by Gail Donovan
He came to the cafeteria door and stopped. It wasn’t just him imagining a weird underwater feeling. Part of the feeling was real.
It was the silence.
The silence was real.
Kids were filing in, lining up with trays, finding seats—all in silence.
Josh bought his milk and then sat down at the fifth-grade table between the two Bens. Across the table, Michael grinned at him. So did Payson and Charu. Josh grinned back. He took his sandwich out of his paper bag, but he was way too excited to eat. He felt more like he might lose his lunch before he even ate it. Because it was so amazing that two hundred kids were going along with his plan!
It was really happening.
It was the Gorfman Memorial Silent Lunch.
It was . . . a miracle?
Josh wasn’t sure if a Silent Lunch really qualified as a miracle. But it seemed pretty miraculous to him.
Beside him, Ben B. tapped him on the shoulder. Then Ben T. tapped him on the other shoulder. They were both signaling for Josh to look behind him. Teachers didn’t usually come to the cafeteria—they usually stayed in their rooms, recovering from the morning—but there in the doorway were a bunch of teachers. Josh spotted his old kindergarten teacher, the band instructor, the social worker, and Ms. O’Reilly.
The crowd of teachers made way for someone. Principal Gorman was coming through.
“Mrs. Sturdevant?” asked the principal. She didn’t raise her voice, but everyone could hear her because nobody else was talking. Nobody was even moving anymore. It was like someone had shouted Freeze! in freeze tag.
“This is the third Silent Lunch we’ve had this week. Who is responsible this time?”
Josh waited to hear his name, but Mrs. Sturdevant answered too softly for him to hear the answer. Then there was a long whispered conversation. Ms. O’Reilly joined in, and so did Ms. Kovich-Carey, the social worker.
Principal Gorman scanned the cafeteria. Her gaze fell on Josh. She marched toward the fifth-grade table.
Josh remembered when he had first picked up Gorfman, the way he could see the frog’s pulse throbbing in his throat. Josh’s heart was pounding so hard he was sure it must be showing in his throat, too.
“Joshua Tree Hewitt,” said Principal Gorman. Her mouth was in a straight line—definitely not smiling, but not that mad, either. And her eyes weren’t glaring. They were more curious. “Is it true that you asked the school to join you in a moment of silence for your frog?”
Josh panicked. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. The Gorfman Memorial Silent Lunch was going so great. He didn’t want to blow it now.
What if he talked too much—that was practically a guarantee—and made the principal mad all over again? What if he—gross—threw up?
He looked around for help. He made a will-you-talk-to-her? face at Michael, but Michael, grinning, just shook his head and pointed back at Josh. And there was Charu, smiling encouragingly. And Payson making say something bug eyes at him.
They were his friends. They trusted him.
Josh took a big breath. It was like he had pushed the pause button—big-time—and now it was time to push it again. Time to unfreeze everyone.
“Yes,” he said. And he smiled what he hoped was a respectful, responsible smile.
“And how long is this moment of silence going to last?”
“I don’t know?” Josh admitted.
So lame! he thought. But somehow his answer seemed to be the right answer. The principal smiled. “Well, I think you can call it a moment, don’t you? Go ahead and announce that everyone can feel free to talk. Then come to my office before you get on the bus, so I can give you back your frog.”
Josh was in shock. “You will?” he asked. “I mean, thanks, Mrs. Gorman!”
He stood up. His legs felt wobbly. He was about to explain that the Gorfman Memorial Silent Lunch was over and that Mrs. Gorman was going to give him back his frog, but he didn’t get any further than “Thanks, everybody!” before his words were drowned out by the sound of two hundred kids cheering and clapping.
Principal Gorman didn’t even try to stop the chaos. She let everybody keep clapping and hollering as she left the cafeteria.
Josh sat back down. He still felt shaky.
The fifth-grade table was going nuts.
“Can you believe it?” asked Payson. “You won! That was awesome!”
“Totally,” said Ben B., and Ben T. echoed, “No, toadly! Toadly awesome!”
“Not toadly,” said Michael, laughing. “Gorfman’s a frog.”
“It’s frogly awesome,” said Charu. “F-r-o-g-l-y frogly!”
Josh sat back down and picked up his sandwich, but he knew he was still way too excited to eat. “Definitely not edible,” he said. “Anybody want my lunch?”
