Apparently Arif had developed a complex fictional world of castles and knights and treachery. When he offered to read a passage on the day I returned, I was confused.

  “Wait—who are the good knights?”

  “Oh, you missed all that, Gina. You’d have to read the whole thing from the beginning.”

  Margie was writing a story about an old woman with magical powers.

  “Wait—can she actually transform people into animals?”

  “Oh, you missed all that, Gina. I’ll fill you in later.”

  Others were especially interested in Freddy’s story about the hidden chest in a hole in the ground.

  “Wait, are the badgers good or bad?”

  “Oh, you missed all that, Gina.”

  “His story is really good, and you missed all that, Gina.”

  The new boy, Gerald, was cranky when it came to writing time.

  “I hate to write.”

  And:

  “Writing is a bore.”

  And:

  “I don’t get what the words and pictures on the board are supposed to do.”

  Miss Lightstone met separately with him to explain, but he resisted her help.

  “It just seems so stupid,” he said, pinching his beaky nose, as if offended by a smell.

  “Ah,” Miss Lightstone said. “Freddy? Tell Gerald how you used to feel about our experiments.”

  Freddy was engrossed in writing his story. “What? Oh. Yeah, I used to think it was stupid, too.” He bent his head toward his paper. “But it isn’t.”

  Gerald crossed his arms. “My hand hurts.”

  “Let’s try writing fast for one minute. Do you think you could manage one minute?” Miss Lightstone asked.

  “Doubt it.”

  Snotty snot-head.

  On that first day back, I was out of practice and unable to concentrate. From the board, I chose the words reflection and illusion and stumbled around getting stuck stuck stuck and then started writing about being sick and about how the world around me seemed hazy then, and about Antonio and his distinct smile and the way it slowly, steadily revealed itself, as if it was triggered by the person he was talking with.

  And that seemed profound to me, that realization that something in him was responding to something he saw in the other person, and in turn, it allowed that person to see something in him.

  I glanced over at the new boy, Gerald, scowling, stiff and stubborn. Was his expression a reflection of him or of how he felt about the people around him? Or both?

  At the end of the day, I realized that not a single person had mentioned Antonio.

  Delivery Boy

  At home, flour and eggs and onions and garlic and ground beef and tomatoes littered the countertops.

  “Are Uncle and Auntie Pasta here?” I probably sounded alarmed. My mind was already racing through the mess in my room, the sheets that needed washing, and our general unpreparedness for such a visit.

  “No, no, Gina, don’t worry. No visitors.”

  “Then—what is all this?”

  Dad looked a little sheepish. “Since we are not getting any batches of pasta from next door, I was getting hungry for some. Yes, it is true. Don’t look at me like that. I couldn’t help it.” With a flourish, he offered me a plate of cinnamon toast and a cup of cocoa. “See? I did not forget the need for toast and cocoa.”

  The toast and cocoa were comforting, as was the routine, and afterward we made the pasta and sauce. Dad wanted to know how my first day back at school was, and so I told him about the fuzziness of it and about the new boy, Gerald, and very quietly at the end, I added that no one had spoken of Antonio.

  “As if he never existed, Dad.”

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t see how that can be. He made such a—a—such a contribution to—”

  “To what? To your school? Your class?”

  “To—”

  “What, Gina? To your world?”

  I could only nod and sniffle and wipe my eyes.

  “You are getting sauce on your face,” Dad said.

  We made too much pasta and too much sauce.

  “Who do we give the rest to?” Dad wondered.

  “Your turn to take it to the Clackertys,” I said.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “And maybe Carlotta next door? She probably hasn’t had any pasta lately either.”

  “You do that one,” Dad said.

  I remembered my last encounter with Carlotta. “Maybe you could do both?”

  He dabbed at my cheek with a towel. “Okay, okay. I will be Mr. Delivery Boy.”

  When Dad returned from his pasta delivery to the Clackertys, he quickly locked the door. His hair was sticking up, his shirt untucked and pasta stained, his shoes untied.

  “Quick,” he said. “Hide! We’re not home!” Closing the curtains in the front room, he raced to the back door and locked it as well.

  “What is it?”

  He bent, hands to knees, to catch his breath.

  Knocks on the front door.

  “No, don’t get it, Gina! Quick! Upstairs! Hide!”

  I followed him upstairs.

  “Tell me! What is it? Who is it? What is happening?”

  “Shh. Wait. Listen.”

  Knocks on the back door. I crept to the hall window, which overlooked that door.

  “Dad, it’s only the Clackertys—the little ones.”

  “Only? Shh. They’ll hear you.”

  From below came shouts from the littles.

  “Pasta man! Pasta man!”

  “Come out, come out!”

  “Pasta man!”

  Dad slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, where he sat, a dazed lump of a man. He whispered, “Those kids will eat you alive! They are very hungry!”

  After Dad had recovered from his visit to the Clackertys, and after he had checked that none of them were lurking outside our house, he took another batch of pasta to Carlotta next door. Barely five minutes later, he returned home, the pasta pan still in his hands.

  “Gina, this is a strange day.”

  “Carlotta didn’t want the pasta? That seems awfully rude.”

