Free Haunted by Melinda Metz - Fingerprints - 2 Page B

bother to sound at all friendly, but of course Salerno came on over, anyway, joining Anthony’s group and cutting in front of the couple who’d gotten into line behind them.
    Salerno had just never figured out that he and Anthony weren’t, never had been, and never would be buds.
    “So you ready for English tomorrow?” Salerno asked.
    School. Why was the idiot Salerno bringing up school? It was the last thing Anthony wanted to think about. Like he didn’t have enough to stress about without imagining sitting in his Bluebird English class with all the other morons, trying to read one sentence out loud without screwing up.
    The most important thing is getting Jesse back, he told himself. Screw English. Screw everything else until he and Rae got Jesse back. Yeah, Rae wasn’t a quitter-even if she was a little pissed off-and neither was he. They wouldn’t give up on Jesse, no matter how long it took.
    Rae dutifully copied the definition for simile in her notebook-picking up some staticky thoughts, all hers, from the pencil-even though she already knew exactly what a simile was. How could she not, living with her dad? She glanced up and found her English teacher, Mr. Jesperson, looking at her. He did that a lot. Clearly he hadn’t gotten over the idea that she needed a special “friend,” someone to help her adjust to being back at school. Forget it, Mr. J., she thought, returning her gaze to her notebook. You and I aren’t going to be doing the inspiring-after-school-special thing.
    “Okay, all teachers are scum. Is that a simile or a metaphor?” Mr. Jesperson asked.
    Anthony’s exercise book flashed into Rae’s mind.
    Nothing about similes or metaphors in there. Just stuff like when you should use an apostrophe. She could still almost feel those spots that had been nearly erased through. Feel the self-disgust that oozed through Anthony, like if he couldn’t read that well, he was a total loser in every way.
    The bell rang, jerking Rae out of her thoughts.
    She jammed her notebook into her backpack, grabbed her purse, and rushed out. She wanted to get out of there fast in case Mr. Jesperson decided he wanted a little heart-to-heart before lunch.
    Rae’s steps slowed as she started down the hallway. She hesitated, then veered to the left, heading away from the cafeteria and toward the library. She wanted to look up some info about learning disorders.
    Maybe there was something Anthony could do, something his teacher wasn’t trying, that would make the English thing easier for him.
    And while you’re doing this good deed, you can skip going to the cafe, which you hate. What a saint.
    But she didn’t turn around. She pushed open the door and stepped into the quiet of the library, then headed to the closest computer monitor and typed in dyslexia.
    Maybe dyslexia wasn’t what Anthony had, but it was the reading problem she’d always heard about, and Rae figured it was a good place to start. She jotted the call numbers of a couple of books on the cover of her notebook and tracked them down without a problem, then settled herself in one of the little cubbies at the last table in the back.
    “Okay, The Rewards of Dyslexia, ” she mumbled.
    She flipped open the book and started to read the intro. Basically it said that people with dyslexia thought in images, which let them think a lot faster than people who thought in words. Which was a good thing-there were scientists and artists who probably couldn’t have done the stuff they’d done if they hadn’t been dyslexic.
    Rae wondered what Anthony would think if she told him that. Would he actually get that having a different kind of thought process didn’t mean he was a moron?
    She kept reading. It turned out that even though people with dyslexia could be really smart, they had trouble reading because if a word didn’t call up a picture in their mind-even a really easy word like the – it was hard for them to understand it. Pretty soon if there were too many