Call Me Edmund: The Nominal Ones, #1

By Donna Rucinski

Edmund has trouble in school. 

 

 

Making friends isn't easy, either. 

 

 

He has learning disabilities, and his communication skills, he admits, are not the greatest. 

And now, a bully is destroying his work on the playground, and getting meaner at every recess.

 

 

Edmund is so smart at math he uses it to sing well, build houses and robots, solve a Rubik's cube, and stay calm. He even has a Secret Super Power where he sees numbers as colors.

 

 

But that Super Power isn't protecting him, and his friends are afraid he'll get hurt unless he uses more than math to defend himself. Read this book and find out if Edmund learns how to deal with a bully.

 

 

Readers of Call Me Edmund say:

"I felt like I was really in the book." - Mason

"This book is amazing!" - Emily 

 

Call me EDMUND is the first book of the Nominal Ones Series, a collection of stories about a group of four friends who all struggle with school, yet are resourceful at making friends, and working together building, programming, and singing.

 

*Disclaimer: The math contained in Call Me EDMUND is painless. You might even find it interesting. There won't be a quiz.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donna Rucinski
• Release date: Jun 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781940507033

Donna Rucinski

Donna Rucinski had an interest in writing even before she had an interest in math. Though she used math while working as a software engineer and when teaching computer science, it doesn’t come up as often now that she teaches Yoga and Mindfulness at a public charter school. She has four grown children, lives in the amazing city of Lowell, Massachusetts, and enjoys reading, writing, biking, hiking, yoga, social dancing and cleaning her room (just kidding). She doesn’t have a pet, but she’s fostered kittens can’t wait to do so again. Please feel free to connect at https://www.facebook.com/DonnaRucinskiAuthor/

Book preview

Call Me Edmund

It was fourth grade recess, and Edmund’s nose came close to touching the bark of a maple tree he was studying.

Hi Eddie, Nick said as he walked up.

Edmund didn’t respond.

This bark is interesting, thought Edmund, thin, and split like its skin is bursting. He looked at the flat, pale-green circles of moss with frilly edges, and compared it to the moss on another maple tree six feet away, where rounded tufts of dark green moss were like soldiers of moss invading the tree, lots at the bottom, fewer at the top. The top soldiers were higher up the tree than he could reach on tiptoe.

Edmund noticed everything except Nick standing next to him.

Hey, Ed! said Nick, louder.

What’s wrong with this kid, thought Nick. I come all the way over here to talk to him and he’s just staring at a tree!

Edmund put his fingernails into the cracks of the maple to measure how deep they were. This tree’s bark isn’t as deep as the oak tree in my yard, Edmund was thinking, Not as corky. He’d compare the depth by doing the same thing to the oak tree at home.

Ed! Eddie! Nick’s voice felt like it was poking its fingers into Edmund’s brain. It bothered him; it almost hurt. Though Edmund turned his head towards Nick, he still just stared with ferocious silence. He had big eyes, a freckled nose, a curly mop of hair, and an expression of death. Death to the conversation.

"Whoa, Ed! Finally. Didn’t you hear me?"

Call me Edmund, he muttered. I upset him, though Nick couldn’t tell. Edmund had practiced staying calm and was good at it. But he didn’t want to talk.

What, you don’t like ‘Ed’?

"That’s not my name."

Eddie?

No.

Ed…mund. How about Mundy?

No.

Or Munday! Like the day of the week, kind of.

No.

Nick enjoyed giving nicknames to friends, so he kept trying.

Captain Ed?

No.

"You’re smart, right? How about Professor Ed?"

No.

Bedhead Ed! laughed Nick, looking at Edmund’s mop of brown hair.

NO! said Edmund. My name’s EDMUND. Things should be called what they’re named! Especially him.

---

Anything else makes him uncomfortable. He didn’t have his Rubik’s cube, which he often used to calm down. Instead, he drummed the fingers of one hand on his thigh.

Edmund attended a social learning group where he learned to call things by their names. He wonders why he follows the rules he learns in his group, but then people out in the world don’t? It’s irritating. But he’s learning how to deal with it, he practices staying calm. Some kids go for extra help in math or reading, Edmund goes for extra help in getting along with other people. His teacher told him it’s also helpful to find people not in the group to practice with.

The next year, in fifth grade, Edmund would get plenty of practice. Bad things happen that test his staying-calm skills, bad things with Nick. Edmund will have to use a secret weapon: math.

In Edmund’s head things are organized and logical, and he made all the rules. He wished people outside his brain would follow them. He kept space in there to store the rules of others, once he learned them, but the paying attention to other people’s rules took effort. So though Edmund’s problems with Nick started with this incident on the playground, Edmund had barely noticed.

"Geez Louise Eddy! Can’t you talk with people? Only trees?" and Nick kicked the tree Edmund was looking at. Edmund kept his head and eyes down, counted to stay calm. The boy had used the wrong name again. And he kicked the tree. Edmund didn’t know why that bothered him, but it did. Still, the only sound he made was the soft tapping on his pant leg.

Weirdo! Fine. See ya later, Mundy the MUTE! Nick said, and strode off to go nickname other friends, kicking rocks out of the way. Edmund’s shoulders tightened up.

Neither boy believed they’d done anything wrong.

Edmund watched as Nick retreated, his annoyance sliding away the further Nick went, like water evaporating off hot pavement after a storm. When they met again in 5 th grade, Edmund had forgotten all about the encounter.

But Nick hadn’t.

