The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR MAC AND JESS AND SAM AND IAN,

  BROTHERS AND SONS.

  YOU ARE THE BEST BOYS I KNOW.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: The Stoopid Shirt

  Chapter 2: The Swoof

  Chapter 3: Better Than Stoopid

  Chapter 4: Our Place

  Chapter 5: Talk to the Dragon

  Chapter 6: Mornings

  Chapter 7: Two Pretzels

  Chapter 8: Big Yellow Chips

  Chapter 9: The Sled

  Chapter 10: Boom

  Chapter 11: Lieutenant Baird

  Chapter 12: The Cluster Stop

  Chapter 13: Calvin in the Crumbledown

  Chapter 14: In the Room Upstairs

  Chapter 15: Feeding the Dragon

  Chapter 16: Annalissetta Yang

  Chapter 17: UPS

  Chapter 18: A Pair of Poems

  Chapter 19: The New Part

  Chapter 20: Applesauce

  Chapter 21: Brambles and Loppers

  Chapter 22: Permission to Enter

  Chapter 23: The Door Swings

  Chapter 24: French Lesson

  Chapter 25: Inside Bishell’s Hardware

  Chapter 26: The Chumsky Parents

  Chapter 27: Seeking a Tube

  Chapter 28: The Fight for the Tube

  Chapter 29: Sand and Paint

  Chapter 30: Bad Timing

  Chapter 31: The Big Dig

  Chapter 32: End of a Day

  Chapter 33: Extinct

  Chapter 34: The Lieutenant

  Chapter 35: One Stuck Window

  Chapter 36: Capping the Shaft

  Chapter 37: The Big Pink Cloud

  Chapter 38: The Chumsky House

  Chapter 39: The Bad Day in the Diner

  Chapter 40: Disturbing

  Chapter 41: Drawing the Aurochs

  Chapter 42: The Dead Man

  Chapter 43: Rocks and Words and Glitter

  Chapter 44: Distressed

  Chapter 45: Wednesday Mode

  Chapter 46: Run, Split, Run

  Chapter 47: Supper Call

  Chapter 48: The Search for Calvin Chumsky

  Chapter 49: The Last to See

  Chapter 50: Hot Rain

  Chapter 51: Emergency

  Chapter 52: Extrication

  Chapter 53: Trouble for Breakfast

  Chapter 54: Caving In

  Chapter 55: Aurochs in the Orchard

  Chapter 56: New Dialogue

  Chapter 57: The Big Wrong Piece

  Chapter 58: The Best Boy

  Chapter 59: The Truth from the Dragon

  Chapter 60: Columbus Day Comes

  Chapter 61: Visit with Calvin

  Chapter 62: Moonie Houdini

  Chapter 63: Chicken Dinner

  Chapter 64: Columbus Day Weekend

  Chapter 65: Smarter

  Chapter 66: My Great Reach

  Chapter 67: The Lieutenant’s Puzzle

  Chapter 68: One Week Gone

  Chapter 69: Family Plan

  Chapter 70: Home by a Nose

  Chapter 71: Row of Yellow Boards

  Chapter 72: When a Dog Goes Home

  Chapter 73: Apple Crisp

  Chapter 74: Last Apple

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Leslie Connor

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  chapter 1

  THE STOOPID SHIRT

  Tell you what. I already know who stuffed this T-shirt into my locker. Matt Drinker did that. He took a Sharpie to it first. Fat black letters. He wrote STOOPID on it. Same way I spelled my word in the spelling bee on Friday morning.

  A kid like me does not belong in the spelling bee. But it is for all of seventh grade. This is not how I would kick off the school year, but I’m not in charge. Elimination rounds start in the classrooms.

  I’m eliminated.

  I saw a movie about a spelling bee once. There was a girl, and she had a magic about her. She could hear her word—any word at all—and the letters wrote themselves in the air. It happened in swirls and sparkles with fuzzy bees and fairies making glitter trails. The letters opened like apple blossoms. They flowed like paint off a brush. Always the right letter.

  People said that couldn’t really happen, seeing things that way. It was just a movie trick. But I believe what that girl saw. At least some.

  I see things too. But no fairy wings. No flowers blooming.

