"I think maybe you're dyslexic."

Both he and Grammy stare at me like I'm crazy.

"No offense," I say and spear a cubed potato with my fork.

I have recently seen a talk show about this, if you can't tell. And it's all coming together now. Like a bullet into my back; I didn't see it coming. I don't know where it came from, but suddenly my whole idea of the world shifts as it penetrates.

"Dyslexic?" Grammy asks me and her voice loses its elegant timber, becomes croaky like an old woman's voice always seems, but hers never is. She drinks lemon water all day. One of her vanities.

"Uh-huh."

"I suppose that might make some sense," my dad says, not eating at all now, just staring at me with those blue eyes of his, waiting for me to go on.

"Well, you aren't a stupid person. I mean you're always asking people questions and watching PBS and learning things. You know tons of facts about everything, right?" I say.

"Your father is the king of trivia," Grammy says. "Ask him anything. But he was never as bright as his brother."

My dad frowns and starts eating again.

"That's where you're wrong, Grammy. I think Dad is smart. It's just that his brain works differently. Dyslexics transpose numbers. They have a hard time reading. Even using the calculator can be difficult because they switch the numbers they see on a page around before they get them into the calculator. It isn't something bad. It's just that their brains process things in different ways."

My dad swallows some more roast, washes it down with some milk and keeps staring at me, waiting for more. I think about the bracelet on his ankle. That has nothing to do with being dyslexic. Being dyslexic does not make you want to wear anklets or pierce your belly button (not that my dad has; thank you, God). I guess what I mean is, I think about all the ways my dad is different, and how hard that must be for him.

"Einstein was dyslexic, wasn't he?" he asks, smiling.

"He had some sort of learning disability," I say.

"Brilliant man." Grammy plucks a few tomatoes off her plate and puts them on mine. They are the same firehouse red that I once painted my dad's toenails. That was a long time ago, when he still lived at home and I was only three or so. I didn't stay on the nails, and colored the hair on his toes, everywhere. When my mother saw what we had done she flipped, dumped a bottle of nail polish remover on his feet and got it all over the rug. The color of the carpet leached right out and I couldn't understand where it went.

They got divorced pretty soon after that.

"A lot of dyslexics are brilliant," I say, "but a lot of them are so upset about their reading capabilities, their transposing of letters and numbers, that they never realize that they are."

My dad's smile slows across his face and his hand shakes a little bit. He changes the subject. "How are Mike O'Donnell and your mother? Is he going to find a place soon?"

I shrug and lift some potato onto my fork. "He's still looking for a job."

"She needs more milk," Grammy says and motions for my father to refill my glass.

My dad gets up with the pitcher and pours the milk into my glass. I can smell his clean smell, a soap and lemon detergent kind of smell. Very different than Mike's.

"He used to be quite a drinker," my father says.

Grammy scowls. She is still, more than half a century after the movement passed, a prohibitionist. "Who?"

"This friend of Rita's," he says, sitting back down.

"Mike O'Donnell," I say, giving him a name. "Thanks."

"Irish. All of them are drinkers."

"Grammy!" I say. "That's offensive."

"It's true," she says. "Just like the Moravians are all depressed."

"I'm not depressed," I say and plunk a tomato into my mouth, feeling the juices of it spurt against my teeth.

"The young," Grammy says to my father, completely ignoring me, "are all such liars."

When he tucks me in, my father puts his hand on my knee where it's upraised under the covers and says, "I'm sorry I forget to feed you on Sundays and about the child support checks and all that."

I look straight ahead at the double circles of light on the ceiling. "It's okay."

He squeezes my knee. "No. No, it isn't. I know I'm not perfect, that I'm not the perfect dad. Thanks for sleeping over. I wish you'd do it more often."

"Maybe I will." Sometimes he is a such sweet man. After a second, I ask him, "What's up with the ankle bracelet thing?"

"You saw that?"

"Uh-huh."

He laughs. "It brings out my eyes."

He blinks them really fast and flirty, and then rolls them.

I laugh too, and our giggles echo against walls of this tiny bedroom and join the sound of the classical music Grammy always plays at night, reverberating in the darkness. One car comes down the road and then another, each shining their lights inside the room for a few moments, and during these seconds I sneak a glance at my dad. He looks happy.

"Do any of your trucker friends know about it?"

Laughing again, he spreads his arms wide open and says, "What do you think?"

"I think some of your trucker friends might knock you some good," I say.

"Either that or ask me home."

He fluffs the bed covers, pulls the comforter to my chin like I'm a little girl. The soft weight of it makes me feel all cozy safe. The smell of clean sheets is comforting, so I smile, and then he asks, "Do you really think I'm dyslexic?"

I tell him yes, and then I spend the rest of the night wondering about how people can be so many things that they don't even know. How my dad could be dyslexic all his life and not realize it. How my mom could be selfish and not know it. How about me? What could I be and not realize? God, I hope it's something good, and not like World Champion Bratwurst Eater.

Of course, at play rehearsal, every time Sasha and I sit down she wants to talk about my sister. It's her new mission. We scrunch up in the auditorium seats. I hug my hands across my chest and we talk.

"We have to do something," she says. "It's ridiculous. It's like, oh yeah, we can do stuff about women in Sudan but not your sister?"

I bite my lip and scrunch down lower. I stare at the ceiling. It has water stains. Someone shot a pencil up there and it hangs, waiting to fall.

"We have to tell people," Sasha insists. She looks at me all earnest. "We have to."

I nod. "But what?"

"That," she sighs dramatically. "I don't know."

