An excerpt from "Inklings"

All afternoon, it seems, we’ve been learning multiplication tables. The spring air coming through the windows doesn’t help my concentration, nor does a wasp that lazily skims the tin ceiling. I love the tin ceiling, how high up it is. Also, the ceiling comes in handy during math. The rows of panels act as a sort of abacus — I can do all sorts of math up there: counting, subtracting, multiplying the panels. Other times I envision crossword puzzle designs, imagining which panels I would color in if I were up there. And of course I am attracted to the corners of the room.

I’ll shift gears and focus once it’s time for art. Today we’re making Easter baskets from construction paper. But for now I home in on one corner in particular, the one toward the front of the room near the windows. I want my eyes to be like my fingers, somehow reaching up there, penetrating deeply into the very point of the triangle where wall meets wall meets ceiling.

“Hey, Cobra,” whispers the boy behind me, tapping the back of my head with a pencil. “What do you keep looking at up there?”

I glance down at my handout, pretending I didn’t hear him.

Still, the corner of the ceiling is irresistible.

“Stop it,” the boy says.

Trying not to stare at the corner is like being thirsty on the hottest day of the school year but not being allowed to leave the room to get a drink. The more you can’t get a drink, the thirstier you become. You raise your hand and ask your teacher if you can be excused to get a drink, but she says no, you just had a drink a little while ago. You’ll have to learn patience, she says. But your mouth is so dry and you just know you’re going to die. In this moment it’s the corner I thirst for.

“I said stop it,” he says, jabbing me in the back. “What’s wrong with you, Cobra?”

I never know if kids call me Cobra to make fun of my last name or because I’m always sticking out my tongue. I can’t look away from the corner.

He grinds the pencil into my back. I worry that the point will break off under my skin and cause lead poisoning. I begin to tear up. But I dare not cry — then I’d really have problems on the playground.

I notice my teacher glaring. “Will I have to separate you two?”

I don’t want her to think I’m a troublemaker. I shake my head no.

To put the corner out of my mind, I try to distract myself.

Closer to ground level, the wasp is bouncing off the glass of the tall double-hung windows, attempting to get out, unaware that just a little ways down, where the window is open, the coast is clear. The wasp takes a breather on one of the paper eggs taped to the windows.

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