Saving Sky Read Free

friends. So easy. Piece of cake.
    Hello, Kareem, my name is Sky. I was just thinking, though you’re a complete and total stranger, maybe you and I could…
    She’d given it a try anyway, since he was new in town, and it would be a nice gesture, and her mother had asked her to do it. Unfortunately it had turned out to be just as awkward as she’d expected it to be. The only thing she could think of to say—that her mom knew his dad from the hospital where they both worked—had utterly failed to get things going. Kareem had merely nodded and said, “I know.”
    End of conversation.
    She’d caught herself nodding back at him, nodding and nodding like some demented bobble-head doll. She made herself stop.
    â€œSo, anyway,” she’d mumbled, “you know, I mean, I just wanted to say hi and all….” It had been so embarrassing. He clearly thought she was an idiot.
    But now, in the split second before she turned away, Kareem caught her watching him and flashed a conspiratorial grin. She responded with a subtle eye roll and suppressed a giggle.
    Ah. That was better.
    Bunsen was still going on about Professor Frybrain, who was now in his laboratory, working and working to solve his problem.
    Please, please get to the point, Sky thought.
    â€œAnd then— eureka !” the teacher practically shouted. “He invented it! Stink-away Juice! ”
    â€œOh, joy,” Kareem whispered. Very softly, but Sky knew he meant for her to hear. She responded by crossing her eyes.
    Mr. Bunsen drew an outstretched arm on Professor Frybrain—he already had two, this one made three—holding a test tube. He labeled it STINK-AWAY JUICE . Gerald and his pals were snorting, and squealing, and playing drumrolls on their desks.
    â€œThe next step, of course, was to test his new invention, to make sure it really worked. So he told his class that all of them would receive a dose of Stink-away Juice. But …”—he lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper—“ only five of them actually did. The other five got sugar water. Now what would you call the five students who didn’t get the real medicine?”
    He looked around the room. Rachel’s hand was up.
    â€œSomebody besides Rachel this time,” Bunsen said. “All right, Travis?”
    â€œStinky?”
    â€œWell, yes, we could probably call them stinky, but I was looking for something a little more…scientific? Somebody? Anybody?”
    Sky checked her watch. Fifteen minutes down, thirty more to go.
    â€œArnold?”
    Arnold shrugged.
    â€œBethany?”
    Bethany stared out the window.
    â€œOh, come on , people. Kareem? Any idea what we’d call the group that got the sugar water?”
    â€œThe control group,” he said quietly.
    â€œExcellent. And the sugar water?”
    â€œA placebo.”
    â€œ Thank you , Kareem. Gerald, what’s so funny?”
    â€œOh, nothing ,” Gerald said, collapsing into a fit of strangled giggles, more of a series of snorts, really, as though Kareem’s mere existence—and certainly the fact that he’d actually answered a question—was just so unbelievably hilarious.
    Sky recognized the signs. Kareem was Gerald’s latest victim.
    He was an obvious choice. He was new, and he had a foreign name that Gerald could make fun of. His family had come from the Middle East, so there was the terrorist angle to run with. And best of all, Kareem was smart, and well behaved, and a good student. Gerald had lots of colorful names for kids like that.
    â€œNow Professor Frybrain got out his Smell-o-Meter,” Bunsen said. “A wonderful machine, one of his very best inventions—and measured the degree of stinkiness of each student.”
    Naturally they got a picture of the Smell-o-Meter, too. Bunsen liked to draw. Sky noted that it took up a minute and a half of class time. On the left side of the dial, he wrote FRESH AS A