention, as no other teacher she’d had ever selected words that way for a spelling lesson. Next came a map of the United States; each state had to be labeled and spelled correctly. Early got Rhode Island, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Tennessee wrong.
At lunchtime she made herself a sandwich, took it over to the counter where you picked up forks and napkins, and slipped it into her backpack. Then she hurried back to the office.
“Mrs. B.’s in a meeting?” Early’s face fell. “Did she leave any messages for Early Pearl? Or a phone number?” The person at the front desk shook his head.
Early sat down in the hallway and ate her lunch. She drank from the water fountain and went into the library.
Pulling out one of the fresh homemade notebooks, she printed Word Book on the cover.
First she looked up research, which had a French root. The work of a spy! Early smiled as she planted the word.
Next came rhythm, from Latin and Greek roots: any kind of movement with recurring strong and weak parts; an on-off beat, as of sound and silence; a harmonious pattern. Langston would add that rhythm could be found flowing from a pencil, tucked within a flower, or humming outward from almost any engine.
Could a gemstone have a rhythm?
Something was missing in what she understood. Early could feel it.
She glanced up to see a gray-haired figure with baggy clothes, wrinkled skin, and huge, red ears. Walking with a stiff-legged limp, he passed the library door.
The man at the front desk spoke with him. Then there was an announcement over the school loudspeaker: “Will Early Pearl please come to the office?”
Her heart pounding, afraid to believe this might be who she wanted it to be, Early put away her Word Book and stood as straight as she could.
“Help me, Dash,” she said softly.
Crimp
The man took two awkward steps toward Early and shook her hand. His was bony and pale, still cool from being outside, and she knew hers was sweaty.
“Well, hello, Early Pearl!” he said, his voice a raspy whisper. Early forced herself to look up. The man was smiling and frowning at the same time, something Early came to learn was a tactic. You couldn’t help but focus on someone who seemed both mad and glad.
“Hello, hello!” he growled, following that with a long, painful cough. “Pardon,” he gasped. “Smoker’s lungs.”
“That’s okay.” Early smiled and blinked. “Thanks, Mr. Waive. Thanks for finding me!”
“Mind if we talk someplace?” Mr. Waive asked the man behind the desk. “I was her father’s teacher, and her father
was one superlative student. I got a call from a Mrs. B. who works in your office, and I want to hear the news.”
Superlative, Early thought, as in superman.
“Sure, no problem. How about in this meeting room here?” It had a glass wall and a door that closed.
“Perfect,” Mr. Waive and Early said in one voice, and this time Early got a relaxed smile from the older man, a smile that divided his face into parentheses of stubbly skin. His teeth, Early noticed, were a brownish yellow.
They sat. Early told.
Mr. Waive crossed his arms on his chest and looked down while she talked, as if he knew that was easier for her than having a strange grown-up look directly at her.
Early filled him in on their family and all that had happened since that terrible day in January, minus the diamond news. She ended with the warrant out for Dash’s arrest.
There was a moment of silence. Early looked at her lap and then back at Mr. Waive. Was he going to get up and leave?
He uncrossed his arms and rubbed his eyes roughly with both palms, so hard that the skin took a moment to settle back into place. Pressing his hands flat on the table, he looked directly at Early. “You are Dashel’s daughter, that’s clear.”
Early nodded. “He said that to me a lot.” As she looked back at Mr. Waive, she noticed with a flash of fright that he had a dark mole on one eyelid, just as the man with the mask had. The man who had lifted her up and said scary things. That is a silly coincidence, she said to herself quickly. Silly.
“That means,” Mr. Waive was saying, “you will understand what I have to tell you. Dreams matter, but they aren’t always to be shared.”
Early was startled. He couldn’t know about her dream last night. She nodded again. Now he was doing the mad-glad expression.
“I mean,” Mr. Waive rasped on, “that your father may have shared more dreams than was wise at that library. It’s a public place. A big place. Anyone can enter, and anyone can listen. He was — I mean, is, IS! — a brilliant young man, one with such a good mind that it must have been noticed, possibly for the wrong reasons. The question is, by whom.”
Suddenly Mr. Waive was on his feet and pacing, taking uneven steps, first one way and then the other. He moved amazingly well for such an unhealthy-looking man, and one with a serious limp. Early thought of the Treasure Island pirate with one leg.
“Coercion,” he muttered. “Some form of coercion.”
Early wasn’t sure if he was talking to her. What did the word mean?
“History and Social Sciences …” Mr. Waive stopped abruptly. “That’s where. But why? Why did he trust them?” Early didn’t know what to say, or even if Mr. Waive was talking to her. She shrugged, a small movement just to let him know she was listening.
“Probably for predictable reasons: the thrill of unauthorized complicity and an opportunity to glean, using intelligence. Participation is a given, but we’ll have to be circumspect,” Mr. Waive was now saying. “It’s obvious that your father stepped into something even he, with his faceted outlook, didn’t read correctly. Or perhaps he simply didn’t see it; a key element was hidden. A deliberate crimp that covered a clue.” A shower of words to plant in the Word Book! Early then realized what he’d said. Participation.
“Can I come to the library?” she asked.
He answered by not answering, saying only, “One step ahead. I knew it.”
Early was beginning to understand what Dash had said about Mr. Waive; he scattered the pieces but didn’t look back to see what you did with them, as if he knew you’d figure things out. She saw how her father, as a boy, might never have forgotten.
