Free Going Where It's Dark by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

eaten lunch together again today, and if Nat remembered his recent weirdness, he didn’t show it. Now, Buck thought, if he could just get through this class without a major blockage…
    “ ‘Four score and seven years ago…’ ” came the first quotation, and almost everyone got it right: Lincoln.
    “ ‘One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,’ ” read the first person in the next row. Most of the class seemed to know it was said by the first astronaut who stepped on the moon, but only a few remembered that it was Neil Armstrong.
    The quotes continued until the last person in the first row of seats had read his, and then all the sheets were passed to those behind them. Buck looked at the clock. This was going faster than he’d thought. He could feel perspiration trickling down his back.
    For a long time the class was stumped on “ ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ ” A debate broke out, and Buck watched the minute hand moving around and around.
    “Well, let’s move on, class,” Miss Gordon said. “But I’m surprised you didn’t know that was President John F. Kennedy.”
    “ ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ ” read the next girl, and several voices answered at once: “Patrick Henry!”
    Buck’s heart began to pound. There was a quote by Julius Caesar that no one guessed, and it was six minutes before the bell. Two more students, and the papers would be passed along to the third row. Four minutes…Three minutes…Two…
    Then the sheet of paper came gliding over Nat’s shoulder and sailed onto the floor. Buck swallowed as he leaned down to pick it up in slow motion.
    When he righted himself, his eyes traveled down the paper and settled on the next quote in the line. He felt his throat going tight:
To be or not to be; that is the question.
    Almost every single word began with a problem letter for Buck, a letter demanding explosive kinds of sounds:
T
s and
B
s were the worst—sharp sounds that even hurt his tongue to look at them, that stuck in his throat where they wouldn’t come out. Choose another quote, he told himself, and he scanned the page. No, the next one began with a
D
….
    “Buck?” the teacher said.
    He looked at the clock and down again. One minute left. One minute of absolute torture and humiliation. People were beginning to look his way.
    “T…t…t…t…,” Buck began. The
T
was trying to get through, but his jaws were so rigid they even held his tongue prisoner.
    He was running out of breath. He stopped, his shoulders sagging, took a monstrous breath, and tried again: “T…t…t…”
    Someone giggled.
    “Take your time,” Miss Gordon said.
    “He is!” someone said, and a few of the kids laughed.
    “T…to b…b…be…be,” Buck said, gasping, and when he finally got to the last part of the quote, the part he could probably say, the bell rang.
    Nobody stayed around to hear how perfectly he read the rest. And before Miss Gordon, with her sympathetic eyes, could make her way back to him, before even Nat could say anything, Buck scooped up his books with one hand, backpack with the other, and half walked, half galloped out the door.
    •••
    On the bus, he sat four rows up from Pete Ketterman and his gang at the back. He positioned himself so that his body took up the whole seat, and neither Katie nor anyone else made a move to sit with him. He was glad, in fact, that Nat rode a different bus because he wouldn’t have wanted to share the seat, even with him.
    Buck wished more than ever that he was in the Hole right now, surrounded on all sides with rock and roots and earth, neither seen nor heard by anyone.
    “Hey, Buck-o!” came Ethan Holt’s voice over the rattle and chatter. “What were you doing out on old Bluestone Road?”
    Buck almost stopped breathing. He refused to turn around.
    “He was clear out there?” Rob asked.
    “Yeah. Pushing his bike up out of the ditch. You