Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,48

a house-husband. I admit that I was proud of Margo. But Dennis, who years later when Margo applied to colleges would tell her to discriminate not by rankings but by how she was treated when visiting, was immune to this kind of smug satisfaction. He said, “Are other kids skipping?” and Mr. Oxley shook his head. Dennis looked at me. “She’ll leave all her friends,” he said.

She’ll make new ones, I thought. At that moment, I could see Margo through the vertical blinds of the classroom: she was standing in the courtyard with her best friend, Carla, using her hands as puppets. One hand opened to talk, then shut as the other yammered on. I’d embroidered a red rose on the front pocket of Margo’s jeans, and it wiggled as she moved.

“This is not a bad time for it, developmentally speaking. The skills in the sixth grade are advanced, yes, but it’s not a complete departure from fifth-grade material,” said Mr. Oxley. “We have a student who advances almost every year.”

“Any serial killers in the bunch?” Dennis said.

Not knowing Dennis—not knowing that he was rarely entirely serious or entirely joking—Mr. Oxley was cautious. “Not that I know of,” he said. Dennis threw up his hands, and his knees banged the underside of his desk. Mr. Oxley addressed me: “The concentration in the fifth-grade reading unit is comprehension—a skill Margo has evidently mastered.”

“Mastered?” said Dennis.

Margo was, at that time, ten years old. When we browsed in the young adult shelves at the public library, Margo’s choices, which Mr. Oxley went on to praise, mystified me. She was less interested in fourth-grade subjects—wizards and time machines and magical dolphins—than in broken homes and runaways and romance. But it became obvious as Mr. Oxley spoke that the suggestion of promoting Margo was not solely, or even mostly, based on academics. “There’s also the matter of Margo’s physical maturity,” he said. “I’m a little concerned about her comfort level in the fifth-grade classroom.” Dennis and I stared at him, slow to catch on. Mr. Oxley cleared his throat. “In other words, if you agree, this might be an opportunity to more closely match her physical development to that of her classmates.”

Then I understood, before he’d explained to Dennis, who looked bewildered. Margo had been the tallest person in the fourth grade. Her height and, as Mr. Oxley put it, “advanced development” (meaning bra size, as far as I could figure, and maybe leg hair), distinguished her. It seems that in order to have had this conversation with a teacher, Margo must have been freakish, but photographs reassure me: she was taller than her friends, yes, but not excessively so. She wore oversize shirts and slouched, and she smiled a lot—people looked at her face.

“Holy hell,” said Dennis. “Margo’s too tall for the fifth grade?”

Outside, Margo finished her hand-puppet conversation and Carla cracked up. In the past year, Margo had become very talkative, almost nervously so, and very sensitive. She had started to put a lot of pressure on herself. Her dentist had fitted her with a retainer to use while sleeping so she didn’t wear down her molars grinding her teeth. I checked on her sometimes in the night, and each time her eyelids fluttered a lot but she didn’t seem to be grinding. When Dennis had mentioned the retainer to his mother, she’d recommended a psychotherapist. Sixth grade, I thought, could hurt her confidence. It could do damage. But the scales tipped when I considered that if she skipped the fifth grade, she would no longer be the most buxom girl in her class. Give her a classroom full of girls tossing their hair and applying lip gloss, I thought. Give her a few friends whose T-shirts reveal the lump of a bra strap on each shoulder.

Dennis knocked on my desk. “We have some parenting to do here.”

Mr. Oxley smiled diplomatically. “It’s not our decision, but it’s possible Margo might feel more comfortable around classmates who are as far along as she is, physically speaking.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” I said, and Dennis shot me a look.

Mr. Oxley said, “The older girls take health education classes. They spend a week learning about reproductive health and menstruation.” His manner was that of a man who’d practiced not tripping over certain words. “Has Margo gotten her period?”

I wasn’t easily flustered—with girlfriends, I could talk about PMS or sex or pregnancy—but in that classroom, beside the model Metro Rails, I floundered. “She—” I stammered.