I felt sorry for things I had thought.

  “You’re not worthless or invisible,” I said.

  Auntie dabbed at her eyes with her napkin and passed two meatballs to my plate.

  Hobbit Holes

  The next time we wrote in class I chose the sentence about the hobbit hole and changed it a bit:

  In a hole in the ground there lived the Hobbit family: Mr. and Mrs. Hobbit and their seven children. Everywhere they went, they all went together, a chain of Hobbits winding through the woods and through the town, and often they had to stop and wait for one or two or three stragglers who were chasing ribbity rabbits and snakes and stuck stuck stuck stuck—

  Wait! I think I did this when I was young. I think I had an imaginary family of—not hobbits, but tiny people, barely six inches tall. And I think they had names, yes, there was Mrs. Tannerobby and her many children—I forget how many—but they had names—there was, let me think think think think—oh, there was Clove and Stick and who was that messy one, was it Unicorn Marie or something like that? And there was Herfy and and and . . .

  Whenever we would go anywhere, the Tannerobbys had to come along and sometimes we had to wait to find one or another and sometimes they would argue . . . and sometimes Mom would say, “Can’t the Tannerobbys stay home today?” and I would say, “Oh, no, they would be too lonely.”

  When writing time was up, I was not the only dazed one who had to blink myself back to the world of the classroom. People were talking all at once:

  “Komorebi and lightning and mångata trails—”

  “The street that we didn’t always live on was Broken Tree Road and a horrible thing happened there—”

  “I remembered the house my grandmother lived in—”

  “There was no lake at Camp Green Lake, but there was a swamp that swallowed people.”

  At lunch Antonio said, “Hobbit hole?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Of course.” He tapped his head and pointed at mine, as if to say, Our brains are connected.

  Silence

  Occasionally Miss Lightstone would close her eyes and press two fingers to the center of her forehead. “Sometimes there is too much noise in the world, don’t you think?” she once said.

  Another time she said, “Did you ever notice how much people talk? Does it all start to sound like—like—buzzing?”

  Margie said, “Yes, you’re right! All the time, people talk, talk, talk. Some people never shut up.”

  All heads swiveled toward Freddy.

  “I do not talk all the time. What about Ruby? There’s a real chatterbox for you!”

  Heads swiveled to Ruby.

  “Me? Are you kidding? What about—?”

  Miss Lightstone wisely interrupted. “How about we try an experiment? I’m not sure it’s possible, but what if we all—each one of us—tried to be quiet for a whole hour? Do you think we could do it?”

  “That’s easy!” Freddy said. “So easy it’s ridiculous. How about two hours? Or three? Or a whole day?”

  That is how we came to an agreement that each Wednesday at school would be Silent Day in Miss Lightstone’s class. It was not as easy as it might sound.

  If we had questions, we couldn’t just write them down and take them up to Miss Lightstone for her to answer. We had been trooping back and forth, back and forth, until Miss Lightstone closed her eyes, stabbed two fingers into her forehead, and then wrote on the board:

  A written question is also noise. Try to answer your own questions today.

  The next day, Ruby felt obliged to report that her father did not think it appropriate for a teacher to refuse to answer questions.

  Miss Lightstone assured us that she would be happy to answer questions on all the other days of the week, and that it might be “an interesting experiment” to see if we could answer our own questions instead of blurting them out whenever they popped into our heads.

  “I don’t blurt,” Ruby said.

  “I was not referring to you, personally, Ruby.”

  Each Wednesday, on the board, was a list of things we were to do in class. For example, we could read, do a writing experiment, or revise something we’d previously written.

  We fidgeted through that first Wednesday, trying to adjust to this new arrangement. I hadn’t thought it would be difficult to remain quiet. I relished the thought that some of the chatterers would have to be silent.

  After a few blissful silent minutes, I heard tapping:

  Foot tapping.

  Pencil tapping.

  Finger tapping.

  I heard:

  Yawning.

  Coughing.

  Throat clearing.

  I heard the tick-tick-tick of the clock at the front of the room.

  I heard my own breathing.

  I heard other people’s breathing.

  The silence was so noisy.

  Absence

  Antonio was not at the bus stop one morning and he was not at school all day. People kept asking me where he was, as if I was his keeper. In frustration, I finally said, “How would I know?” to which Claire replied, “Don’t you live next door to him?”

  Audrey chimed in, “I thought you loved him!”

  “I do not love him.”

  “Do you know if he will be here later?”

  “No. I have no idea.”

  At lunch, Ruby asked, “Where’s Antonio? Is he sick?”

  Standing in line behind me, Freddy said, “I wish someone would notice when I was absent. Nobody notices if I don’t show up.”

  “Sure, they do, Freddy,” I said.

  “No, they don’t.”

  And the sad thing was, he might have been right.

  When I got home that day, a girl with orange hair and a bright yellow raincoat was standing in Antonio’s backyard spraying Mr. Blue, the cat, with a hose. The cat dashed this way and that, either dodging the spray or trying to drink from it. It was hard to tell which.

