WONDER
Chapter 3
Halloween
August
Mom always asks me how something feels: between one and ten. It started in the hospital two years ago, after some surgery on my mouth. They took some bone from my leg to put in my face-to make me look more ordinary. So, my face hurt, and my leg hurt, and I couldn't open my mouth to talk. ‘One’ meant it hurt just a little, and ‘ten’ meant it hurt a lot.
After school, Mom was waiting for me outside. She hugged me and said, "How was it? ‘One’ to ‘ten’?"
"Five," I said.
She was surprised. "That's good!"
We started to walk home.
"See you tomorrow, August!" It was Summer. She was crossing the street.
"Bye, Summer," I said, waving to her.
"Who was that?" asked my Mom, after a minute.
"Summer."
"Is she in your homeroom?"
"No," I replied.
"Did you like your teachers?"
"Yes."
"What about Julian, Jack, and Charlotte?" she asked.
"I sat next to Jack a lot."
"How did you meet Summer?" asked Mom.
"We sat together at lunch," I said.
"She looks nice."
"She is."
"And she's pretty."
"Yes," I said. "We're like Beauty and the Beast."
September was hard. It wasn't easy to get up early in the morning. And homework was a new idea for me. I didn't have any free time. Before, I could play a lot, but I couldn't do that now. And school was really difficult. In every new class I met new children, and they stared at me. They tried not to stare, but I knew.
And in the classroom and the halls they walked around me. They weren't cruel. They didn't say horrible things. They just wanted to look. And sometimes I wanted to say, "It's OK, you can look."
After about one week, the children in my classes knew about me, and after two weeks, everyone in fifth grade did.
After a month, the children in the other grades did, too. These were big children of twelve or thirteen. Some of them had strange hair, or rings in their noses. But none of them looked like me.
I sat next to Jack in a lot of classes, and we had a great time. Jack was always laughing. One day, in class, Jack smiled and asked me, quietly, "August, are you always going to look like this? Can't you get plastic surgery or something?"
I smiled. "This is after plastic surgery!"
"You really need to find a new doctor!" said Jack, and we both laughed a lot. The teacher came over, told us to be quiet, and moved us to different desks.
Mr. Browne's precept for October was: PEOPLE REMEMBER YOU BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DO.
Someone wrote this thousands of years ago, in Egypt, Mr. Browne told us.
Most of the children at school were nice to me, but they didn't want to go too near me. In class, they talked to me, but they didn't sit next to me. And they walked around me because they didn't want to touch me.
My birthday is October 10th. I like that: 10/10. I usually have a little party at home, but this year I wanted a bigger party. I wanted to go bowling with some friends.
"Who do you want to ask?" asked Mom.
"Everyone in my homeroom, and Summer," I replied.
"That's a lot of people."
"I know," I said. "But I can't invite some people from my homeroom and not others."
"OK," said Mom. "I'll email all the parents."
A week later, I was at home in the living room. I was playing with our dog, Daisy. She's old now, but we all love her. She likes to sleep on my bed, and I like to hug her and have her near me. I talked to Mom about my birthday.
"Who is coming to the party?" I asked her.
"Jack, Summer, Reid, the two Maxes. Charlotte has a dance class, but she will come if there's time. And Tristan has a soccer game; he'll try to come after that."
"Is that all?" I said. "That's only five people!"
"We asked late," she explained. "And a lot of children had other things to do."
"Why isn't Julian coming?"
"Julian's mom didn't answer. So, I don't know."
My birthday party was small, but a lot of my uncles and aunts came. The adults were bowling next to the children, and we all had a great time.
I didn't see Summer much in class, but we always sat at our summer table for lunch. At lunch the day after my birthday, Summer asked me about Halloween.
"You can wear a costume to school, you know," she told me.
"That's cool," I replied. "Maybe I'll go as Boba Fett from Star Wars. What about you?"
"I guess I'll go in black - as a witch."
Halloween is the best holiday for me. It's better than Christmas because I can wear a costume and a mask. Nobody looks at me. I'd like to have Halloween every day.
On the morning of Halloween, I put on my Boba Fett costume. On the way into school, I passed someone with the same costume. We looked at one another, and he high-fived me. He didn't know it was me, of course.
In homeroom, everybody was wearing a costume, with masks. I heard Julian's voice; he was talking to three other boys.
"He doesn't need a mask," he said to them. "He looks horrible without one."
The other boys laughed. I knew that Julian was talking about me.
"Why do you sit next to him all the time?" Julian asked one of the boys.
"I don't know." It was Jack's voice. "Mr. Tushman asked me to be nice to him. And now he always wants to be with me."
I ran to the bathroom. I stayed there for a few minutes, and then went to see the school nurse. "My stomach hurts," I told her, and she called Mom. Mom came into school and took me home.
The next day was Friday, and I didn't go to school. I had the weekend to think about things, but I was sure of one thing: I wasn't going back to school.
