a moment, he thought he saw something run into it. Fast as lightning. He wasn’t sure what. Maybe a deer.
“Mom, what is that?” he asked.
“The Mission Street Woods,” she said.
When they arrived at school, Christopher’s mother wanted to give him a sloppy kiss in front of all the new kids. But he needed his dignity, so she gave him a brown bag and fifty cents for his milk instead.
“Wait for me after school. No strangers. If you need me, call Shady Pines. The number is sewed into your clothes. I love you, honey.”
“Mom?” He was scared.
“You can do this. You’ve done it before. Right?”
“Mommy—”
“You call me Mom. You’re not small.”
“But they’re going to be smarter than me—”
“Grades and smarts are not the same thing. Keep trying. You’ll get it.”
He nodded and kissed her.
Christopher got out of the car and approached the school. Dozens of kids were already milling about, saying hello after their summer vacations. These twin brothers were pushing and shoving and laughing. The smaller one had a lazy-eye patch. A couple of girls itched at their new school clothes. One of them had pigtails. When the kids saw him, they stopped and looked at him like they always did in new places. He was the shiny new thing in the store window.
“Hey,” he said. And they nodded the way the kids always did. Quiet and mistrustful at first. Like any animal pack.
Christopher quickly walked into his homeroom and took a seat near the back. He knew not to sit up front because it’s a sign of weakness. His mother said, “Never mistake being nice for being weak.” Christopher thought maybe that worked in the grown-up world.
It didn’t in the kid world.
“That’s my seat, Squid.”
Christopher looked up and saw a second grader with a rich boy’s sweater and haircut. He would soon know Brady Collins by name. But right now, he was just this kid who was mad that Christopher didn’t know the rules.
“What?”
“You’re in my seat, Squid.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”
Christopher knew the drill. So, he just got up.
“Didn’t even fight back. What a Squid,” Brady Collins said.
“And look at his pants. They’re so short you can see his socks,” a girl said.
When the teacher took roll call later, Christopher would hear her name, Jenny Hertzog. But right now, she was just a skinny girl with an overbite and a Band-Aid on one knee, saying,
“Floods! Floods!”
Christopher’s ears turned red. He quickly moved to the only open seat left. Right in front of the teacher’s desk. He looked down at his pants, and he realized that he must have grown because he looked like Alfalfa in the Little Rascals. He tried to pull them down a little, but the denim wouldn’t budge.
“Sorry I’m late, boys and girls,” their homeroom teacher said as she quickly entered the room.
Ms. Lasko was older like a mom, but she dressed like she was still a teenager. She had a short skirt, Sound of Music blond hair, and the thickest eye makeup Christopher had ever seen outside of a circus. She quickly put her thermos down on the desk with a thump and wrote her name on the blackboard with perfect penmanship.
Ms. Lasko
“Hey,” a voice whispered.
Christopher turned around and saw a fat kid. For some reason Christopher couldn’t figure out, the kid was eating bacon.
“Yeah?” Christopher whispered back.
“Don’t listen to Brady and Jenny. They’re jerks. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Christopher said.
“Want some bacon?”
“Maybe not during class.”
“Suit yourself,” the kid said and kept chomping.
As it was in the kid world, that is how Christopher replaced Lenny Cordisco with a new best friend. Edward Charles Anderson ended up being in Christopher’s remedial reading class, lunch period, and gym. He ultimately proved to be as bad at reading as he was at kickball. Christopher called him Eddie. But everyone else in the school already knew him by his nickname.
“Special” Ed.
Chapter 4
For the next two weeks, Christopher and Special Ed were inseparable. They had lunch every day in the cafeteria (trade you my baloney). They learned remedial reading from the sweet old librarian, Mrs. Henderson, and her hand puppet, Dewey the Dolphin. They failed math tests together. They even went to the same CCD two nights a week.
Special Ed said that Catholic kids have to go to CCD for one reason…to get them ready for what Hell is really going to be like. Marc Pierce was Jewish and asked him what CCD stood for.
“Central City Dump” was Special Ed’s hilarious reply.
Christopher didn’t actually know what CCD stood for, but he had learned a