What I Came to Tell You by Tommy Hays Page B

checkers, Grover looked up and saw her standing over them.
    Sudie jumped up and hugged her. She was always hugging Miss Snyder and her teachers whenever she saw them out in public.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever beaten Sudie at checkers,” Miss Snyder said.
    “You haven’t,” Sudie said, sitting back down across from her brother.
    Miss Snyder watched them long enough for Sudie to do a double jump and take two of Grover’s men.
    “She’s following me,” Grover said to Sudie after Miss Snyder had left.
    “All the way to Bean Streets?” Sudie asked.
    “She wants me to come see her.”
    “I like going to see her,” Sudie said. “All we do is play checkers or hearts or booby trap.”
    Grover stopped himself from saying that the only reason Miss Snyder played games with her or any of the other Claxton kids was because it was her job. It was her job to get at kids’ feelings. Their mother had played games with kids too. She’d once explained to him that playing with little kids was a better way to understand them than asking direct questions. Grover didn’t say anything more about Miss Snyder to Sudie. It was good for his sister to have someone to talk to.
She
needed it.
    The next day, Mrs. Caswell was at the board, diagramming a sentence. She’d said that back in the Dark Ages when she was in sixth grade everyone had to learn how to diagram a sentence. She didn’t expect the class to learn how, but she thought they should at least see what a diagrammed sentence looked like. Grover didn’t care about the
subject
and the
predicate
and all the other names of the parts, but he loved the look of it, the design it made, like a tree turned on its side. He was imagining a whole forest of diagrammed sentences, when there was a knock at thedoor and Miss Snyder came in. Grover’s heart raced as the two women went out into the hall.
    With their teacher out in the hall, the kids in the class turned to each other and started talking in low voices, whispering and giggling.
    Emma Lee leaned forward. “Teachers are never talking about what you think they’re talking about.”
    They heard Mrs. Caswell and Miss Snyder laugh out in the hall.
    “See?” Emma Lee said, whispering behind him.
    After a minute Mrs. Caswell came back, clapping her hands to quiet everyone. “Back to work.” She picked up the chalk and finished the sentence she’d been diagramming.
    Grover didn’t trust it. Mrs. Caswell wouldn’t say in front of the whole class that Miss Snyder wanted to see him. She’d tell him at the end of class after everyone was gone. When the bell sounded and the class lined up to go to lunch, Mrs. Caswell didn’t even glance Grover’s way. He lingered, pretending to look for something in his desk, but she just looked at him over her glasses.
    “Found it,” he said, picking up a pencil, and ran to catch up with the line.
    As Grover’s class passed Miss Snyder’s office, the door was closed and no light came from the bottom of the door, which was how Grover used to tell if his mother was in. His mother used to intercept him on his way to lunch. Sometimes she pulled him out of line, took him into her office and shut the door. She’d tell him to be nice to a particular boy or girl. She’d never say why. He’dknow it was because the kid’s parents were divorcing or someone in their family was sick, had maybe even died. As he passed Miss Snyder’s closed office door, Grover realized he’d become one of those kids his mother had told him to be nice to.
    After lunch, Grover went out on the playground. Miss Snyder stood with Mrs. Caswell and Miss Shook, talking.
    “You’re shooting worse than usual.” Sam fished the basketball out of the juniper bush. Grover watched Sam swish another shot.
    Shouts went up on the other side of the playground as Emma Lee, who’d launched the kickball all the way to the chain-link fence, streaked around the bases.
    Most days Emma Lee played kickball with Mira and some other girls.