Read Online Bee Season by Myla Goldberg - Free Book Online

for at least five or six years. He puts her back down, silently resolving to start exercising.
    “Elly, that’s fantastic! I wish I could have been there. I bet it was something else, huh, Aaron?”
    Aaron smiles and nods, tries to think of what a good older brother would say. “She beat out a lot of kids, Dad. You would have loved it.”
    “I know, I know. And I didn’t even think to give you the camera.” Saul shakes his head. “But now I get another chance. You’re going on to the next level, right?”
    Eliza nods. “The area finals are in a month. In Philadelphia.”
    Saul claps his hands. “Perfect! We’ll all go. A family trip. A month should give your mother enough time to clear the day. I’m so proud of you, Elly. I knew it was just a matter of time until you showed your stuff. A month. I can barely wait.”
    At which point Eliza realizes that she has only four weeks in which to study.
    Studying has always been a chore on the level of dish-washing and room-cleaning, approached with the same sense of distraction and reluctance. Eliza fears that studying will leech her of spelling enthusiasm. The days following her spelling win, she resolutely maintains her after-school schedule of television reruns, pretends not to notice her father’s raised eyebrows at the sight of her in her regular chair, nary a spelling list or dictionary in sight. More than her father’s unspoken expectations, it is Eliza’s growing suspicion that she has stumbled upon a skill that convinces her to break out the word lists. She realizes she has never been naturally good enough at anything to want to get better before. She renames studying “practice.” Spelling is her new instrument, the upcoming bee the concert for which she must prepare her part.
    Within a few days Eliza has developed a routine. After two TV reruns, she retreats to her room. Though she knows there is little chance of anyone disturbing her, she closes and locks her door. She likes the idea, however unlikely, of Saul or Aaron stuck outside, reduced to slipping a note under her door or to waiting for her to emerge. After dinner, she allows herself one prime-time show and then, with Aaron and Saul playing guitar in the study and her mother either cleaning the kitchen or reading her magazines, she returns to her room. The click of the bedroom door becomes one of her favorite sounds, filling her with a sense of well-being.
    When Eliza studies, it is like discovering her own anatomy. The words resonate within her as if rooted deep inside her body. She pictures words lining her stomach, expanding with each stretch of her lungs, nestling in the chambers of her heart. She is thankful to have been spared from fracture, tonsillitis, or appendectomy. Such incidents might have resulted in words being truncated or removed altogether, reducing her internal vocabulary. Elly contemplates growing her hair long; it could give her an extra edge. When she closes her eyes to picture a word she imagines a communion of brain and body, her various organs divulging their lingual secrets.
    Eliza starts walking around with the kind of smile usually associated with Mona Lisas and sphinxes.
I am the best speller on this bus,
she thinks on the way home from school. After a few days of studying, when she’s feeling more daring, she goes as far as
I am the best speller at the dinner table,
Saul, Miriam, and Aaron innocently eating around her. Eliza knows that something special is going on. On Wednesday, she remembers the words she studied on Monday and Tuesday. On Thursday, she remembers all the old words, plus the new ones from the day before. The letters are magnets, her brain a refrigerator door.
    Eliza finally understands why people enjoy entering talent shows or performing in recitals. She stops hating Betsy Hurley for only doing double-Dutch jump rope at recess. If Eliza could, she would spell all the time. She starts secretly spelling the longer words from Ms. Bergermeyer’s droning