Confidence & Being Myself
The Mark on the Front
The writing notebooks came back at the end of the day, face-down, along the row. Harun took one off the pile, checked the name on the back, and passed it on. Behind him the chairs were already going up on the tables, clonk, clonk, and somebody’s pencil case had emptied itself under a desk.
Kwame’s was the one about the dog getting out. He’d spent two whole writing lessons on it. He’d kept his neatest handwriting all the way to the last line. That is hard, because your hand gets tired a long, long time before the story ends.
Harun put it on Kwame’s desk without looking, because it was face-down and there were four more to get down the row. Kwame put one finger on the corner. Then he turned it over.
The number was in a circle in the top corner of the front page. Pencil. The circle not quite closed. Kwame read it in one look. He didn’t have to work anything out. It was just there, at the top, before the writing even started.
He flipped it back over and put his hand flat on it. Nobody saw. Next to him, Halima turned hers over, looked, and went back to fitting her pencils into her pencil box. That took both hands. She didn’t ask him anything.
Mr. Vasilakis was at the front, sorting out the coat hooks, because somebody’s sweater had gone missing again and he was going to have to say something about it. He wasn’t looking at Kwame. Nobody in the whole room was looking at Kwame.
Under his hand was a page he’d gone over slowly, twice, and a number he’d read in one look. The number was on the front. Everything else was underneath. Twenty minutes of the day left. And the page wasn’t going anywhere without him.
Chairs were going up at the far end. The first coats were moving. Kwame’s book lay face-down under his hand, the number on the other side. Nobody had seen it. Twenty minutes left.
What does Kwame do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Slide it into the book bag, still face-down
He slid it into his book bag without turning it over, between the reading log and a crumpled note about a trip that had already happened. Zzzip. The number went in with the page, face-down. And stayed there.
The rest was completely ordinary. Hooks. Coat. The part where everyone tries to squeeze through the door at once. Halima told him a long, long thing about her cousin’s rabbit. Kwame said enough back. The bag bumped on his back the whole way home.
At home, Dad tipped the bag out on the table, hunting for the note about the trip. The book flopped out with everything else and landed open, front page up, right next to the fruit bowl. The circle was at the top. Dad read it without meaning to.
Kwame was in the doorway with one shoe off. Dad looked at the page a moment longer. It stayed where it was, face up, and Kwame hadn’t read the part at the bottom yet. Then Dad moved the fruit bowl to make room. “Come eat something,” he said, and pulled Kwame’s chair out with his foot.
Turn it over and read what is underneath
He turned it face-up and started at the very first line, sliding his finger down the way you do when you’re not going to skip anything. There were pencil marks in the margin. One word had a line under it. And then a second line under that.
The middle paragraph had no periods at all, and Mr. Vasilakis had put a big bracket around it. Next to the part where the dog gets out, the part Kwame liked best, he had written: It is not clear who is holding the leash here.
The room emptied in its usual order. The far table. The middle. Then Halima, who said bye without stopping. Kwame stayed with the page. He read the middle paragraph again, and put his finger where he’d have taken a breath. And again, a little further on.
Mr. Vasilakis was holding the door open with his foot, a lost sweater over one arm. “Bag, Kwame,” he said. That was all he said. Kwame put the book away and went. He could have put his finger on the exact place. It was one paragraph wide.
Take it up and ask to write it again
He carried it up to the front, pressed against his chest, face-down, the way you carry something you don’t want turned over on the way. Mr. Vasilakis was untangling somebody’s hood from a hook. Kwame asked if he could do it again.
Mr. Vasilakis didn’t look up from the hood. “The mark stays,” he said. “It’s written. It goes in the folder either way, and so does the new one.” Then: “Paper’s in the tray.” He got the hood free. Kwame took two sheets.
That evening he did it again, on the floor, with the paper on a board. Same dog. Same gate. Same escape. It took longer than the first time. He didn’t know which part to change, so he did all of it again, slowly, all the way down.
In the morning he put it in the tray, and Mr. Vasilakis carried the whole pile off to the cabinet. The first page, circle and all, had already gone into the folder. The new one was somewhere in the middle of the pile, with nothing on the front of it yet, and the dog getting out all over again in Kwame’s slow, careful handwriting.