Chapter 18: The Poster Boy

The treasurer was a stout woman in her sixties.

She turned up on Aunt Dot's porch that same night with a ledger under her arm.

She said she would not move one dollar until she heard from the boy himself.

She also said she had signed the committee's checks for four years and had never once met the doctor.

"I'll be at the gala," she said. "Third table. I'll know what to do when I hear it."

After she left, Aunt Dot made a pot of tea nobody drank, and we got to work.

Dylan practiced on the phone with me all week, and on Sunday he came to the kitchen.

He stood on a chair in his socks while Polly sat on the counter and held a wooden spoon for a microphone.

"Hi," he said. "My name is Dylan Houghton."

"Too stiff," said Polly.

"I'm nervous."

"Say it like you're ordering a sandwich."

"Hi. My name is Dylan Houghton, and I'd like to tell you something."

"Better. Now say it without the shaking."

"I can't stop the shaking."

"Then say it with the shaking," Aunt Dot said, from the stove. "It's allowed."

By Friday he could say the whole speech, start to finish, in under three minutes.

I had read it half a dozen times, and I wouldn't have changed a word.

On Saturday evening my mother called, in a voice that sounded as though it had been pressed flat.

She said Dad would drop Dylan at Dot's.

Dylan could ride to the gala with us, she said, since she and Dad had to be there early.

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