Free Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel Page A

sir,” I said.
    “He just can’t control himself, sir,” David told the teacher. “He was raised among jungle apes.”
    “You can join him if you like, Godwin,” the teacher said. “Now settle down.”
    I took my seat. I wondered if Jennifer had heard all this commotion. Henry Gardner and the other hobbits were looking at me differently, and so were the other kids farther up the table. I wasn’t sure if they were impressed or freaked out.
    It didn’t matter. I’d made an
impression.
    I was pretty glad when the school bus dropped me off at the end of the day.
    After my chimp boy routine at lunch, I’d started worrying I’d done the wrong thing, and people would just see me as a complete head case.
    It was stupid to think that David would want to hang out with me at school. Grade nines didn’t hang out with grade eights. As for Jennifer, she was obviously super popular. She was too busy to talk to me, even though we were in the same English and History classes.
    Inside our house it was quiet. It was one of the days both Mom and Dad were on campus. Peter McIvor and another student named Cheryl Tobin were on the afternoon shift with Zan. Through the sliding doors in the kitchen I couldsee the three of them outside, playing in the sandbox.
    I wanted to be with them, but Dad had told me that I wasn’t to distract Zan when he was with the students. Just as I was about to turn away, though, Zan must’ve seen me. He scampered across the lawn, with Peter not far behind, towards the sliding doors. He knocked on the glass with his little fists.
    I waved at him. It was an overcast day, and kind of cool for early September. Zan wore a T-shirt and shorts, and kept gripping himself like he was chilly.
    “I think he’s cold,” I told Peter through the glass.
    “What?” he said.
    “Cold. He’s cold. He’s shivering.”
    It seemed mean to ignore Zan, now that he’d seen me, so I opened the door, and he rushed in and climbed into my arms. Then, holding on with his legs around my left hip, he leaned back and slapped his arms across his chest again.
    “Holy cow,” said Peter quietly. “He’s not cold. I think he’s signing!”
    “Hug!” I exclaimed. And then to Zan: “Hug?” And I did the sign back to him. I put my arms around him and hugged him. “Hug. Hug. Hug!” I said.
    He hugged me even tighter. That hug felt good.
    I looked at Peter and we both shook our heads.
    It had been only two weeks since the project officially started.
    “His first word,” I said.
    “You
taught him his first word,” said Peter, clapping me on the shoulder. “Way to go, man.”
    It was like Zan and I had both started school on the same day.

PART TWO
    I ’m a slow learner.
    Letters. Numbers. They’ve never come easily to me.
    When I was nine, Mom and Dad had me tested. They wondered if maybe there was something wrong with my brain. A learning disability. A psychologist came to the house and asked me questions and looked at me and timed me and examined all my answers and wrote up a big report.
    He didn’t find anything wrong with me.
    I just wasn’t that smart, I guess.
    Mom said it would all come in time: all the words and numbers would start to make sense, when I was ready. But I always got the feeling Dad thought I wasn’t trying hard enough.
    He thought I had a bad attitude. He thought I was lazy. He got angry when my report cards came home.
    I thought I was trying, but I just wasn’t very good at school. I wasn’t good at a lot of things, like controlling my temper. But I was good at loving Zan.

S EVEN
P ROJECT ZAN
    D rink,
Zan said to me.
    I shook my head and pointed at the food on his tray.
Eat,
I said.
    We were talking with our hands.
    Zan was in his high chair in the kitchen, and I sat in front of him, trying to feed him cereal with a spoon. He was over eight months old now, and could hold his own spoon and fork perfectly well, but he still liked throwing them more than putting food in his mouth.
    Drink!
Zan