Chapter 17
Heaven
Josh decided he was going to have to side with Lacey in the bio-grands’ debate over whether heaven would be more like a June evening or a September afternoon. Because it didn’t get much better than this: a Saturday evening in June with a no-cloud blue sky. Warm but not hot. The air smelled like berries, probably because Josh had parked himself right in front of Lacey’s strawberry-rhubarb pie.
Unlike the Gorfman Memorial Silent Lunch, where nobody talked and Josh hadn’t been able to eat, today he could eat just fine. And everybody was talking. His mom and his dad and Matt and Lacey and Cady and Charu and Payson and Michael and the Donatellis.
They were all here for the Gorfman wake, which his mom had explained was something like a party you had when somebody died, to help you say goodbye. They were all here to say goodbye to Gorfman, because after supper Dr. Donatelli was taking him to her lab, along with the tadpoles she and Josh had collected that afternoon.
The jar of tadpoles stood in the middle of the picnic table surrounded by plates of lasagna and mashed potatoes and pie. Gorfman was in the freezer.
Polishing off his mashed potatoes and starting in on the pie, Josh listened in on the conversation at the grown-ups’ end of the picnic table. His dad was telling the story. Again.
“So I pick up the phone and it’s Josh’s principal calling, and I’m thinking, Uh-oh! And she tells me that Josh organized the entire school into being completely silent in honor of Josh’s frog! And then I hang up the phone and somebody is calling for Josh . . .” He paused and motioned for Dr. Donatelli to take over.
“That’s where I was lucky enough to come in,” said Dr. Donatelli. She had taken off her hip waders, and now she was wearing cutoff jeans shorts and a T-shirt that said I BRAKE FOR FROGS. “After Josh called Matt, and Matt called my mother, and my mom called me—”
“And told her what a charming boy Josh was,” interrupted Mrs. Donatelli from her wheelchair parked at the end of the picnic table.
Dr. Donatelli was going to send samples of the water to the state lab, and monitor the tadpoles’ development, and study Gorfman. And she had promised Josh he could visit her at the university. Josh was thrilled, but he had more important things to think about.
“Can I have another piece of pie?” he asked.
Beaming at Josh, Lacey cut him a piece. “Of course you can, dear.” Her dowsing crystal hung from a silver chain around her neck.
Josh bit into his second piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie. At the other end of the table Cady was showing Charu the cover of her book, the one with a girl holding a horse by a bridle. Both the girl and the horse had the same kind of braid.
“Like that?” asked Cady. “Can you do it like that?”
“A French braid?” asked Charu. “Sure!”
“Come on,” said Cady, holding her hand out to little Grace Donatelli. “You want to come?”
The girls went and sat down by the pool where Josh had found Gorfman. Cady turned her back to Charu, and Charu started plaiting Cady’s long brown hair into a French braid. Clutching her doll, Grace watched.
Payson and Michael got up from the picnic table, too.
“Hey, Hewitt
,” said Payson, putting on his baseball glove. “Wanna play?”
“No way. Too much pie,” Josh explained, patting his stomach. “Use my glove,” he offered to Michael.
Michael and Payson moved away from the table and started tossing a baseball back and forth.
“Josh,” said his mom, “I’m sorry I said you couldn’t keep your frog in the freezer. That night the ceiling leaked.”
She put her arm across his shoulder, and Josh didn’t shake it off.
“I know,” he said. “That’s okay.”
“You know you could keep it there now, right?” she asked. “You don’t have to give Gorfman away if you don’t want.”
“Or you can still bury him,” said Matt.
“No,” said Josh. “This is better. It’s not like he’s mine—like a toy—like I need to keep him. I’d rather have him be with somebody who can figure out how he got an extra leg so maybe they can stop it! ’Cause it’s not fair!” Josh could get mad all over again, remembering how it felt when people looked at you like you were a freak. They weren’t looking at him that way now. But he still remembered. He was always going to remember Gorfman.
“Thank you, Josh,” said Dr. Donatelli. “It will be an honor to study your frog. And you promised to come help me, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Josh.
Josh’s mom gave his shoulder a squeeze, then helped herself to some pie.
His dad cleared his throat and said, “We’re proud of you, Josh.” His voice sounded funny.
Mrs. Donatelli asked, “How on earth did you get the idea for a Silent Lunch?”
“We had a couple of Silent Lunches already this week,” answered Josh quickly.
All the grown-ups were looking at him expectantly.
Josh decided this was a pause button situation. Quickly he took a bite of pie, and then chewed as slowly as possible.
Okay. It seemed to be working. He wasn’t saying every single thing he was thinking. And he wasn’t feeling like he was going to explode, either.
