I passed my tray to him at the Ms. Smith table so Atticus could grab some fries. His mom didn’t let him buy lunch on french fry days.
“Me and M will help you study,” he said through a mouthful of potatoes.
I laughed. Atticus and M were about as good as each other at spelling. It was the one thing that I could do way better than him.
“We need to talk about our magical powers, too,” he whispered, leaning between the tables so nobody else could hear. “Any news?”
“Not yet,” I said. Atticus asked me about this daily. It was always on his mind. I wondered what he would do if I got mine first. It might drive him crazy!
Across the room, I saw Hari Singh laughing with some of his friends at one of the seventh-grade tables. It would be cool if my Infinity Year power made me a great speller like him. Or it would be great if it saved me from Elena’s evil plans. But deep down inside, I really wanted one thing. Even though he had done something really bad, I wanted my Infinity power for my father. I wanted him to write me a letter. Or give me a call. I wanted my mom not to be mad at him anymore. I wanted us to be a family again.
In the afternoon, our classroom went to the art room to work on our Family Tree Project. Mae and I sat on the floor in one corner of the room with all of our supplies around us. We had to make three posters. One about my family, one about her family, and one about things both our families had in common. We had to include diagrams and drawings and pictures. The diagrams were supposed to trace back all the way to our great-great-grandparents.
Mae is very good at drawing and I am very good at gluing so we are perfectly matched. We had to make our presentation to the class right before Thanksgiving.
So far, we had been doing research trying to figure out who all our relatives were. We’d just started making copies of the pictures we’d found and began gluing them on our poster board.
The week before, I called Grandma Grace, who told me all kinds of things on the phone. Like how her father fought in World War II and how her great-grandmother marched in parades to get women the vote. Grandma Grace is good at stories and history. She is the editor in chief of her town’s weekly newspaper in Tennessee called the Sanford Telegraph. She sent me all kinds of pictures she copied from my mother’s side of the family.
“Who is that again?” Mae asked, pointing at one of my black-and-white pictures.
“I think that’s my great-great-grandfather,” I said, and turned over the photo. Grandma Grace had written everyone’s name and how they related to me on the back of each picture. Thank goodness. And this was, in fact, Great-great-granddad. “His name was Talmadge Guest,” I said, and held up the photo so Mae could see it better. “Do we know any Talmadges?”
“I don’t think so,” Mae said, and smiled. As she searched through her photos, I looked at Talmadge Guest again. His thin lips drew a straight line across his wrinkled face. Obviously never heard of sunscreen. Maybe never heard of a smile. If he lived in this century, I thought he’d be at home with the phrase Hey kid, get off my lawn.
“Look at this one.” Mae held up one of her black-and-white photos of a man who looked even scarier than Talmadge Guest. He had a long gray beard and round glasses that sat on the end of his nose.
“Yikes!” I said. “Who’s he?”
She looked down at her notebook to double-check his name. “This is Adam Wasserman. He came from Poland in … 1904.” She read from the notes she had made with her mom. “He and his wife, Freda, landed at Ellis Island and started a new life in Brooklyn, New York.”
I looked at Adam Wasserman more closely. He had even more wrinkles than Talmadge Guest did. It must have been even harder to live in Poland than in Tennessee.
“These are my great-grandparents from my mother’s side of the family,” Mae said, showing me another old picture. The man and woman in this photo were old like the other ones. They both had gray hair and glasses. But these ancestors looked nice. They had kind faces. They were even smiling. “Mom says they could have been killed. It was a miracle that they survived. Mom says if they hadn’t escaped, we never would have existed.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, we’re Jewish, and they lived in Nazi Germany. That was before World War II,” she said as she studied the photo. “They had to sneak out of their house in the middle of the night with just a couple of suitcases and some forged passports. Mom said it took them three months to make it all the way to America.”
