Write This Down by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374301668
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

17

After school on Wednesday I’m in Kylee’s mother’s car with a plastic trash bag filled with a dozen neatly folded dog sweaters. I hope the animal shelter people like her sweaters better than the New Yorker people liked my poems or Ms. Archer liked my review. In a million years nobody could ever call Kylee mean. If there were a Nobel Prize for kindness to animals, she’d get it. The sweaters are adorable, with patterns she designed: sweaters with snowflakes, sweaters with dog bones, stars and stripes for the patriotic dog, pine trees with gold stars on top to get dogs into the Christmas spirit. Kylee is kind and creative.

“Ms. Archer didn’t pick my review to put in the paper,” I tell her, though I still haven’t made myself tell her about The New Yorker. Besides, Kylee will know anyway when the paper comes out next week and my review’s not in it. “I guess she agreed with Olivia.”

“Oh, pooh,” Kylee says, as if nobody could agree with Olivia. “She probably just didn’t think enough people were interested in a band that’s only played one gig at one coffee shop so far.”

That’s an excellent point, and one I hadn’t thought of when I picked Paradox to write about.

But I notice Kylee looks uncomfortable when she says it, glancing out the window so she won’t have to meet my eyes.

Maybe she didn’t love my review the way she loved my poems, or at least the way she said she loved them? Maybe she agrees with Olivia more than she wants to say?

Then I notice something even stranger: Kylee’s not knitting in the car. It’s the first time I haven’t seen her knitting since the fateful day I saw the sign.

“You’re not knitting.”

“I’m knitted out.”

“You? Knitted out? Never!”

Come to think of it, she wasn’t knitting in journalism today either. I hadn’t noticed because Cameron was writing haiku all during class again, rather than doodling. He let me read one of them, and I adored it.

Stones in the river

Hundreds of millions years old

Are used to waiting

I wanted to ask him if this poem had anything to do with his mother saying that his first love was rocks, but there is a limit to how much I can confess to secretly reading over his shoulder.

“I knit so much my fingers were starting to get numb and tingly,” Kylee confesses.

“Carpal tunnel syndrome,” says her mother from the front seat. “A repetitive stress disorder. The human body wasn’t made to knit ten hours a day. We’ve told Kylee no more knitting for a while.”

This is terrible! Poor Kylee!

“What will you do?” I ask her.

“I like all kinds of crafts,” she says with a cheerful shrug. “My aunt is taking me to a bead show down in Denver this weekend, and she’s going to teach me to make these really cool bracelets and necklaces. Forget I told you this: I want you to be surprised when I give you your Christmas present.”

Margo, the lady who gave Kylee all the knitting patterns that first day, isn’t at the front desk when we arrive at the shelter.

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