  Here is what happened on Monday morning: I heard my word.

  Stopped.

  Had to be the easiest word ever in a seventh-grade spelling bee. Tell you what. I knew I was going to spell it right. Stopped has double letters. I like those. It is like getting a two for one. Well, too bad, because as soon as I thought of that, I thought of another word. Starts with the same sound and has double letters somewhere around the middle part.

  Stoop.

  I have been with my brain for twelve long years. I know how it puts things wrong. So I closed my eyes. I thought, okay, Mason, don’t let that in your head. Don’t go spelling stoop. That’s not your word. Your word is stopped. Under my eyelids I started to see the letters. That’s why I say it is like the girl from the movie. I can see the letters. But for me they go ugly. They fade or swell up. They slide away. If my eyes had pinchers on them, I’d grab at the letters and hold them still.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  You cannot take your time in a spelling bee.

  Stopped.

  S and T.

  Those were correct. I knew they were. I said them. I got the safe feeling. The spelling timer ticked again.

  I tried to see the letters. Clear. But they fuzzed. Then they blobbed. I have seen it plenty of times.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. I thought, please let me get this. I saw fat letters. Blurry letters. Then came the other thing I see. Color. Happens sometimes. This time it was the dirty green. Floats in like smoke. Happens when I can’t get to the right answers. That green, it is the color of pressure. On me. A spelling bee is pressure.

  I rolled my eyeballs behind my lids. Tried to erase all that mess. My brain got itself caught on that other word: stoop. Double letters.

  Tick. Tick.

  I saw two Os.

  I said two Os.

  Somebody snorted.

  I knew I was wrong. Knew I had to finish. Get it over with. I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. Stopped. I heard a P sound. I said it quick. Knew there was something more. T on the end? No! D! It would be D on the end. But not just D . . .

  Tick. Tick. No time.

  I said, “I and D.”

  What I spelled was S-T-O-O-P-I-D.

  What it sounded like was stupid.

  The buzzer sounded. That whole classroom roared.

  Matt Drinker loves when something like that happens. That’s why I’m guessing he put this STOOPID shirt inside my locker. He must have picked my lock to do it. Funny thing is I knew what the shirt said because of the two Os in the middle. I knew in two blinks.

  Matt doesn’t know it but he did me a big favor. I always take two shirts to school. Unless I forget. I change just before lunch. This is because of how I sweat. It is a lot. Can’t stop it. Can’t hide it. I need to be dry at the lunch table. Otherwise I’m a total gross-out of a kid.

  Well, today was a day that I forgot my extra shirt. So I’m wearing this one that says STOOPID on it. It’s big and it fits me. It’s clean and dry. I’m going to keep moving. Maybe nobody will see what it says.

  And if they do, well, tell you what. Plenty worse has happened.
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  chapter 2

  THE SWOOF

  Other kids look up to me in the hallway. They have to. I’m the biggest, tallest seventh grader at Merrimack Middle School. By a lot. Today, I’m moving fast. They laugh when they see me. Laughing is better than no laughing. I smile. I know I look funny. Like a big walking billboard for STOOPID with two Os.

  I’m skipping the cafeteria. It is a wild place. Seems like a STOOPID shirt could start a food fight. I am headed to the SWOOF. That’s Ms. Blinny’s room. I take giant steps all the way down the hall. I think about this: The SWOOF has double Os in the middle. Like the word on my shirt.

  Funny name, the SWOOF. Ms. Blinny made that up. She used some little tile letters. They came from a sign that said SOCIAL WORK OFFICE. I know that because Ms. Blinny told me. She was making the SWOOF sign the day I met her. Mrs. Lorenz from the elementary school brought me over to the middle school on the last day of fifth grade so I could meet her friend.

  We walked through the front part of the office where there is a big soft couch and two beanbag chairs. Also, a lava lamp and the little table with a snack basket on top. There are posters on the walls and a whole lot of clutter. Ms. Blinny’s desk is the last thing, tucked behind a bookcase by the window.

  Something smelled hot in there the day I went to meet Ms. Blinny. Sure enough, she was holding a glue gun in one hand and pushing those letter tiles around on her desk with the other. Pink paint was drying on a nice wooden shape. A pink paintbrush was drying onto her desk. Ms. Blinny sure was busy. But when she saw me, she looked up and smiled.

