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Leaf Coneybear knows something none of his siblings seem to. Which is very exciting and very, very, very super cool because that’s never, ever happened before.
(Well, actually, though, sometimes he knows more about something; because things like bird calls and cats and making his own clothing is cool so he spends weeks with his head buried in his dad’s old Aubadon journals or bent over the sewing machine-- but someone else always knows about that stuff before he does. He’ll tell them his fun facts, hands all excited-buzzy and brain ping-y and wanting to share it, but no matter what, Landscape or Marigold or Brooke will roll their eyes and go ‘uh, yeah, Leaf, everyone already knows that’.
But this is something he knows first. This is something Leaf knows before everyone.)
He keeps it in his back-left pocket like a secret (squished between a cool feather that he found in the parking lot and the six napkins his mom made him bring because his nose drips and she didn’t want him wiping it on his cape in front of a bunch of people): he’s smart.
He’s smart, he’s smart, he’s smart!
He hums it around the chewed up plastic of his juice box straw. (He’s smart!) He finished the juice a while ago, but he’s been puffing air into it so the sides bow out in-between his hands and then squashing it all out. Over and over and over again. (He’s smart! He’s smart! He’s smart!)
He knows he should probably find his family, but he’s gotta do something first.
On the car ride over his dad had turned back in his seat and told him: ‘Heya Leafy-Green, after the Bee make sure you congratulate the winner.’
And he nodded, and then asked, even though, if he’s being honest, he’d known he wasn’t really gonna, but he was curious, ‘Okay. But what do I do if I win?’
His siblings had all laughed and his dad blinked at him a thousand-hundred-times like he’d never considered that was a possibility, and said, ‘Just, well-- hm. Be a good sport, bud.’
And he’s trying to be. He really, really, really is.
But after the ceremony ended it’s like everyone in the whole, entire world had the same conversation with his dad, and everyone in the whole, entire world flooded together all at once to talk to William Barfée-accent-aigu.
It sort of reminds him of ants; the ones that live in itty-tiny-bitty hills across the forest behind his house, and the way they’ll all crowd up around the organic-snack-crumbs he leaves them, a billion little black wiggly things crawling and eating and, Leaf can only assume, talking.
He wonders if ants have competitions. They probably wouldn’t spell, because they don’t have books or anything, but they can carry up to fifty times their own body weight, so maybe they have Carrying-Heavy-Things-Bees… or, maybe, they’d call them Carrying-Heavy-Things-Ants? (Wait, no, that doesn't work, that would be like if it was called a Spelling Human-- which would just be silly. Bees, then.)
The people gathering around William Barfée-accent-aigu are a lot bigger than ants, though, and he’s had a very, very, very hard time pushing his way through to the middle to tell him ‘good job’ and ‘congratulations’ and ‘I like your name ‘cause it sounds funny’.
He knows he probably coulda done it, theo-ret-ically. Most of the people are adults, and he’s a lot shorter, it’d be easy-ish to duck under their arms and squeeze in between them. And he tried, he really, really, really, really, really, really did, but it’d gotten all hot and loud and squeezy and bad (the kind that makes his stomach flip around himself like he’s gonna throw up) so he’d had to stop.
He scrambled up onto the tippity-top of the bleachers a bit ago so he could watch from the new high ground, knees pressed up against his chest and sunk between two rows of seats. Puffing the sides of his juice in and out and in and out and in and out. It’s nice up here, even if he can’t say congrats from so far away. Quieter-ish but there's enough to look at he’s not bored.
He can see Miss Rona Lisa Peretti, in her pretty-swishy-bright-dress, as she makes rounds shake shake shaking hands, and Mr. Panch smoking a cigarette fast in the corner where Leaf is pretty sure he’s not supposed to because there are, like, a lot of no smoking signs, and Marcy Park shoving a concession stand Butterfinger candy bar in her mouth messy-fast. Leaf wonders if she’d share. He doesn’t think so.
He can’t see any of his brothers or sisters, or his mom and dad. He saw them at the break, when Pinecone had poked him hard-sharp-don’t-like-when-he-does-that-hurts in his side and asked how he was cheating.
Which he wasn’t. Because he didn’t have to. He was smart.
