Where I Belong by Mary Downing Hahn Read Free Book Online

The hall is crowded with kids, pushing and shouting. I don’t know where my classroom is and I’m scared. There’s too much going on, too much noise.
    Trying not to be noticed, I edge along a wall of lockers until I see an exit sign. Without even thinking about what I’m doing, I escape through a back door into the summer heat. A teacher calls after me, but I run as fast as I can across the playground.
    Can’t catch me
, I think.
I’m the gingerbread boy
.
    Once the school is safely behind me, I slow down. Mrs. Clancy is at the mall by now, so I don’t need to worry about her seeing me. The whales are most likely playing boring team sports or swimming at the country club pool. So I wander along a street lined with tall trees whose roots have pushed the sidewalk up here and there. Big old-fashioned houses sit back from the street on grassy lawns. Wedged in between them are bungalows and ramblers and brick apartment buildings. A power mower roars somewhere. Birds sing. A few cars pass me. It’s not hot yet, just cool and damp with the smell of freshly cut grass. No one is waiting around the corner to beat me up.
    I hear a train whistle and head for the railroad tracks. In a few minutes, I plunge into the cool silence of the woods. I look for the Green Man but he’s not in sight. Disappointed, I climb up to my platform and survey the treetops. Green as far as I can see in all directions, rippling in the breeze. It’s like being on a ship at sea.
    Â 
    A week after summer school starts, I come home from the woods at suppertime to find Mrs. Clancy waiting to pounce on me. She’s the cat. I’m the mouse. She’s big. I’m small. She’s mad. I’m scared.
    â€œWhere have you been all day, Brendan?”
    â€œAt school in the morning and then hanging out with some kids in my class,” I answer without hesitating. If I take too long to answer, she’ll know I’m lying.
    â€œAnd what did you learn today?”
    If I tell her the truth—I learned a new shortcut to the woods, I patched my tree-house roof, I drew three pictures of wizards and dragons, I almost finished my unicorn head—she’ll be outraged.
    â€œOh, just the usual,” I say. “Some math stuff, state capitals, and what President Wilson did way back in the 1800s.”
    Her face is growing grimmer with every word. Maybe I went too far with President Wilson. Got too specific. What if he wasn’t president in the 1800s? Maybe it was earlier, maybe it was later.
    â€œTell me what President Wilson did in the 1800s.”
    â€œHe bought Louisiana from the French?” Or was it the Spanish?
    â€œFor your information,” she says, “Wilson was president during World War One. Afterward, he started the League of Nations.”
    I look at the floor. Who’d have guessed Mrs. Clancy knew that much about Woodrow Wilson? I should have said Calvin Coolidge. Most people don’t even remember his name.
    â€œIt so happens I got a phone call from school this afternoon. The principal wanted to know why you haven’t attended a single class.”
    Mrs. Clancy’s eyes are boring a hole in the top of my head. What brains I have will leak out and make a mess on her spotless kitchen floor. “Where have you been? What have you been doing all this time? How are you ever going to amount to anything if you don’t have an education?”
    Although she doesn’t say it out loud, she’d like to say,
You worthless boy, why do I even care what happens to you?
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    The next morning Mrs. Clancy drives me to school, but this time she goes inside with me. Straight ahead is the principal’s office. I feel sick. I have a history with principals, and it’s not pretty. Mrs. Funkhauser sends me to the office about once a month. I’m used to Mr. Padgett, the principal at my school, but this is a different school and a different principal.
    The school