  She said, “Oh yeah! Mason! Glad to meet you.” The smile got bigger. She stayed looking at me—like a person shining from the inside out. At me. Her glue gun dripped a glob of hot stuff onto her papers.

  I said, “Be careful!”

  She said, “Oh! Oops! Dripping!” Then there went another string of glue. She grabbed for a tissue, but she spilled a tub of glitter beads across the desk. She smiled with a big open mouth and bright happy eyes. “Ha! Look at that, Mason. A sparkle spill!” She took a picture of it. That has been her screen saver for more than a year now.

  There was a new SOCIAL WORK OFFICE sign on the door when school started last September. I mean the plain kind. Like the school puts up. But Ms. Blinny had finished her glitter project too. She stuck her pink SWOOF sign on the door. Tell you what. Makes the room easy to find.

  I like the way she is, Ms. Blinny. How she spills things and doesn’t wait for paint to dry.

  So today, I turn the corner into her room. Breathe out a breath. The kind that means you made it home. I like the SWOOF. I am always welcome here.

  chapter 3

  BETTER THAN STOOPID

  I’m the only kid in the SWOOF today. But I won’t be for long. It’s a stopping-in place. I poke my head around the bookcase. I tell Ms. Blinny hello. She is working. But I can interrupt her if I am polite about it. I hold up my lunch bag for her to see. I have twisted the top into a thing that looks like a pumpkin stem. It’s wet from me sweating it up.

  I say, “Okay if I eat in here?”

  She says, “Sure!” She pushes a button on her desk phone. She tells the office, “Hello. I have Mason Buttle and I’m keeping him for a while.” She says keeping as if everyone should want to keep me.

  At the end of the call, Ms. Blinny stands. She is small even in her tall boots. She looks up to me too. She tilts her head. She is reading my shirt. The letters that spell STOOPID. She says, “Mason? Want to tell me about the shirt?”

  I look at my chest. Ms. Blinny might already know about the spelling bee. She knows lots of things about me.

  I won’t tell that I think it was Matt Drinker who put the shirt in my locker and I won’t tell why either. I say, “It’s clean and dry. It’s handmade.”

  She says, “Handmade . . . hmmm. I don’t like it. It’s derogatory.”

  I shrug. Derogatory must be bad. But what am I going to do about it anyway? My morning shirt is all sweated up. It’s in a bag inside my locker.

  Ms. Blinny opens her desk drawer. Pulls out a roll of duct tape. The decoration kind. Purple plaid. She pulls off two strips. Tapes over STOOPID like she is crossing that off me. Then she takes out a Sharpie of her own. She says, “Mind if I write on you, Mason?”

  I tell her, “Go ahead.”

  Being written on is tricky. Ms. Blinny has me tuck a copy of the Merrimack Gazette up the front of my shirt. I look down and watch her write. She puts three words.

  There’s a thing to know about me: I can barely read. I can’t read right side up and I sure cannot read upside down. But now she is drawing a picture too. She draws two squares with corners overlapping. Connects the sides with four lines. I know this one. It is a box.

  Ms. Blinny finishes. She backs up. She puts the cap on her Sharpie. Good thing, because she’s tapping the end of the marker on her bottom lip now. She smiles. Big white teeth. She says, “Wait, wait! I just thought of something else.” She pops the pen open again.

  She writes two more upside-down words. Puts a question mark on the end. She says, “Done!” I peel the Merrimack Gazette out from under my shirt. The front page is wet from my sweat. We agree that I should put that in the recycle bin, and I do.

  I tug on the bottom of the shirt. Look down the long front of me. I ask Ms. Blinny, “What do I say now?”

  She reads. “THINKS OUTSIDE THE . . .” Then she points to her drawing. Looks up at me.

  I say, “Box?”

  She says, “Yes!” Then she reads the last part. “CAN YOU?” She chirps that part like a bird. She says, “Your shirt makes a statement and asks a question. It is a curiosity!” She smiles, Sharpie waving in the air.

  I nod. I say, “Guess that’s better than STOOPID. Just one thing, Ms. Blinny. What does it mean?”

