The Moonlight Boy | Ferry's Tale # 1

One peculiar boy

It was a quiet afternoon. Peter was enjoying his beer, reading the newspaper. Yet Eileen couldn't concentrate. Ferry kept stealing her attention.

The boy was lying on his stomach, on the carpet in front of the TV. With his eyes glued to the screen, he was whispering the right answers to all the questions of the show. That's how Eileen found out that the oldest tree in the world was a Bristlecone Pine. That whales were actually mammals, not fish. And that the bee hummingbird was the smallest bird in the world. One after another, the boy gave the right answers to all the questions, even the most difficult ones about galaxies, solar systems, and far away planets.

"Did you see that?" she asked her husband when the show was over and Ferry left the room to bring some snacks.

"See what?" Peter said, slightly annoyed he couldn't read his newspaper in peace.

"Ferry knew all the right answers."

"Well, I'm sure it was all a coincidence. How could a child have known all of those things? Unless you've read to him from your encyclopedia," he added.

He was mocking her, of course. The Culinary Encyclopedia was Eileen's most precious book and among the few she owned.

But she didn't feel discouraged by her husband's words, "I think we should send him to school. I'm afraid I can't give him home lessons for much longer. I've taught him everything I know."

This time, Peter Donovan put his newspaper aside. "Are you out of your mind, woman? Can't you see the poor boy is living in his own world? He's daydreaming all the time, he stumbles and falls when you're least expecting and he injures himself at the very touch of a nail. What could he possibly do at school? He won't last one day," he said before rising from his armchair, obviously upset. Then, he took his beer with him in his workshop, hoping that was the last discussion on the subject.

But he couldn't be more wrong. Ferry heard the last words of his parents' conversation. The boy yearned for freedom and the school would have offered him the opportunity to leave his home for the first time in nine years. The summer was almost over, and he had little time to convince his father.

"I really want to go to school, Mum," he said to his mother.

"I don't know, Ferry... Maybe your father is right," she said, looking away. "Maybe you'll get hurt among strangers... Besides, you'll be too old for the first grade."

"But I can be in the third grade just like the other children my age. You taught me well, Mum. I'm sure I can pass the tests." And Ferry took a pen and a piece of paper and wrote the most beautiful letter in which he said how much he yearned to learn new things and meet children his age.

Eileen read the letter, and by the end of it, her eyes were full of tears. For a moment, she pictured her son in his white pharmacist uniform, saying long, difficult words of diseases or medications. She imagined the neighbor ladies watching her walking at her son's arm. Or better yet, in his car. By the end of the letter, she had made up her mind ─ the boy had to go to school at all costs.

And from that day forward, she tried to convince her husband that school was the best thing for their son.

"We won't spend any extra money for school,'' she assured him. "I'll work harder and I'll take care of all the school expenses."

"Yeah, I bet nothing good will come of this..." Peter Donovan muttered, sick and tired of his wife's insistence. "So be it! Let him go to school, but you won't see any penny from me!" he shouted and left, banging the door.

The next week, when the autumn began whispering its arrival in the color of the leaves and the gentleness of the sun, Andrew Ferry Donovan joined the third graders of the only school in town.