  “It wasn’t Carlotta.”

  “Was it a girl? Did she have black hair all crazy-chopped?”

  “It was a girl. Blue hair. Crazy-chopped.”

  “That’s Carlotta,” I said.

  “She said Carlotta did not live there.”

  “Did she say what her name was?”

  “Princess Azalea.”

  “Ha!”

  “No, really, Gina, that is what she said her name was and she seemed quite serious.”

  “And the pasta?”

  “She hates pasta. She was very polite about it, though. She said, ‘Sir, I am sorry to disappoint, but I, Princess Azalea, have a strong dislike of—of—pasta.’ She said pasta as if the word itself tasted bad.”

  Sukey

  At school the next day I chose the word reflection and began writing about Carlotta and Princess Azalea and how maybe one was a reflection of the other. Maybe Princess Azalea was Carlotta’s better self. Soon, however, a bucket of unexpected thoughts from kindergarten poured out.

  On the first day of kindergarten, when I came home from school, Mom asked me how the day had been. I replied that it was okay. “Most kids were good.”

  “Most kids?”

  “Yes, except for Sukey.”

  “What did Sukey do?”

  “She didn’t pay attention. Miss Lockett had to keep saying, ‘Sukey! Are you paying attention? You need to pay attention to this.’”

  “She’ll get used to it,” Mom said. “It can be hard at first.”

  “And Sukey kept dropping things, like her pencil and her crayons and her paper, and when Miss Lockett reminded her to pick them up, Sukey said she was too tired.”

  For the next few weeks, I eagerly gave my parents daily updates on Sukey’s behavior.

  “Sukey fell asleep, right in the middle of story time! Miss Lockett said, ‘Wake up, wake up, sleepyhead.’ Everyone laughed except for Sukey, who was very, very sleepy.”

  Another day: “Sukey scribbled on her desk, and Miss Lockett told her that she would need to wash that off, and from then on, she should only scribble on paper. Sukey said she wasn’t scribbling, she was drawing.”

  Another day: “Sukey punched a boy, but she said the boy had punched her first, and the boy said he hadn’t, and Miss Lockett said that punching was not permitted in our classroom. Not ever.”

  A few weeks later, Mom went to Parents’ Night at the school and saw Miss Lockett. When Mom came home, she said, “Strangest thing—when I mentioned that I’d heard all about Sukey, she said, ‘Sukey? Who is that?’”

  “Hm.”

  “She did remember you, though,” Mom said. “She said you had a wonderful imagination but that you seemed tired sometimes and had a little trouble settling in to all the rules of the classroom, but that you were adjusting.”

  “Hm. She said all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm.”

  Afterward, when Mom or Dad would ask about my day, I’d say it had been fine, and that I had used my imagination a lot.

  “And Sukey?” they would ask.

  “She’s adjusting,” I said.

  All of that emerged from bouncing off one word: reflection. It seemed magical, the way a word could open up paths in my mind and lead to places and people both old and new.

  I felt as if the tiny tin box of my mind was breeding riches.

  Adjusting

  Next I wrote about adjusting, leaping off my recollection of Sukey and of adjusting to kindergarten and how maybe we were always adjusting: to new teachers and students and classes, to everyone we encountered, to noises, to weather, to food.

  I wondered what or who shaped us or were we shaping ourselves?

  I thought about Antonio and how I no longer expected to see him at the bus stop or at his desk. I thought about how no one spoke of him, as if they were angry with him for having deserted us with no warning or explanation.

  “Gina?” Miss Lightstone knelt beside my desk. “You okay?”

  She handed me a tissue and patted my arm.

  “I’m just adjusting.”

  “To—?”

  “Life.”

  Miss Lightstone patted my arm again. “Ah, life,” she whispered. “Yes, one is always adjusting.”

  Always?

  At the end of each day, Miss Lightstone still traced beneath the two lines that had been up there on the board for so long now:

  Who are you?

  Who could you be?

  Had we so adjusted to those lines that we no longer were conscious of them? I was absently staring at the lines when I realized the question on the board wasn’t “Who am I?” but “Who are you?”

  Confused, I looked all around the room. I didn’t want to write about myself or what I knew anymore. I wanted to write about who and what I did not know.

  On the bus on the way home that day, I asked Margie a question that had been nagging at me.

  “Why doesn’t anyone mention Antonio?”

  Margie said, “Oh, Gina.”

  Arif, sitting in front of us, turned around and said, “You must have missed all that.”

  “All what?”

  Margie said, “It must have been while you were sick.”

  Arif explained that many of them had been moaning and groaning about missing Antonio, and one day a fight broke out when Freddy said he did not see what the big deal was with Antonio.

  “And Audrey punched Freddy, and Freddy punched Renaldo, and someone threw Freddy’s books on the floor—”

  “And I was trying to defend Freddy,” Margie said, “but then he said Antonio was weird, and someone else agreed—”

  “And everyone was yelling.”

  And that was when Miss Lightstone suggested they all settle down and spend the next half hour writing about what was bothering them.

  Margie was clutching my arm as if I might float out the window. “I think most of us ended up writing about Antonio, but no one wanted to share what they had written.”

