On the other side of the table, Wavy was working her feet into her boots.

“Hey,” I said.

I was worried it would startle her, but she’d known I was awake. She stamped her feet to seat the boots and pulled on her backpack.

“Let me get myself together and I’ll take you home.”

I got up, stiff in weird places from sleeping facedown on the floor, but at least my back didn’t hurt anymore. In my bedroom there was a rumpled spot on the bed where Wavy musta slept. Still warm when I laid my hand on it. In the bathroom, a second damp towel was hanging next to mine. So she’d had herself a shower, too. I took a piss and then splashed cold water on my face, trying to get things into focus.

In the kitchen, Wavy was standing right where I left her.

When I sat down to pull on my boots, she slid a piece of paper across the table to me.

Her school registration form. She’d filled it all out, but she needed a parent’s signature and the twelve bucks to register. Nobody had registered her for school, and that morning was the first day. I couldn’t pass myself off as Val, but I was getting pretty good at playing Liam.

4

WAVY

Mrs. Norton said, “I want each of you to stand up and say your name and one thing you did this summer.” Whispers bubbled up all over the classroom like butter on a skillet before you pour eggs in.

We went down the rows, following the alphabet, so I was near the end. Maybe something would happen before they got to me. Maybe the fire alarm would go off. Or maybe there would be a tornado like last spring. We all went into the hallway behind the gymnasium and lots of kids cried. I liked the darkness and waiting for a tornado to tear the school away.

Nothing like that happened. It never did when you wanted it to.

The girl next to me stood up when it was her turn. Her name was Caroline Peters and over the summer she visited her grandmother in California, where she “went to Disneyland and rode roller coasters and saw Mickey Mouse and…”

“That’s enough, Caroline,” Mrs. Norton said. “One thing.”

Then it was my turn. I had things to tell. I visited my cousins. I learned to replace spark plugs on the Panhead. I watched stars with Kellen in the meadow. I taught Donal to swim. I took care of Kellen when he was tired. While he was asleep I kissed him. First on his cheek, then on his prickly sideburns. Then on his mouth, which wasn’t prickly at all. Even though the mouth is a dirty place, he wasn’t afraid of my germs.

“Go ahead, dear. Stand up and say your name and one thing you did this summer. Don’t be shy.”

Shy. That was a trick. Like the kids on the playground daring each other, saying, “What are you, chicken?” My heart was thumping inside my ears so loud, but I wasn’t chicken. I just wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Mrs. Norton’s trick.

“Mrs. Norton,” said Caroline Peters.

“You’ve already had your turn, Caroline.”

“That’s Wavy Quinn. She can’t talk.”

“She most certainly can talk. She chooses not to talk. And if she persists with that behavior in my classroom, it’s going to earn her a mark on the board.”

Mrs. Norton walked to the chalkboard and wrote “Wavonna Quinn” in the upper right corner. After recess, she wrote “Jimmy Didier.” He got a mark for talking too much. You were only allowed to talk exactly as much as Mrs. Norton wanted you to.

Every day was like that. My name wasn’t always the first one on the board, but it always went on the board. If it wasn’t on the board before lunch, it went on after, because Mrs. Norton said I had to eat lunch. She wanted to see me eat lunch.

One day, I wrote my own name on the board after lunch. The way I wrote my W was prettier, with arches on both sides and a loop in the middle. Grandma made Ws like that.

Mrs. Norton clenched her teeth and said, “You are a very disrespectful young lady.” Then she erased my name. She rewrote it with a plain W and put a mark next to it. Not eating lunch. Being disrespectful.

After nine weeks, my report card had a list of every day Mrs. Norton wrote my name on the board and why.

Kellen registered me for school, so I gave him Mrs. Norton’s report of bad things. After dinner he sat at the kitchen table with Donal on his lap and read the list.

He frowned so hard while he was signing Liam’s name, I thought maybe he was mad at me. I put Donal to bed, and when I came back, Kellen was still scowling at my report card.

“Come here. I’m not mad at you.”

I went to the table and leaned against his shoulder so he could put his arm around me. For a while, we stared at my report card.

“When I was in school, they used to paddle kids,” Kellen said. “I used to get sent to the principal’s office all the time. Between him and my pa, they used to whoop me so bad I couldn’t sit down sometimes. They don’t still paddle kids, do they?”

I didn’t know, but I shook my head, so he would stop looking worried.

The next day when I came out of school, Kellen was waiting for me, but he’d put the Panhead on its kickstand.

“I wanna talk to that teacher of yours,” he said.

Mama walking through the halls had been scary, her high heels clicking on the tiles, quick quick quick, going to tear somebody a new asshole. Kellen took long, slow steps that I could keep up with.

In the classroom, Mrs. Norton kept writing while Kellen waited, but she couldn’t trick him into talking first. He could wait all day.

“May I help you?” she said.