What Hearts Read Online Free PDF

proficiency from every boy, in every school. Though he had never been anywhere long enough to learn team sports, when it came to portable skills, he could play . In the classroom his strengths had come out clearly, too, as he was called on for this and that. He could be counted on to whip through big-number multiplications and divisions in his head with an arrogant immediacy. And hislong sentences—which filled themselves in as they wound their way around the subject of a question, opening impossible challenges of tense and sense in their early clauses but always, always coming to a brilliant conclusion—became a kind of group exercise in suspense and release as everyone felt the momentum pick up, heard the possibilities for error accrue, kept track of the bits that would be required for final resolution, and applauded with laughter as he boisterously provided them. He would have bet that his classmates, if asked about him, would not have recalled in their first thought, or even their fifth, that he had been inserted into the class six weeks into the year.
    So it was something of a shock when Mrs. Brock clapped her hands one afternoon early in his third week and said, “All right, my little prima donnas, we’ve been taking it easy, but now it’s time to rehearse for Show Night,” and everyone separated into configurations he had never seen, twos, fives, boys with girls, singletons. He stood at his desk, blinking, uncertain. Right away Mrs. Brock noticed him, and puther hands on her cheeks in mock horror.
    â€œAsa, what a chucklehead I am,” she said. “I completely forgot.”
    She explained that every year the PTA kicked off its membership drive in the late fall with a variety show put on by a single class. This year was the fourth grade’s turn. During the second week of school, each child had chosen something to do for the show. Six of them together were enacting a play they had written about the first Thanksgiving. Two others were putting together a clown act, in which, she suspected, they planned to throw a few of the pies used as props by the earlier pilgrims. One girl was dressing up as Robert E. Lee and giving short speeches about how the South actually had won the Civil War. What, she asked, did Asa want to do?
    What did Asa want to do? Well, his project had been making friends, his concentration so keen that, at this moment, he was unable to think of himself doing something alone.
    It did not take Mrs. Brock long to sense that he was at a loss. She motioned to the three solo acts, two boys and the girl who would beRobert E. Lee. They came over. “Okay,” she said. “Who wants a partner? Amy Louise?”
    â€œMrs. Brock I cannot possibly,” said the girl, clearly offended, perhaps by the implication that Robert E. Lee could be joined as an equal by anyone, or perhaps by the implication that she herself could.
    â€œFine. Generals can be very difficult colleagues anyway, Asa,” said Mrs. Brock. “How about you, Harold?”
    Harold looked confused. He often did. “It ain’t nothing but radio,” he said.
    â€œOf course, of course.” Mrs. Brock patted his shoulder. “Harold is a ham radio nut. His performance is to set up his receiver and pull in a broadcast from Russia. Very exciting, but not the sort of thing that invites collaboration. Well, Joel?”
    Joel was a tall boy with fuzzy hair and a red face, all the parts of which seemed to be straining outward in a parody of aggressive friendliness toward all: his eyes popped, his nose arched, his cheeks bulged, even his teeth seemed to reach. He had spoken to Asa often, especially in his first days in the class; he hadeven invited the new boy over to play at his house after school two or three times. Asa had not been much interested; he had more challenging conquests to mount. Now, at the prospect of sharing, Joel was about to burst with goodwill.
    â€œMrs. Brock, Asa would be