Read Online Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) by Macaulay C. Hunter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Macaulay C. Hunter
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classroom phone. When you could hunt-and-peck as fast as Kitts could, why bother messing with what worked?
Adriel beat me to sixth period, already at our back table and having covered it with assignments. He didn’t look up when I came in. I fit myself past him to the window seat as he pushed his books closer to his side and mumbled sorry. Inexplicably, I was offended. After giving me such a strange look at Monday lunch and being so sweet and personable during our class, now all I got was a mutter? I sat down unhappily and without a reply. After swiping my right hand down my jeans, I pulled out my homework. Mr. Rogers closed the door once the last student was in, and I wondered if he even washed his hands after using the restroom. That made feel a little ill.
“What’s wrong?” Adriel whispered, his pencil never pausing as he scratched out the answers to a calculus assignment. The speed with which he was working was unreal, like he was just taking dictation rather than having to think about the steps to the problems.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied. There was no way he could know what I was feeling, nor did I want to tell him the reason. Then I felt badly for behaving like a jerk. “You must have a lot to catch up on. Was it . . . your brother?”
“He’s having a hard time,” Adriel said. His pencil continued to whip down the paper, transcribing the problems from the page and solving them at the same rapid speed.
“Isn’t that really your parents’ problem?” I asked. “I mean, you shouldn’t miss so much school for that.”
“He’s my brother, so it’s my problem, too.”
“Did you find him?”
The pencil stopping, Adriel looked at me carefully. “He wasn’t missing, Jessa. Autumn is just a hard time of year for him, for some reason. His behavior gets worse and even music can’t calm him down. I’m not going to pry my little brother off my shirt and leave him crying to come to school and sit in class. He needed me more at home than I needed to be here.”
Something about the way he said it made me feel horribly self-centered. I flushed and looked down as class began. Mr. Rogers put on a sitcom to show an example of good character building and settled in his seat to watch it with us. Miserably, I stared at the screen. Adriel raced on with his work when I glanced over on occasion, finishing one assignment after another at insane speed. From calculus he went to science, from science to government, and the pages of his text turned at a pace even I as a speed-reader couldn’t hope to match. I entertained the thought that he wasn’t really reading, but then he unearthed a packet of fill-in-the-blank and paragraph essays about the chapter and finished it in short order.
Zakia was working outside at the other building. Half of the planters around the school were rotted, since they were wine barrels sawn in half rather than concrete. And, rather than replace them with concrete, the school was just taking away the bad ones and putting new wine barrel halves in. A truck backed up and spilled a heap of soil to the ground, which Zakia shoveled into the new planters.
By the time the credits rolled on the sitcom, which had made no impression on me, Adriel was essentially done with a whole week of work. I was smart, but he must have had an IQ of over two hundred. Wishing I’d never put my foot in my mouth about his brother, I said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know,” Adriel said with polite remove, and listened attentively to the teacher’s lecture of the show. I looked out the window while class moved on in a discussion. The janitor came over with a second shovel. It had a much narrower blade than the one Zakia was using. He made Zakia switch with him. As the janitor walked away, Zakia shook his head and went back to filling the planters with a shovel that barely scooped up anything.
The bell rang ten minutes later. I mustered up the civility to say to Adriel, “So, are you going to the
Adriel beat me to sixth period, already at our back table and having covered it with assignments. He didn’t look up when I came in. I fit myself past him to the window seat as he pushed his books closer to his side and mumbled sorry. Inexplicably, I was offended. After giving me such a strange look at Monday lunch and being so sweet and personable during our class, now all I got was a mutter? I sat down unhappily and without a reply. After swiping my right hand down my jeans, I pulled out my homework. Mr. Rogers closed the door once the last student was in, and I wondered if he even washed his hands after using the restroom. That made feel a little ill.
“What’s wrong?” Adriel whispered, his pencil never pausing as he scratched out the answers to a calculus assignment. The speed with which he was working was unreal, like he was just taking dictation rather than having to think about the steps to the problems.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied. There was no way he could know what I was feeling, nor did I want to tell him the reason. Then I felt badly for behaving like a jerk. “You must have a lot to catch up on. Was it . . . your brother?”
“He’s having a hard time,” Adriel said. His pencil continued to whip down the paper, transcribing the problems from the page and solving them at the same rapid speed.
“Isn’t that really your parents’ problem?” I asked. “I mean, you shouldn’t miss so much school for that.”
“He’s my brother, so it’s my problem, too.”
“Did you find him?”
The pencil stopping, Adriel looked at me carefully. “He wasn’t missing, Jessa. Autumn is just a hard time of year for him, for some reason. His behavior gets worse and even music can’t calm him down. I’m not going to pry my little brother off my shirt and leave him crying to come to school and sit in class. He needed me more at home than I needed to be here.”
Something about the way he said it made me feel horribly self-centered. I flushed and looked down as class began. Mr. Rogers put on a sitcom to show an example of good character building and settled in his seat to watch it with us. Miserably, I stared at the screen. Adriel raced on with his work when I glanced over on occasion, finishing one assignment after another at insane speed. From calculus he went to science, from science to government, and the pages of his text turned at a pace even I as a speed-reader couldn’t hope to match. I entertained the thought that he wasn’t really reading, but then he unearthed a packet of fill-in-the-blank and paragraph essays about the chapter and finished it in short order.
Zakia was working outside at the other building. Half of the planters around the school were rotted, since they were wine barrels sawn in half rather than concrete. And, rather than replace them with concrete, the school was just taking away the bad ones and putting new wine barrel halves in. A truck backed up and spilled a heap of soil to the ground, which Zakia shoveled into the new planters.
By the time the credits rolled on the sitcom, which had made no impression on me, Adriel was essentially done with a whole week of work. I was smart, but he must have had an IQ of over two hundred. Wishing I’d never put my foot in my mouth about his brother, I said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know,” Adriel said with polite remove, and listened attentively to the teacher’s lecture of the show. I looked out the window while class moved on in a discussion. The janitor came over with a second shovel. It had a much narrower blade than the one Zakia was using. He made Zakia switch with him. As the janitor walked away, Zakia shook his head and went back to filling the planters with a shovel that barely scooped up anything.
The bell rang ten minutes later. I mustered up the civility to say to Adriel, “So, are you going to the
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