  “Hi,” I said. “Where’s Carlotta?”

  The girl turned to me, tilted her head from one side to the other. “Carlotta? Where is she? Well, she just up and flew away”—she waved her hand in the air —“just like that. Like a bird. Or a fly. Or whatever.”

  I stepped closer. “Are you—?”

  She put up her hand like a stop sign. “Whoa. Close enough.”

  “It is you,” I said. “Carlotta? I didn’t recognize you, what with—with—you know, the new hair and all.”

  She pulled a chunk of hair to one side. “This is new?”

  “I mean the color—the color is new, right?”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “Is Antonio home? Is he sick?”

  She squinted at me and swished the hose so that the water landed near my feet. “Antonio who?”

  At night I dreamed that I was writing my life. I would be writing rapidly—long, detailed passages about places and people. I wasn’t writing about things that had happened, but about what was about to happen. As soon as I wrote something, it appeared before me.

  If I described a tiger, it appeared: sleek and mysterious and elegant. If I described a person named, say, Georgio, he would appear in our class or at my house.

  In my dreams, I realized that I could create my life in this way. Anything could happen, good or bad. Anyone could appear, for good or ill.

  When I woke, the feeling of that mystery, of that ability to create my life, lingered. It was an odd feeling, as if something were growing inside me—in my mind or my body or my soul—or all of those. I liked the feeling but I also feared it.

  Antonio was not at school the next day or the next.

  In Miss Lightstone’s class, we now wrote for thirty or forty minutes and still, for many of us, that wasn’t enough time, and we were frustrated when the time was up.

  “I was just getting to something interesting.”

  “I have to finish this.”

  Miss Lightstone, who wore a ladybug pin on writing days, said, “The ladybug inspires me—ever since that time we were writing and I remembered the wallpaper on which I drew ladybugs.”

  Freddy wrote with increasing intensity, sometimes exclaiming aloud “Whoa!” or “Wow!”

  “I feel like I’m on fire,” Arif said one day. “Like I could just write and write and write and even if some of it later sounds stupid, so what? In the middle are some cool things.”

  “Surprising things,” Margie agreed. “Like all of a sudden the old lady who lives next door popped up when I was writing about our street. I described what she looked like, what she wore, how she sat on the porch in a metal chair, how she talked, that funny accent . . .”

  And I understood, because that was happening to me, too.

  But Antonio was not there, and I missed him.

  Ribbity Rabbits

  On Saturday, three of the younger Clackerty children appeared at our door: two boys and a girl (or it might have been three boys or three girls; it was hard to tell).

  “Is the girl home?” they asked Mom. “The one with the ribbity rabbits and the snakes?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure who—”

  “And the lasagna?”

  “Oh, I think you mean Gina. Is that who you mean?”

  “Is she the one with the ribbity rabbits and snakes and turtles?”

  I joined Mom at the door.

  “There she is! That’s her! Do you have some ribbity rabbits and snakes and turtles?”

  “Not today,” I said.

  “Lasagna? Do you have lasagna today?”

  “Ah. Try next door. Ask for the grandmother. She makes the best lasagna.”

  A short time later, the three Clackertys returned.

  “The grandma is not there. Only a girl with orange hair.”

  “Like a pumpkin.”

  “Pumpkin hair.”

  “And a mean cat.”

  “Really, really mean. See?” A boy revealed scratches on his arm. “I was just trying to hold it.”

  “And the cat went crazy—”

  “And the pumpkin hair girl—”

  “Was snotty—”

  “Snotty snot snot-head—”

  “And she didn’t have any lasagna—”

  “And even if she did—”

  “She wouldn’t give it to us—”

  “Snotty snot-head.”

  The Hole in the Room

  School was different without Antonio.

  When someone asked a question or made a comment in Miss Lightstone’s class, we often turned automatically toward Antonio’s desk.

  When had that become a habit, to look to Antonio for affirmation? Were we seeking confirmation that he heard us?

  Were we seeking his approval?

  Why did he matter so much to us?

  Why did I feel sad or betrayed by his absence?

  There was a hole in the room where he had been.

  One day, Renaldo sat at Antonio’s desk.

  “Hey!” Freddy said. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s—that’s Antonio’s place.”

  “So?”

  Arif said, “It doesn’t seem right.”

  Others had gathered near, murmuring disapproval.

  “You shouldn’t sit there.”

  “He might come back today.”

  “No,” Miss Lightstone said, entering the room. “Not today. Maybe next week. There is some sort of family business to attend to.”

  “Someone died, I bet,” Arif said.

  November was cold and gray. In Miss Lightstone’s class, we wrote and wrote. One time she said, “Basketball players practice dribbling, yes? Today let’s dribble with words.”

  Another time: “Tennis players practice strokes: forehand, backhand, volley, serve. Over and over. Let’s practice our sentence strokes.”

  Sometimes she met with us individually while the others were working. She would say, “What a strong detail” or “Which part do you like the best?” or “This sounds like a poem” or “I’d love to know more about this place” or “I hope you will write more about that.”