  “I wrote about the way he listened to people and about the cool things that came out of his head,” Arif said.

  “And I wrote about that smile—the slow, widening one. You know what I mean?”

  I knew.

  “But at lunch, Claire said she had written about how strange Antonio seemed to her, and someone else said that Antonio claimed he saw weird things—like elephants and porcupines.”

  “And even though I didn’t mean to,” Arif admitted, “I mentioned the time Antonio said he felt the world turning.”

  “After all that, we stopped talking about Antonio, I guess,” Margie said. “But that was when you were sick, Gina, so you missed all that.”

  The Knight, the Lion, and the Badger

  Over the course of the next week, as students volunteered to read from the stories they were writing, I began to see a pattern.

  In Arif’s story of a castle threatened by an evil army was a magnificent hero: the Knight of Onio. He was strong and powerful, but also quiet and noble. When he smiled at people—friend or foe—they acquired some of his strength.

  Margie wrote of an old, old woman whose touch could transform people into creatures that mirrored their personalities: a pacing tiger, a shy lamb, a sneaky fox. The only person not affected by her touch was a young man who had appeared on her doorstep one morning, offering to chop wood. The young man had a magnetic smile that cast its own spell on the old woman, transforming her into . . . something. Margie was not yet sure what that would be.

  Freddy’s story of the chest hidden in the ground told of the Badgers—a band of lost boys who were the rightful heirs to the chest. Their leader was a boy named Santon, who was really a traitor in disguise. He was tall and lean with black curly hair that draped over one eye.

  So.

  They had not forgotten Antonio. He had become a character in their stories. I wondered what other parts of their lives were in their stories.

  Meanwhile, the new boy, Gerald, who hated writing, now drew while the rest of us wrote. At first, he wouldn’t show anyone his drawings, but as the days went on, we glimpsed portions of his work. He drew faces reflected in mirrors and sun-ray daggers piercing leaves and winding mazes through forests. When he drew intricate tunnels into the earth, leading to an underground dwelling, something clicked. I said, “You’re using the inspiration boards, right?”

  Arif walked over to Gerald’s desk and read, “In a hole in the ground lived—”

  “But it’s not a hobbit,” Gerald said, covering his paper with one arm. “I’m definitely not going to have any stupid smiling people in here, though.”

  Snotty snot-head.

  But . . .

  His drawings were very good.

  The Trial Smile

  As I fell asleep that night, I thought about Antonio’s smile and how it had affected so many, and it occurred to me that I could try an experiment. Why couldn’t I smile like that?

  The next morning, Mom said, “What are you so happy about?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Why are you smiling so much?”

  “Can’t a person smile for no reason?”

  At the bus stop, Margie said, “What are you so happy about? It’s freezing out here.”

  At school, Freddy said, “What? What are you looking at? What are you smiling about?”

  Even Miss Lightstone said, “Gina, have you had some good news?”

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  I removed the smile.

  At lunch, Renaldo whispered to me, “I know what you’re doing—with the smiling. You’re imitating Antonio, aren’t you?”

  “It’s an experiment. Want to join me?”

  After lunch:

  Freddy: “What’s so funny, Renaldo?”

  Arif: “Yeah, why the big smile? Did you play a joke on somebody?”

  Claire: “What are you up to, Renaldo?”

  Margie: “Do you and Gina have some secret you’re not telling us?”

  Neither Margie nor Arif spoke to me the rest of the day.

  Renaldo and I stopped smiling.

  The next day at the bus stop, Margie and Arif were smiling.

  “What are you so happy about?” I asked.

  Margie and Arif replied in unison, “Nothing. Nothing.”

  At school, Ruby asked them what was so funny. “What’s the big joke?”

  Claire: “Is this some stupid game? Cut it out.”

  They removed their smiles.

  On the following day, it was Ruby and Audrey, smiling all over the place.

  “Hi!” Ruby said. Smile.

  “Hey there!” Audrey crooned. Smile.

  Arif said, “Not funny. Cut it out.”

  They removed their smiles.

  That day Gerald drew a ten-panel cartoon that showed various people grinning and smiling, their mouths stretched ridiculously wide. Along came a tall, armored figure, brandishing a sparkling sword.

  “Enough!” the armored figure boomed. “Off with the smiles!” The figure waved his sword in the air, flipping and twirling it, and as the sword spun past each person, the smiles vanished.

  The final cartoon panel was blank. Gerald had not decided how to finish it.

  “Hmm,” Miss Lightstone murmured. “Hmm.”

  Quickly Gerald sketched the final panel. It showed a row of expressionless people with blank stares.

  “Huh,” Gerald said. “I wasn’t quite expecting that result. Looks like a bunch of sheep.”

  “Gray and dirty?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  The Desk

  An extra desk appeared in our classroom overnight.

  “What’s with that?” Freddy asked.

  Miss Lightstone looked up from her attendance book, squinted at that empty desk, and said, “Hmm.”

  At the classroom door, Miss Judy appeared, and with a wave of her slender fingers, summoned Miss Lightstone to the hall. When our teacher returned, Renaldo asked her if she was in trouble.

 

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