The Sentence That Traveled

Chapter 1Eight Words

It started with eight words that Moishy Rosen said on the way out to recess.

He did not plan them. He was holding the door for the line, and Avrumi Feld came through carrying a lumpy gray blanket under one arm. Avrumi had a cold. He was always cold, and his mother let him bring a blanket to school on days like this.

Moishy, who had been having a great morning, grinned and said, "Look, it's Avrumi and his big baby blanket!"

Eight words. He counted them later, on his fingers, many times.

Two boys near the door laughed. That felt good for a second, the way a snowball feels good when it hits its target. Avrumi's ears went red. He tucked the blanket tighter and kept walking, and he did not say anything.

Moishy forgot about it before he reached the playground. He kicked the ball around. He played four-square. He ate his apple.

When he went back inside for the afternoon, everyone was acting strange.

Chapter 2The Trail

It began with a little thing. A boy named Dovid stopped him in the hall and said, "Is it true Avrumi sleeps with a stuffed animal?"

"What? I never said that."

"Yeah, I heard you said he wets the bed."

Moishy felt the floor lurch. "I did NOT say that! I said he had a blanket."

Dovid shrugged. "That's what Yankie told me."

By the end of the day Moishy had heard four versions, and each one was worse. Avrumi had a baby blanket. Avrumi still had a baby bottle. Avrumi was afraid of the dark, and was crying in the bathroom, and had told the teacher he wanted to go home.

By dismissal, Moishy's stomach felt like a stone in cold water. He sat on the bench outside, waiting for the bus, and thought: I did not say any of those things.

But that was not quite the whole truth, was it?

He had said eight words. He had said them in a funny voice, to get a laugh. And those eight words had gone out through the door and down the hall and into twenty pairs of ears, and everybody who touched them had changed them a little, and the changes had gone all the way around the room.

It was like a whisper chain, only nobody was playing, and somebody was getting hurt.

Moishy did something then that surprised him. He took out a pencil and the back of his homework sheet and drew a map. At the center he wrote: ME.

Then he drew lines out to Chaim and Dovid, the two boys by the door. Then to Yankie. Then to the boys who had talked to Yankie.

It was a detective's chart. And in his chest the stone got heavier, because the map led in every direction, and every line began at the same place.

Chapter 3Avrumi's Door

That night, Moishy could not eat his supper.

"What's wrong?" said Mommy. She was wearing her gray tichel and had flour on her sleeve from baking.

"You are pushing food around."

"Nothing."

"Moishy."

He put down his fork. It was easier to say it to the table than to her face. "I said something to a boy at school. It was supposed to be a joke. But it got passed around and now everybody's saying worse things. And I don't know how to stop it."

Mommy sat down across from him. She did not say "How could you?" She did not say "I'm disappointed."

She said, "Tell me what you said."

He told her. All eight words. All four versions. He showed her the map.

She looked at the paper for a long time. "Do you remember what Abba said last week about words?"

she asked.

"That they are like arrows. Once you shoot, you can't pull it back."

"Close. He said you cannot take an arrow back once it flies. But you can go to where it landed, pull it out, and help the place heal." She touched the paper, at the center where it said ME. "That is the hard part, and it is the only part that matters. You can't unsay what you said. But you can follow it. You can find where it went and set it right, one place at a time."

"How?"

"What is the first thing a real apology needs?"

Moishy thought about the lessons from school. "Say what I did."

"Good. And then?"

"Say I'm sorry, and say how it made the person feel."

"And then?"

"Ask what I can do. And then do it."

"Three steps," said Mommy. "Then the work."

"Avrumi might never talk to me again."

"He might not. An apology is not a trade. You do it because it is right, not because it buys you anything." She stood and brushed the flour off her sleeve. "Do you want to walk over to his house now?

It is not late."

His stomach clenched. But he got up.

Chapter 4Pulling the Arrows Back

The Felds lived three streets away in a yellow house with a blue door. Avrumi's mother answered, in a soft scarf and an apron, and her face when she saw Moishy was careful. She knew something. Avrumi had told her.

"He's in his room," she said. "I'll ask if he wants to come."

Moishy waited on the porch in the cold. His heart pounded. Mommy waited on the sidewalk, far enough that it was only the two of them.

The door opened. Avrumi came out, wrapped in the lumpy gray blanket, with his nose red and his eyes puffy.

"What?" he said.

Moishy had practiced on the way. He forgot every word. He said, plainly, "I'm sorry. What I said today was mean. You have a cold, and it's a blanket, and I made it sound like a baby thing so people would laugh. That wasn't fair, and it made you feel embarrassed in front of everyone. And then the story went around and got worse. I did not want that, but I started it. What can I do to fix it?"

Avrumi looked at him.

"It's not a baby blanket," he said, in a thick voice. "My Zeidy made it before he passed away. It's the last thing he made. That's why I take it when I'm not feeling good."

The words landed like a stone in a quiet pond.

Moishy felt the ripples all the way up his throat.

"I didn't know," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. That's...

that makes it so much worse that I said it."

"I know you didn't know." Avrumi sniffed. "You could tell people the truth. That would help."

"I will. Tomorrow. Everybody."

"You don't have to say about my Zeidy."

"I'll say you can bring whatever blanket you need and it is nobody's business." He paused. "And I'll say I started it, and I was wrong."

Avrumi wiped his nose on the blanket. "You're going to look pretty dumb."

"I know."

For the first time, one corner of Avrumi's mouth moved. "Okay," he said. "Come inside, it's cold."

They did not become best friends that night. But they sat on Avrumi's rug, and Avrumi showed him a model rocket he was building, and Moishy held the glue stick while Avrumi pressed on a tiny fin.

On Thursday morning, before the first bell, Moishy stood by the classroom door and talked to each boy on the trail, one at a time. Chaim. Dovid. Yankie. He said, "What I said about Avrumi was mean and it was not true, and what went around after was not true either. I'm sorry I started it. Please tell people the real thing: he had a blanket because he had a cold."

Some boys rolled their eyes. Some looked ashamed.

Dovid said, "I didn't think. Sorry." Yankie said, "I only repeated it," and then, after a pause, "I should not have."

When the bell rang, Avrumi walked in, holding his gray blanket. Nobody laughed. Dovid said, "Nice blanket," and for once he meant it.

At recess, Moishy drew the map again. In the middle he wrote ME, and next to every name he had talked to he drew a small check. The lines did not disappear. But each one now ended somewhere better than it began.

It would not erase what he had said. But it was a start, and a real one.

He folded the map and put it in his pocket, where he would remember to think before he spoke.