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I
been wanting to sit on his lap since I met him. Been wanting to know how it feel cuddling up close to him. Don't remember nothing about it now. Hopped off his lap, got off the elevator soon as the doors opened.

“Autumn!” He called me. He wanted me to come back on the elevator. That never happened before. I ain't even turn around. I couldn't.

Running. Up the hall. Over the bridge. Past sixth graders lined up to go on a field trip. Past the horticultural club carrying snake plants into the main office. I'm thinking about the newspaper article. It didn't say why I wasn't wrestling, just that academics was involved.

Running. Down steps. Past lockers and the pool. Past varsity boys, who call my name and try to pump fists. I
stop, out of breath. Hands shaking, I pull open the door to the wrestling room.

Lying on the mat, pressing my nose into the thick, blue rubber, I smell yesterday. Practice. Underarms and scalps that needed washing. “Autumn.”

I freeze.

The door closes.

It ain't the end of the world, he saying. I got the brains and the mind to do in school what I do in here. “Strategize. Achieve ya goals.”

We always teasing Coach about his feet. A big man like him walking on his toes like a dancer. Can't hear him coming half the time.

Squatting beside me, out of breath, he reading off my stats for the season. Then he say, “Tournament Saturday. Ya coming?”

“Huh?”

“Ta support your teammates?”

“No.”

My teammates supported me 100 percent when I was wrestling, he saying. “They still do.” Then he bring up the guys on the team who lose week after week and don't quit, on themselves or the team. “Wrestling can teach ya something when you losing, too, Auddy.”

Can't come to no matches, sitting and watching everybody else winning, guys from other schools asking me why I ain't in there. What I'm gonna say? I can't read? I'm stupid? Grown-ups don't know nothing.

Coach's feet walking across the mat. Light from the hallway shows through the door he holding open. “What if I tutored ya, Auddy? On my own time?”

“No!”

Before he leaves, he brings up Friday night. He invited us to spend the night at his house. Working out. Bonding. Watching wrestling movies. I been looking forward to it.

“Ya still invited. A part of the team.”

Coach is gone before third period bell rings. When the fifth period bell goes off, I take another spot on another mat, leaving a big, wet stain where I was.

Two thirty. Four periods later, I'm opening the door. The team gonna come soon. Don't wanna see 'em. Or nobody.

Leaving the building, my coat in my locker — my purse and books there, too.

“Autumn!” Roberto's wheelchair hops the curb. He moving in between kids and buses, trying to get to me. He don't listen to teachers trying to stop him. His long,
stringy black hair blowing into his eyes. “Autumn. Do you want this?”

He holding up another present. A long box wrapped in pretty, hot-pink paper.

I'm close enough to pick it out his hand like it's a leaf. Backing up, shaking my head, I don't say one word. I run.

Cutting through trees, up the hill, I pick up speed.

Snow gets inside my sneakers. Falling off branches, it drops onto my back. Cold, wet air cuts my arms and cheeks after I been at it a while. Everything is burning. My fingers. Cheeks. My frozen toes. Can't hardly feel my arms.

I don't stop, though. I keep at it. Running and wrestling make me feel strong, perfect, powerful. Can't nobody understand. As ain't everything.

H
er black shorts would show everything, but her purple tights are good at keeping secrets. “You ever been bad at anything?” Autumn asks me.

It's a ridiculous question. If you prepare, practice, you can absolutely avoid screwing up. “No.” I sit a book on the table. It was shelved incorrectly.

“Nothing?” She looks up at me, almost smiling. She does not do that much anymore.

“Autumn.” I've been trying to be patient with her. Ma helped me understand. It's difficult losing something of importance to you, even if you were responsible. “I try to prepare, to make sure that I do everything the right way the first time. So I …” I want to say that goof ups happen when you are immature and running around thinking that life is all fun and games. Ma says
I sound like an old man when I speak this way. I think I sound wise. Wisdom keeps you from making errors and mistakes.

Moving to the next bookshelf, I keep my thoughts to myself. Autumn does not really care to hear them anyway.

Walking beside me, she picks at her hair. No feathers. I thought feathers were a silly look for a girl her age. She has not worn one lately, not since leaving the team three weeks ago. I am not sure I like this new look.

