Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
And so I look out the window again. Remind my mouth to keep shut.
I’ve learned from the seven different schools I’ve been to that it’s better to stay quiet. Never argue unless I really have to.
I realize that both of my hands have curled into tight fists and Mrs. Silver is looking at them.
She sits down in the chair next to me. “Ally, sometimes it seems that you just want to get into trouble.” She leans forward a bit. “Do you?”
I shake my head.
“C’mon, Ally. Tell me what’s going on. Let me help you.”
I look at her quick and then away. I mumble, “No one can help me.”
“That’s not true. Will you let me try?” She points at a poster on the wall. “Can you read that for me, please?” she says. “Out loud.”
The poster shows two hands reaching for each other.
Great. Probably some sappy saying about friends or sticking together or whatever. I don’t even have any friends.
“C’mon, Ally. Read it for me, please.”
The letters on the poster look like black beetles marching across the wall. I could probably figure most of them out, but I’d need a lot of time. And when I’m nervous, forget it. My brain goes blank like an Etch A Sketch turned upside down and shaken. Gray and empty.
“Well, what does it say?” she asks again.
“I don’t need to read it to you. I get it,” I say, trying to bluff. Staring her dead in the eyes. “Believe me. I know all about it already.”
“I don’t know about that, kiddo. I think you might need to work on it a bit.”
Now I wish I knew what the poster said. I don’t look at it, though. Then she’ll want to talk about it more.
The bell rings.
Mrs. Silver rakes her hair with her fingers. “Ally. I don’t know if you thought the card would be funny or you are upset that Mrs. Hall’s leaving or what. But it feels like you’ve crossed a line this time.”
I imagine myself crossing the finish line. My body breaking the bright red ribbon. The crowd cheering as confetti spins through the air. But I know this is not what she means.
“As of Monday, your new teacher will be Mr. Daniels. Let’s try to avoid any negative consequences, okay?”
I think about how me avoiding consequences would be like the rain avoiding the sky.
She waves me out, and as I stand, I look at that poster again. I wish I knew what it was I should learn, because I know that I should know a lot more than I do.
She sighs as I leave her office and I know she’s tired of me.
Even I’m tired of me.
• • •
As I run from the office, the hallways are filling with kids. I head back to my classroom to apologize to Mrs. Hall before the buses leave. I run up behind her, tap her on the shoulder.
When she turns and looks at me, her face goes sad before straightening out. I stand there thinking how sorry I am. Hoping she doesn’t think I’d wish anything bad on her baby.
But I can’t find the words. My mind does the Etch A Sketch thing. Blank.
“What is it, Ally?” she finally asks. She puts her hands on her big belly like she needs to protect it.
I turn and run out of the room. Down the hall and out the front door. The buses are pulling away without me. But that’s the way it should be, I guess. I deserve to walk.
All that long way. And all by myself.
CHAPTER 4
Bird in a Cage
When I finally get to Park Road, I head into A. C. Petersen Farms, which is a weird name for a restaurant. They have pictures of cows inside and outside but it’s on a busy street with tons of stores. I wonder if there is a restaurant somewhere in the middle of nowhere named Crowded City.
My mom is waiting. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron.
“I missed the bus and had to walk.”
She shakes her head. “Sit yourself right down there and start that homework of yours,” she says, nodding toward the end of the counter. The same place I always sit. A place where she can keep an eye on me, she says.
“Anything you want to tell me?” She seems tired.
“They called you, didn’t they?” I ask.
“Yes. I don’t know why you would do such a thing, Ally.” She sounds sad instead of mad. Which is worse, I think.
There is a tray full of glass sundae dishes filled with brightly colored ice cream. Strawberry, pistachio, black raspberry. Pink, green, and purple. I like the colors next to each other and wonder what kind of impossible things I can draw about ice cream. Maybe melting rivers of it. And a man with a cone-shaped head sitting in a banana split dish rowing with a spoon.
“Ally! Are you listening?”
“Oh. Sorry,” I mumble, pushing off the floor with my foot to spin on the padded stool.
“I just don’t know what to say anymore.”
My mom’s boss looks at her over his glasses.
She drops to a whisper. “Just do your homework. We’ll talk at home. And please—no spinning on that stool.”
“I’m sorry. I am. I really thought Mrs. Hall would like that card.”
“How could that be?” she says as she picks up the tray of ice cream and moves away.
I pull out a book and open it, but the letters squiggle and dance. How are other people able to read letters that move?
So instead I stare at the steaming liquid dripping into a coffeepot and start thinking of steaming volcanoes. And dinosaurs standing around drinking coffee, staring up at the giant meteor soaring through the air, commenting on how pretty it is. And I think about how lucky they were that they never had to go to school. I grab a napkin and begin a drawing of them for the Sketchbook of Impossible Things.
Soon, my mom’s brown and white checkered apron is in front of me.
