Just Call Me Stupid by Tom Birdseye

Author:Tom Birdseye [Birdseye, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781497646063
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Magic Book

Celina darted after Patrick. He could hear her footsteps behind him in the school hall.

“Patrick! Patrick, come back!”

He sprinted out the front door of Dewey Elementary and down the sidewalk in the blinding midday sun.

Celina followed. “Patrick, stop!”

But he didn’t stop until blocks later when he plunged through the oleander bushes into The Kingdom. Celina staggered in after him and dropped to her knees, dripping with sweat, gasping for air, unable to talk.

Patrick faced her with pain and anger in his voice. “Andy’s right!” he cried out. “I am stupid! I can’t read. I’ll never be able to read. I’ll never make it in middle school. I’m too stupid. Everybody knows it! Mrs. Nagle. Mrs. Romero. Everybody probably says it behind my back. Go ahead. You say it, too. Say it to my face. Just call me stupid!”

Patrick turned away when he felt the tears well up in his eyes and his shoulders begin to shake.

Celina reached out and touched him. “No, Patrick. You’re not stupid. You can read. You can!”

He spun back to face her. “You don’t understand!” he yelled. “I’m not like you! I can’t!”

But just as quickly as angry frustration filled him, it left. His voice went soft, as if someone had taken the air out of it. His next words, when they came out, had no life, only hurt and despair. “I just get all messed up. It’s like I can’t see regular or something. I don’t know … I want to read, but I just can’t do it the way I should. I really can’t. I try. I’ve been working hard for Mrs. Nagle. I have. But …”

Patrick’s voice quavered and he stopped talking, trying to get control, trying to keep the great flood of emotions he felt building up in him from spilling out like water over a dam.

“It’s OK,” Celina said, “don’t cry.”

Patrick sat up straight. “I’m not crying.” He took a deep breath, then let it out forcefully. “Andy just made me mad, that’s all.”

Celina nodded. “If I was really Merlyn, Andy would be in big trouble right now. I’d turn him into a”—she looked around The Kingdom—“a Questing Beast. And I’d put him on the run from King Pellinore!” She forced a laugh. “That’s what I’d do!”

Patrick looked over at the sleeping chuckwalla and tried to smile. But it was a small and fragile smile, and wouldn’t stay on his lips. He sighed and looked at Celina. “If you were really Merlyn, you know what I’d get you to do?”

Celina shook her head. “No.”

“I’d get you to make me a magic book, that’s what.”

Celina sat back, cross-legged on the dirt. She folded her hands in her lap. “How would the book be magic?”

Patrick let his gaze wander over the cutouts and the castle, coming to rest on the Questing Beast again. He tapped on the glass cage, got no response from the sleepy lizard, then looked back at Celina. “It would be magic because all you would have to do is open it and you’d know the story.

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