Free Seeing Orange by Sara Cassidy Page A

carpet at the front of the classroom is the color of a rotting Christmas orange. But up close, it’s amazing. It is made of a million, zillion tiny thread loops. Each loop is a single color: rust, copper, gold, bright orange. I like to stick the point of my pencil into a loop and pull until one end comes out. Sometimes the nib of my pencil breaks.
    Mr. Carling shoves a piece of chalk into his chalk holder. He writes: October 25 . The backs of his fingers are hairy. His hands are hairy too, and his arms. I wonder if his wrist is hairy under his watch strap. Maybe the strap hides a seam where he’s stitched together, like a monster. I wonder if any of the other kids wear watches to hide their seams. Sam has one. He could be a—
    â€œ Leland? ”
    Mr. Carling looks at me hard. I look back at him, but it feels like there are miles between us. “Get your listening ears on,” he says. “Where are the salmon spawning?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I say.
    â€œGoldstream River. We’re going to see them on Thursday. There will be a permission form for your parents to sign…”
    My grade one class went to Goldstream last year. I watched a giant maple leaf whistled down from a tree onto the back of a dead salmon that seagulls had been pecking at. The red leaf landed right on top of the salmon’s red wound.
    Everyone is standing and moving quickly to their desks. I hurry to mine. “What are we supposed to do?” I whisper to Angela.
    â€œWrite a story about the ocean,” she says. “Duh!”

    Angela’s fire-orange hair is in a thick braid down her back. I asked her once if she was a Viking, but she didn’t answer. Now, her hand scuttles across her page like a crab. I imagine streams of fire running through her, down her arm and out her hand. Her pencil marks are the ash.
    â€œLet’s see what you’ve done so far, Leland.”
    Mr. Carling is at my desk. I look at my page. It’s blank. White as a bandage over someone’s mouth.
    â€œNothing,” Mr. Carling grunts. He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
    My stomach hurts. I stare at the bare page. It starts to blur and fall away. It falls down to the bottom of an ocean. Mr. Carling squats beside my desk. I smell the lemon drop that clicks against his teeth.
    â€œYou will have to stay in for recess,” he says.
    Delilah growls from the cubby. The bell rings. Everyone leaves except me and Mr. Carling.
    I wipe tears from my eyes. The page floats up again. I write a title: Raft . I begin: A Viking was alone on a raft. His salty tears landed in the salty ocean. I trace over the o in ocean . I make the o bigger and bigger. I draw little waves inside it, and a raft. I work hard on drawing the ropes and swirling knots that hold the raft together.
    Then I look out the window. Kids crawl all over the playground. Their footprints in the sand look like little waves.
    Mr. Carling gets up from his desk and looks at my paper. “Well, at least you wrote something . You can go outside.”
    I race to the jungle gym. But as soon as I make it to the top, the bell rings to go back inside. I get one big jump for the whole recess. I dig my heels in deep, all the way down to where the sand is dark brown.

Chapter Three
    On Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school, I pull the Red Flyer wagon, heavy with newspapers, down our street. Silas runs door to door delivering them. Our cat Pumpkin sometimes follows for a block, then turns back. Today, though, she stays longer. Silas waves his arms at her. “Shoo. Go home.”
    There’s a house on our paper route that Silas and I call Gloomy Rooms. The front steps sag. Moss bubbles up between the roof shingles. The grass is high, and the bushes are dark tangles. Silas rolls up the newspaper and throws it onto the crooked front porch from as far away as he can. For a while afterward, everything seems a little scary. Then Yellow House cheers me up.

    The