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Aria came up next to her and scanned the page of text. “The color keeps the letters from jumping around all over the place.”
She stared at the little girl. “What did you say?”
“The letters usually move when I look at them. But they’re not so wiggly with the color. Can I see your notebook again?”
“Sure.”
Aria opened to the first song and traced a line of text. “Penny’s…sisters…are not…nice. They smell like…they live with a…family of…mice.” She looked up. “Is that right?”
Aria had read them perfectly.
“It is.”
The child beamed and set the notebook on the bed. “Sometimes, the letters flip around or parts of them breakaway, but it’s different with the color on top of the words.”
Could Aria be a neurodivergent learner like her?
“The letters used to do that to me, too,” she confessed.
“They did?” Aria exclaimed, wide-eyed.
“Yeah, words in books and musical notes. Musical notes used to be really tricky for me.”
Aria nodded. “That’s why I hate school and especially hate music class. I can play anything I hear on the piano. I used to play with Mommy before…” The child glanced at Landon, then trained her gaze on the notebook. “Anyway, at school, the teacher makes you practice writing the notes on paper and makes you look at them on the board. I can’t do it. It’s so easy for the other kids. That’s why I had to punch Jason Huber when I was in first grade at my old school.”
“Was he mean to you?” she asked, taking a knee to be at the girl’s level.
Aria twisted the tutu’s brown tulle. “He made me so, so mad. First, he laughed at me when I couldn’t read the morning message on the board in the classroom, and then he called me stupid head when I couldn’t name the notes my music teacher wrote on the staff where music goes. So I got up in the middle of class and punched him right in his belly. He fell on the floor and started crying like a big old baby,” she finished, lifting her little chin.
The little brawler.
“And then you had to go to the principal’s office, and the school called your grandparents and me,” Landon added. His countenance had done a one-eighty. His laughing eyes darkened. And she had a feeling Aria’s behavioral issues at school weren’t the only thing weighing heavily on his heart.
“Yeah, I got in big trouble,” Aria admitted, casting her eyes to the ground. “And they made me say sorry to stupid Jason Huber.”
Poor thing.
She could sympathize. She’d pummeled her fair share of crummy kids who’d made fun of her or her friends. “You know what, Aria?”
“What?” the child asked, dragging her toes over the edge of the rug.
“Jason Huber sure sounds like a giant douche nozzle to me.”
The girl stopped messing with the rug, and a mischievous twinkle glinted in her eyes.
Oh yeah, she’d dropped the douche nozzle, and Aria was there for it.
She feigned mock embarrassment. “I mean, I should say that he sounds like a,” she began, then tapped her foot three times and whispered, “douche nozzle.”
It was seriously the best word for describing…well, douche nozzles.
“He’s the king of the,” Aria replied and knocked out three foot taps.
She smiled at the little scrapper, who also appeared to be a neurodivergent learner, just like the people she taught online.
Did Landon know? Did her old school know, or did they chalk up her troubles to a bad attitude?
The little girl retrieved the notebook and pored over the page. “Maybe I have rainbow reader eyes. Maybe the rainbows calm the letters down and keep them in their place.”
