Jake doesn’t know what I did, so neither does Freddie.
At least I hope that’s what it means.
Charlie Parker Drysdale goes to his desk and starts talking to Esther.
Hannah gives me a thumbs up as I get closer to her and Jake. When I sit down she says, “Jake and I were just talking about how he sent the video of Freddie to Jackson Jo when he got home last night.”
“Cool,” I say. “You hear back?” I ask and I stare at Jake’s face. I am trying to see if I can tell for sure if he knows what I did.
I totally can’t.
“Not yet,” he says. “But there’s something we need to talk about.”
Uh-oh.
He takes what looks like a big piece of paper from under the notepad sitting on his desk.
“This,” he says. “I turned the part right before you bailed into a still shot and printed it. Here.”
Whew!
He passes me the picture.
“I still don’t get why you guys were talking about your face,” he says.
And then he looks up and, before I can say anything, Jake says, “Uh-oh.”
He’s looking toward the front of the class, so I do too.
Mr. MacDonald is standing in front of Ms. Anderson’s desk.
“Think I know why Freddie left the park so fast yesterday and why he didn’t text last night,” Jake says.
Mr. MacDonald tells us that he’s filling in for Ms. Anderson. He says that she and Freddie will be out for a few days and that we’ll have a substitute teacher.
“Both of them?” asks Hannah.
I turn around and look at Jake.
“Unfortunately,” says Mr. MacDonald, “I have some sad news. Freddie’s grandfather passed away last night.”
“He did?” says Charlie Parker Drysdale through the sounds of people saying things like “Oh, no!” and “What?”
“But,” says Esther, “what does that have to do with Ms. Anderson? Why isn’t she here?”
“Are they related?” I ask Jake, but I’m pretty sure I know the answer. All I have to do is think about crooked pinkies.
“Guess it’ll come out sooner or later,” says Jake to me. But then he starts talking to everyone in the classroom. “Ms. Anderson is Freddie’s aunt. He lives with her now. He has ever since the summer when his grandpa got sick. Didn’t want anyone to know, but now that his grandpa died, I guess it won’t be a secret much longer.”
“Wow, he really did have a worse summer than me,” I say.
“Maybe that’s why he’s been so mean,” says Hannah. “My dad says mean people are just really unhappy.”
“You can’t go around being a bully,” I say. “Even if something really, really bad happens like…” I stop myself because saying that Freddie’s grandpa died makes me think about Pops dying and I do not want to think about that.
“Why wouldn’t Freddie just tell us his grandpa was sick?” asks Esther. “And that Ms. Anderson is his aunt?”
“Guess he thought we’d blab,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale and he looks at me.
“Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it,” I say and I look back at him.
“Did you ever think,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale, “that you have way too many secrets?”
“Just ’cause I tell you something, or Nan tells your moms, doesn’t mean you can go ahead and tell everyone else,” I say. “How is that being a friend? And how is reminding me about seeing me fall off my board being a friend?”
“Because you always get back up,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale. “But ever since you moved here, you keep looking at everything like it’s all bad. Isn’t anything good?”
“Okay, okay,” says Mr. MacDonald. “Time to chill, or breathe, or find your happy place—call it what you will but you can’t think straight when you’re rattled. No one can.”
“That’s what my debate coach says too,” says Hannah. “It’s actually pretty funny. Ready? Keep calm because…the debate will carry on.” Hannah is the only one who laughs.
“Look,” says Mr. MacDonald. “Some things are hard to figure out and even harder to talk about. Like losing someone or something you love. Or having your parents split up. Or moving to a new town. Or joining a team when you don’t know anyone. Or,” he looks at me and at Charlie Parker Drysdale, “feeling like a friend has let you down or that you let them down,” he says. “It can make us feel weird, even afraid. And it’s really hard to talk about what makes us feel weird and afraid. And you’re right,” Mr. MacDonald looks back at me. “Just because Freddie’s grandpa died doesn’t mean he has the right to be a bully. Maybe he needs to figure out what he’s so afraid of. Maybe we all do. Maybe that’s the place to start.”
“Can English be where we start?” says Jake. “I’d rather talk about grammar.”