She always seems to be thinking now. Introspective and quiet. That's disconcerting. I never thought I would say that I'd rather hear her talking foolishness, saying nonsensical things. Laughing for no reason. At least I'd know what she was thinking.

“Adonis.” She pulls a book from the shelf, not for any reason, though. “How many years it take to get from here to Jupiter?” She looks at the ceiling, like she can see the constellations. “See … that's how long it seem like it's gonna take me … to learn to … read on grade level.”

Tears come. Plenty. Almost every day now.

I look away. I do not know what to do when it happens.

“I been reading like this for so long….” She sniffs, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, like the guys at practice. “Messing up in school since second grade …”

Pushing past her, I feel my eyes water. Stopping, I realize that I cannot be around her anymore. I love libraries. Books are sacred to me, fun. I escape in them. Lately, before I come to volunteer, I worry: Will she cry today? Should I avoid pressing her to do her work? What if she crawls onto my lap? What should I do?

I think I may switch my volunteer days. Or work at the public library instead. It all makes me furious. The world does not revolve around Autumn.

“… Stuck.”

I look over my shoulder, trying to understand what she means.

“I'm stuck.” Pointing to a plastic palm tree in a pot, she says, “Like that … there.” Her parents thought they could afford to pay to get her extra reading help at night. It's so expensive, they cannot afford it.

She walks over to the tree, sticking her arms out like branches. She sits on the floor, knocking on the hard plastic pot. “Stuck.” She hasn't been attending class, I know. Miss Baker came in one day to speak with her. Mr. Epperson, as well. It's hilarious, I think, that a girl
who hates books and libraries makes sure to volunteer twice a week. Even when she does not go to class.

“Autumn …”

“You ever feel stuck?”

Swallowing, I sit up tall.

“Adonis.” She walks over, kneeling at my wheels. “People be so fake.” Her head lowers, so I cannot see she's crying. “Maybe I'm not smart. But I'm truthful.” Her mother says she tells people too much about herself. “I can't read…. I say it. What's wrong with that?” She keeps talking. “I been thinking … sometimes … in this chair …”

“Autumn …”

“Roberto say sometimes he feel like me … stuck …”

I ask her why she is talking to a seventh grader about things that are personal to her. “It's his business,” I say, “how he feels about being disabled, sitting in a chair. Quit asking people things like that.” She is holding on to my chair handles, crying again. How can I move? I'm stuck, too. “Autumn —”

She thinks it's a good question to ask and she apologizes if I think that it's not. She has never apologized for anything she has done to me. And she has done a lot. “Why you don't like to talk, Adonis?”

Mrs. Carolyn calls us both.

“You are talking about me.” I back up. “I am an excellent student with outstanding grades. You should be thinking about yourself, Autumn Knight.”

Standing up, walking beside me, she informs me that she has been thinking of herself. “That's why I ain't been to class so much. To see what the right thing to do is, I gotta think.”

I think all the time — at home in the den, at night in my bed, in the van on the way to school. Even on the toilet. My mind is constantly examining and studying the world and people around me. “Autumn, you are making your situation worse. Getting further behind in class will not help you to read better.”

“I know.”

We take the elevator to the second floor of the library. “Then why … oh, forget it,” I say.

She is not a girl who thinks logically. She has me wasting my voice, my time.

“If we got stuck in this elevator —”

“Quit talking about being stuck!” I point to her. “Do what you are supposed to do!” She has me yelling. “And you will have everything you want in life!”

I point at her again and again. “It's your fault. Start
there. Quit complaining. If you need to read better, get better. Get help. Ask someone. People want people to succeed. No one wants to see you fail.”

When the door opens, with her rushing out, I think I will never see Autumn Knight again. Good.

 

Leaving the library, she is so close that her jacket button taps my chair. Classes are changing. It's very crowded in the hall. She sprays on perfume, the same scent she wore the day she sat in my lap.

“Adonis Einstein Anderson Miller.”

Only Ma uses my full name. “Yes, Autumn.”

Taking a deep breath, she says, “Will you help me learn to read better?”

I know the people around us must have heard her question, especially my honors English teacher, who is walking just ahead of us. She looks over her shoulder at Autumn and me, and smiles. Of course Autumn doesn't care. She believes that everyone is exactly like her, waving their lives in front of the whole world like dirty laundry.

How can I say no, without my honors English teacher thinking less of me?

