Everyone knows Brian Hurble could do a backflip. He doesn’t
have to do it right now in front of everybody, he’s not a performing money or a
circus elephant, and even those animals get time off for like dinner and
sleeping and holidays. You don’t tell a sleeping elephant to do a trick that’s
for sure. Maybe I’ve never seen Brian do a backflip. So what? Maya’s cousin
said he saw him do it and that’s good enough for me.
On the bus ride to the museum he spends all his time talking
to Jenny Jenlin. I doubt she tells him about the time she in second grade when
she raised her hand to be excused and when Mrs. Marple called on her she
barfed. I wasn’t there, but everyone knows about it. Everyone who went to my
elementary school. I can’t believe that when we get to middle school all that
stuff just goes away. Like the past doesn’t matter. Like history doesn’t
matter.
In fifth grade I did a report on Amelia Airheart. I remember
every report I ever did. This one was designed to look like it was the long
lost journal discovered near the sight of her disappearance. I used handwriting
fonts on the computer and traced pictures out of books to look like old time
pictures of the plane she rode in. I wondered how someone could just vanish
like that.
Maya talks to me about a fight she had this morning with her
mom and her sister about the bathroom and I just stare at the back of Brian’s
head. All the excitement I had for visiting the Air and Space Museum leaves my
body.
