Read Online Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio - Free Book Online

the doorway. “Say something, please!”
    I stood up. “I’m okay,” I muttered, shuffling to the door. “I feel better now,” I said. “Will you braid my hair?” I asked, extending my wrist with the rubber bands wrapped around it. “I want to wear my new ribbons.”
    Matanni put her hand on my forehead. “No fever,” she pronounced. “Just nerves.” She took my hand, led me over to the sink, where she turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water over my face. “I don’t understand it,” she said as she dried my skin. “School ain’t never bothered you. By fall, you’re aching to go.” She combed her fingers through my hair. “Stay right here,” she said. “I gotta fetch your hairbrush and ribbons. Don’t worry none. We’ll make you look real pretty.”
    I stared at my pale face in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were bleached out and dull. My hair seemed wilted and dead. Like a dead cat’s hair, I thought, one that has been dead in a ditch for weeks. Suddenly I understood why Miss Emily hung cheesecloth over her mirror. “If I had me a piece of cheesecloth,” I whispered, “I’d hang it up, lickety-split.” But I had no cheesecloth and watched dismally as my grandmother, all smiles, scurried into the bathroom and, with hairbrush and ribbons, went eagerly to work.

    P eavy Lawson was the first person I saw. He and his frog eyes occupied the first seat of the first row near the door. When I entered the room, he jumped up and waved his hands at me. They looked like frog’s feet—greenish yellow, webbed, and slimy. I blinked and looked again, but he had hidden them in his lap. Now he winked at me, his frog eyelids flying up and down like blinds. A wide, thin grin covered his face. I tried to find his lips but couldn’t. Frogs, I guessed, didn’t have lips.
    â€œHowdy, Icy!” He lisped the cy. When he spoke, his tongue—slender and blood red—shot out a full five inches. “Howdy, Icy,” he lisped again, the tip of his tongue curling up when he spoke.
    I concentrated on my own eyes, tried to sink them way back into my skull, and said, “Peavy Lawson, why don’t you jump back into that pond where you belong?”
    He popped out his eyes, then rolled them up into his head. “We can jump together,” he said.
    I snapped my eyes shut—unable to tolerate the sight of him—and blindly shuffled forward. When I bumped into the large wooden desk and heard the class laughing, I opened my eyelids and slid into the first empty seat I could find. The minute Peavy Lawson leaned way over into the aisle, flashing me a huge, froggy grin, I knew that I had picked the wrong desk since I was only a few seats down from him. My face reddened, and I stuck out my tongue. I opened my hands, turned my palms upward, and spit into both. Then, I slapped them together and rubbed them fiercely back and forth, all the while staring into Peavy Lawson’s amphibian eyes.
    â€œHey you, young lady! You’re Icy Sparks, aren’t you?”
    I heard the voice and turned my head toward the classroom door.
    â€œWhat in the world are you doing?” Mrs. Stilton barked. “I’m beginning to question Miss Palmer’s high opinion of you.”
    I looked at Mrs. Stilton’s long nose and her squinty, black eyes and was too frightened to speak. A long quiver started from the nape of my neck and shook me down my spine to the tips of my toes. This ain’t no jerk, I thought. This is just plain fear. My desk began to bang against the floor.
    â€œIcy Sparks!” Mrs. Stilton screamed.
    I clamped my hands over my ears.
    â€œRemove those hands, young lady!”
    I froze.
    â€œRemove them or else!” she warned.
    Still, I couldn’t move.
    â€œOkay, you asked for it!” she said.
    Deliberately, she walked toward her desk and pulled out, inch by