Free Wonder by R. J. Palacio

and started to put on the Boba Fett costume, but all of a sudden I didn’t feel like wearing it. I’m not sure why—maybe because it had all these belts that needed to be tightened and I needed someone’s help to put it on. Or maybe it was because it still smelled a little like paint. All I knew was thatit was a lot of work to put the costume on, and Dad was waiting and would get super impatient if I made him late. So, at the last minute, I threw on the Bleeding Scream costume from last year. It was such an easy costume: just a long black robe and a big white mask. I yelled goodbye from the door on my way out, but Mom didn’t even hear me.
    “I thought you were going as Jango Fett,” said Dad when I got outside.
    “Boba Fett!”
    “Whatever,” said Dad. “This is a better costume anyway.”
    “Yeah, it’s cool,” I answered.

The Bleeding Scream
    Walking through the halls that morning on my way to the lockers was, I have to say, absolutely awesome. Everything was different now. I was different. Where I usually walked with my head down, trying to avoid being seen, today I walked with my head up, looking around. I wanted to be seen. One kid wearing the same exact costume as mine, long white skull face oozing fake red blood, high-fived me as we passed each other on the stairs. I have no idea who he was, and he had no idea who I was, and I wondered for a second if he would have ever done that if he’d known it was me under the mask.
    I was starting to think this was going to go down as one of the most awesome days in the history of my life, but then I got to homeroom. The first costume I saw as I walked inside the door was Darth Sidious. It had one of the rubber masks that are so realistic, with a big black hood over the head and a long black robe. I knew right away it was Julian, of course. He must have changed his costume at the last minute because he thought I was coming as Jango Fett. He was talking to two mummies who must have been Miles and Henry, and they were all kind of looking at the door like they were waiting for someone to come through it. I knew it wasn’t a Bleeding Scream they were looking for. It was a Boba Fett.
    I was going to go and sit at my usual desk, but for some reason, I don’t know why, I found myself walking over to a desk near them, and I could hear them talking.
    One of the mummies was saying: “It really does look like him.”
    “Like this part especially …,” answered Julian’s voice. He put his fingers on the cheeks and eyes of his Darth Sidious mask.
    “Actually,” said the mummy, “what he really looks like is one of those shrunken heads. Have you ever seen those? He looks exactly like that.”
    “I think he looks like an orc.”
    “Oh yeah!”
    “If I looked like that,” said the Julian voice, kind of laughing, “I swear to God, I’d put a hood over my face every day.”
    “I’ve thought about this a lot,” said the second mummy, sounding serious, “and I really think … if I looked like him, seriously, I think that I’d kill myself.”
    “You would not,” answered Darth Sidious.
    “Yeah, for real,” insisted the same mummy. “I can’t imagine looking in the mirror every day and seeing myself like that. It would be too awful. And getting stared at all the time.”
    “Then why do you hang out with him so much?” asked Darth Sidious.
    “I don’t know,” answered the mummy. “Tushman asked me to hang out with him at the beginning of the year, and he must have told all the teachers to put us next to each other in all our classes, or something.” The mummy shrugged. I knew the shrug, of course. I knew the voice. I knew I wanted to run out of the class right then and there. But I stood where I was and listened to Jack Will finish what he was saying. “I mean, the thing is: he always follows me around. What am I supposed to do?”
    “Just ditch him,” said Julian.
    I don’t know what Jack answered because I walked out of the class without anyone