Mockingbird

by Kathryn Erskine

I try not to listen to Dad because I’ve had all the empathy I can take right now. Empathy can make you feel really sad.

I think about quarter-cut oak and how I still don’t actually know what that means. I know what an oak is. We have an oak tree in the backyard. I know what a quarter is. I have forty-seven in my State Quarters Map because Illinois and Florida and Iowa fell out and are under my bed somewhere I think. And I know what it means to cut something. I look up quarter cut in my Dictionary but there’s no definition. I guess I have to put it together myself so quarter-cut oak is oak you cut with a quarter. I have forty-six quarters in my State Quarters Map now because Virginia is coming out to cut the oak tree.

You have to Work At It, Dad. You have to try even if it’s hard and you think you can never do it and you just want to scream and hide and shake your hands over and over and over.

I know, I say, after he says, This is hard, for the third time. This is what happens when you have a TRM, I tell him. You make a mess. It’s okay. You just have to try harder next time.

I guess the good news is that everybody has to put up with being special because everybody is alive.

Empathy isn’t as hard as it sounds because people have a lot of the same feelings.

I don’t even need the chart any more. Not now that I know they’re MY manners and I can do whatever I want with them.

Now I’m ready to use them because I figured out how I’m going to draw the whole complete picture. I smile and begin.