Everything is high drama with Sasha, which is good because it's interesting. But sometimes I wish she were a little more like Nicole and we didn't have to save the world or be amazing actresses or deep thinkers for just a minute or two.

"I don't know either," I say. I imagine lassoing Brian and dumping him in a pig's pen. I imagine branding his big beefy Budweiser butt with a WB for wife beater. "But we've got to do something."

During a break in the action Stuart Silsby yells, "It smells like feet in here."

Up on the stage, Paolo looks at me and I can tell he's trying not to laugh. I look away first. He has a hula skirt on over his jeans. He looks mortified. Stuart lifts it up and looks under it.

"Enough, Stuart." Mrs. Gallagher stops consulting with the boys on how to dance the hula without looking girlie for a long enough time to point her long, crooked finger at Stuart. He shrugs.

He trots over to us, and Sasha makes a big sweet look and says, "I'm sorry Stuart, we can't talk right now. Personal stuff."

"Oh, the rejection," he croons and skips away.

I sort of wish Stuart would stay. I draw a heart on my jeans. It's lopsided. "There's no one to tell."

"How about your dad?"

I shrug.

"Your mom's boyfriend?"

"I don't know," I say. "He's a little weird."

I almost tell Sasha about the empty bottles and how he stands outside my door, but she's already worried about my sister's cheek and I don't want her to think we're total trash, all talk show and stuff, because we aren't. Not really. We just are right now. Fortunately, Mrs. Gallagher's scream saves me.

"Enough! Can't you be secure enough in your masculinity to wear a goddamn hula skirt? Jesus!" she yells, then throws up her hands. "Get off my stage!"

The boys all hoot and celebrate and yank off their hula skirts, throwing them into the air. She calls Sasha up on stage. Paolo jumps down and I gulp when he heads directly towards me.

He plops into the seat next to me, slings one leg over the seat in front of him. "You okay? You look sad."

I shrug, tilt my head a little and look into his big eyes. I'd like to tell him, Mr. Wayne, I really would, but it's like my mom said, there are no hero men. We've got to be hero women now.

"I'm good," I lie.

He gives me the look of scrutiny, squinting a little at me, and then he decides to accept things I guess, because his shoulders relax. He has big shoulders like you. I can see him walking down those western streets. I start to blush.

"I'll pick you up for the game Friday, okay?" He shifts his weight so that he leans back against the chair. One hand crosses in front of his belt and the other hand kind of rests under it like he's some sort of Latin American movie star posing for a shot. Only Paolo is not posing.

And me? I want to touch him, sneak my hand under his, grab the belt loop of his jeans and pull him closer. It's all warm and gooey inside me like I'm just one big want. My face must be bright red. "You can drive?"

He blushes now. "Not officially."

Imagine with me, Mr. Wayne. There he is, Paolo Mattias, with a black baseball cap, yee-hawing down the streets of Merrimack. He's got one hand on the wheel, the other around my shoulders and he's driving free with fourteen lawmen behind him, all ready to take him to the brig because he doesn't have a license. The car leaps over the top of a hill, careens down a dirt road kicking up dust behind us, but the way ahead is clear.

"My brother's going to drive us," he says, chasing my thoughts away.

He has little dimples in his cheeks when he smiles. Sometimes he looks like you, Mr. Wayne, all man-confident and able, and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he looks like a boy.

Paolo and I both have nothing to do for the last hour of rehearsal. He's waiting on his brother for a ride. I'm waiting on Sasha and Olivia. Sasha's up on stage, waddling like she weighs 875 pounds or something and hamming it up. She's so brilliant even Mrs. Gallagher cracks up. Stuart keeps forgetting his lines.

"Stuart!" Mrs. Gallagher yells. "Have you read the script?"

He sulks into himself and goes, "Yeah. I have."

She points at him. "Then prove it to me."

Sasha jumps out of character. "They're difficult lines. I'll practice with him. Lily will too. Right Lily? Maybe this weekend?"

"Yep!" I yell from where I'm sitting in the bleachers cranking out the geometry homework. I alpha-dog stare at Mrs. Gallagher. She surrenders.

"Fine, try it again. Stuart, go get your g-d script."

Stuart hustles off stage right to get his g-d script. Paolo leans over my shoulder. "You want to leave?"

I'm slamming my math book and notebook into my bag before I can even answer. "You bet."

As soon as we mosey through the big green auditorium doors and hit the hallways, it's like being released from prison. The air loses its gross damp theater smell. We stop in the center of the hallway.

"Want to go outside?"

I nod.

Outside it's even better-fresh air, blue skies. We head down towards the back of the building and we aren't really saying anything, which makes me feel kind of awkward once I realize it, so I say, "Tell me more about this parkour stuff."

"How about I show you?" He sets his pack on the ground. The straps flap and still. I put my bag next to it and it kind of leans in, like they are meant to be there resting together.

I flop on the grass with the bags. My hands brush against the soft blades of it.

"Grass in New England is different from grass in Florida," Paolo says.

"When did you live in Florida?"

"Till I was eight. I moved here. Remember?"

I nod. I lie. I don't remember.

Wind brushes a dark wave of hair across his forehead. "You ready?"

"Show me what you got," I say and then realize I sound too John Wayney, too much like you and not enough like Lily, so I say in a more normal, too soft voice, "Don't get hurt."

Paolo laughs. "Trust me."

And then he moves. He runs, springs, dashes right at the brick wall so fast I know he's going to smash into it. I jump up ready to scream "stop" but I don't get to, because he's already conquered the wall, not by crashing into it, but by kicking off of it. It's like all the push of him going forward has pushed him up instead, and with two steps he's standing on the roof.

"Oh my God."