He wonders if they forgot him. They do that sometimes, and they always come back when they realize, so the possibility doesn’t concern him much.
The ant-crowd around William hasn’t budged, if anything it’s grown, and Leaf’s finding himself… stuck. And he sorta kinda wants to cry about it. Earlier today, before he knew he was smart he might have.
Luckily, he does know now, he’s smart, so he sucks the air out of his juice box and tries to work out of plan to unstick. ‘Cause at least for right now, he can’t congratulate the winner, which he’s gotta if he wants to be a good sport. So, to him, at least, it feels like the next step is to congratulate the almost winner.
Second place.
Which is perfect because he’d wanted to do that anyways.
Olive Ostrovsky was nice and pretty and complimented the stickers on his helmet, and he thinks he wants to be her friend. He’s not very good at friend making, it’s not something he’s got much practice in, but she seems like an okay start. He wants to ask if she’s got an email address and maybe, if she does, if he can give her his email address so they can talk.
But if he tilts up on his knees he can see that she’s next to William Barfée-accent-aigu. And that kinda makes things tricky. Stuck again.
(Which is frustrating because he’s already decided that he might ask William for his email address too. He hadn’t wanted to at first, ‘cause William seemed sorta scary, but then he’d happy-cried when he won, and said thank you, which are nice things. And Olive seems to like him, so Leaf thinks he’s okay.)
(And, anyways, his Mom always says he’s not supposed to ‘judge a book by its cover’-- which, according to Brooke, when he asked, means he’s not supposed to rely on first impressions.)
So, bad news: first and second place are unreachable.
But, good news: Leaf came in fifth.
Logic dictates and stuff that there are two whole other people ahead of him in the winning-line, so if he can’t get to first and second, he has to go find third.
He can’t see Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre anywhere, even from his bird’s-eye-viewpoint, but he knows she’s still gotta be there because he can see one of her dads (and he knows its one of her dads because she’d mentioned them during the Bee, so he watched her during the break to see them, because he hadn’t known you could do that. Have two dads. Be a dad who has another co-dad. It’s very interesting. He’s put it in his pocket for later with the feather and the tissues and his smartness).
He hops down from the bleachers one step at a time, grinning as they clang-shift underneath his sneakers, and lets the too-many-people crowd bounce him over to Logainne’s dad.
He was planning on just asking him where she is, and maybe about the two dads thing, but he’s on the phone when he gets there, talking mad-quiet-fast. And Leaf knows he’s not supposed to talk to people when they’re on the phone.
(Especially not on a cell phone. Both because it’s rude, and because his mom and dad say cell phones are kinda like microwaves. They’ll give him radiation poisoning in his brain, like too much television or laptop computers or getting an x-ray or the big, order screens at McDonalds, which is why they aren’t allowed to eat there, he thinks.)
“Well, Dan, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe she went to the bathroom! She’s got to be here somewhere!” Mr. Logainne’s dad says, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he tugs a bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket and starts squishing it between his fingers. Leaf wonders if that helps with the radiation; cleans it off, maybe, “Just find her. I want to leave soon, before we hit traffic--”
He thinks about waiting to see if not-Dan-dad can help. It kinda sounds like they don’t know where Logainne is either, but it’s rude to eavesdrop on grown ups, so asking would make it sound like he hadn’t been. But then he gets bored.
So, he heads off down the shiny-tile hallway on his own.
He checks all the bathrooms first, because her dad had mentioned them when he was-wasn’t-eavesdropping, but she wasn’t there. Not in the boys ones or the girls ones (he kept his eyes closed for the girls ones, so he thinks it’s fine that he went in). He keeps his head swiveling, even though it makes him kinda dizzy as he walks down the hallways in case she’s there. She hasn’t been.
She was pretty little, though, like, size wise, so he starts checking in the lockers he can open up, just in case.
He guesses if he can’t find Logainne he can go congratulate fourth-place-Marcy. If she’s still there.
Fifth place really is a beautiful place to be, he thinks. It keeps his options nicely open.
He’s about to give up, or, at least, pause his search, when he hears something that isn’t buzzy-fluorescent lights and his own sneakers squeaking against tile. A sniffle almost. Sob-kinda.
