New Beginning 1028

Inside her first clubhouse, Lacy Dawn glanced over fifth grade spelling words for tomorrow’s quiz at school. She already knew all the words in the textbook and most others in any human language.

Nothing’s more important than an education.

The clubhouse was a cardboard box in the front yard that her grandmother's new refrigerator had occupied until an hour before. Her father brought it home for her to play in.

The nicest thing he's ever done.

Faith lay beside her with a hand over the words and split fingers to cheat as they were called off. She lived in the next house up the hollow. Every other Wednesday for the last two months, the supervised child psychologist came to their school, pulled her out of class, and evaluated suspected learning disabilities. Lacy Dawn underlined a word with a fingernail.

All she needs is a little motivation.

Before they had crawled in, Lacy Dawn tapped the upper corner of the box with a flashlight and proclaimed, "The place of all things possible -- especially you passing the fifth grade so we'll be together in the sixth."

Please concentrate, Faith. Try this one.

"Armadillo."

"A, R, M, … A … D, I, L, D, O," Faith demonstrated her intellect.

"That's weak. This is a bonus word so you’ll get extra points. Come on."

Lacy Dawn nodded and looked for a new word.

I’ll trick her by going out of order – a word she can't turn into another punch line.

But something had changed.

Faith began rattling off the vocabulary words: "pianist," "Uranus," "mainstream," while Lacy Dawn did her best to make them funny: P, E, N, I, S . . . . Y, O, U, R,   A, N, U, S . . .  W, A, N, K, C, H, E, E, S, E.

They stopped.

"We've switched bodies," said Faith. "Hey! Now I can pass math!"

Lacy Dawn nodded. She suddenly saw her future. Now she was dumb enough for the boys to like her.


Opening: Robert Eggleton.....Continuation: Khazar-khum