Leon and the Spitting Image by Allen Kurzweil Read Free Book Online Page A

did,” Lily-Matisse said, sounding a little embarrassed. “She tends to go for flashy colors.”
    “So it would appear,” said Miss Hagmeyer neutrally. She moved on to Leon’s outpost, where she found not one, but two pieces of cloth.
    “I suppose it’s a start,” Miss Hagmeyer said of the pink scrap covered with after-school practice stitching. She then harpooned the hotel hand towel with her instructional needle and read out loud the faded blue words woven into terry cloth. “‘Property of Trimore Towers.’ How very
utilitarian.”
    Leon kept his mouth shut. Exhausted from lack of sleep, he was nevertheless alert enough to know that asking the meaning of “utilitarian” would get the word tacked onto the weekly vocabulary test. His decisionproved wise. Miss Hagmeyer ended her inspection and turned to the supply cabinet.
    Leon cast his eyes on the blackboard as she removed the padlock. He wasn’t about to get caught sticking his nose where it didn’t belong a
second
time, thank you very much.
    Miss Hagmeyer spent a minute or so retrieving a few sewing tools. She then secured the doors and returned to the front of the room. Once satisfied that the supplies were properly positioned on her desk, she picked up her instructional needle and said two words no student likes to hear: “Pop quiz.”
    Over the resulting groans, she aimed the needle at Thomas and said, “Mr. Warchowski. Stitch number three. Name it.”
    “Chain,” Thomas managed.
    “Correct…. Miss Brede, number one?”
    “The first stitch of virtue is the running stitch, Miss Hagmeyer.”
    “Correct…. Mr. Zeisel, number six?”
    “Umm, satin?”
    “Incorrect!” snarled Miss Hagmeyer. “The answer is directly above your head.” She pointed at a poster taped to the wall.
    “Overcast?” Leon said sullenly after glancing at the picture of the severed hand stitching up a seam. He’d spent so much time struggling to master the stitch, he hadn’t memorized its numerical rank.
    “Bravo, Mr. Zeisel,” Miss Hagmeyer said sarcastically. “For the future, I expect you to know all stitches of virtue both alphabetically and by number.” She put down her needle. “Right. Let’s move on to my worksheets.”
    As the handouts made their way around the room, Miss Hagmeyer registered some snickering.
    “Miss Jasprow, does something amuse you?”
    “No, Miss Hagmeyer,” Lily-Matisse said, suppressing a giggle.
    “Perhaps you would like to share your wit with the rest of the class.”
    “It’s just that it says ‘animiles’ on the top of the page,” said Lily-Matisse.
    “It’s
supposed
to,” Miss Hagmeyer replied curtly. She retrieved her chalk holder and wrote the following word on the blackboard:
    animiles
    “It’s a medieval variant of
animal
and shares a Latin root with ‘animate,’ as in living or making alive. All the creations sewn in my class will be called ‘ani
-mile
s
’—not
‘ani
-mals.’
Why? Because ani
-mals
tend to be smelly, uncontrollable beasts that bite and bray and refuse to show respect. On the other hand, ani-miles … ”
    Miss Hagmeyer turned and tapped the blackboard.
    “… ani-miles do
not
bite. They do
not
bray, and … ”
    She paused to glance at Lily-Matisse.
    “… they do
not
giggle disruptively. It is my expectation that by making ani-miles you will cease to act like ani-mals. Does everyone understand?”
    A chorus of “Yes, Miss Hagmeyers” filled the room.
    “Good,” she said crisply. “Now begin.”
    Leon felt tense as he leafed through the handout, a nine-step project that was supposed to transform a scrap of material into a decorative stuffed snake.
    Step one required Leon to measure a six-inch-by-ten-inch rectangle on the towel he’d brought from home. That was a snap. Step two—cutting along the marks—wasn’t too tough either. The trouble only started with step three. That’s when the actual sewing started.
    Leon managed to make an okay-looking chain stitch down the middle of