I look up. “I swear it. I didn’t know it was a sym . . . a sym . . . a card for dead people.”
“It’s a sympathy card,” she says. “And it’s for the people that miss the person that has died. Not for the dead.”
“Well, don’t you think the dead person deserves a card more than anyone?”
And she laughs. She leans her elbow on the counter and lifts her other arm to put her hand on my face. It’s warm and I’m so relieved that she isn’t that mad at me. “You’re funny. You know that?”
Then she pulls over the napkin with the dinosaurs holding coffee cups. “What’s this?”
“Just an idea I have for the Sketchbook of Impossible Things.”
She stares at it. “Aw, your grandpa knew you were talented, and he’d be so proud of how hard you’re working on your art. And he would love that you named your sketchbook after Alice in Wonderland. He had such fun sharing that book with you.” She looks up at me. “Just like he shared it with me when I was young.”
Alice in Wonderland—a book about living in a world where nothing makes sense made perfect sense to me.
“I miss Grandpa,” I say. Three words that hold sadness like a tree holds leaves.
“Me too, sweetheart.”
“I miss how he’d move from place to place with us whenever Dad got stationed somewhere new or deployed. It’s weird to think he doesn’t know that we’ve moved again.”
She taps the end of my nose. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I think he knows.”
Just then, voices I recognize come through the glass doors. It’s Shay and Jessica.
When I turn around, Shay says, “Well, look who’s here. It’s Ally Nickerson.”
They know my mom works here and have seen me here before. So I figure it isn’t a coincidence that they’re here.
“Ally,” Shay says. “You never came back to class. We were worried about you.”
What a joke that is. I turn back around while they wh
My mom motions with her head that I should follow them. “Go ahead, sweetheart. You can take a break.”
I give my mom the please-just-stop eyes while Shay mimics the word “sweetheart” in a baby voice.
I guess my mom didn’t hear, because she whispers, “New friends would be good, Ally. It wouldn’t hurt you to at least give them a chance.”
Someone comes to seat them, but Shay asks, “Can we just sit at the counter?”
Great.
Once they sit, there are two stools between them and me.
My mom leans in and whispers, “Why don’t you move down and sit with them? They’re reaching out, Ally.”
Reaching out with a bottle of poison.
I think back to one of our apartments where the landlords kept llamas in their field. I loved them, but Mom said they smelled. I whisper back, “It’s more likely that you’d buy me my own pet llama than me sit with them.”
She half smiles. “What shall we name the llama?”
I squint and shake my head.
She makes that exasperated sound. “So stubborn.”
Shay and Jessica stare at us like two cats watching birds in a cage.
My mom takes her pad out and walks over to them. “Hello, girls. What can I get you?”
Jessica orders strawberry ice cream, but when Shay orders chocolate, Jessica tells my mom, “Oh, that sounds good. I’ll have chocolate instead.” I roll my eyes. Typical Jessica.
As soon as my mom is gone, Shay asks, “So, Ally?”
I look over.
“Why would you give Mrs. Hall that card? That’s, like, really mean.”
Since there is no good answer to give, I stare at the page in my book. I’ll ignore them. I’ve taken their teasing before.
Jessica laughs. “Has your mother always been a waitress?”
“No,” I blurt out. “She used to be an astronaut.”
They break into laughter and, over near the kitchen, my mom smiles. She thinks I’m bonding with them.
“My father,” Jessica begins, “owns his own flower business, and he says—”
Shay interrupts. “Ally, maybe you can be a waitress when you grow up. But can you read the flavors of ice cream for me? I’m having trouble.” She points up at the slow-turning cube hanging from the ceiling that lists the flavors on each side. The movement makes it even harder to read.
I feel my face get hot. Oh no. Do they know I can’t read?
As they laugh, I remember how I had to read aloud last year when I first got here. I knew I shouldn’t have, but some stupid voice in my head sometimes says it will be different this time and I try. And I always fail. That day, I read that macaroni can swim up to twenty miles an hour. It was supposed to be a manatee. The class laughed, of course. But so did the teacher, so I tried to pretend I had done it on purpose.
I get up, walk behind them, around the corner and into the back room. I’m not supposed to be back there but it’s the only place they can’t follow me. I step behind the tall metal shelves with cans of pickles and ketchup and relish that are bigger than my head. Pushing my back hard against the wall, I see words on everything that surrounds me. Boxes and cans and giant plastic bottles.
Words. I can never get away from them.
I think back to second grade when my teacher wrote a whole lot of letters down and asked me what they said. I had no idea. But I was used to that.
“That spells your name, Ally. Ally Nickerson.”
Who knew a second grader could understand what being humiliated feels like.
Tears begin to come, but I swallow them because I know I’ll be found soon. I worry so much about them knowing my secret that my stomach feels like I’ve been kicked in the guts.
“Ally?” my mom asks as she comes around the corner. “Your friends have gone. What are you doing back here?”
I can’t tell her. Thinking I have friends makes her so happy.