And he doesn’t think that’s gonna be Logainne, she came in third, that’s basically first minus two, but he follows the sound anyway. Leaf cries a lot, even when he’s not supposed to or his siblings say it’s a stupid time to be upset, so maybe Logainne is like him. Or, maybe it’s happy crying. Either way it’s worth a shot.
The door to the classroom where the noises are coming from is closed, but it’s not locked, so Leaf lets himself inside. All the lights are off and the blinds are pulled shut, and he blinks like forty-five-hundred times, trying to adjust to the dim-dark, shadow-y lighting of the room.
(He thinks he likes it better than the too-bright-ness of the well lit hallways and gym, even if it does make him kinda sleepy.)
Logainne looks up, startled and half hidden behind the light spots still swirling across his eyes. She’s curled underneath a desk with her back pressed against the attached chair. And she’s definitely crying. And not the happy crying Leaf had been hoping for. Her whole face is pink and wet and squished upset-tiny.
For some reason, he’s kinda surprised.
But he’s smart. He’s smart, smart enough to place fifth in the Putnam County Spelling Bee and smart enough to start a custom cat cape business and smart enough to teach himself how to play fourteen Leaf Coneybear Original Songs on the harmonica and kazoo. He can be smart enough to help a crying Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre. Probably.
“Hey, are you okay?” He asks, trying his very hardest to be quiet, but she still flinches in on herself into an even tinier ball.
“Go away.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he sits down next to her, just outside of the desk.
(If having six siblings has taught him anything it’s that ‘go away’s and ‘leave me alone’s aren’t really hard and fast rules the first time someone says them. The, like, third time's when you actually gotta start listening. And, then, running and hiding, usually.)
Logainne cries weird, he thinks to himself, fiddling with the zipper on his sweatshirt. She takes in these big, gaspy breaths and then holds them for longer than Leaf thinks he’d be able to. And Leaf can hold his breath for pretty long. (Sometimes, when his family goes to the lake over the summer, he’ll go underwater for so long that his mom thinks he drowned and sends one of his older brothers to pull him out.)
He considers telling her that it’s impressive, holding her breath for such a long time, but she heaves out another choked-sounding sob as he opens his mouth, and instead the compliment comes out like, “What's’a matter?”
“None of your business,” She wheezes, sharply, before taking in a steady 1-2-3 normal breath and saying, softer (but still kinda serious and grown-up-y), “I mean, I… I would rather not discuss it.”
“...‘kay.”
She rubs her fist hard underneath her eyes, still crying, but breathing in that weird, 1-2-3 pattern. He offers her one of his pocket napkins to use as a tissue.
She hesitates for a long, long, looo-ooong second. And then she takes it. It feels like a victory. Another just-as-good-as-fifth-place win.
“Just. I…” She sniffs hard, “I wasn’t supposed to lose!”
“Oh,” He hums, spinning the statement around in his head so all the sides are visible. It’s kind of a silly thing to say, if he really thinks about it. He giggles a little, shrugs, “I was.”
She blinks, so surprised that she kinda stops looking sad, “What?”
“I was,” He shrugs, again, “I actually did super, super, super better than I was s’pposed to.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh. Okay, you’re ‘scused,” he hums, disappointed. He’d wanted to at least talk to her a little longer. He’d… he’d had something to tell her. (Wait. What did he want to tell her again?)
“No, not like--” She puffs out her cheeks, but this time she’s not holding her breath, really, “What do you mean you weren’t supposed to win? That is the entire point of entering a spelling competition.”
“Bee.”
“What?”
“It’s a Spelling Bee. I know it’s kinda tricky--”
“I know it’s a Bee,” She snaps, mean-sharp-loud and he shrinks into his cape a little. He was just trying to help, “But the only reason you even competed today was because you already won your local Bee, so--”
“Nu-uh. First and second place couldn’t come ‘cause they had a Bar Mit-z-vah. I was the second alternate,” He tells her proudly, and she bites the inside of her cheek.
“Right. Yes, they did say that earlier,” She squints at him like she’s trying to count his freckles or read his mind or something, “Hm.”
(He thinks about the two real winners. Would they have won? Probably.
