She was shy. That’s what Rico told us the day she became his sister. But she could read. There was nothing wrong with her.
But just because we knew that didn’t mean everyone else did. Some of our classmates laughed at her and Rico had fought every single one of them at lunch or after school. And man, Ms. Drew really loved writing him up for that.
“I saved you for last, please read your paragraph, Harlow. We don’t have all day.”
For the first time, Harlow stopped making intense eye contact with the words in front of her and peeked up at the teacher.
“I’m s-sorry, I don’t know what it says.”
Ms. Drew sighed, loud and dramatic, before shaking her head. “Is there anybody else that can read the passage?”
A hand near the front shot into the air while Harlow shoved her hand under her chin beside me.
I probably wasn’t supposed to see the tear that hit the page a minute later, but I did and my hatred for Ms. Drew grew.
“What did she say?”
We all closed in on Harlow when she walked out of the classroom ten minutes after we had for the day.
It should be a crime to make a student stay late on Friday, but our teacher was the devil so nothing she did surprised me anymore.
Harlow’s eyes widened before she found her voice. She was the type of person you had to be looking at to know she was talking. Everything that came out of her mouth sounded like a whisper.
She sniffed and wiped over the tear tracks on her cheek. “She said she’s going to write on my progress report that I need reading intervention until my grade comes up. She said she’s going to meet with my mom to get permission to keep me inside during recess.”
Harlow was a tiny little thing and watching her shoulders shake when she began to cry changed something in my nine-year-old brain. I hated seeing her like that. Never wanted to see her like that again.
“That’s BS,” Soul groaned. He never did tell us whatBSmeant, but he made it sound like something awful. I was convinced he’d heard his older brother say it and hadn’t turned back.
Silently, Rico slung an arm around her shoulders as we began the walk home. On Fridays we went to Soul’s house, so I hiked my backpack higher on my shoulder and prepared for the longer walk across the Cove.
Soul instinctively took Harlow’s backpack off her back and carried it by the top loop as we all fell in stride together.
“But you can read,” Soul pointed out. “Just because you don’t want to read out loud during class shouldn’t mess up your grade.”
I had to strain to hear her reply.
“I told her that!” She raised her voice, but it just sounded like everyone else’s speaking voice. “Then she said something about participation points. Rico, I don’t want to fail third grade!”
She hid her face in his armpit and cried some more.
Rico stopped walking and my steps stuttered so I wouldn’t pass them.
He looked helpless holding his sister’s face in his hand. “Hey, stop crying.”
“B-but everybody thinks I’m not smart.”
“Who cares?” Soul hissed, tugging one of her pigtails. “We’re the only ones who matter. You’re the smartest person out of all of us.”
Harlow wiped her tears with the back of her hand and looked at Soul like she didn’t believe him.
He tugged her hair again. “Come on, my mom said we can all have a slice of the chocolate cake she made for our afterschool snack!”
He started running up the street and turned around with a huge smile on his face while we jogged to catch up.
Once we were at his house, his mom Gina herded us to the kitchen sink and watched us wash our hands before she pulled the chocolate cake out of the fridge.
I sat silently at the kitchen table until an idea popped into my head.
