Seeing Orange Read Free Page B

every piece of blackened wood, every soot stain, every dirty crack in the bricks.
    â€œWhy did you paint it so sad?” I ask. “You seem so happy.”
    â€œI am happy,” Pamela says. “But maybe I’m happy because I don’t hide from sad things. I don’t pretend they don’t exist.”

Chapter Nine
    I have been thinking about what Pamela said about not being scared of sad things. I thought about the place under the back stairs with the broken pots. One day after school, I put on a sweater and drag a chair down the back stairs. I sit there with my notebook and drawing pencils and stare at the cobwebs and shriveled spiders. I feel frightened. But I take a deep breath. Nothing here can really hurt me.
    As I draw, I see why the stuff is there. The spiders can spin webs, safe from rain. The pill bugs eat the rotting bouquets. I don’t like the bits of plastic garbage though. They stand out too much. I color them superbright.
    Liza opens her bedroom window and asks what on earth I am doing. A few minutes later she joins me.
    â€œHere,” she says.
    â€œWhat are they?” I ask.
    â€œGloves.”
    â€œI can’t draw with gloves on!”
    â€œYou’re right,” she says. She goes back into the house and returns a minute later.
    â€œNow try them.”
    â€œCool!” I say. She cut the fingers off the gloves!
    My hands are warm, but my fingers are free to hold the pencil.
    Pamela taught me to draw as if the nib of the pencil was my eye. She said to follow the edges of things as if the pencil was my eye moving along them. It is difficult to draw the broken edges of the pots. They’re so sharp, they hurt my eyes!

    At our next class, I show Pamela my drawing. “What
are the colored things?” she asks.
    â€œBits of plastic,” I tell her. “That neon-orange thing
is a Play-Doh lid. That’s the handle of an old beach
shovel, and that’s the top from a peanut-butter jar.
I don’t like them.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause they don’t move. They don’t change. They just…” I can’t find the right words.
    â€œThey stand out,” Pamela says. “Plastic is stubborn. It’s kind of selfish, isn’t it? It doesn’t really join the world.”
    â€œYeah! That’s what I feel!” I say.
    â€œI know,” Pamela says. “Your drawing showed me.”

    Mr. Carling moves between the desks on crutches. We’re supposed to be writing about rain. Angela’s hand moves across her page so quickly, it’s as though her fingers tell the page her story. I write: Rain knocks the last leaves from the trees. Puddles are mirrors.
    â€œYou’ll have to stay in for a while,” Mr. Carling sighs when he sees my story.
    I sigh too. But then Delilah growls, and I start to feel hot. My heart pounds in my head. I’m angry. Really angry. This must be what Mom calls seeing red . I can’t see anything, just red air.
    The recess bell rings, and everyone leaves except me. Mr. Carling stays at his desk. I look at him for a long time, the way I looked at the fireplace and the cobwebs under the stairs. I see him. He’s like a little bird, half busy, half nervous.
    â€œAre you mad at me because you hurt your foot?” I ask.
    Mr. Carling looks up. He raises his eyebrows. “I was ,” he says. “But it was mostly my fault. I’m clumsy on rough ground.”
    â€œI like rough ground,” I say.
    â€œI like to stick to the path.”
    â€œI like it off the path,” I say. “I love the woods. Almost as much as I love drawing—”
    â€œAnd daydreaming?”
    Delilah growls and bares her teeth.
    â€œI don’t daydream,” I say. “I think about stuff.”
    â€œListen, Leland. You’re at school to learn,” Mr. Carling says. “You have lots of time to play and daydream, or think , before and after school, all evening and