“Me too,” says Mr. MacDonald. “I’d rather talk about grammar, or basketball, or how I made the best casserole of my life last night. But emotions are complicated and can get all twisted inside of us.” He walks around to the other side of the desk and asks us to take out a piece of paper. “I have an idea,” he announces. “How about you try to write down what scares you most?”
A few people groan.
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to show it to anyone,” says Mr. MacDonald. “You can talk it out with each other or keep it to yourself forever if you like.”
“Why do it if we’re not going to talk about it?” asks Charlie Parker Drysdale.
I roll my eyes.
“Because not everyone thinks best by talking about it, Charlie,” says Mr. MacDonald. “And it’s important to admit what scares you, if only to yourself. To say ‘Yeah, that scares me, but I’m not gonna let being afraid get in my way.’”
Mr. MacDonald takes out a piece of paper and sits at his desk. “I’ll do it too,” he says and starts writing.
I take out a piece of paper and a pencil. I don’t know what to write. Then I look over at Charlie Parker Drysdale. He’s writing down a ton of things.
Esther writes something. Stops. And then starts writing again. I turn around. Jake is staring straight ahead.
“What?” he says. “I’m done.”
I look down at his paper.
“Quit it,” he says.
I turn back around. I still don’t know what to write, so I just start drawing a skateboard. Then I feel someone looking over my shoulder.
“Seriously?” says Charlie Parker Drysdale and he’s pointing at my drawing, “You’re not doing it?”
“What the…hey!” I lift my head to see him looking at my paper. “Stop looking.” I cover my paper.
“You looked at Jake’s,” he says and then he sits down in his seat and lifts his paper. “Here,” he says. “I don’t care if you see my list.”
“Dude,” says Jake. “You have a list?”
“Things going okay?” asks Mr. MacDonald.
“Did you want us to make a list or just name one thing?” asks Charlie Parker Drysdale.
“Whatever applies,” says Mr. MacDonald. “And I encourage you to talk to each other about what you’ve written, but let’s keep it to a whisper, so those who aren’t finished won’t be disturbed.”
“Sorry,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale. And then he pulls his desk closer to mine and Jake’s and says, “Don’t you have a list?”
“No,” says Jake quietly. “Just one thing.”
“Being new?” I ask Jake.
“Nope,” he says. “When you move as much as I have you get used to being new and making friends. Keeping ’em is the hard part. So that’s what I wrote down.”
“Is that why you just go along with Freddie when he starts picking on people?” asks Esther.
“Shhh,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale, waving his hand to signal that Esther should come closer.
> “It’s not like that,” says Jake.
Esther pulls her desk closer and whispers, “Seems like it’s exactly like that.”
“She’s right. I mean you went along with him, yesterday,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.
“Sibby stood up to him,” says Jake. His voice rises. He looks past me at Mr. MacDonald and then back at me and whispers, “Didn’t think you needed help.”
“So you helped Freddie instead,” I say.
“How?” he asks.
I take the still shot he printed and hold it up. “You wanted him to know about that face,” I point to the picture. “Even when you stand up to a bully, they still get inside your head, especially when you’re the only one doing the standing up. So, that…” I point to my face in the picture, “that’s what being bullied looks like.”
“What?” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.
Esther takes the picture from my hand and examines it. Charlie Parker Drysdale does too.
“You sure don’t look happy,” says Esther.
“So you bailing at the park is all my fault?” says Jake.
“Not totally,” says Hannah who is now kneeling between Jake’s desk and Charlie Parker Drysdale’s desk. “But going along with a bully only helps the bully. I mean I’m really sorry about Freddie’s grandpa, but I don’t want to spend the entire year being called Big-eyes-banana.”
Hannah stands up. “Sorry, Mr. MacDonald,” she says because she didn’t whisper that last part.
“Thank you,” he says. But he says it loud because there is a ton of whispering in the classroom now.
“And I don’t want to spend the year being Esther-blue-hair,” says Esther.
“Okay, okay,” says Jake. “I get it.”
“You sure?” I ask him, and I totally don’t sound chill when I add, “Or are you just saying that?”
“What’s with you?” asks Jake. “What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t like being spied on,” I snap.
“What are you talking about?” Esther asks.
“He secretly videoed me from behind the trees. Creep,” I hiss.
