Read The Book of Jonas for Free Online

though he has exchanged memories for facts, as though whole periodsof his childhood have been replaced by lists of questionably useful trivia.
    The California gold rush began in 1848; Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat; William the Conquerer conquered England; the Mormons founded Utah.
22
    The school day begins with a half-hour period known as “homeroom.”
    It is the period Jonas dreads.
    He sits at one corner of the large, desk-filled classroom, as far from the other students as he can get, and prays not to be called upon or otherwise prompted to interact. In the space of only weeks, he has come to fear this half hour more than any other time of the day, an aimless gathering of teenagers that can turn predatory in an instant. The homeroom teacher is an old woman who can barely control her hormone-fueled students. She frequently leaves the room on one ill-timed errand or another, and when she comes back, she seems not to register the hurriedly hushed chaos that has descended in her absence.
    Already, Jonas has become a target. He barely comprehends how it happened. The quizzical looks he receives when he says anything, his unusual phrases, his dark complexion, his worn clothes, and then, one morning, the wet splat of a spitball that sticks to his cheek, a hollow ballpoint pen hurriedly tucked out of sight, the muffled snickers of all who witnessed it, andsuddenly he has become the outlet for all of homeroom’s pent-up aggression.
    One day someone invents a game, the object being to see who can hit Jonas with the most spitballs during the brief time the teacher is absent from the room.
    Every morning, he sits at his corner desk and remains quiet. He tries to blend into the wall, the Formica desktop, the floor. He attempts to render himself invisible.
    And then the old teacher steps out of the room again, and almost instantly Jonas is grabbed from behind, his arms pinned to his sides. A boy’s face appears in front of his, freckled and smiling, puckers his lips, and for a horrified instant, Jonas fears he is about to be kissed. And then Jonas feels a long stream of thick spittle running down his cheek. Someone else, someone unseen, spits at him again, but misses his face, and he feels it lodge instead in his hair.
    He hears a girl’s voice say, “Eww, stop it; that’s gross,” but his arms remain pinned to his sides. And then, straining, he breaks free of the grip and stands up, his face wet and smelling of other people’s mouths. At that moment the old teacher steps back into the room, sees him standing up at his desk, and tells him sharply to sit back down.
    “Welcome to America,” someone whispers, and the room erupts into laughter.
23
    He remembers talking with one of his sponsors, just after he arrived in America. He remembers asking her why they were helping him.
    “We are the right hand,” she said.
    She was the director of the Friends International Assistance Society, the Quaker organization that helped people like him. She was heavyset and wore thick glasses, and she had a kindly face, but tired, her soft brown eyes deep and compassionate. She had just given him the small allowance he could use for “incidental expenses,” as they were called, which at this time usually consisted of pizza and bottomless cups of cola. He would meet with her regularly, every few weeks, and she would inquire after his progress, his health, his social adjustment. She would ask about his host family, which the society had found through an interfaith cooperative, and his school, his classes, his friends. He always painted for her a pleasant, sanitized picture, because he felt it would be rude to do otherwise.
    He remembers her handing him this little sum of money sealed in a tiny white envelope, and he asked her why she did it, why she helped people like him. She looked at him for a moment from across her cheap metal desk, and then she said, “We are the right hand.”
    This confused him. “The right hand of what?”