  One time she said to me, “You notice things. You wonder about people. You are a good observer.”

  When she moved on to the next person, I stared down at my notebook, repeating her words in my head. Instinctively, I turned to Antonio’s seat, wanting to share that moment with him, hoping he had heard her.

  But Antonio was not there.

  Sometimes we worked in pairs or small groups, listening to each other’s work, seeking something special in each piece. I was often surprised by what I heard.

  I liked the way Renaldo wrote dialogue, his pieces like short plays. Freddy’s pieces, I thought, would be sarcastic, and at first they were, but something gradually changed so that by the end of that month, he was writing a mystery, filled with eerie landscapes and hidden clues. Its first sentence was, “In a hole in the ground lay the wooden chest.”

  Margie and Arif both wrote detailed, specific descriptions of places they had lived and people they had known. I could see these places and these people, and I could hear Margie’s and Arif’s voices in them, too.

  When I was writing, I could follow the rhythms of my own mind, and I could explore people and worlds with abandon. I could be funny or silly or serious. I could be anyone or anything.

  Miss Lightstone strolled by our desks and stopped to say, “Oh, why don’t you read that line there, Arif? I like that detail.” Or “Margie, what was that beautiful line you wrote about the blue scarf on the white-haired lady?”

  Now when Miss Lightstone would ask, “Who has a contribution they would like to offer?” most of us had something to volunteer. It felt so worthy to have a contribution.

  Those days in her class seemed to balance the flatness of November skies.

  But Antonio was still gone.

  Anyone Home?

  Each day I looked for signs of life at Antonio’s house. Occasionally, I’d notice a curtain had been opened or closed, but no people emerged, and even Mr. Blue, the cat, was nowhere around. Leaves littered the yard where they had fallen weeks earlier.

  One day I saw the mailman delivering mail there. When he came to our house, I said, “I’m not sure anyone still lives there—next door.”

  “Oh?” He turned to regard the house. “Well, they’re still getting mail. We don’t have a change-of-address notice for them, and until we do, I guess we’ll still deliver there.”

  I studied his face, taking note of thick eyebrows and wide nose. I wondered how I would describe him in writing.

  “No packages for you today, Miss Gina Filomena,” he announced with a flourish. “But I do have a few bills. I am hoping you are not the one who has to pay them.”

  The following day I marched up to Antonio’s front door and knocked loudly. I was tired of waiting and wondering. I knocked again and again, louder each time. I sat on the front steps and waited. When I thought I heard a noise inside, I knocked again.

  The door opened slightly.

  “What? What do you want?”

  It was Carlotta, her hair no longer orange but now jet black and cut in jagged angles, as if someone had hacked at it with a dull knife. She squinted at me, her face distorted with annoyance.

  “Why are you endlessly knocking? Is there an emergency? Is this house burning down? What do you want?”

  “I need to know about Antonio.”

  “You need to? Why on earth would you need to?”

  “At school—we were wondering—when he would be returning.”

  “Is that so? At school people were wondering. Not you, specifically?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she spluttered. “I have no idea when he’ll be back or if he’ll be back.” And with that, she shut the door and I heard the lock click.

  Woozy

  I had the flu. For five days, I slept and woke and wobbled and slid in and out of fever and chills and confusion and fog. I was dimly aware of Mom’s and Dad’s presence and their soothing voices and their faces with their troubled brows bent close to mine.

  Full moons and lighted paths of reflection on dark lakes filled my dreams. In this woozy state, I met Angel Lucia and an elephant with a frog on its head and a porcupine eating red licorice.

  Glimpsing a group of students at the bus stop, I called to them: “Wait, wait for me—” but they did not hear me and the bus came and went without me. “Wait—” I called. “Wait! I have a contribution!”

  Missed

  When I returned to school, I learned that both Margie and Arif had come to my house to check on me while I was absent, but no one had answered the door.

  “It was spooky,” Margie said, “as if you’d disappeared.”

  “But Miss Lightstone told us you were sick,” Arif added.

  And then I caught sight of Antonio’s desk and inhaled so suddenly and deeply that I choked.

  “He’s—he’s back?” I said.

  “Who?” Arif said.

  Margie leaned against me. “That’s the new boy. His name is Gerald.”

  Arif whispered, “He’s not very friendly.”

  I had to see for myself.

  On top of a long, lanky body was a tangle of dusty brown hair, like a dirty mop. He had squinty eyes and a beak nose and hollowed cheeks. When I approached, his head jerked up.

  “What?” he said. “Whaddya want?”

  His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been shouting.

  “I’m Gina. I’ve been sick. You’re new?”

  “Well, I’m not old,” he snarled.

  “I meant new to this school—”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  “Your name is . . . ?”

  “Gerald.”

  “Do people call you Jerry?”

  “No. They call me Gerald.”

  He didn’t deserve that desk.

  I felt I had missed much more than a week of school because I did not understand the references others were making to a book they had read or to pieces they had written.

 

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