In the afternoons, after school, Kunal sometimes works at the Ramada front desk. On the counter sit two little American flags and on the other side is Kunal, doing his history homework.

Later in the evening he sits in the family's adjacent apartment going over his new list of words. On the sofa closer to the TV, his uncle, D.C. Prasad, watches the Indian soap opera "Jabb Love HUA." On this particular evening the cable TV isn't working, so periodically motel guests ring the buzzer at the front desk to complain.

Uncle D.C. says that Kunal read the entire World Book Encyclopedia by the time he was 8. He won his first regional bee four years ago, when he was in the fourth grade, with the word abominable. After that, Kunal says, "I got kind of an affection for spelling." But nobody in the region knew how to send him to the National Bee, Uncle D.C. says, so Kunal didn't go.

In his bedroom at the Ramada, Kunal has a couple shelves full of local and regional spelling bee trophies. Last year, after winning the regional when he was in the seventh grade, he did go on to Washington, but didn't make it past the written round. He has been studying for this year's competition since then, usually five or six hours a day. This is the final year he will be allowed to enter the Bee, which has an eighth-grade cut-off.

Kunal says he knows that his 31-year-old uncle is sacrificing a lot to stay with him in Green River. D.C.'s wife couldn't stand the rural Utah town, and left him to move back to her parents' house in Texas. But in India, D.C. says, a nephew is just like a son. "If a brother or sister is asking for help, we always give priority to help them."

Sometimes, he says, Kunal will act rude or sullen. When that happens, D.C. says, he'll give him this example: If a window is open, dust can get into a house and then into a cupboard and even into a safe inside the cupboard. In the same way, negative thoughts can seep into a person's mind.

"If you are having negative feelings, for example that you won't be able to go to Harvard, once your mind is prepared for that, you're never going to go to Harvard, you're never going to win at spelling. ... We always give this example: nothing is impossible in this world."

Kunal's favorite American movie is "Akeelah and the Bee," the story about an inner-city girl who finds comfort in words after her father dies. Against all odds, Akeelah makes it to the National Spelling Bee, encouraged by a neighborhood full of people who help her study as the triumphant song "Wake Up Everybody" by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes plays in the background.

Kunal doesn't have a neighborhood of people helping him study, but he might have a theme song, he says. It would be "Move Along" by the All-American Rejects. And even when your hope is gone, the lyrics go, move along, move along just to make it through.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com