Wow. We had studied Nazi Germany in class this year. About how Jewish people were killed by the Nazis in concentration camps. When we learned about it, it seemed really bad but somehow, being part of history, it also seemed kind of distant. Now, hearing a story like this directly from Mae’s lips, it seemed not only really bad but really real.
“Did your mom know them?” I asked.
“She said she met them when she was little but doesn’t remember them much. Just knows about them through stories.” She arranged the photo on one of the poster boards and then looked over at what I was working on.
“Do you have any old pictures from your dad’s family tree?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said quietly.
I’d got everything I needed about my mom’s family, but my dad’s family was a problem. I wrote him to ask about his ancestors but he hasn’t written back. His parents live way out in California and we don’t talk to them much, especially now. So, I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’ll make up names and stick them to old pictures I find on the Internet. An imaginary family. One with a dad who didn’t go to—
“That’s going to be embarrassing to explain.” The voice came from above. I looked up and saw Elena staring down at my poster board. She was pointing right at the spot where my father’s picture would be.
“Maybe everybody doesn’t know about your dad,” she said. “Does Mae even know?”
She looked at Mae. I was sure Mae knew my dad was in prison. Everybody knew. We just hadn’t talked about it yet.
Mae didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Elena’s face. After my dad went to prison, Elena had been extra mean to me. She even took a picture of my dad from the newspaper and drew prison bars across his face and posted it on the fourth-grade bulletin board. That had been the last straw. The next week I took that picture of her and her American flag underwear.
“If I were Mae, I’d be embarrassed to even be your partner,” Elena snarled.
I looked down. “Shut up, Elena,” I said quietly. Mae still didn’t say a word. Maybe she was embarrassed to be working with me. Maybe Elena was right.
“I wouldn’t blame her one bit,” Elena taunted.
It’s bad enough when Elena says things about me. When she says stuff about my family, it’s worse. I felt my face start to burn. I wanted to jump up and push her away. This was a moment when I really wished for Atticus. He’d know how to stop me. But he wasn’t there.
I dropped my marker and began to rise, like one of the erupting volcanoes at the back of Ms. Smith’s class. I suddenly didn’t care about anything Elena had planned for me. I was ready to end this thing now.
“Elena!” Mrs. Jackson suddenly called out from across the room. “Back to your work, please,” she said. Elena narrowed her eyes at me before turning to go. As she walked away, I saw Mrs. Jackson looking at me. She gave me a little smile before she went back to helping Eva Chang and Marcus with their project.
In that moment, I realized if Mrs. Jackson caught Elena in the act, she would be on my side. Maybe I should tell her what I had heard in the bathroom at the open house. Maybe. But if I did, I knew Elena would just deny it. She would say I was the liar and then nothing would change.
I sat back down across from Mae and tried to act normal. We went back to organizing our photos like nothing happened.
By the time Atticus’s class got to recess, I was ready to boil over. He could tell something was wrong right away. We walked past the jungle gym and sat down on the swings.
I told him
what happened and how mad I was at Elena.
“Don’t listen to her,” he said.
“But why does she do it, Atticus?”
He shrugged. “I know she started it but…”
I was glad he didn’t finish that sentence, but I knew what he meant. Elena might have started it but I never seemed to let it end.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she got dropped on her head when she was a baby.”
“And Mae didn’t say anything. Even afterward,” I said. “Do you think she doesn’t know about my dad?”
Atticus raised his eyebrow at me.
“Okay, she knows about him,” I said. “Of course she knows.”
“Yeah,” he said.
I dug my toe into the worn ground beneath the swing. “Atticus,” I said, and looked around to be sure nobody was listening. “I know you want a big Infinity Year power but really, I only want one thing.”
He looked over at me.
“I just want my dad to write me back,” I said. Tears welled up in my eyes and I quickly brushed them away.
“He’ll write,” Atticus said. “Your dad’s not a bad guy.”