Ellie Anderson, who’d come in first, had gotten words like cardiopulmonary and zephyr, and second-place Joel Gonzalez hadn’t gotten out until demitasse, and who’d even know what that meant.)
(But it doesn’t matter, Leaf’s real smart even if he can’t spell Chinchilla. Couldn’t. He can now. C-H-I-N-C-H-I-L-L-A.)
“Well,” Logainne considers him some more, chewing her cheek even harder, “What preparation did you do?”
“... preparation?”
“Preparation,” She repeats, “Like… like flashcards, or crosswords, or analyzing the dictionary, or… or sensory deprivation--”
He shrugs, tilting his head so it falls against his shoulder, “I sat in the woods.”
“And?”
“I dunno,” He hadn’t really… done anything to learn how to spell, it was just the light and the fun of stringing letters together and not hearing a bell at the end. Spelling just sorta made sense and then it happened. Like breathing or going outside during a storm and sticking his tongue out to catch raindrops, “I took my cat out there sometimes with me and read to her out loud. Does that count?”
“No.”
Her face has gone weirdly, sorta, kinda pink-ish. Almost like she’s mad. Which would make sense, Leaf’s been told he makes people mad real easy. But he also doesn’t want her to be mad. He wants to help.
“What did you do for preparation?”
She scoffs, “I don’t just give my spelling tips out to the competition… but… um,” She sucks in a new breath sharply, and holds it. He leans forward and counts the seconds quietly in his head, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, until she lets go of it, “I guess you are no longer… competition. Are you?”
He shakes his head, “Nope.”
“Unless you come back next year,” She accuses, eyes going steely, and he shrugs.
“I prob’ly won’t.”
It’s not that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to, he knows he could, now, but Leaf goes through phases (like real leaves do, which he thinks is cool). He had his mom sign him up for his local Bee on a whim, and 365 days from now he can’t really guarantee he’s gonna be in the same mood. He’ll still like spelling, yeah, but Leaf isn’t much of a competitor. He likes games where there aren’t any winners just as much as ones where there are.
Logainne stares at him with thin, flat lips, “I don’t… appreciate how casually you seem to take this whole endeavor.”
“Sorry--”
“If you're going to be a speller you have to take it seriously. I mean, did you even have one of your family members make a list of this year's words so you could use it as prep for next year?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer, “Of course you didn’t. And you came in fifth! That’s only two behind me! Which brings the entire moral sanctity of the entire event into question, because it’s completely and entirely unfair that someone who got in as second alternate and didn’t even study can come so close to me when I worked so damn hard--”
She’s talking a lot. He sinks into his cape, fidgeting with the finger puppet in his pocket. And listens. And thinks about how she fits a lot of words into one tiny body. It’s impressive. Like the breath holding.
(Though, to be fair, maybe they have something to do with each other. Talking fast and holding her breath. Maybe her whole chest is just a big pair of lungs. Like a blue whale, kinda.)
“I just think it’s not fair and square, that in stupid Spelling Bees--” Suddenly, she stops talking; cuts herself off so fast her last word squeaks a little. She stands up, fast-quick and glares down at him, eyebrows scrunched together. She’s definitely, definitely, definitely mad now, “You're such a… a jerk!”
He looks up, head tilting confused without his say so. He hadn’t even said nothing, so he doesn’t really understand how he could be a jerk. Usually, when Leaf is a jerk (which isn’t often, he’s more annoying than mean) at least his mouth is involved.
He goes to ask, but when his mouth cracks open he realizes that his tongue is through his teeth, hissing out a steady, thin thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Whoops.
He figures that must be what she’s mad about. Like, she thinks he’s making fun of her lisp instead of it just being a thing he does. Mimicking cool new sounds without thinking about it.
Whoops, whoops, whoops.
He flaps his hands nervously in her direction before she runs away, “I didn’t mean to!”
She crosses her arms, “Sure.”
“No! Honest, I didn’t! My mouth copies noises sometimes. Like a Catbird.”
There’s plenty of other birds who mimic sounds too. Crows are good at it, and Mockingbirds, obviously. But he likes Catbirds better. They’ve got the word cat in their name and everything.
“Oh,” Logainne blinks, and she doesn’t sit down but her arms uncross, so he thinks he must’ve said something right, “Like echolalia.”