“Honey?”
“I was checking the ingredients of ketchup.”
Her eyebrows bunch up. She knows something is up, but I walk past her before she asks another question. I walk back out into the restaurant with her following and sit next to Shay’s and Jessica’s matching empty dishes. It feels like they should mean something. Like maybe I’m an empty dish compared to everyone else.
But mostly those dishes make me feel like this year will be the worst year I’ve had so far. And that’s really saying something.
CHAPTER 5
Silver Dollars and Wooden Nickels
The back door swings open and my brother, Travis, is there, smelling like grease. Looking like he rolled in it. And I instantly feel better.
“How’s my favorite little sister?”
“I’m your only little sister.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’d still be my favorite.” He smiles. “So, your favorite big brother had a silver dollar day today!”
I think of Grandpa and Dad, who always asked us if we were having a silver dollar day or a wooden nickel one.
Travis is doing that thing where he wiggles his fingers in the air and asks his daily question, “What are these?” He looks older—more like my dad, who’s been deployed since just before Thanksgiving last year. It was hard to feel thankful after he’d gone. Especially since Grandpa had died three months before that.
“The hands of a genius?” I say.
“Correcto-mundo!”
“Do you realize you come home every day and ask me to compliment you?”
“Not really,” he says, opening the fridge. “Just asking you to state the facts.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“Exactly!” he says, pointing at me. “Guess what? I finished restoring an old Coke machine today. Thing is like seventy years old.” He pops open a soda. “Those things are worth a bundle fixed up.” Then he holds up the can. “Look at this. Disappointing compared to those old green bottles.”
Travis must be happy. The happier he is, the more he goes on about things.
“And,” he says, “I picked up an old gumball machine. The kind that takes pennies. I’ll sell it for ten times what I paid for it.” His voice drops and he takes a sip. “I will have to throw some money and elbow grease at it first, though.”
He comes over like he’s going to mess up my hair, but I block his dirty hands. “No way!” I laugh. “Don’t touch me!”
“Aw, c’mon, Al. I’ve had a great day. And guess what? I almost have enough to buy those rolling tool cabinets. And someday my big neon sign.” He sweeps his hand through the air like he’s showing me a row of mountains. “Nickerson Restoration. My own place. My name—our name—is going to be in lights someday, Al.” But then his voice deflates. “I just have to get out of high school. We’re like oil and water, school and me. I wish Mom would let me quit.”
“She would kill you.”
“Yeah. So would Dad. And being dead won’t be good for my business.” He smiles. “Won’t be long, though. I’m learning a ton at the garage. The boss is letting me do all kinds of different stuff.”
I smile.
“I’m going to buy a car soon, too. A classic. And a V-6 at least.”
And then he’s off and I can still smell the grease after he’s gone.
I’m glad he had a silver dollar day.
• • •
When my mom finally gets home, I’ve already microwaved my dinner and I’m watching TV while I sketch pictures of a pet llama named Butch Cassidy. With a name like that, I give him a cowboy hat, a bandana, and a holster. But in the holster he carries an ear of corn.
When my mom comes in from work, she turns off the TV and I can feel it coming.
“So,” she begins. “When are we goin
“On my ninety-fifth birthday.”
“Funny one.” She shifts her weight. “I’m trying to be patient, honey. I really am. But today was a party. How could you get into trouble at a party?”
“I don’t have to do anything. They all hate me,” I blurt out.
“I doubt that. But can’t you see why they’d be tired of your behavior? These shocking things you do and say to get laughs?”
She doesn’t get it. Being funny when you don’t mean to be is terrible. Having to laugh at yourself along with everyone else is humiliating.
“Oh, Ally . . . you’re too smart for this. School is too important to joke about. I don’t want you working long hours on your feet for a bunch of tips like me. I want more for you. And you’re so smart. Good at math. A gifted artist. Don’t you think it’s time to stop clowning around?”
“I’m not that smart. You say that, but I’m not.”
“Now, we know that isn’t true. You could stand to work a little harder, though.”
I’m so tired of this conversation. We’ve had it a hundred times, even though my third-grade teacher told her that I might just be slow, that my mom shouldn’t expect too much of me. My mom’s eyes got all wide and shiny when she heard that, and I felt sad and embarrassed for her having to be my mom.
But my mother’s never bought what that teacher said. I sometimes wish she would, but most times I’m grateful that she hasn’t.
She bends over to look me dead in the eyes. “I know that moving as much as we have has been hard for you. And I know I work all the time and can’t keep tabs on your schoolwork. It has made it hard for you to keep up with some subjects, and I understand that. I really do. But you’re going to have to make more effort, Ally. Things worth having are worth working for.”
“I’ll do better,” I tell her. I used to say this and mean it. Now it feels like I’m just making up one of my stories.
Her smile is sad. “Okay, then.” She kisses the top of my head.
“Can I turn the TV back on now?”