Owen could never tell if Father was joking. He would say something like "You and James have to keep on doing school at least through part of July." And it would seem like he was telling the truth. But then he would add something like "All of the public school kids across the road are jealous of you because they have to stop doing school in June, and they don't get to start up again until September. You guys are really lucky."
And then Father would always look at Mother to see if she laughed, and that was how Owen knew that he wasn't telling the truth. Public schoolkids didn't want to do school when the weather was nice any more than Owen did.
That was why Owen didn't really believe Father when he told him that he was going to have a final exam today. But here it was, almost naptime, and James and Owen were both still at the lunch table listening to last-minute instructions. "Read slowly and clearly. If you have questions don't ask me, ask Mrs. Taylor. I'll help you if she says to, but she is the one who is in charge of the exam."
There was really going to be a final exam. Felix was upstairs crying in his room because he bumped his head on the way up to nap, and Father was printing papers out and then putting them up high where the boys couldn't look at them. James was going to go first. James had been examined by Mrs. Taylor at the end of 1st grade and 2nd grade, so he already knew her. Apparently they did it at Alexa's school, and Mrs. Taylor even used to be Alexa's teacher.
Alexa was James' best friend. Out of all the things in the world that made Owen upset, Alexa was the worst. He actually like Alexa a lot, because she was funny and friendly and could climb anything in the world and had even visited Australia. But Owen hated the fact that James had a best friend and that he didn't. He felt left out every time James and Alexa played together and sometimes he felt left out even when they let him play with them, because they were always giggling at each other and having jokes of their own. Owen wished Alexa would visit Australia and stay there.
Mrs. Taylor said hello to James on the computer screen and asked him some polite questions. James smiled like he had a toothache--he liked Mrs. Taylor just fine, but this was the way James always smiled around adults--and read his reading test out loud. Owen could tell that James was used to doing reading tests. He read much more slowly than he usually did and made a point of pronouncing all the words. Sometimes when James read stories to Owen he went so fast that he didn't even stop to breathe in. He'd just keep on reading but making the noises of the words while he was inhaling, and he sounded like a vacuum cleaner running over a sentence.
Owen forgot all about his own test while he listened to James read. It was an interesting story about mysterious tracks on a beach that turned out to be from a leatherback turtle. There were a couple of words (like "cordoned" and "surmised") that he could tell James had never read before, but when he answered questions about what the story meant he seemed to have understood it just fine. Mrs. Taylor raved about his reading and told him what a great job he was doing. She even told Father, "if Owen goes this quickly I don't think I should charge you for an hour...James breezed through his test!"
"Well," said Father "let's wait to figure that out until after Owen has had his turn. Owen, can you come over here?"
And that was when, all of a sudden, Owen decided that he definitely didn't want to take his test.
So he ran away.
He didn't exactly have a plan for where he was going to go. Perhaps up to his room? Maybe he could hide in his closet. Or maybe, if he found his shoes, he could escape outside on his bike. But Father caught him before he even got out of the living room, so running away wouldn't work after all. Owen decided to flop.
He went as limp as he could in Father's arms so that Father almost dropped him, and then when Father put him in the wooden chair in front of the computer he went floppy again and flopped right down on the floor. Father was apologizing to Mrs. Taylor and calling to Mother. Owen tried to run away again and this time Mother caught him. He wasn't really listening to her as she put him back in the chair again but she was whispering something about "no dessert."
Mrs. Taylor ended up winning Owen over. She invited her dog over and Owen watched her pet the dog on the screen. The dog's name was Amber. Mrs. Taylor said that she had another dog and that Owen could see that dog after he did his reading exam. Owen decided that she seemed nice.
But he was still worried about reading his story. Owen knew that he was getting better and better at reading, but he still preferred to read books that he had mostly memorized. Reading new books by himself was okay if no one else was watching, but he didn't like the idea of reading a brand new book in front of Father and another grown-up. Plus, Owen's story was much longer than James', because there were some pictures that went along with each page, and the pages had printed funny, so that Father had to keep turning them upside down and then over.
But once he started, he found it was easy.
The story was funny, and the grown-ups had more trouble with it than Owen did. Father kept losing track of which page came next, and Mrs. Taylor got Owen's name mixed up with one of the characters from the story and kept calling him "Dillon" when she asked him the questions about it. The questions were easy--not hard questions about "surmise" or "cordon," but the sorts of questions that Felix could answer about a book.
Owen saw Mother peeking at him from the other side of the room. She was grinning a big grin, and Owen could tell that he had a done a good job.
Mrs. Taylor eventually remembered what Owen's name was, and she kept her promise about showing him her other dog at the end of the test.
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