Yolonda's Genius Read Free Page B

— turning, turning, their eyes fixed, not on each other, but sort of out of focus, listening — the way Andrew did all the time. When the recess bell had rung, the partners had laughed and slapped gently at each other with pleasure, then wound up theropes. They had gone back into the school building with their arms slung across each other’s shoulders.
    For a while, Yolonda liked to remember that. She liked to pretend that those girls had been her friends.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€œNow, Andrew, we can’t play with our harmonica when we’re reading,” said Miss Gilluly. She sat next to him at the little round table. She had a kind voice. “We must put the harmonica and other toys away so we can concentrate on the task at hand.”
    Andrew looked at the bright page in front of him across which marched a regiment of black marks. He clutched the harmonica and his chin went stubborn. Then he gave up. She might take his harmonica away from him. He’d seen that happen to others before. LaToya French had been made to put her push-wind racing car on the teacher’s deskfor the whole reading lesson. Stacey Goldstein’s drinking-wetting doll had wet 2-percent milk all over her workbook. She couldn’t ever bring that doll to school again.
    Andrew carefully slid the harmonica into his back pocket, the one farthest from Miss Gilluly. He looked again at the bright page with the black marks. He was supposed to tell this woman what the marks meant. They were some sort of code people used instead of talking. He didn’t really care what the message was because above the marks was a picture of some boring-looking kids playing in a sandbox. He knew what they were doing and what they were saying and he knew he wouldn’t even want to play with them. They would probably get into an argument over the little red truck in the picture. There were two white kids in the picture and two colored brown. The brown ones didn’t look like him or any other blacks kids he knew. They looked like white kids colored brown. He didn’t want to play with them at all.
    â€œCan you tell me what the first word says, Andrew?” asked Miss Gilluly.
    Andrew hunched down and looked at his hands. His hands already missed the harmonica, and his mouth itched to play a tune.
No, no
, he would play on the harmonica.
This is stupid
, he would play on his harmonica. Then he might imitate MissGilluly’s voice — low and kind and floaty. Or he might simply fly away on his harmonica and leave Miss Gilluly with her mouth like an
O
.
    Miss Gilluly sighed and took away the book. She slipped a page to color in front of Andrew. The picture was of a puppy with its foot on a ball. Andrew could bark-bark on his harmonica, but it was in his back pocket, so he just stared at the picture. Underneath it there were a few of the black code marks.
    â€œCan you tell me what’s in the picture?” asked Miss Gilluly. It was so obvious what was in the picture that Andrew thought Miss Gilluly must mean that something he couldn’t see was hidden in the lines of the picture — like the puzzles on the comics page of the newspaper that Yolonda liked to do. Find the hidden faces. So Andrew looked real hard for hidden faces in the picture.
    â€œWhat do you see there, Andrew?” asked Miss Gilluly a little impatiently.
    I hate this reading, thought Andrew, and he ached for his harmonica. He couldn’t see any hidden faces so he just put his head down on the picture. I’m the hidden face, he thought, and this made him smile.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” asked Miss Gilluly, and Andrew could tell that she was upset. “There’s nothing funny in that picture!”
    Andrew made his mind fly up and away. Bark-bark, he heard in his head. Inside his mind he bounced the ball, and the little puppy jumped in such a funny way that Andrew wanted to laugh, but he didn’t want to make Miss Gilluly madder, so he