work, do the exercises, and then we'll go over them
together to be sure you understand it all."
Echo watched us, clearly annoyed about the
time he was devoting to me. She interrupted us
continually with questions we both knew she didn't
have to ask. He exchanged a knowing look with me
and directed himself more to her.
"I'm glad you're not filling your ears with wax
today," he whispered. "Although, I'll admit now, it
wasn't a terrible idea. In fact," he confessed. "we did
similar things in school to prepare for teaching the
disabled."
It felt good to get compliments from him. My
self-respect was like a crumbled house of cards. It
would take a lot of patience and glue to build it up
again. I bore down on the assignments, motivated
more than ever to do well. Time flew by. Mrs.
Westington called us to lunch and at lunch Tyler was
more chatty, directing himself to me now almost as
much as he did to Echo. He asked me questions about
Memphis, about my earlier life, and about the shows
Uncle Palaver and I did on the road. Wisely, he
included Echo in everything, relating my answers to
her. I could see she was torn between wanting me as a
friend and wanting all of Tyler's attention as well. We returned to our work, but halfway through
the afternoon. Tyler surprised me with a bag. "What's this?" I asked, and looked in to see the
batteries I would need to install in Destiny.
"I thought it might be a good idea to visit the
motor home and show Echo how you get the doll to
perform."