19
“Why are you lugging all those books around all the time?” Amma asked as Yusuf left for school on Thursday. “Don’t you have a locker at school to put them in?”
Yusuf tried to pretend he wasn’t holding five textbooks and two notebooks in his arms, plus a lunch bag that was dangling from the crook of his elbow. “What books? They’re just a few things I need for school.”
Amma narrowed her eyes at him. She’d left store-bought croissants on the table and disappeared into her garage office before Aleena woke up, but now she was back again in the kitchen, watching him like a hawk as he got ready for school. Ugh. Two more minutes and he’d have been out of here without anybody noticing his load of textbooks. “No, your school definitely has lockers. Mrs. Khan was telling me about how Danial doesn’t bring his books home anymore.”
Yusuf groaned loudly. “Okay, fine. I’ll leave them in my locker today. Happy?”
She smiled and kissed him on the top of his head. “Yes, darling, I’m happy. I don’t want to see my son bent down under the load of all these books.”
He smiled back as he left. “Stop calling me darling!”
“Never!” she replied as she closed the front door after him.
Yusuf was still smiling as he met Danial on the corner of the street. He was still smiling as they walked to Frey Middle and entered the building a good twelve minutes before the bell rang. He waved goodbye to Danial as they parted in the hallway. It was only when he reached his locker, which he had been avoiding like the plague for three weeks now, that his smile slipped. He stood in front of the locker, staring at it. Should he open it? Should he dump his books on the floor in front of it and run away? Both options seemed equally impossible.
Man up, Yusuf, he told himself. You’re not a baby. If your dad can handle a robber, you can definitely handle a few notes.
With a surprisingly steady hand, he reached up to the lock. Seven zero two zero. As he dialed the numbers, he suddenly realized he’d never changed the combination like the school had advised. What if the person who put those notes inside knew his combination? The thought of somebody else walking up to his locker and opening it, putting mean notes with tilted almost-cursive handwriting inside, made him want to puke.
The lock clicked, and the door swung open slowly like something out of a horror movie. He peered inside carefully.
Nothing. There was no new note.
Yusuf’s chest heaved. Thank God. Maybe the note writer had forgotten all about Yusuf. Maybe he’d moved on to another victim. Yusuf could feel relief running like a cool hand over his forehead. It was going to be okay. He didn’t have to be scared anymore.
He dumped his textbooks in the locker and swung the door shut again. Before it closed, he caught sight of lined paper sticking out from the top shelf. The old notes. Why in the world had he kept them?
He reached for them and stuffed them in his pants pocket. He’d wait until he got home to get rid of them.
After lunch, the combined classes of sixth grade had PE. Coach Boston was a tall, muscular man with thighs like pillars and a blond ponytail that swished around like a whip. “Change into your gym shorts and get out here in five minutes!” he yelled as they filed into the gym on their way to the changing rooms.
Yusuf hated the changing rooms. Amma and Abba had written a letter to the school in August requesting that Yusuf, along with all the other Muslim students at Frey Middle, be allowed to change in private for PE. The response from Principal Williamson was swift. No special accommodations for students. Everyone hated changing in public, but they did it anyway. The Muslims weren’t any different.
In other words: get used to it.
He and Danial were together, at least. Danial held up a towel and looked away as Yusuf wiggled out of his pants and into his shorts. Then Yusuf did the same for Danial. It took all of five minutes. The other kids were laughing and joking. Ethan Grant was swatting the behind of another boy with his towel, and the other boy was yelling “Hey!” over and over.
Yusuf glared at Ethan, a tight feeling rising in his chest. “I don’t think you should do that.” It took a second before he realized he’d said it out loud. Loud enough for Ethan to hear.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” whispered Danial furiously. “Stop trying to be a hero.”
Ethan turned to Yusuf. “What’s your problem, dirty Mooz-lim?”
Yusuf’s stomach turned to jelly, but he clenched his fists at his sides like Uncle Rahman had done. He was never going to be a hero, but he was definitely a decent person. He took a deep, deep breath, and said, “You need to stop hitting people. It’s not funny even if it’s with a towel.”
