Hound Dog True by Linda Urban Page B

Bonnet that hangs outside the door, and then they are off again, rounding the corner and heading to the end of the hall, past the art room, past the music room, to a pair of orange doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. That's where Uncle Potluck keeps his office.
    It is a neat office, with a desk tucked snug under the hot-water pipe and walls covered in pegboard. Uncle Potluck hangs his tools on those walls. He's drawn white lines around them, too—like the ones they draw around dead bodies on TV shows, except dead-body lines are about mysteries and Uncle Potluck's lines are about things being for sure where they belong. Broom in the broom spot. Wrench in the wrench spot. There's even an outline for Uncle Potluck's hat—though mostly that spot stays empty.
    Things that don't belong on the walls have shelf spots or drawer spots, all of them labeled neat.
    SCREWS
    GLUE
    TAPE
    EXTENSION CORDS
    STRING
    Uncle Potluck's chair has a label, too. DIRECTOR OF CUSTODIAL ARTS it says on the back. Neat and square.
    Mama is neat, too, Mattie thinks. But Mama's neat is about getting rid of things. Every time she and Mattie moved, things got left behind. Toasters and TV trays and Mattie's old dollhouse, all left by the driveway, a FREE sign propped against them. Mama never owns more than can fit in a pickup truck.
    When Mattie was real little, she would buckle herself into the truck before any boxes got packed, afraid maybe there wouldn't be room for her. Used to think that was what had happened to her father, that he hadn't fit in the truck and Mama had driven off. Really, he was just too young to get married, so he drove off himself.
    Mattie pushes the DIRECTOR OF CUSTODIAL ARTS chair up to the desk, so Uncle Potluck can maneuver the ladder. Watches him hang it firm in the ladder spot. Sees a spot marked RECYCLING and sets the bulb box there, which is exactly where it goes.
    "Mattie Mae," Uncle Potluck says. "I have a mind to declare you too talented for this here school and take you on as an apprentice." And it feels like Uncle Potluck has drawn a fat white belonging-line around her.
    MATTIE MAE BREEN CUSTODIAL APPRENTICE

CHAPTER THREE
    T HAT AFTERNOON M ATTIE TAKES something shiny-silver out of her bureau, carries it to Uncle Potluck's rock ledge out on the rise. It is shady there now, but most of the day the rock has kept company with the sunshine, and the day-heat has soaked up into it. Mattie lies down flat on the rock, feeling the warmth of it on her belly. She places the silver thing in front of her.
    It is a notebook.
    A silver notebook with creamy white paper stitched into it—the kind a person would have to work real hard to tear a page out of.
    It was a gift from Mama, given two weeks ago, on the very day she said they'd be moving again. "I thought you might want to write your feelings in it," Mama had said, but right off, Mattie knew that book was too fine for feelings. And she didn't write stories anymore. Not since Star.
    Mattie didn't tell Mama that, though. Just said
thank you.
    Now, turns out, she does have something worth writing in that silver book.
    Mattie Breen, Custodial Apprentice, she writes.
    Her stomach flutters, sam as Mama's fingers. This is how it feels to make a plan.
    Â 
    There are laws, Mattie knows.
    There are laws that say she has to be in the classroom and learn fractions and spelling and survival of the fittest. But there are not laws about going outside at recess time. And there are not laws about where to sit at lunchtime.
    And there are not laws that say you have to show up at the same exact time everybody else does and jostle around in the coatroom. You could go earlier. Your coat doesn't have to be with everybody else's coat.
    It could have its own peg someplace else.
    And your boots could rest someplace else, too.
    If you were helpful to somebody—really, truly helpful, apprentice-like helpful—you could probably go help that person during all those lawless times.
    Mattie turns