Her classroom was designed to replicate the future silent-sedentary life we’d inevitably have, so when she said we’d get to leave the room twice a week to play reading games, I was stoked.
Our class hosted a party with sugar cookies and pink lemonade, and there was an elaborate ceremony to introduce us to the kids we’d be working with for the rest of the year. At the end, the kindergartners ordered their fifth grader to lift them up. Mrs. Nethercutt immediately ordered us to put them back down.
The boy assigned to me—Julian—looked like an anime character, with too much shiny black hair that fell just short of his enormous round eyes. As soon as I deposited him back on the ground, he grabbed my hand in that unself-conscious way little kids do, and told me to listen.
My attention had been wandering because the room was pure chaos. Kids were darting everywhere, someone had spilled the giant bowl of lemonade, and Charlie was wailing that his reading buddy had peed on him.
“I’m listening,” I said.
Julian’s little face got serious, and then he burst into song. His powerful voice grabbed the attention of the entire room, and even Charlie stopped crying for a minute. I can’t remember what Julian sang, but he was good. Not just little-kid-good, but really good.
It took a few meetings with our reading buddies before I realized that kindergartners were a lot like manic-depressives, vacillating between euphoria and despair with terrifying speed. It was overwhelming to a lot of us, and one time Charlie got sent to the office for saying “This is hell.”
But I got lucky. Julian never cried or threw fits or peed on me. He was just a naturally cheerful kid—always singing and wearing those crazy glasses you’d get at joke shops—so we spent our time in the library playing superpowers and having fun.
Well, that was until Mrs. Nethercutt demanded to know what I thought I was doing. I told her that Julian and I felt we’d been misled. We’d been promised reading games; instead, we just got reading.
She ignored my totally valid concerns and ordered me to make Julian read aloud from one of the kindergarten primers at the center of our table. I promised I would, and I had the best of intentions, but Julian’s pockets were full of distractions—coins, paper clips, a gooey hand on a long gooey string—all the kinds of things my mom made sure I didn’t have in my possession before she’d let me out of the car in the morning.
Mrs. Nethercutt eventually got fed up and said if we didn’t get to work, she’d assign me a new kindergartner, or even worse, Emerald would get two, and I’d have to sit alone and still. Emerald and her partner were seated right across from us, so when she overheard the threat she gave me a severe frown. Maybe she was still annoyed because I’d messed up her perfect hair with the gooey hand.
I didn’t have much choice, so I got serious and told Julian no playing—just reading. The kid who was always singing and smiling dropped his dark head onto his outstretched arm, looking miserable, and kicked his little feet in the air.
I could totally sympathize. The books we had to choose from weren’t exactly page-turners. Every line of every story was practically the same. Boy plus verb plus ball. Girl plus verb plus cat.
Completely out of self-preservation, I brought an old picture book from home. Julian took one look at it, sniffed with very adult disgust, and said no, he didn’t want to read at all. I pleaded, telling him it was my favorite book when I was in kindergarten. He huffed that he wasn’t in kindergarten. He was a second grader. He’d said this before, and I’d figured it was just little kid posturing. He was always trying to impress me—like telling me that when he was at home he could fly and move things with his mind.
“If you’re a second grader, then why are you here?” I asked.
“I have dyslexia,” he said. “I’m in Reading Improvement.”
Hearing that, I felt like a jerk. I knew how much it sucked to be separated from your class for something you couldn’t control.
I glanced over my shoulder to find Mrs. Nethercutt watching us with narrowed eyes, and I hastily promised Julian it was an awesome book—my favorite in second grade too.
This seemed to pique his curiosity, so he looked at the cover—a little boy with dark hair and round eyes standing on a giant sailboat—and tried to sound out the title. “E-e-el—”
“Elian Mariner.”
“He has a ship? Like Swiss Family Robinson?”
I’d never heard of Swiss Family Robinson, but he was actually looking interested now, so I said, “Yeah, just like that. But Elian’s ship is magic. It can go anywhere.”