The Silver Glove Read Free Page A

him, and I had a funny feeling that he held them that way to keep the fingers from getting him in trouble by doing something clever and full of mischief while he wasn’t looking.
    â€œWell, boys and girls,” he drawled in this husky, juicy voice, “here I am, take a good look. I’m older than some of your parents, and in some ways a lot more experienced. I come from a family of truckers, not a family of doctors or professors. In fact I used to be a cop.”
    That got him some buzzing all right.
    He smiled, and it was amazing how wide and toothy that pursed-up, droopy mouth got. “Now you know the worst, right? It gets better. I didn’t like being a cop, I got bored being a cop. So I went back to school to make myself into something else: a sort of minor-league shrink. My job is to be around when you need to talk to somebody besides the kid sitting next to you, somebody who hasn’t spent his whole life in school. I’ve been outside, I know a few things. Try me.”
    My friend Barb jogged me again and whispered, “Better than old Matthews, anyway.”
    To tell the truth, Dr. Brightner did seem pretty okay. Interesting, at least. But this alarm kept dinging way back in my head someplace, warning me. Of something.
    â€œI’m going to start out,” he said, “by asking a few of you to come by my office and spend a little of your free time talking to me so I can get a feel for this place. I need to know the kinds of things that are on people’s minds. And I’d like something to do until somebody flips out and really needs my attention.”
    He took a piece of yellow paper out of his pocket. “I’ve got a list here,” he said, “which I will not read out loud. The people I’ve selected to be my first contacts on this planet—” Laughs. “—will get a note from me in the next day or two, inviting them to drop by.”
    Clang . I knew I was going to be one of those kids.
    Sure enough, after lunch I got a printed form delivered to me in French class. It read, “Please come to my office at for a talk at        today. Brightner.” He had filled in the hour that my free period started that afternoon.
    Phooey, I thought; that’s all I need, a friendly chat with a nosy stranger. I only had one thing on my mind, naturally, but you don’t go and discuss your magic grandmother with anybody at school. I hadn’t said anything to Barb, even.
    My friend Lennie came drifting over as I left the classroom, and I put the summons in my pocket.
    He said, “Hey, Val, could you do me a favor?”
    â€œSure, what?” I said.
    He lowered his voice and moved a little closer to me, looking down at his shoes in embarrassment. “You know that thing I wrote for English? Petterick wants me to read it out loud to the class. I hate reading out loud. Could you read it for me?”
    â€œOh, come on,” I said, “you’re not that shy!”
    He was, though. Lennie grew up with Spanish as his first language, and he had a little bit of an accent and would sometimes even stammer in English.
    So I ended up reading his “Letters from Another World” (we were doing a unit on great travel-writing) for him in English. It was about some creatures called the wigpeople, and here’s a sample: “ ‘They sent her home from work because she said she was a wigman or wigwoman. There had been quite a problem in these parts about the wigpeople, did I ever tell you? Huge, huge wigs wandering under the copper beeches, and, Mabel, you can just see the funny toes in the striped socks sticking out through the ends of the hair.’ ”
    The reading got started late, but it was a huge success and it actually took my mind off Gran and Mom. I really got into it and started clowning around and leaving room for the laughter, and what with one thing and another, I only got through about half of