Danial made a faint noise in his throat. His eyes looked as if they would bulge right out of his face. He walked backward until he was away from Yusuf.
Yusuf hardly noticed. What was Ethan going to do? Hit him with a towel too?
Ethan blinked and leaned forward. “How dare you. . . .”
“What?” Yusuf said quietly. He looked around. The other boys had crept closer until they formed a circle around Yusuf and Ethan. Danial was nowhere to be seen, but Sammy, Ethan’s red-haired friend, stood nearby, watching with fascinated eyes. “How dare I tell you to stop being a bully? I dare, because I’m Muslim, and that’s what we do.”
The crowd oohed as if they’d heard something scandalous. Yusuf knew his statement was cheesy, but also accurate. The residents of Frey—some of them, at least—thought of Muslims as terrorists. As bad people. It was time they learned what being a Muslim was actually all about. He remembered what Amma had taught him the first year of Sunday school, when he was six or seven. “We have a responsibility to spread kindness and help others. To serve and protect God’s creatures, not hurt them.”
Ethan put up his fists and brought them close to Yusuf’s face. They were like mini versions of the hams Yusuf had seen on the butcher’s counter next door to Abba’s dollar store. “I guess you want to fight,” said Ethan with a sneer.
Yusuf shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said quietly. Sadly. “You do.”
The door to the changing room slammed open, and Coach Boston strode in. Danial scurried behind him, his face pale. “What’s going on here?” Coach demanded.
The crowd broke up and everyone backed away, leaving Yusuf and Ethan standing before each other like wrestlers. Ethan put down his fists. “He was threatening me.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Yusuf protested.
“No, he wasn’t,” agreed Danial breathlessly. “Ethan was—”
Coach Boston put up an angry hand. “Quiet! Explain it to the principal.”
Principal Williamson wasn’t happy at being disturbed. She sat on her leather chair and stared at Yusuf and Ethan with cold black eyes. “So, fighting in the locker room, eh? That’s original.”
Ethan scoffed lightly. “We weren’t fighting. Right, Yoo-soof? It was all a big misunderstanding.”
Yusuf’s eyes widened. Ethan’s tone was almost . . . friendly? The tightness around his mouth was gone, and he was smiling like an innocent child who had zero idea of who had eaten all the cookies. “Are you joking?” Yusuf asked him.
Ethan turned to the principal. “It’s true. We’re best friends, aren’t we?”
Principal Williamson looked from one boy to the other. “Are you? What’s Yusuf’s last name?”
Yusuf waited with bated breath. Did Ethan know his last name? They didn’t share any classes except PE.
Ethan shrugged. “Ahhhh . . . I forgot . . . maybe Osama or something?”
Principal Williamson turned to Yusuf with a sigh. “What really happened in the gym, young man? I know your father. I know how he raised you. You’re going to tell me the truth, aren’t you?”
Yusuf gulped. Telling the truth would only land him in deeper trouble with Ethan and Sammy. But lying was really not an option either, was it? Amma and Abba would be devastated if he lied. “He was hitting another kid with a towel. Sort of like a joke,” Yusuf fi
nally replied. “I told him to stop. It wasn’t a big deal though, really.”
The principal didn’t seem to agree with the last part. She gave Ethan a glare and said, “You can go now. I’m going to call your father this evening.”
Ethan blushed so brightly his face looked like a red neon sign. “Please, ma’am . . .”
She put up a hand. “Go now.”
He shuffled out, but not before giving Yusuf the nastiest look a boy could give another. Yusuf squashed his fear. This was not over.
Principal Williamson turned her attention to him. She made a steeple with the fingers of both her hands and looked at him from above it. “So, how’s it going, Yusuf? Middle school is tough, eh?”
He nodded, still on edge. “Definitely.”
“Mr. Parker says you’re the guy giving us a shot at winning TRC this year.” She smiled, the hard look in her eyes gone as if it had never been there. “That man’s been trying to get to TRC for years. You have a big task ahead of you.”
