“I don’t usually agree with the youngster,” Wheatie started, “but in this situation, we concur.”
I glanced between them. “Great, great. Thanks for sorting out my life for me. We have a freezer on the fritz at the bakehouse and six hundred pounds of blackberries waiting to be moved to the canning house and a shitshow of a goat milk operation but you two want me to take a page from my yearbook out to dinner so everything’s fine. Under control. We’ve got it handled. Thanks.”
After a long pause, Bones said, “Those blackberries went to the cannery first thing this morning. They’re probably jam by now. No worries on that.”
I rubbed my eyes. “At least something is going right around here.”
chapterfive
Shay
Students will be able to make stones speak.
“So,based on what we’ve read, what would you say is the most important detail?”
Gennie dragged her tongue back and forth along her teeth as she studied the book between us. “Blackbeard was a badass,” she said.
I gave her a quick nod. “Can you think of another way to say that? A school-friendly way?”
She thought about this for a minute. “Blackbeard was really good at being a ship captain and making pirate plans.”
“Okay. Are there any details from the text to show this?” I handed her a stack of sticky notes. “Use these to mark the spots where you find evidence.”
Last week, I’d made the mistake of arriving to our “playdate” with some early elementary storybooks. Gennie had zero interest in the classics and anything with the merest whiff of school halted our progress. When I’d told her I taught kindergarten, the betrayal was plain on her face.
I’d returned to the Friendship Public Library in search of books that would appeal to her interests. That I’d found a few titles on pirates and that they were even remotely appropriate for a six-year-old was amazing. There were several mentions of beheadings but that didn’t deter Gennie. If anything, it made her more excited to read.
I watched as she flipped through the book, carefully pressing sticky notes to the passages that proved her point. Each passage required a different colored note, which was no problem since an office supply store had exploded in Noah’s kitchen in the past week. Every time I visited, there were more goodies waiting on the table. Markers, pens, crayons, and every sticky note under the sun.
It was obvious Noah wanted what was best for Gennie. Colored pencils weren’t going to make up for the gaps in her reading skills but they’d make the practice more fun. I gave him credit for that.
“There was a fox on the roof of the chicken house last night,” Gennie said as she ran her finger over a sticky note to secure it in place.
“Afox,” I murmured. “You’ll have to tell me that story after we search for words that make theasound, like inblack.”
“Like Blackbeard,” she said.
“Exactly like that. Use these little sticky flags to point out thoseasounds in the story.”
“Likecat?” she asked. “Like my barn cats, Blackie and Brownie?”
“Yes,cathas the sameasound. See if there’s any others in the story.”
“What aboutbastard? Is that the same?”
I lifted my water bottle to my lips to drown out a laugh. Once I’d recovered, I said, “Yes, you’re right, though let’s keep our words school-friendly.”
“School isn’t friendly,” she mumbled.
I leaned down to catch her eye but she looked away, suddenly interested in finding those words. “We’ll work on that,” I said. “It’s going to get better.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, the pout thick in her words.
“Actually, I do know it. When I was a kid, I moved and changed schools a bunch of times. It was really hard. It took me a long time to make friends and I was always the new kid. But it got better.”
She kept her gaze on the pages and it was clear I had to talk to Noah about this today. She’d mentioned a few other troubling tidbits over the past week and I’d meant to share them with him but I hadn’t been able to get a minute of his time. He wasn’t at home when I arrived, Gennie usually in the care of Gail Castro, an eternally patient woman whose family bred and trained horses nearby. Gennie spent the day with Gail now that she wasn’t in summer school anymore.
Noah typically made an appearance about halfway through our playdates, strolling through the kitchen and then immediately disappearing into the adjoining den or back outside. I’d wanted to speak to him on Monday, but Gennie had put up a relentless fight for me to join them for dinner, and I’d made a quick exit. She invited me every time we worked together, but I couldn’t maintain a cheerful face for multiple concurrent hours. Not yet.
