Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes Page A

tiny fibers that hold the paper together. An expert could tell you from those fibers exactly where the paper was made. Isn’t it amazing how much information you can get from something so ordinary?”
    She took the frame from Bo and walked back to the front. “What other writing could we look at?”
    Zac offered the last issue of The Candy-Gram , the one with his review in it.
    â€œDots!” he said when Miss Loupe placed her loupe over his words.
    â€œYes, because computer printers, unlike felt pens, shoot out hundreds of tiny jets of ink.”
    â€œLike when they do tattoos on TV,” Rick said. “Can we look at yours with the loupe?”
    â€œI don’t think that will be necessary,” Miss Loupe said, closing the lens. “But the point is that nothing is ordinary if you examine it closely. And the things that make someone imperfect are also the things that make them who they are. That’s one thing I learnedat drama school: how to use small things to make an audience see me in a new way.”
    She sat down on the couch, crossed her legs, and held her back stiff and her hands folded in her lap.
    â€œAm I a proper young lady who is meeting her future in-laws for the first time?”
    She flipped to lie on her back with one hand over her belly. “Or an old woman who has eaten too much pie?”
    She curled up on one arm and licked her paws. “Or a very spoiled cat?
    â€œIt’s all in how I make you look at me, isn’t it?”
    She got up from the couch and pulled a large box from behind her desk. She pushed it into the middle of the Taped Space.
    â€œMarc asked for little toys and school or health supplies that he and his buddies can give to the kids in Afghanistan. If you want to help, you can drop your ordinary things into this box. I promise you those kids need a new way of seeing us.” She placed a pack of lined paper and a package of felt-tipped pens into the box. “This is what I’m sending.”
    She smiled. “And while you’re looking at things in a new way, if you notice a crack, would you please let me know for the report? You may borrow my loupe if you like.”
    She placed the framed quote next to Marc’s picture, and they returned to the math lesson, but just like that, the class started finding cracks everywhere.
    Allison noticed a crack while checking her hair in the mirror in the girls’ bathroom. Why did that crack have to be in themiddle, where it divided her face into two parts? It made her feel like when her dad fought with her mom over who got to see her when. She brought in two sets of hair ribbons for the box.
    Martina found the same crack, but she liked it. What if everybody could see both halves of her, Filipino and white, instead of one or the other, all the time? She smiled at herself in the mirror and stared at the place where her two mouths came together. She brought in some toothpaste.
    Dillon thought about the three huge moving crates his family had shipped out to Germany. Hundreds of his LEGOs were squeezed in there, along with his mom’s green-and-white china, his dad’s half-rebuilt motorcycle, and his sister’s piles of comics. What if the boat delivering the crates developed a crack? He took his ruler and rubbed at the groove in the side of his desk, making it millimeters deeper. He brought in a large bottle of glue.
    Trey drew a map of Afghanistan based on the one in his social studies book. When he got home, he crumpled up the paper and stuffed it into a glass of iced tea that his mom had left on the counter. After it dried, he carefully opened the map and admired the yellowed “old” cracks in his authentic-looking document. He thought about next spring, when his dad would deploy again to the Middle East. He brought in a set of colored pencils.
    Melissa politely pointed out a crack in the lunchroom cash register to Mrs. Purdy, the cafeteria manager.
    â€œDo you see