Winston stood up, and the cafeteria fell silent. Every boy and girl in the fifth grade were staring at him, waiting to see what he would do next. Even the teachers’ aides were watching. Winston’s muscles twitched with fear. His breath was fast and ragged. His heart bashed against the walls of his chest as if it were trying to escape.
He struggled with even the simplest math and when he tried the read the letters were all scrambled up. The other kids always laughed at him. That hurt, but sometimes people are hurtful. His mother told him that the first day he came home from school crying.
“You can’t let them ruin your day,” she’d said.
He knew she was right. Life was hard for her too, but she always put on a smile for him. She didn’t know that he could hear her stifled sobs through the wall when he lay in his bed at night.
He wasn’t good at school stuff and didn’t have many friends, but there was one thing he’d always been good at and he was going to show them now. Winston cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and sang. His voice rose up in the air and echoed through the room, bouncing off the large windows that ran along the ceiling. It was like a light bursting out of him, a fire that could not be put out.
Winston’s soul expanded to hundred times to size his body as he let the song pour out of him. He was relaxed now, riding the wave of music into another world. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was singing on a stage in front of a crowd of people who had come just to hear him.
When he stopped the cafeteria was so quiet they could hear the squeak of the marker on the whiteboard in the class across the hall. Winston opened his eyes and the other children looked like they were frozen in time. Then a teacher’s aide started to clap. She stood up, the bangles on her wrist jingled as she put her hands together. As if on cue everyone stood and filled the room with applause.
Winston bowed, sat down in his chair, and took a bite of his pizza. Now they all knew what he knew. He was good at something.