M
e and Peaches cooking. Arguing over math, too, and the cheat sheet she tried to give me recently. “But I ain't ask you for it.”

“Well —” She puts sticks of butter in the pot, stirring. “I was helping you out anyhow.”

I stop rolling out dough. “You thinking I'm stupid, too? Everybody thinking that, huh?” I rush across the kitchen, pulling open the drawer. Poor Grades Take Down Star Wrestler, the newspaper article say. “It's not right. Schools should keep a kid's private stuff private.”

Peaches look at me for a long time. Before she say anything, I'm telling her, “I fail on my own. Pass that way, too.” I open the window. Tear up the article, let the wind have it.

We both go back to work. Sweating like we in the
oven baking with those apple pies. We cooking for the lady up the block. She got book club today. Twenty chicken potpies. Six apple pies. Plus lemon berry ice cream. Everything from scratch, even the ice cream.

Pressing out the dough, I think about Adonis. He shoulda said yes, I'll help you read better. Two days passed already. Why ain't he say nothing?

Peaches walking over, blowing a spoon filled with veggies and chicken. I open my mouth, wide. “A little more pepper, this much salt.” I show her with my fingers. I take the top off the pot. Watch the chicken pushing past the peas, the carrots sitting on top the string beans while I think about that article. They used to write good things about me.

Getting back to the table, Peaches start up with school again.

She and me never talked about her cheating. Not the first time. Not the second time after she tried to pass me that paper. Then she did it again yesterday. Like I didn't already show her that's not something I do. “Do you want to pass ninth grade?” She rolling a piece of dough in her hand, eating it. “You getting further and further behind.” If I just catch up on a few tests, she saying, I'll feel better about myself.

I yank open the cabinet. “So cheat. That's what you want me to do?”

I got some nerve acting high and mighty, she saying, when I'm practically flunking school. I wanna know how she can cheat and talk about wanting to be the twelfth-grade valedictorian when the time come. Three times don't make her a cheat. She telling me that without laughing at herself.

I'm at the cabinet, pushing boxes and cans around, looking for vanilla and lemon extract for these pies. That's when I see it written on a can. Big and red. All the letters capitalized. Evaporated. It's how I feel. Invisible, almost gone.

Running upstairs, holding on to the can, I open my jar. Spelling the word out in pearl-gray crayon. I stuff the paper in the jar and put the lid back on.

Peaches calling me. I'm Google searching, looking for a definition for evaporate.
Vanish
.
Fade
, one site says. I like those. “No, this the one I like.” I mix my definition with theirs, like grits and butter.
Evaporate
is … when all the moisture in you or something else is dried out and nothing's left behind but the solid stuff. Everything else done vanished.

“Autumn! I can't make pies!”

My mother calling me now, right along with Peaches, like I been up here forever.

Walking downstairs, I'm thinking. This how I been feeling — like my body is here but the inside of me is fading. Evaporated. Sucked away. Gone, like wrestling.

“Dad!” My father's got a spoon dipping in the pot, sampling our food.

“You gonna get that restaurant, I do believe.” Kissing my cheek, he reminds me I gotta save some of the money I make for the books I threw away. They wasn't free to the libraries that bought 'em. So I have to pay 'em back.

Mom's behind him, mentioning Miss Baker. She called late last night. I skipped her class all week and would be on punishment, but the book club asked us to cook three months ago. We can't let 'em down. And what else my parents gonna take away from me? Cooking?

Miss Pattie walking into the kitchen, dressed in all red, talking about school. She got this idea. She will work with me on my reading. “Four hours every Saturday. That'll do it.”

We arguing, 'cause my parents like what she saying. Peaches and me yelling 'cause that's our cooking day. Plus I'm thinking Miss Pattie gonna give me eczema
like she gave Peaches, bugging me about school all the time.

When Peaches's father walks in using a cane, everybody gets quiet. If wrinkles was wings, he could fly to Paris, I think. “Peaches.” He walks over to her. “Studying time.” Looking at his watch, he say they need to leave.

Miss Pattie got to remind him that we cooking. “Running a business.” Then she whispers, “He getting old.”

She take him back to the living room and then comes in reminding the two of us. “Study. Do well in school. A girl needs that.”

I wonder sometimes, with all her talk, if Miss Pattie don't feel like she evaporating, too.