His head does another confused-tilt (which ends up with him sorta uncomfortably bent because he hadn’t actually un-tilted from before), “What?”
“Echolalia,” She repeats, like she’s reading from a long, complicated kind of textbook that would make Leaf’s head hurt, “It’s a behavioral disorder where you mimic other people’s words without meaning to. It’s usually connected to ADHD or Autism.”
“Huh.”
“Do you have ADHD or Autism?” She asks, slowly.
He shrugs, twisting his hands in his cape while he thinks about it. He doesn’t think he super knows what those are. He remembers that his mom and dad had said something about autism being one of the many, many reasons why they weren’t allowed to get vaccinated a while ago, but it’d been more of a general conversation; not Leaf specific.
Apparently it’s a good enough answer, though, because Logainne makes a low, steady hmmmm-ing sound, and then very carefully settles criss-cross-applesauce back down on the floor next to him. Outside of the desk this time.
He smiles over at her using all his teeth. She just sort of stares back.
The room settles quiet around the two of them.
Awkward and uncomfortable and… and, well, Leaf knows he came in here to say something specific, which would break the silence, but all of a sudden he can’t remember it. Which is frustrating.
“... ‘m’sorry you lost when you weren’t s’pposed to,” He mumbles, eventually.
And Logainne doesn’t say anything, just kinda rocks back and forth quietly, left knee touching the floor to right knee touching the floor and then all over again, which is okay. Leaf likes to rock sometimes too.
He just wishes he could remember what he came in here to say. He’d known it, and he’s smart, so he knows it’s in his head somewhere, but he’d gotten distracted and lost it when he saw her crying earlier.
He balls a bit of his cape into each fist while he thinks it over. Something about… the Bee. Right. And her coming third because he couldn’t get to Olive or William.
Oh. Right.
“Congratulations!”
Her head whips over to him, braids spinning so they wack against her ears, “For what?”
“Coming in third. That’s like… almost winning. Even if it’s not actually winning. You came real close. So I wanted to congratulate you too, not just say sorry.”
She squints, and then does the same eye-roll-y thing Marigold has started doing when he says something weird, “Whatever.”
“You did really good.”
“I didn’t win, though,” She repeats, like he doesn’t know that. (He’s starting to think that, maybe, Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre is one of those people that thinks winning is more important than it actually is.)
“Well… yeah, but you knew, like, all those really long words,” He thinks back on her up at the microphone, the way she stood still and confident and just knew stuff right off the bat. She barely ever needed a definition or use in a sentence or anything, “And your arm-write-y thing was super cool.”
“... thank you.”
He nods, going back to twisting his cape-ends in between his fists, feeling the fabric stretch against his back, “You're welcome.”
The room goes quiet again. There aren't even mechanical buzzy noises from the lights ‘cause he never turned them on.
Leaf doesn’t like quiet much, he’s not really used to it. Back home there’s always people yelling or talking over one another or running around so the floorboards echo thud-thud-thud, and they always keep the windows open so even if everyone was asleep there's birds and tree leaves rustling against one another and windchimes.
“Do you have an email address?” He asks.
His voice sounds extra, extra loud because of the silence, but Logainne doesn’t look at him, or answer, so he figures, somehow, she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she’s more used to quiet, he considers. Miss Rona Lisa Peretti hadn’t mentioned her having any siblings during her fun facts.
He asks again, louder, trying to sound clearer, because he really, really, really, really, really wants to know, “Do you have an email address?”
Logainne leans away from him fast, face annoyed-looking and her hands pressing over her ears.
Whoops, that was shout-y.
“Sorry,” He offers, “... do you have one, though?”
“Obviously,” She says shortly, sliding her hands back onto her knees.
“Can I have it?”
He has so many things he could email. More bird facts or cat facts or sewing ideas or stories he thought up or, even, spelling things. He could ask her about her dads, and how she gets her braids so high, and about going to not-home-school. Friend things.
“No.”
Oh. Shoot. He tries not to look disappointed but his face always goes scrunchy when he’s sad, even if he doesn’t want it to, “... ‘kay.”