  She says, “Thinking outside the box is a skill. It means your mind is big and open, Mason. If you can think outside the box, you have no limits! That’s you!” Ms. Blinny is smiling. At me.

  I say, “And it is not derogatory.”

  She says, “Not one bit.”

  I run through that again. THINKS OUTSIDE THE BOX. Memorize it.

  She says, “Okay. Get comfy and have your lunch, Mason. Oh, and think about some of the things you and I always talk about. Let your mind go deep. When you’re done eating, I have something new for you to try.”

  I choose the one hard chair in the SWOOF. I can dry it off later if I sweat it up. I untwist the top of my lunch bag. Wonder what Ms. Blinny has planned. Wonder if my mind can be deep.

  Then I think this: Well, I guess my mind can be outside a box. Maybe that’s a start.

  chapter 4

  OUR PLACE

  When I say that Ms. Blinny knows a lot about me, I mean she knows because I tell her. She says I talk a blue streak. She thinks I have a story. Funny thing. She is not the only one who thinks that. Lieutenant Baird thinks it too. He thinks I have a story about my best friend, Benny Kilmartin. More than I already told him. He gave me that notebook. Wants me to write in it. But that is a nightmare for a kid like me.

  Ms. Blinny means a different story. More like the whole thing about me. My story. She talks about that like it’s something I’m sitting on. Like I could pull it out from under me. Like a copy of the Merrimack Gazette. Like any old time now, I will say, Here. Here’s the true story of me. Mason Buttle.

  Some people might think they already know my story. That’s just because they live around here. Some stuff is plain. Some stuff is right where you can see it.

  If you lived in Merrimack you might know our place. It’s the crumbledown house out on Swaggertown Road. Sits on a good bit of acres that used to be a whole lot more. Developers. My uncle Drum says we can’t live without them. My grandma says we should have tried.

  You might know our orchard. You might remember it looking alive as a hive late in summer. PYO. Pick Your Own.

  If you are like me your eyes about pop out of your head at how quick the developers dozered
down the trees. They are still building. New houses. Up the hill and down the hill from our place. You might look at our house sitting in the middle and wonder why it looks like somebody emptied a dustpan over it.

  I try. I sweep up the porch. Pull weeds in the front. But I am now and then about it. I don’t keep up. Uncle Drum says just leave it. Then another shingle drops off the roof. Lands in the yard.

  But that crumbledown is still home. The place I start from every day. If I had a story it might begin there. But tell you what. It would not be long before I got to the parts that could ruin anybody’s lunch.

  I sit in the SWOOF staring at my sandwich. Not eating. Must be my mind has gone deep.

  I think this: Benny Kilmartin is a part of my story. Best friends since first grade. The Kilmartin place is not far down the road from my house. Walking distance. I went to Benny’s house a lot. And he came to mine. Like brothers with two homes. So I got close with Benny’s dads. Andy is the most at-home dad. A carpenter. A housepainter. Benny’s other dad is Franklin. He works in an office in the city. But it was Andy who always watched for the bus. So I miss him. But most of all, I miss Benny.

  Benny’s been gone since the end of fifth grade. Springtime. Apple-blossom time. That’s a year. Plus a few months. He died in May and now it is the second September since. Second bloom. Second apple time. I think of the apples because Benny died in the orchard. Our orchard.

  That’s the story Lieutenant Baird wants. I already told him. I told everyone. I found Benny still as a stone right under the tree fort. I saw the ladder was broken. Top rung snapped. Hanging. Saw that just before I tried to make Benny Kilmartin breathe again. I guess it was not the best ladder. I told everyone that I was sorry about that. I wish I’d built that better. But that ladder was not broken at suppertime when I jumped down from the tree fort. Heading for home. I got no idea what made that rung give out. I didn’t then. And I don’t now.

  So now you know it. My best friend is dead.

  Tell you what. Puts a fly in my head thinking about what happened to Benny Kilmartin.

  chapter 5

  TALK TO THE DRAGON

  I look at my lap. Got the end of my sandwich sitting there. I don’t want it. My lunch seems pretty ruined. I ball that up with the bag. I mop dry with two napkins as best I can. The sweating is always ahead of the mopping with me. I look up. So far, I’m still the only kid in the SWOOF.