Yusuf was surprised his science teacher thought they had a chance at winning. His shoulders relaxed. “We’ll try our best, ma’am.”
“That’s good enough for me.” She stood up, still smiling. “You can go now. And stay away from Ethan Grant. And his father.”
20
Saturday club was like a party for nerds. The Freybots sat cross-legged on the floor of the gym, with their LEGO Mindstorms parts scattered around them like candy wrappers. Mr. Parker watched the team from his perch on a bleacher, smiling slightly. Since the first task at hand was to design their robot, all eyes were on Tony and Jared. The others crowded around Tony as he slowly made sketches on pieces of paper and then crumpled them up in frustration. Jared watched him with intense eyes. “Don’t you all have something better to do?” Tony finally yelled.
Madison waved a binder and pencil in the air. “I’m recording all your mistakes,” she told him, grinning.
Danial was busy uncrumpling the papers and smoothing them open. “Why are you throwing these away? We may use one of these for the design later.”
Yusuf groaned. Loudly. As captain, he was aching to get started. But he also knew the design process was crucial. A flaw in the design could mean the difference between winning and losing. If Principal Williamson was right about Mr. Parker’s hopes for TRC, Team Freybots really needed to win the regionals in January.
The added pressure didn’t help.
Tony threw another piece of paper across the floor. It landed on Jared’s lap, and he yelped.
Mr. Parker clapped his hands once. “Okay, kids. Give these guys some space. Go play with the LEGOs while he works.”
The others moved away. Yusuf and Danial hunched over their laptops reading the TRC contest guidelines they’d downloaded. Cameron took an armful of LEGO pieces into a corner and began to assemble them into little bot babies. His hands were a blur as he worked, his eyes focused like laser beams on the LEGOs. For once, his mocking grin was completely absent. Yusuf elbowed Danial. “See, told you he’s going to be great at building our robot.”
“And I told you: ugh.”
Mr. Parker ended the club just before noon. Yusuf stopped Jared as they were leaving. “How’s the design going?”
“Okay, I guess,” Jared replied uncertainly. “Tony thinks he’s got a good design, but there’s no way of knowing until I make some decent sketches over the weekend.”
Mr. Parker led them out and locked the school. “See you on Monday, kids!” He waved as he walked toward his Volkswagen. “I’ve got tickets to a play in Houston tonight!”
“Sounds cool,” Yusuf called out. He’d been to a few Christmas plays in the public library, but nothing too exciting. He could just imagine the theaters in Houston, the actors dressed in fine clothes. To be honest, everything in Houston sounded way more fun than Frey.
Jared was fiddling with his backpack. “Can you help me?” he burst out. “With the sketches, I mean. This is my first real robotics club. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Yusuf slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Of course. Want to come over to my house now? You can call your grandmother from there.”
Yusuf’s house was quiet when they arrived. Amma met them at the front door with a finger to her lips. “Shhh, Aleena just fell asleep. She was having trouble breathing.”
Yusuf and Jared tiptoed inside, but not before Yusuf pointed to a neat row of shoes in the hallway. “Can you take your shoes off, please? It’s a rule in my house.”
Jared did as he was told. Yusuf relaxed. He didn’t like inviting kids from school because they asked questions about things like these. Why do you take your shoes off in the house? What is that language your dad is speaking on the phone? Why do you eat such spicy foods? But Jared was okay. He didn’t ask unnecessary questions.
They made a detour to the kitchen to devour Amma’s aloo parathas, still warm from the stove. Then Jared called Mrs. Raymond to tell her where he was. Yusuf could hear her excited voice through the phone. “She says I’m welcome to stay as long as I want,” Jared told him after hanging up.
“Perfect.”
In Yusuf’s bedroom, they flopped on the floor and took out Tony’s papers. There were a lot of them, full of pencil markings and lines and circles. Yusuf pored over them, relieved to see that they made a lot of sense. “Tony’s got a good eye,” he remarked. One design was the classic arm robot with a single wheel. Another was a flat wagon-shaped robot with smaller arms and four wheels. A third was a big arm and a little arm on each side of a pillar robot.