I tried to smile. Of course, that’s what Atticus would think. He always thinks the best of everybody. My mom says that Atticus is guileless. I looked it up one time in the dictionary. It means someone who is innocent and naive. I don’t know if that’s true about Atticus but I have never heard him say a bad word about anyone.
Not about my dad.
Not even about Jasper Hightower.
That’s how we became best friends. It was first grade, and it changed the course of Avalon history. I knew Atticus. Everyone knew Atticus. His sister, Caroline, was the Queen of Eighth Grade, and his family lived up on Bunker Hill.
Jasper Hightower used to live down the street from me. He was the kind of boy who would set an ant on fire with a magnifying glass and laugh. My mom would walk me to school every day while Jasper walked with his older brothers.
I’d overhear things. Like how they were going to toilet paper somebody’s yard or how they were going to steal somebody’s lunch money or dunk somebody’s head in a toilet. I remember feeling sorry for Jasper because I knew his brothers were bad. And that didn’t leave much room for Jasper to be good.
I kept my distance until one day I heard them talking about Atticus. Jasper’s brothers hated the kids who lived up on Bunker Hill. They hated their nice houses and their nice lives. They decided that, for the fun of it, Jasper should play a trick on Atticus.
Atticus had seemed like a nice guy to me. So what if he lived on Bunker Hill? So what if his sister was the Queen of Eighth Grade?
One afternoon during recess, I was at the very top of the jungle gym. From my perch, I saw Atticus following Jasper back inside the school. That was weird. We weren’t supposed to do that.
So, I decided to follow them.
I jumped down and hurried inside just in time to see them going into the boys’ room at the end of the hall. Nobody saw this but me.
I was only in first grade. I didn’t have a hall pass. I knew I’d get in trouble if anybody caught me. But I couldn’t get the vision of Atticus getting his head dunked in the toilet out of my mind. So, like the six-year-old superhero that I was, I busted into the boys’ bathroom.
Whatever was about to happen hadn’t happened yet. But I could tell it was about to. I started jabbering on about how Mrs. Warneke was looking for them and she was really mad. That even got Jasper scared. Jasper suddenly ran out of the bathroom, leaving me and Atticus in there alone.
Atticus looked confused but glad to see me. “Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I said back.
We’ve had each other’s backs ever since.
Later I learned that Jasper had told Atticus that someone had left him a prize in the middle stall. I still can’t believe he fell for that one.
Luckily for Atticus, Jasper and his brothers moved away the very next year.
I wish I’d been so lucky with Elena.
SIX
In our school, the classroom spelling bees are on the second Friday in October. I made over five hundred flashcards and had been studying harder than ever.
Ever since Mrs. Jackson noticed I was a fantastic speller, we had been doing spelling drills together every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.
During our drills, I would sit across from Mrs. Jackson’s desk and we would start practicing. She’d ask me word after word and it was my job to spell them. The week before the classroom bee, I spelled every one of them correctly except pseudonym.
How was I supposed to know that the p was silent? I spelled it S-E-U-D-O-N-Y-M—which made complete sense to me because the word doesn’t start with a p sound, it starts with an s sound.
“A pseudonym is a fictitious name, esp. one assumed by an author.” That’s what it says in the dictionary. Esp. is short for especially.
Mrs. Jackson had been teaching me about word origins and how they can help me figure out how to spell things. For instance, pseudonym comes from the Greek words pseudo (which means “false”) and nym (which means “name”). Put them together and you get false name. Also, she taught me that if a word has a Greek origin and begins with an s sound, it probably starts with a p.
Probably. But not always. That made my head hurt a little. There are so many rules to learn. I’m not so sure about these silent-letter words.
Mrs. Jackson taught me how a spelling bee works and said that unlike some of the other classrooms, we would be strictly adhering to the official rules during our classroom bee. Every class in the school (grades four through eight) had a bee on the very same day. The top two winners from each class would then advance to the school-wide spelling bee in January.