What she didn’t exactly see was how Mr. Waive could be so willing, so quickly, to help her now. She knew Dash was special, but something about all this felt too easy. Too fast.
Sum would sort it out, she told herself. “You’ll have to meet my mother,” she said.
Mr. Waive nodded, as if Early had been making small talk about the weather. “The sum of the parts,” he muttered to himself. “Quite brilliant.”
Early felt almost dizzy, but suddenly lighter. Again, a bubble of hope was rising inside her.
“Can you come to the shelter?” Early asked, then wished she hadn’t. After all, he’d just come to the school to find her, and only a day after she’d left a message. “If you have time,” she added.
“Real time I don’t have, but time for you, I do,” he said. “I’ll be there after dinner tonight.”
“We eat at —” Early began.
“Oh, I know,” Mr. Waive said. “Never forget.” He turned, left the room, and lurched down the hall at an amazing speed.
Early sat for a moment in the conference area, wondering how to think about what had just happened. She opened her Word Book and wrote down coershun, complicity, circumspect, glean, faceted, crimp. Some were familiar, some not, but these were the six he’d emphasized. The bell rang, and she couldn’t get back to the dictionary.
The rest of the day dragged. When she happened to look at the clock and it was 2:22, she smiled. “Okay, Dash,” she whispered. Without her father near, those last number entries in his notebook felt like a message. Whenever she noticed a pattern that he’d seen, too, she felt as if he knew it, like he’d left her a clue.
Crimp
Mr. Waive was a different man around Sum.
He spoke more slowly. He’d shaved and even combed his hair. It was as if he knew he had to behave more normally. Early watched and wondered.
“I retired early because of bad health: lung disease and rotten knees. Then my sister and her kids needed a place to live. Her husband died, and she had no income. It was like a game of dominoes. One piece fell, knocking down another.”
Sum nodded. “So sorry,” she murmured.
“My pension is stretched to the breaking point,” he whispered in that gravelly voice, “otherwise I’d try to help you more directly. But what I can do is some undercover investigating at the library. I’ll pretend to do research in Dashel’s department, and ask some questions. Observe. Poke around.”
“That would be wonderful!” Sum brightened immediately. “I’ve been dying to go in again myself, but of course I can’t — I’m instantly recognizable. And let me tell you, it’s a waking nightmare to feel so powerless. Invisible, yet too visible, if you know what I mean.”
Mr. Waive nodded, then shook his head, as if drawing tic-tac-toe boards in the air. He left without asking Sum if Early could come. Perhaps it was because Jubie had whined, “Can I go? Got lollipops there!” and Sum had said quickly, “Not this time, son.”
Early had to admit she was relieved.
Mr. Skip Waive was overwhelming one-on-one, and she wasn’t sure she was smart enough to keep up with him. Dash, who is this person? she asked silently. When there was no response, she looked again at the new list of words. Why did Mr. Waive use such strange vocabulary around an eleven-year-old?
And why, it suddenly occurred to her, hadn’t Dash tried to find him in recent years, especially since this teacher had helped a boy without parents believe he could succeed in the world? A boy who became a generous, outgoing man?
As Dash had taught her to do, she tried spinning Mr. Waive around in her imagination, but all she could see was that black mole on his eyelid and his way of grinning and frowning at the same time.
It was odd for a retired teacher with hardly any voice, but he felt like someone with deep secrets. And secrets, in Early’s world, were almost always dangerous.
Crimp
At lunchtime on Monday, Early was alone again. Gulping down a sandwich in the hall, she hurried back into the library. Aisha was still out sick. Making friends at this new school, after her experience with Slippery Braid and the other girls in the cafeteria, was no longer a part of the plan.
She pulled out the Word Book and got to work on Mr. Waive’s list of six. The first three — coercion (tough spelling!), complicity, and circumspect — were about being forced to agree, or being dominat
ed; about working with someone else on something that wasn’t right; about being cautious, thinking of the consequences. Early didn’t much like this pile of C words. It was too much of a wrong-right tangle.
The second three were easier. Glean meant something her family was already good at: gathering what’s been left behind, or picking up relevant information. Glean gleamed, gentle and smooth. Faceted was what a cut gemstone was, and what made a diamond sparkle in bright light. Crimp she knew, as Dash had added it to their onomatopoeia list.
While working her way halfheartedly through math problems that afternoon, she rolled the words around and around, ending up with glean, coercion, faceted, complicity, crimp, circumspect.
In that order, they told a story that might explain what had happened to Dash. Her heart sank, and she knew Sum was right: Mr. Waive was, at the moment, their best and only hope. Dash was caught in something complicated, a mess with too many meanings for Early to sort out on her own.
Crack, from the Middle English crakken
Verb: to break, split, or snap with a sharp sound; to
fall apart under pressure; to solve a mystery, decipher
a code, or understand a problem after much thought;
to strike; to break through a barrier; to open a book,
as for studying.
Noun: a loud noise; a narrow opening; a joke;
a break in a surface; an opportunity.
Crack
Another day went by, and no Mr. Waive.
Early’s time in school circled around checking the office for a message or a missed visit. She half-expected Mr. Waive to show up outside the door one day at dismissal and whiz her off to the Harold Washington Library. Just in case, she kept a note from Sum in her pocket.
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