Chapter 2

A bunch of our jerky classmates started to laugh.

“Shut up!” I shouted. I had no real idea why I jumped to the new kid’s defense. It wasn’t as if I was Mr. Compassionate back then.

“Reed, we don’t say ‘shut up’ in this classroom.” Mrs. Smeckler turned her evil sneer upon me.

“We shouldn’t laugh at people either,” I answered back.

Mrs. Smeckler didn’t have a comeback for that, nor did she chastise the others. Turning her attention back to her frigging competition, she simply asked, all straight-backed and pursed lips, “Would you like a new word, Mathias?”

Mathias moved his head side to side as the wet spot on the front of his tan corduroys got bigger and bigger. Maybe Smeckler thought ignoring it was the compassionate thing to do, since we were close to dismissal. Surely she saw it. Everyone did. I’d have made a joke, something like, “It’s a vocabulary bee, not a vocabulary pee.” The word peemight have even brought forth a smile from Mathias. We were at that age.

“Reed, it’s up to you, then.” Smeckler fixed her eyes on mine. Maybe she wasn’t being kind. Maybe she was wicked. “Please, go to the board.”

“And if I don’t?” From wide brown circles to defiant slits, I imagined my eyes shooting death rays. I was quite the smartass, quite brave. I knew it was close to the end of the day. There was little time for conversation, let alone a new word. If I refused to spell out pride, I assumed the bee would end in a tie.

“Please take your hand from in front of your face.”

Ugh. She was really on my case. It was a habit I had—covering my mouth sometimes when I spoke, because my teeth were jacked up.

“If you know the word, Reed, go to the board and write it.”

The entire class grew silent. It was a real competition now, not between my team and Mathias’s, but between Mrs. Smeckler and me.

“Reed?”

“What?”

Tick, tick, tick, the clock over her head counted off the final few seconds of the day. She knew I knew. Even after just a few days as my teacher, she knew I was smart, and I knew she knew. Would she call my bluff or just move on to my teammate Caryn?

“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, tomorrow we’ll have a written test.” Smeckler clapped her book closed, like an alligator capturing its prey. “Spelling. Fifty words. Unless everyone in the class gets a passing grade, there will be no recess at all for the rest of the week.”

Big deal.I may have lost the vocabulary bee, but I’d won the fight for human decency, and the victory felt good, at least until Jeff Ackerman got up in my business, hissing a whispered warning, like the snake he was.

“We lose recess, Watson, I beat the crap out of you.” Jeff was a jerk—and a troublemaker. He sat right next to me in our assigned seats, way up front, real close to the teacher’s desk. My reputation had preceded me. His word had been homely, and he’d written underneath it on the board Like Reed Watson.The class had laughed at me, like they had at Mathias. Had it been aimed at someone else, I might have considered it clever from someone our age. I got some solace at least from the fact the doofus put two M’s in homely—h-o-m-m-e-l-y. I got to laugh right back at him. The difference was, when he hung his head and looked sad about the teasing, I actually felt bad.

“I’d like to see you try, Ackerman.” That was a lie. I was pretty sure Jeff could put me in a full-body cast if he wanted to.

“Meet me in front of my bus outside, then, and I’ll rearrange your ugly face.”

“I will.”

I didn’t. I might have been mouthy, but I wasn’t masochistic. Though I hated my jagged, whack teeth, crooked nose, and scarred chin, I didn’t really want my hommelyfeatures rearranged. My pride took a backseat to common sense that day. Jeff scared me, and that was the truth.

* * * *

The following morning, Mrs. Smeckler went down the list in her little black book to call attendance. “Reed Watson.”

“Here.”

“Did you bring in your picture for the bulletin board?”

Again with that damned bulletin board. A large banner asked the question “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” Beneath that were cutouts from magazines and other sources of a doctor, a race car driver, a news reporter, a teacher, loving parents with two little boys approximately our age, and assorted other occupations, including a shepherd. Who the heck wanted to be a shepherd, I wondered. We’d each been assigned the task of bringing in a picture to add to the collection, a representation of our future plans. Mrs. Smeckler had made the request the very first day back from summer vacation, insisting we comply by Monday of the following week. It was already Wednesday, and I still hadn’t done it. I kept forgetting. Plus, my nine-and-a-half-year-old brain couldn’t totally settle on one eventual vocation.