his reverie, he could feel them watching him, feel their smoldering anger.
And hear their snickers as they realized he hadn’t been paying attention to the teacher.
His mind sped, instantly replaying Mrs. Schulze’s all-but-unheard question. “Come now, Josh,” she’d said. “Surely you remember the date of the attack on Fort Sumter?”
“April twelfth, 1861,” Josh blurted out. “Two days later, the garrison at the fort surrendered, and the Civil War began.”
The snickering died away, but Josh felt angry eyes fixing on him from all over the classroom.
What was so wrong with being smart? It wasn’t his fault he remembered everything he read, and could do algebra in his head. And it wasn’t as if anybody else had been able to answer the question. He hadn’t been waving his hand in the air like some kind of kiss-up! Besides, he’d spent most of the summer reading books about American history, and the questions the other kids hadn’t been able to answer at all had seemed pretty easy to him.
So it was going to be another endless year of being bored in class and lonely outside of class.
When the noon bell finally rang, Josh busied himself with his book bag until all the rest of the kids were gone, then slid out of his seat and started for the door. Before he could escape, the teacher’s voice stopped him.
“Josh?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. He could hear Mrs. Schulze’s heavy footsteps coming down the aisle toward him. When he felt her hand on his shoulder, he once again wished the floor would open and the earth would swallow him up.
“I just wanted to tell you how happy I am to have you in my class this year,” Rita Schulze said. “I know it’s not going to be easy for you—”
Before she could finish, Josh spun around and stared up at her, his stormy eyes brimming with tears. “No you don’t,” he said in a voice that trembled with emotion. “You don’t know if it’s going to be easy or hard. And you don’t care, either! All you care about is that I can answer the stupid questions!” His voice rose as he lost control of his tears. “And that’s what they are, too—stupid, stupid, stupid!” Jerking away from the teacher, Josh turned and stumbled into the mercifully empty hall, then ran toward the boys’ room at its far end.
Five minutes later, his tears dried and his face washed, he emerged from the boys’ room and uttered a silent sigh of relief when he found the hall empty. He went to his locker, put his book bag inside and took out the brown paper bag containing his lunch. He was about to close the locker when he suddenly changed his mind and burrowed a hand into the bottom of his book bag, fishing out the copy of Les Miserables his mother had given him last week. Though he knew the cover wasn’t real leather, he still admired it for a moment, with its ornate gilt border surrounding a fleur-de-lis pattern.
Since he already knew he’d be sitting by himself in the cafeteria, he might as well try to read a few chapters.
In the cafeteria, he joined the tail end of the lunch line, silently moving forward until he was able to pick up a carton of milk, then edging toward the cash register. “Well, look who’s here,” Emily Sanchez said, smiling warmly as she rang up Josh’s purchase. “Seventh grade already. Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re headin’ for high school!”
Josh managed a slight nod of his head, and held out his hand for the change from the dollar bill he’d given Emily. As she put the coins into his hand, Emily leaned toward him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Any of them kids give you trouble, you let me know, okay? They ain’t so smart as they think they are, right?” She winked conspiratorially, but Josh didn’t see it, his flushing face already turned away as he hurried toward an empty table in the far corner.
No one spoke to him as he threaded his way between the tables, but he could feel them watching him.
He sat down with his back to the room, determined to ignore the rest of the kids, and opened his bag to pull out the peanut butter sandwich and small container of cottage cheese that invariably made up his lunch.
“I know it’s not interesting,” his mother had explained to him over and over again whenever he’d complained of