Atticus came over on the Sunday before the bee to help me study. While he quizzed me on words at the kitchen table, my mom sat at the counter, letting out the hem on my favorite pair of red pants.
“Systematic,” Atticus said, reading off one of my flashcards.
“S-Y-S-T-E-M-A-T-I-C,” I spelled.
“Right,” Atticus said. He put that flashcard on the bottom of the pile and picked another one. “Consternation.”
“C-O-N-S-T-E-R-N-A-T-I-O-N.”
“Correct,” he said. “Kevin and Adam are definitely going as Iron Man and Ant-Man,” he continued. “I think I want to be Captain America.”
We had been trying to figure out our Halloween costumes for the past two weeks but nothing seemed right yet. As a rule, we liked to go as a pair.
My mom looked up from her sewing. “You’d be a perfect Captain America, Atticus.”
He smiled at her and picked up another flashcard.
“Then what am I supposed to be?” I asked as M jumped onto the kitchen table.
“You can be the Wasp,” he said enthusiastically. “Or the Black Widow.”
“Maybe—” I started to say, but Mom cut me off.
“Not the Black Widow,” she said. “She’s too … grown-up.”
“Then who?” I asked. “There aren’t any other girl Avengers.” I looked at Atticus, who was frowning at the flashcard in his hand. He was actually a lot like Captain America. Reliable (always). Honest (mostly). Indefatigable (look it up). And then Captain America got up from the table and helplessly showed the flashcard to my mom. Spelling challenged (without a doubt).
“Obsidian,” she told Atticus. “It means ‘black,’ like the Widow.”
“Cool,” Atticus said. “The Obsidian Widow.”
I looked at my mom. “Could I be her if we called me that?”
“Nice try,” she said, and turned back to her sewing. “You’ll come up with something.”
By the time we finished all the words, we still hadn’t come up with something and it was time for Atticus to go home.
The following week, we talked about Halloween every day at recess but mostly I was thinking about my spelling words. Atticus finally gave up and said we would talk about it after the bee beca
use I wasn’t giving our costumes the serious thought they deserved.
He wasn’t mad or anything. He was right. My mind was cluttered full of words and letters. I just couldn’t make any more room for Halloween.
The night before the classroom bee, I sat up with M until almost one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. Words kept running through my head, and every few minutes, I would look one up just to be sure I was spelling it right.
The morning of the bee, M sat on the toilet seat and watched me read off the flashcards that were taped onto the bathroom mirror. I brushed my teeth and looked at them over and over again.
“You’re going to brush your teeth off,” my mom said as she stopped at the bathroom door. “Don’t you think you’re ready?”
I just looked at her.
“Of course you’re ready!” she said, and kissed me on the side of my forehead.
I spit out the toothpaste and wiped my mouth. I guess I was as ready as I would ever be.
* * *
Mrs. Jackson’s classroom bee began at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, October 13. You heard me. Friday the thirteenth! For someone as superstitious as me, this was alarming. One of the biggest days of my life was falling on the unluckiest day of the year. It could only be worse if I had to stand on a sidewalk crack while I was spelling. I did what I could: I crossed my fingers all the way to school; I carried Atticus’s acorn in my pocket; I walked around Mr. Dale’s ladder. But would it be enough? Maybe I would need my Infinity Year magic for spelling after all!
The first round began. In alphabetical order, Mrs. Jackson called each of us to the podium in the front of the room. Mae went first. Mrs. Jackson asked her to spell microscope. She spelled it right, I am pleased to report, and then sat down again. Eva Chang was next. She got the word enormous. Eva spelled it E-N-O-R-M-U-S. Mrs. Jackson rang a little bell on her desk letting us know that Eva had gotten the word wrong. Eva slapped her hand to her forehead and sat back down in her seat. Mrs. Jackson then spelled enormous correctly for us.
By the time it was my turn, three of my classmates had already been eliminated. When Mrs. Jackson called my name, I walked to the podium.
The Infinity Year of Avalon James Page 5
