just off the trail, and I don’t make a sound.
Their voices drift up into my branches.
“They’ll be getting hungry. I’ll call and have him preheat the oven.”
“Or I can do it when we get back. Relax, Angela. Enjoy the sunshine.”
The path through the forest was already darkening with tree shadows, but here in the clearing, the last rays of late afternoon sun make it feel a lot warmer.
“It is a pretty nice day.” Mom tips her head up to the sky. I duck behind a branch so she doesn’t see me. “Fall still makes me think of Dad,” she says.
“It was his favorite.” Nonna’s voice is quiet as they take the turn in the trail that heads back to the parking lot, and I strain to listen. I’ve never heard much about Mom’s father because he died right before I was born. “Remember how he’d take you out picking apples in the orchard and hold you way, way up to get the ones on the highest branches?”
“I always thought they looked sweeter,” Mom says.
She laughs, and as I watch her reach out to help Nonna step over a tree that’s fallen across the trail, it’s a little easier to imagine a Mom other than the list-making, tofu-eating, three-ring-binder-organizing Mom of right now.
I climb down, jump the last five feet to the ground, pick up my shoe box, and run to catch up with them.
“Well, there she is,” Nonna says. “Our leaf catcher. We thought you’d gone up ahead.”
“I did, but then I found a great climbing tree,” I say. “It had perfect branches. They were just the right—”
Mom frowns at me, licks her finger, and smudges it against my cheek. “You have pine sap on your face.”
But Nonna reaches for Mom’s hand and pulls her back. “Let her be, Angela. The tops of trees are always sweeter. You know that.”
Mom looks over at me. “Sappy girl,” she says, but she smiles a little and lets my face stay dirty all the way to the car.
CHAPTER 14
P lease stand for the Pledge to the Flag.”
I stand, but I pull my backpack up onto my desk so I can look for my English papers while I’m pledging allegiance. I never got to do my homework last night because we got back so late and then dinner was late and then Ian tried starting the dishwasher with laundry soap inside and the kitchen got all wet and bubbly. After we cleaned it up, I had to go to bed.
I pull my crumpled poetry response sheet from my backpack. For some reason, it smells like applesauce. I reach in my bag for a pencil and feel something mushy. It’s the apple I brought for a snack after cross-country. Bruised, juicy, and mushy. I toss it into the garbage near my desk and read the journal question:
What might Robert Frost mean when he writes, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches”? Write your personal response in a paragraph.
This is the very worst kind of assignment. When teachers ask for a personal response, they never mean it. They want a school-acceptable personal response, which kids make up based on what we’re pretty sure they want us to think. It’s not what we really think, though. I toy with the idea of writing the real deal this time:
I think Robert Frost is saying that a little daydreaming and playing isn’t such a bad thing at all and that teachers ought to lay off when a kid gets caught looking out the window. We’re not plotting to make bombs or something; we’re just taking a little time out from a boring lecture to think about important stuff like the school dance or what’s for lunch. I really hope it’s pizza. Robert Frost probably would have failed English at this school because he’d be looking out the window instead of writing these responses all the time.
And if he had written the responses, he would have failed science, too, because he would have written poems about birches instead of collecting their stupid leaves and pasting them into an overpriced binder with index-card labels. And then someone like Bianca probably would have made fun of his poems when he was
Their voices drift up into my branches.
“They’ll be getting hungry. I’ll call and have him preheat the oven.”
“Or I can do it when we get back. Relax, Angela. Enjoy the sunshine.”
The path through the forest was already darkening with tree shadows, but here in the clearing, the last rays of late afternoon sun make it feel a lot warmer.
“It is a pretty nice day.” Mom tips her head up to the sky. I duck behind a branch so she doesn’t see me. “Fall still makes me think of Dad,” she says.
“It was his favorite.” Nonna’s voice is quiet as they take the turn in the trail that heads back to the parking lot, and I strain to listen. I’ve never heard much about Mom’s father because he died right before I was born. “Remember how he’d take you out picking apples in the orchard and hold you way, way up to get the ones on the highest branches?”
“I always thought they looked sweeter,” Mom says.
She laughs, and as I watch her reach out to help Nonna step over a tree that’s fallen across the trail, it’s a little easier to imagine a Mom other than the list-making, tofu-eating, three-ring-binder-organizing Mom of right now.
I climb down, jump the last five feet to the ground, pick up my shoe box, and run to catch up with them.
“Well, there she is,” Nonna says. “Our leaf catcher. We thought you’d gone up ahead.”
“I did, but then I found a great climbing tree,” I say. “It had perfect branches. They were just the right—”
Mom frowns at me, licks her finger, and smudges it against my cheek. “You have pine sap on your face.”
But Nonna reaches for Mom’s hand and pulls her back. “Let her be, Angela. The tops of trees are always sweeter. You know that.”
Mom looks over at me. “Sappy girl,” she says, but she smiles a little and lets my face stay dirty all the way to the car.
CHAPTER 14
P lease stand for the Pledge to the Flag.”
I stand, but I pull my backpack up onto my desk so I can look for my English papers while I’m pledging allegiance. I never got to do my homework last night because we got back so late and then dinner was late and then Ian tried starting the dishwasher with laundry soap inside and the kitchen got all wet and bubbly. After we cleaned it up, I had to go to bed.
I pull my crumpled poetry response sheet from my backpack. For some reason, it smells like applesauce. I reach in my bag for a pencil and feel something mushy. It’s the apple I brought for a snack after cross-country. Bruised, juicy, and mushy. I toss it into the garbage near my desk and read the journal question:
What might Robert Frost mean when he writes, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches”? Write your personal response in a paragraph.
This is the very worst kind of assignment. When teachers ask for a personal response, they never mean it. They want a school-acceptable personal response, which kids make up based on what we’re pretty sure they want us to think. It’s not what we really think, though. I toy with the idea of writing the real deal this time:
I think Robert Frost is saying that a little daydreaming and playing isn’t such a bad thing at all and that teachers ought to lay off when a kid gets caught looking out the window. We’re not plotting to make bombs or something; we’re just taking a little time out from a boring lecture to think about important stuff like the school dance or what’s for lunch. I really hope it’s pizza. Robert Frost probably would have failed English at this school because he’d be looking out the window instead of writing these responses all the time.
And if he had written the responses, he would have failed science, too, because he would have written poems about birches instead of collecting their stupid leaves and pasting them into an overpriced binder with index-card labels. And then someone like Bianca probably would have made fun of his poems when he was
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