Yusuf could see the benefits and difficulties of each design. An arm robot was probably going to be the fastest, but its single wheel made it more prone to falling. A wagon robot was stable but also slower and bulkier. “None of these are the right one,” he murmured.
Jared peered over his shoulder. “We could try combining them.”
They spent more than an hour perfecting Tony’s designs. Jared took notes as Yusuf talked, his words so rapid they bumped into each other as they left his mouth. The afternoon was hot, and he wished he had a fan in his room. Halfway through, he remembered Madison and began recording his notes in his laptop to send to her.
At three o’clock, Amma knocked on the door and peeked in. “Snacks, anyone?” she asked.
Yusuf’s forehead was beaded with sweat. “Do we have any ice cream?”
Amma shook her head, then her face brightened. “Aleena’s awake now, so I could take you kiddos to Dairy Queen.”
Everybody knew DQ had the best ice cream in the northern hemisphere. Jared and Yusuf said together, “We’ll be right there.”
Before they left, Yusuf had something for Jared. “You’ll never guess what came in the delivery truck for my dad’s store last week.”
“Dollar store items?”
Yusuf picked up his pants and dug through a pocket. He came up with a handful of papers. The notes from his locker! He hastily put them on his dresser and searched the other pocket. “Here, since you play solitaire so much.”
Jared looked at the playing cards Yusuf was holding out. “These are for me?”
“Yeah. My dad doesn’t really sell a lot of them. He was going to return them, but I took one pack. Aren’t they nice?”
Jared nodded. The cards had the Statue of Liberty on the box. “I’ve never been to New York,” he whispered.
Yusuf nodded. “Me neither. But I like this statue. Lady Liberty. She welcomes all the immigrants who come to our country.”
Jared stared. “Our country? Uncle Trevor says it’s not your country. It’s ours. White people’s.”
Yusuf’s face burned. “Since when have you started listening to Ethan’s dad?”
“He’s my uncle, remember? He comes over for Sunday dinner every week.”
“Well, tell your uncle I was born here, just like him. So was my mom. So that makes this our country too.”
Amma knocked on the door again. “Are you two coming? I want to swing over to St. Mary’s pumpkin pat
ch first. Aleena’s been begging to go.”
Yusuf knew better than to complain. Aleena was the baby, and she had asthma. That meant if she begged for something, she usually got it. Plus, the pumpkin patch might be fun. Sometimes they had games like dunk the pastor.
Jared was silent in the car. Was he thinking of what Yusuf had said? Or about what Ethan’s dad was saying every week at Sunday dinner? Yusuf gave him a little smile to show he wasn’t mad. Jared was a good, kindhearted person. It wasn’t his fault he was related to an adult bully.
The pumpkin patch turned out to be very fun indeed. St. Mary’s was a big Catholic church on several acres of wooded grounds, and their pumpkins were the best in Frey. Yusuf and Jared stood in a long line to dunk Father Robbins, an elderly fellow with bushy white hair and an easy grin. They ran like little kids around a big play fort and jumped on a giant trampoline until they were exhausted. Aleena’s favorite was the tractor hayride, and she made the boys ride with her three times. By the time Amma drove them to Dairy Queen, everyone was starving.
“Forget just ice cream, I’m going to eat a burger and fries too,” Yusuf announced as he collapsed next to Jared in the booth.
Amma took out her phone. “I guess you better call your grandmother again, Jared.”
Jared grinned at Yusuf. “She’s going to be so happy I’ve made a friend.”
21
Yusuf stayed up late to work on his 9/11 report. He read articles from 2001 about each of the terrorists, staring at their faces and wondering why they’d done what they’d done. He questioned what kind of Islam they practiced, which was so different from his own. He wanted to scream at them, “Thanks for ruining everyone’s lives, you evil men!”
The next day he went to the mosque construction site with bleary eyes. The half-built structure was cold and empty. The uncles clustered in a group on plastic chairs drinking chai and looking wistfully at their tools. “My dad reminded them they can’t build until the zoning meeting,” Danial told him as they walked toward the Sunday school area.
Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero Page 11