The Book of Lost Friends(83)

Other than during the library’s short public hours, we are alone in the place, so noise doesn’t matter. And we are noisy. Ideas circle the room like honeybees, buzzing from landing place to landing place, gathering the nectar of inspiration.

Over the past three weeks, each day has brought new discoveries. Breakthroughs. Little miracles. I never imagined that teaching could be this way.

I love this job. I love these kids.

I think they’re starting to love me back.

A little, anyway. They’ve given me a new nickname.

“Miss Pooh,” Lil’ Ray says as my fourth-period freshman class makes the short trek over to the library for another Monday session.

“Yes?” I squint upward into the patches of sunlight and leaf shadow slipping over his chubby cheeks. He is a mountain of a kid, in the middle of the adolescent growth spurt that seems to hit boys about this age. I’d swear he was three inches shorter yesterday. He must be at least six two, yet his hands and feet are still huge for his body, as if he still has a lot to grow into. “You could put some chocolate chips in these.” He holds up the pooperoo he’s eating while we walk. He’s struggling to choke it down with no drink. Food is not allowed in the library, but there is an art deco drinking fountain on the way in. “I think that’d be good.”

“Then they wouldn’t be so healthy for you, Lil’ Ray.”

He chews another bite like he’s trying to process gristle.

“Miss Pooh?” He opens another topic. I’d like to believe that they’ve given me this delightful nickname because I am cuddly and charming in an oh, bother sort of way, à la Pooh Bear. But really, they’ve named me after the lumpy oatmeal cocoa cookies.

“Yes, Lil’ Ray?”

His gaze rolls upward, scans the trees as his tongue swipes the leftovers from his bottom lip. “I been thinkin’ about something.”

“That’s a miracle,” LaJuna smarts off. She returned as unceremoniously as she left and has been back in class for two and a half weeks now. She’s staying with Sarge and Aunt Dicey. Nobody, including LaJuna, knows how long that will last. She’s strangely lackluster and negative about the Tales from the Underground project. I don’t know if that’s because of her current life situation, or because the project developed while she was AWOL from school, or because she doesn’t like the fact that dozens of other students have horned in on her exploration of the secrets the judge left hidden in Goswood Grove House. That place was sacred territory for her, a refuge since her childhood.

Some days, I feel like I’ve betrayed a fragile trust with her or failed some important test, and we’ll never get to where I’d like to be. But I have dozens of other students to think about, and they matter, too. Maybe I’m being na?ve and idealistic, but I can’t help hoping that Tales from the Underground has the potential to bridge the gaps that plague us here. Rich and poor. Black and white. Overprivileged and underprivileged. Backwoods kids and townies.

I wish we could bring the school at the lake in on it, draw together students who live within a few miles of one another yet inhabit separate worlds. The only reasons they comingle are to battle it out on the football field, or sit in close proximity over boudin balls and smoked meat at the Cluck and Oink. But during what have turned into regular Thursday evening update sessions at my house, Nathan has already warned me that Lakeland Prep Academy is one of the places I need to stay away from, and so I have, and will.

“So, Miss Pooh?”

“Yes, Lil’ Ray?” There is no short discussion with this kid. Every conversation goes this way. In stages. Thoughts move carefully through that head of his. They percolate while he seems lost in space, looking at the trees, or out the window, or at his desktop as he painstakingly manufactures spit wads and paper footballs.

But when the thoughts finally do emerge, they’re interesting. Well developed. Carefully considered.

“So, Miss Pooh, like I said, I been thinking.” His oversized hands wheel in the air, pinkie fingers sticking out as if he’s practicing to drink tea with the queen. The thought makes me smile. Every one of these kids is so unique. Filled with incredible stuff. “There’s not just dead grown-ups and old people in that cemetery, and in the cemetery books.” Consternation knits his brows. “There’s a lot of kids and babies that hardly even got born before they died. That’s sad, huh?” His voice trails off.

Coach Davis’s star lineman is choked up. Over infants and children who perished more than a hundred years ago.

“Well, of course they did, numb nut,” LaJuna snaps. “They didn’t have medicine and stuff.”

“Granny T said they’d mash up leaves ’n’ roots ’n’ mushrooms ’n’ moss ’n’ stuff,” skinny Michael pipes up, anxious to do his job as Lil’ Ray’s wingman-slash-bodyguard. “Said some of that worked better than medicines do now. You didn’t hear that, homegirl? Oh, that’s right, you skipped that day. Show up, you might know the stuff, like the rest of us, and not be raggin’ on Lil’ Ray. He’s trying to help the Underground project. And there’s you over there, wanting to tear it down.”

“Yeah.” Lil’ Ray straightens from his ever-present slump. “If losers would stop saying loser stuff, I was gonna say that we can play people our age, or people that’re older, like we can color our hair gray and all. But we can’t play little kids. Maybe we oughta get some little kids to come and help, and do some of the kid graves. Like Tobias Gossett. He lives down from us in the apartments. He ain’t got nothing to do, mostly. He could be that Willie Tobias that’s in the graveyard. The one that died in the fire with his brother and sister because his mama had to leave them home. People oughta know, maybe, you can’t leave little kids by theirselves, like that.”