Free Wonder by R. J. Palacio Page A

knowing I had been there. My face felt like it was on fire while I walked back down the stairs. I was sweating under my costume. And I started crying. I couldn’tkeep it from happening. The tears were so thick in my eyes I could barely see, but I couldn’t wipe them through the mask as I walked. I was looking for a little tiny spot to disappear into. I wanted a hole I could fall inside of: a little black hole that would eat me up.

Names
    Rat boy. Freak. Monster. Freddy Krueger. E.T. Gross-out. Lizard face. Mutant. I know the names they call me. I’ve been in enough playgrounds to know kids can be mean. I know, I know, I know.
    I ended up in the second-floor bathroom. No one was there because first period had started and everyone was in class. I locked the door to my stall and took off my mask and just cried for I don’t know how long. Then I went to the nurse’s office and told her I had a stomach ache, which was true, because I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Nurse Molly called Mom and had me lie down on the sofa next to her desk. Fifteen minutes later, Mom was at the door.
    “Sweetness,” she said, coming over to hug me.
    “Hi,” I mumbled. I didn’t want her to ask anything until afterward.
    “You have a stomach ache?” she asked, automatically putting her hand on my forehead to check for my temperature.
    “He said he feels like throwing up,” said Nurse Molly, looking at me with very nice eyes.
    “And I have a headache,” I whispered.
    “I wonder if it’s something you ate,” said Mom, looking worried.
    “There’s a stomach bug going around,” said Nurse Molly.
    “Oh geez,” said Mom, her eyebrows going up as she shook her head. She helped me to my feet. “Should I call a taxi or are you okay walking home?”
    “I can walk.”
    “What a brave kid!” said Nurse Molly, patting me on the back as she walked us toward the door. “If he starts throwing up or runs a temperature, you should call the doctor.”
    “Absolutely,” said Mom, shaking Nurse Molly’s hand. “Thank you so much for taking care of him.”
    “My pleasure,” answered Nurse Molly, putting her hand under my chin and tilting my face up. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
    I nodded and mumbled “Thank you.” Mom and I hug-walked the whole way home. I didn’t tell her anything about what had happened, and later when she asked me if I felt well enough to go trick-or-treating after school, I said no. This worried her, since she knew how much I usually loved trick-or-treating.
    I heard her say to Dad on the phone: “… He doesn’t even have the energy to go trick-or-treating.… No, no fever at all … Well, I will if he doesn’t feel better by tomorrow.… I know, poor thing … Imagine his missing Halloween.”
    I got out of going to school the next day, too, which was Friday. So I had the whole weekend to think about everything. I was pretty sure I would never go back to school again.

Far above the world
    Planet Earth is blue
    And there’s nothing I can do
    —David Bowie, “Space Oddity”

A Tour of the Galaxy
    August is the Sun. Me and Mom and Dad are planets orbiting the Sun. The rest of our family and friends are asteroids and comets floating around the planets orbiting the Sun. The only celestial body that doesn’t orbit August the Sun is Daisy the dog, and that’s only because to her little doggy eyes, August’s face doesn’t look very different from any other human’s face. To Daisy, all our faces look alike, as flat and pale as the moon.
    I’m used to the way this universe works. I’ve never minded it because it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve always understood that August is special and has special needs. If I was playing too loudly and he was trying to take a nap, I knew I would have to play something else because he needed his rest after some procedure or other had left him weak and in pain. If I wanted Mom and Dad to watch me play soccer, I knew that nine out of ten times they’d