But should he tell them the whole story? About how he had to do a Silent Lunch to get Gorfman back after the other Silent Lunch where the principal had taken Gorfman away? His mom said that sometimes not telling the truth was the same thing as telling a lie.
But he hadn’t lied. Yet.
But if he didn’t change the subject he’d either have to tell the whole truth, which he didn’t want to do, or lie, which he didn’t want to do, either.
Josh decided to try steering the subject in a slightly different direction.
“And I remembered those moments of silence they have sometimes at church,” he said. “So I sort of put those two things together.”
Except for Mrs. Donatelli, whose eyes were drooping closed, everyone was smiling at him. Josh was so embarrassed he took another bite of pie.
Matt helped himself to a piece of pie. “This is a very nice wake,” he said.
“We had a nice wake for Jonathan, remember?” asked Lacey.
“We had a great big party,” said Matt, “and a lot of good stories.”
Josh didn’t remember. He’d been way too young to remember when his biological father died.
And from what Josh knew, his dad—the dad he knew, David—hadn’t been around when his first dad—Jonathan—had died. So he didn’t remember the wake, either.
Josh’s dad stood up. “Think I’ll get into that game of catch,” he said. “You folks can reminisce.” Going past Josh, he leaned down and said quietly, so only Josh could hear, “Nice job on the button.” Then he clapped him on the back and ran off to join Michael and Payson.
Dr. Donatelli rose from the table, too. “Be right back,” she said. “Nature calls.” She disappeared into the house.
Mrs. Donatelli was sound asleep.
That left Josh with his mom and the bio-grands.
“What kind of stories?” Josh asked his grandparents.
His mom said, “Well, Matt got up—”
“Wait a minute,” Josh interrupted his mother. “You were there? But weren’t you guys—you know?”
“Divorced,” she said. “Yes. But he was still the father of my child.”
Lacey reached across the picnic table, between the pie plate and the lasagna, and put her hand on Josh’s mom’s hand. “It was good of you to come.”
“So, Matt got up,” said Josh’s mom. “And he starts to talk about how the acorn isn’t supposed to fall far from the tree.”
She stopped talking and started laughing, and Matt and Lacey joined in.
“What’s so funny?” demanded Josh.
Matt explained. “You know that expression, don’t you? It means that the acorn is going to grow up to be just like the oak tree it came from, right? The way children are like their parents?”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, I know that.”
“Well, the joke was that Jonathan wasn’t very much like me at all.”
“Or me,” offered Lacey.
Josh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean . . . he didn’t talk a lot? Like you guys?”
Matt and Lacey shook their heads. No.
Josh’s mom said, “I guess it skipped a generation. You’ve got the gift of gab, like Matt and Lacey here. But Jonathan was a pretty quiet guy.”
Josh’s head was spinning. That meant that his mom hadn’t split up with his first dad for being a motormouth. His birth dad wasn’t just like him, and he wasn’t just like his birth dad. He was like . . . himself. Which meant that when his entire family got mad at him they were just . . . mad at him. Which they were probably still going to get on a regular basis.
But right now nobody was mad.
His dad was hitting grounders to Michael and Payson.
Cady was brushing Charu’s hair, and Grace was watching and clutching her doll.
Dr. Donatelli was back outside, leaning over her mother’s wheelchair and saying something quietly to her mom.
And the bio-grands were bickering over whether apple was the king of pies (according to Matt) or whether it was strawberry-rhubarb (that was Lacey).
Josh’s mom asked, “What do you think of this wake? Do you want to say a few words about your frog?”
“Wait a second,” Josh said. He couldn’t resist the chance to tease his mom. “Did I hear you right? You’re asking me to talk?”
“Yes, Joshua Tree Hewitt,” said his mom. “I’m asking.”
“Ask me again,” said Josh. “And say please.”
His mom smiled. “Please,” she said. “Now don’t push your luck, Hewitt.”
Josh grinned. “Can I make a toast?”
“Sure thing,” she said. “Let me fill your glass.”
“No, wait.” He lifted up a forkful of strawberry-rhubarb pie. “Hey, everybody! It’s a pie toast!”
His mom saluted with her fork, and so did Matt and Lacey. The others stopped what they were doing and gathered round the picnic table. His dad and Michael and Payson. Charu and Cady and Grace. Mrs. Donatelli and Dr. Donatelli. Everybody grabbed a fork and dug into the pie.
“In memory of Gorfman!” said Josh. “Gorfman T. Frog.”
