The Wonder Spot Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    After introducing himself, Moreh Pinkus rummaged through his briefcase for what turned out to be the attendance sheet. He read it over, and even then hesitated before speaking; it occurred to me that he didn’t trust or like his voice.
    He called my name first: “Applebaum, Sophie?”
    â€œHere,” I said.
    He looked up at me for a long moment, so long I wondered if he’d divined how much I didn’t want to be there. But he did the same with the next person and the next—calling the name, studying the face—until he said, “Muchnick, Margie?” and there was no answer.
    It seemed possible that she had dropped out or was in the other class, and I hoped that she had or was. Margie Muchnick was one of the girls who lived on or around Foxrun Road—the Foxes, they were called—and though I wasn’t one of their main victims, nobody was immune; they’d nicknamed me Sofa and tortured me about Eric Green.
    Moreh Pinkus repeated, “Muchnick, Margie?” and she walked in and said, “Here.”
    Inexplicably, she sat at the desk next to mine.
    Margie was short and solid, dressed in a baggy sweatshirt, jeans, and black high-tops. She had a round face and wore her red hair in two bunches, big fat frizz balls. Her eyelashes and eyebrows werealmost white, and she had the yellow-brown eyes I imagined a fox might have.
    I didn’t acknowledge her, let alone mouth, Hi, as I had to my other un-friends. I pretended not to see her, just as I did when I ran into any of the Foxes.
    There was an embarrassing silence while Moreh Pinkus waited for her to apologize for her lateness; then he looked down at the attendance sheet and read the next name.
    To make up for Margie’s rudeness, Leslie Liebman helped Moreh Pinkus distribute our Hebrew I textbooks.
    Margie flipped through the lessons and exercises. “Fascinating,” she said.
    At the blackboard, Moreh Pinkus wrote out the Hebrew alphabet; slowly, slowly, slowly he said the name of each letter, pronounced the sound it made, and waited for us to repeat after him.
    It was hot, and Moreh Pinkus removed his suit jacket and draped it around his chair. When he returned to the board, I saw that he’d missed a belt loop. I noticed, too, that he wore a wedding ring, and I thought it might not be a bad idea for Mrs. Pinkus to look her husband over before he left the house.
    I tried to focus on Moreh Pinkus, but it was hard.
    Margie pushed her sleeves up, revealing a wristful of baby bracelets—seed pearls interspersed with tiny alphabet cubes on a chain that turned your wrist green—last year’s symbol of friendship. I’d lost mine in the ocean, but now, just as Moreh’s wedding band revealed that he was married, my bare wrist seemed to announce that I was friendless.
    I kept wishing Margie hadn’t sat next to me. I wondered if it would attract too much attention for me to change desks.
    She herself solved the problem. She had a coughing fit—a loud one—and you could tell it was fake. I thought that she was trying to amuse herself or to get our teacher to turn away from the board. But she was just setting up the pretext for her escape: She left the room, as though in need of water.
    I felt better as soon as she’d gone. With the rest of the class, I repeated after Moreh Pinkus, but the Hebrew letters refused to enter my brain. I fell into a bored daze, which I interrupted only to check the wall clock and will its audible minute hand to tick faster.
    I pretended to take notes, looking up at the board and down at my notebook, while I wrote out the words to Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited.” I lingered over “God said to Abraham kill me a son/Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on,’ ” which seemed pertinent.
    It wasn’t until I had to go to the bathroom that I realized how long Margie had been gone. She’ll be back in a second, I