CHAPTER 1 JUST ANOTHER DREARY TUESDAY It's Tuesday morning Just a normal Tuesday morning Dreary outside a bit windy leaves are crunching under my gray boots as I drag my self to school My heavy gray cardigan is weighing down my shoulders and my itchy gray scarf is catching the wind and flicking me in the face My eyes are watering So yeah Tuesday By the time I get to school the bell is about to ring A sound that still makes my stomach hot and kind of flip I stare at the mean looking building Are all schools hideous beasts or just mine In the movies school seems like a happy place a fun place A place where smiley kids bounce and laugh and play games and kind sparkly teachers sing songs and read stories and and Not here they don't Couldn't there at least be some grass A flower A shrub Well there isn't The big double doors lick their lips 11
wide open and hungry for happy laughing children skipping and hurling themselves into the school’s empty math-testing spell checking finger-pointing belly Swarms of us are swallowed at the ring of the nine-am bell digested and spat out again at the burp of three-thirty For them And there it rings The buzzing throngs throw themselves as one through the doors and down the long hall It’s feeding time Not for me though No Nope I stay on this side of the gate this side behind the tree right here on the park bench I put down my bag and settle in I take off my scarf and fold it carefully and I put it on my lap and stay right here On this side of the gate This side As though the bell never happened in the first place La-la-la-la-la My life I’m nine and I’m a gray moth And I mean an actual gray moth not metaphorically that I’m a dull barely there sort of kid lurking in shadowy corners hold on wait Maybe I mean that too Yeah that’s me I’m Gary Gary Gray Moth Good to meet you 12