Logainne’s eyebrows shoot up a little, and then her face does a scrunchy thing too. Not sad like his, though. Thinking, maybe. She rolls her eyes again, and groans, “Ugh, fine.”
“Huh?”
“Sure. You can have my email address,” His smile splits across his face so fast it kind of hurts his cheeks, and she tilts away from him a tiny bit, looking sort of startled before insisting, “But only for professional use. I don’t want you to clutter up my inbox with any
spam.”
“Okay!” He nods hard, again and again until his head goes dizzy. He’s not totally sure what ‘professional use’ entails specifically, but it’s gotta leave room for at least a couple of cat facts, right?
He scrambles his hands at the pockets of his cargo shorts, trying to find the marker he knows is in there so she can write her address on his arm, but before he can find it, she’s pulled a tiny, flip-top notebook out of the inside of her blazer.
“Cool.”
She nods, like she agrees, tugging a blue click-y pen out of the same inside pocket, and quickly writes something down.
“Here,” She bends the paper at the top, ripping it in a perfect-straight line along the perforated loops on top, and hands it over. Her handwriting is just as teeny-tiny as she is, small, neat, sorta slant-y letters that he’s kinda gotta squint to read. [email protected].
He beams, shoving the little paper into its own, special pocket; mostly empty, except for a couple of pony beads he forgot to take out after his last self lead art class.
The clock on the wall across from them tick-tick-ticks, quietly, and he squints up to read it. Three-forty-eight. He’s been here longer than he thought. Especially since the Bee ended at three-oh-nine.
His family probably came back for him by now if they had left, so he should go find them. And, since it’s been a little, the audience-ant-crowd has maybe-hopefully died down, so he’ll have time to get Olive and William’s email addresses too, if he’s lucky.
“Wanna go back to the gym together?”
Logainne buries her face into her knees, which… is odd, he thinks. As an answer to his question. After a second she mumbles, “I… I dont wanna have to face my dads.”
“Oh,” He wonders if it has something to do with the there’s-two-of-them thing, “Why not?”
“They're gonna be so disappointed.”
“Huh,” He doesn’t think that has anything to do with the there’s-two-of-them thing.
He knows she said she was supposed to win but she came in third. His mom and dad were really excited with Leaf’s fifth place… so, maybe it is a two dads thing after all, “Well… that's dumb.”
She snaps her head up and glares at him. He doesn’t really get why.
Instead he pushes himself standing, hopping a couple times to wake all his fingers and toes and knees and elbows up, and offers her his hand, “Wanna go congratulate the other winners with me first, then?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“But--” He pauses, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and she sits up a little, straightening her blazer, “But, I should, though. It… reflects a strong moral fiber.”
“Yeah!” He nods a couple times, for emphasis, “And then after we can find our parents, and they won’t even be mad about anything because we were being good sports.”
Logainne snorts, and for some reason, making her laugh lights up in his chest like fireworks. He knew he could cheer her up. He’s just smart like that, “That’s… absolutely not the case. But fine.”
He beams, offering her his hand again, and she takes it so he can help hoist her up off the ground.
(And, Leaf knows he’s light, because his dad can still throw him up in the air the way he can with Raisin and Paul, and Raisin and Paul are eensy, but Logainne whips up like she doesn’t weigh nothing at all. Like scooping up one of his cats.)
He grins some more. She sets her jaw sorta kinda like a smile, and leads him out of the classroom.
She lets go of his hand as soon as they're in the hallway, but that’s okay, just like it’s okay that she holds her breath for, like, half the walk instead of talking.
(He’ll tell her that it’s impressive in his first email.)
Leaf always smiles easily, even when nothing is particularly smile-y, it just sorta settles on his face and sticks there, but he smiles extra hard as they walk next to each other. He doesn’t think he could stop if he wanted to, but he’ll never really find out for sure, because he doesn’t want to. It’s a day that calls for smiling.
Because now Leaf knows two things before any of his siblings. Two.
He knows that he’s smart, smart, smart, which would have been good enough on it’s own. But even better, he knows that he made a friend. A real friend. A friend he kinda made laugh, and who is going to maybe make more friends with him. A friend who gave him her email address.
Today has the best day in Leaf Coneybear’s whole entire life.
He can’t wait to go home and tell his cats about it.