The TV Kid by Betsy Byars Read Free Book Online Page A

fire. His leg twitched again, frog-like, and the pain almost made him faint.
    His strength was leaving him rapidly. He was so weak now that he had to sit down or he would collapse. Moving his leg as little as possible, Lennie eased himself down on the top step. With a sigh, he reclined against the porch railing.
    After a moment, even weaker, he let himself lie on the porch. He sagged. All his strength was gone. His leg felt like a sausage in a frying pan.
    He looked up at the porch ceiling. Rain had seeped through the tar and shingles of the roof and stained the boards. Lennie saw it all in a kind of blur because he had started crying again.
    All of a sudden Lennie found himself remembering a poem. Lennie knew only one poem. He had had to learn it for a school assignment.
    “If everyone else can memorize a poem, you can too, Lennie,” his teacher had said.
    “But why can’t I substitute a TV jingle? They’re poems. They rhyme.”
    “No, Lennie.”
    “But listen to this. Why isn’t this a poem?
    “Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce,
Special orders don’t upset us,
All we ask is that you let us
Serve you—”
    “No, Lennie, that’s not poetry.”
    “Well, here’s another one. What’s wrong with this?
    “Hotdogs, Armour hotdogs.
What kind of kids like Armour hotdogs?
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who—“
    “Lennie for the last time, you are to learn a poem. Advertisingjingles are not poetry.”
    Lennie could no longer remember the teacher’s name—he had had twenty-three different teachers in all that year—but he could still remember his poem and how bright the sun had been, slanting into the room, as he said it. It was as if the audience were lit up for the occasion instead of the stage.
    “The July sun is gone,
The August moon.
September’s stars are dim,
October’s bright noon.”
    “I am curious,” the teacher had said when he had finished. “Why did you select that particular poem, Lennie?”
    He had selected it because all the months of the year were in it, and that would make it easier to memorize. He already knew the months. “It just appealed to me,” he had said.
    “Why, Lennie?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you think the poet had in mind when he wrote the poem?” The teacher, interested in Lennie for the first time, crossed in front of her desk.
    “Let me think.” Lennie put his hand to his chin at this point to give the impression of deep thought. Lennie had always had a hard time arranging his face in the right expression. Looking interested or studious was especially hard for him. He sometimes thought he needed acting lessons on being a person.
    “Do you think he was just talking about one year passing?” the teacher went on. “Or do you think, Lennie, that the poet was seeing his whole life as a year, that he was seeing his whole life slipping past?”
    “I’m not sure.” Lennie’s hand was still on his chin as if ready to stroke a long gray beard.
    “Class?”
    “His whole life slipping past, ” the class chorused together. They had had this teacher so long that they could tell, just from the way she asked a question, what they were supposed to answer.
    “I was just getting ready to say that,” Lennie mumbled into his hand.
    And now, two years too late, Lennie knew what they were talking about. The poet had meant his whole life. Lennie knew because he saw his whole life slipping away too. In exactly the same way. July’s sun. August’s moon. September’s stars. October’s noon.
    He closed his eyes and the tears came again, hot and fast. He couldn’t remember the rest of the poem. What was it he would miss about November and December? He squeezed his eyes shut tighter in determination. He stuck out his jaw.
    Then his body went slack. He sighed. He realized that he would miss everything about the world. He would miss all the reruns of Bonanza and Star Trek. He would miss shows that hadn’t even come on the air, midwinter replacements he didn’t even know