Milly

O pen your mouth wide when you sing! Ms. Tremblay commanded the entire class, waving both arms in the air for emphasis. Her fingers spread as far apart from each other as she could get them, as if her hands were open mouths. Don’t sing through clenched teeth and tiny lips! Drop those jaws, open your mouth and SING!

It was Milly’s first day of fifth grade, her first day in Ms. Tremblay’s chorus class. She loved to sing.

Milly opened her mouth and sang, and the boy in front of her turned around and made a squinty-eyed face, put his hands over his ears, and hiss-whispered at Milly:

"You are not doing that right!"

That doesn’t mean to scream, Ms. Tremblay corrected the whole chorus, but the boy looked at Milly again, put his fist next to his right cheek and pointed his index finger at Milly. She gulped, and her face grew hot as she realized that she sang louder than the other students. She vowed to figure out how to sing loud without screaming. You want a full sound, a beautiful sound, but you shouldn’t be trying to drown out the people around you. The boy shot Milly another meaningful look.

She wished he would stop turning around.

They tried again. This time Milly listened to herself and the others around her and concentrated by reminding herself in her head: A beautiful sound. Not yelling. A beautiful sound.

Much better! said Ms. Tremblay, and she smiled right at Milly. Milly stood a little taller and her small shoulders straightened. This was fun! They practiced the song several more times, and all she saw of the boy in front of her was his curly, light brown hair. He didn’t turn around again the whole class.

---

Their teacher, Kate Tremblay, had already met Milly over summer vacation when Kate took her white terrier mutt, Zig Zag, for a walk in the morning before her lunch shift at her summer waitressing job.

She named Zig Zag for the way he moved, never in a straight line, but back and forth, and never a walk, trotting ten fast steps for every one of her own, pulling the leash taunt the whole time. Kate lived in a brand new apartment that had a balcony, a shared outdoor area with a pool, and picnic tables. None of which interested Zig Zag. And if he didn’t find interesting things, no problem, he’d find things to chew up. He always found that interesting. He didn’t bother to search far. The leg of the couch right next to him would do. He’d tuck his flat head under the couch and chew and chew until the leg was almost gone. Or Kate’s cardigan that fell off a chair, the shoes Kate kicked off when she entered the apartment, the headband she used to hold back her straight, black hair. Chewing any of these was a satisfying way to pass the time.

But it wasn’t satisfying for Kate to have all her things chewed up, so she took him around the corner where there to a neighborhood of compact houses in the woods by the river. Kate and Zig Zag loved getting out of the apartment early and walking while the summer air was still tolerable. Often they’d see a white mist hovering over the river like a cloud had gone to bed there, and still sleepy, started rousing itself for a trip back to the sky. By the time the heat of the day kicked in, Kate would be in an air-conditioned restaurant, stocking the tables before people came in to eat lunch, putting out the white, pink and blue sugar packets, filling salt and pepper shakers, wiping down the red and white plastic tablecloths with a cloth dipped in soapy solution. The moist air near the river felt cool and refreshing on her skin. Zig Zag liked all the smells. He ran back and forth gathering them all up into his nose, like a collector, trying to save them for later.

Kate passed Milly’s house on her walk. If Milly spotted Kate from where she was playing in her front yard, she would freeze and stare at Kate through wide-open eyes, as if it shocked her to see another human being outside. There weren’t often other neighbors out so early in the morning, and Kate saw no one but Milly on her walks. She always gave the girl a warm smile.

Milly would smile back and half-raise her hand in surprise. Then, collecting herself, she would hurry over to the fence at the edge of the yard (after Kate had walked by most of it already) and scramble to say something, to start a conversation.

She could have said:

My Mom passed away three years ago. I miss her.

There aren’t any kids in this neighborhood to play with.

Lydia, my babysitter, said I’m loud and I need to be outside today.

But she didn’t say any of these things. Instead, she hid her loneliness. And tried to start a conversation by saying something like,

I’m Milly. I found this pink flower in the side yard. Do you think it’s a weed?

Or,

My cat has a sore paw this morning.

Or,

"I’m digging a huge hole, I can stand in it as deep as my knees, but the handle broke off my shovel!

She stood looking over the old chain-link fence, thin body tensed and waiting for Kate’s reply.

Kate thought it an invitation to stay and play, or at least talk, even if Milly didn’t ask out loud. But Kate couldn’t just grab a shovel and help Milly dig a hole, she had to get to her job. And Milly hadn’t invited her out loud, anyway. So Kate would say,

That’s nice, hon, or,

That’s too bad, depending on what Milly had said, smile, and try to hold Zig Zag back for a while. Milly would stoop down and put her fingers through the fence and Zig Zag would give them a thorough licking, making Milly laugh, and then he’d resume pulling on the leash. Kate would allow him to get his way and pull her down the street. Milly would skip along the fence a bit, following Kate to the end of her yard, perhaps adding another nugget or two of conversation, until Kate passed the fence at end of the yard. Milly would stop at the corner and shout,

Bye! waving as hard as she could. She’d go back to digging her hole, or comforting the cat, or looking for flowers. And she’d start singing out loud, which made Kate smile.

Kate liked the slight, eager girl with long, dirty blond hair and matching eyelashes. She had hair that wore out a little the longer it grew, the ends wispy, pale and delicate, like it’d been growing without a haircut for a long time.

Grown-ups were kind to Milly when they had a chance. They all knew about her, because her mother died while serving in the war on terror. Elizabeth, her mother, had been in the air force. It was unusual for a woman to be killed in war, and the news reported it when Elizabeth’s vehicle came under attack when she deployed in Iraq. Grown-ups had sympathy for Milly, because they understood the depth of her loss, and