Eleven Read Online Free Page A

book with about four words on each page, words he couldn't read. “What does it all look like to you?” she'd asked.
    He'd shrugged. How could he say the lines moved like black spiders, stretching their legs and waving their feelers across the pages?
    She was sorry, he could see that. “Look.” She pointed out the window. “What do you see?”
    “Trees, two of them.”
    “Yes. You see the branches, the leaves. And that tells you they're not houses, or clouds. You don't even have to think about it. Trees.”
    He'd felt something begin in his chest, because he couldn't imagine that happening when he read.
    “That's the way it is with words,” she'd said. “After a while, the circles and lines will mean things. They'll jump out at you, so that trees are trees, and not clouds.”
    The bell had rung then, and he'd escaped. That thing in his chest was growing, was going to explode. He'd held it in while they gathered up their books in the classroom, held it in on the bus, almost bursting with it, just waiting until he reached Mack in the workshop.
    Mack had sat with him on the bench at the side wall as it finally burst out into the loud sound of his crying. Mack's arm had gone around him, and he'd hardly been able to get the words out, only “—spiders on the page that will never look like anything but spiders.”
    He'd buried his head in Mack's shirt, smelling furniture wax and pine, and Mack had cleared his throat. “You have a gift, Sam. A gift like mine.”
    He'd burrowed deeper into Mack's shirt, listening.
    “You don't know it yet,” Mack had said, “but it's the wood. It talks to us.”
    What did that have to do with anything?
    “Already you feel the wood under your fingers. I've seen you.”
    That was true. Sam would run his fingers over the wood, imagining where it had come from: pine from the forests here in New York State, or mahogany from the jungles far away. He knew what the woods were good for, what they could be made into.
    “You read the wood,” Mack had said. “And that's something that almost no one else can do.”
    Mack had turned up Sam's chin with those broad fingers. “You'll learn to read, Sam. It may take longer than most, it may never be your strong point. But you have this.” Mack's hand swept over the workroom, wood stacked waiting to become chairs or tables, tools gleaming. And in a voice Sam strained to hear: “You have me, Sam. Me, and Onji, and Anima. And we all love you more than anything.”
    Now clouds moved between the sun and the boat. Sam pulled his jacket up against his neck, and Night Cat slid off the backseat, almost as if he didn't have bones, and curled up next to him.
    Sam didn't think in steps. He'd started out thinking about telling Caroline, and instead he was remembering Mack that day long ago. No wonder he mixed up those syllables, those words. “But I read the wood,” he told Night Cat, and felt better until he thought again about being missing.
    He pulled the oars out, one old and dark, the other fresh wood. He and Mack had cut the new oar and sanded it just the other day.
    Mack, Onji, and Anima. Did all three know about thatnewspaper clipping? And even though he'd never ask straight out, he'd have to begin in steps to find out where he'd come from, even though he wasn't sure what he'd do when he knew.
    One thing, as Caroline would say. He'd never be happy anywhere else.

5
Beginning
    Sometimes Sam took a detour on the way to Mrs. Waring's Resource Room. He'd open the side door, stick a book in the edge so it wouldn't lock behind him, and sit outside to breathe in a little air.
    Or maybe he'd slide along the corridor and have a gargling contest at the fountain with Robert, who came to the Resource Room from the opposite direction.
    It was a little dangerous because Mr. Ramon, the assistant principal, patrolled the halls.
    This afternoon, Sam hadn't gotten three steps away from the classroom when Caroline opened the door. “Going to the Media Center?”
    He