“Hold on!” says Jake.
“You spied?” asks Charlie Parker Drysdale.
“Ewww,” says Esther.
“Jake videoed Sibby skateboarding at lunch yesterday,” says Hannah. “Without her knowing.”
“Out back,” I say.
Charlie Parker Drysdale has a funny look on his face.
“It’s not like that,” says Jake. “It’s nothing.”
“Sure seems like something,” I tell him.
“You need to explain,” says Esther, “because that sounds really bad.”
“I ran home for a few minutes after I ate my lunch,” says Jake. He points his thumb toward the windows. “I live in that brown house on the other side of the empty lot behind the school. I wasn’t sure if you were telling me the truth about Jackson Jo and slo-mo. I mean, I don’t know you, right?”
“So you thought I was setting you up?” I ask.
“Maybe. I wanted to see for myself,” he says, “but then I saw you skating. We couldn’t find anything online of you skateboarding and Freddie was a little freaked out. I mean, he won’t admit it, but he knows about the Charlottetown Invitational and, hey, you came second. That’s dope. So when I saw you out there, I started videoing to show him what kind of skater you are. But, I mean, you didn’t just fall, that was a slam. I ran to see if you were okay, but you went in through the basement door. When I came inside with everyone else, I saw that you were fine.”
“Sounds sort of reasonable,” says Esther.
“Not to me,” I say. “You were spying on me to help Freddie beat me. And that’s not cool. I mean you know what it’s like to be new and you weren’t just being a jerk-face, you were being a super jerk-face.” I am getting madder and madder as I talk. “And that’s why—”
“Sibby, don’t,” says Hannah.
“That’s why I’m totally glad I deleted the part of the video where I bailed and sent it to Freddie,” I blurt.
“You messed with a video I took?” shouts Jake in a loud voice. “When?”
“Shhh,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.
Hannah hangs her head. “Last night,” she says. “When you were upstairs.”
“Were you in on it?” he asks Hannah. “Was the whole ‘hey come on over and have a muffin’ thing a setup?”
“No,” says Hannah. “We didn’t even know about your spying until you went upstairs.”
“I wasn’t spying,” he says.
“Jake,” says Mr. MacDonald. “Voice down, please.”
“Did you know Hannah and Jake were coming over last night?” Esther asks me.
“What?” I say because I don’t get why she’s asking me that right now. “What’s the difference?”
“Did you have pizza?” asks Esther.
I ignore her and look at Jake. “And you were probably going to put it online somewhere anyway, right?”
“You really think that?” says Jake.
“Um, you were hiding in the bushes,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.
“I told you it wasn’t like that!” shouts Jake.
“Okay, okay. Seems like we are well past whispering and into full-on shouting,” Mr. MacDonald says. “It’s one thing to have a lively discussion, but it sure doesn’t sound like—”
He’s saying more, but none of us can hear him because we are all yelling at each other.
Mr. MacDonald stands in front of Freddie’s empty desk and shouts “HEY! STOP SHOUTING!” which, I think, is a very strange way to get people to stop shouting.
Then, when no one is shouting, he tells us he has a new idea. And when he tells us what it is, I decide I don’t like Mr. MacDonald’s ideas.
His new idea is this: Charlie Parker Drysdale, Hannah, Esther, Jake, and I all need to stay in the classroom—together—and eat lunch—together. And no one can leave until lunch is over. No one, except Mr. MacDonald.
Chapter 15
Owner of the Ghost Board
Mr. MacDonald says he needs to supervise the lunchroom so he can’t stay for all of our together time.
“Aren’t you at least going to tell us what you wrote about what scares you most?” asks Charlie Parker Drysdale.
“Sure,” he says as he’s walking toward the classroom door. “Being a good teacher.”
“What?” says Jake. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I like teaching. I want to do it well, but sometimes it’s hard to know. And teaching isn’t just about a subject, at least not to me. It’s also about the hard stuff, like helping a group of friends stay friends. So, I’m hoping you’ll find a way.” He smiles, waves, and shuts the door behind him.
No one waves back. Charlie Parker Drysdale is drinking juice. Hannah is chomping on an apple while flipping through books from the shelf over by the windows. Esther is reading a magazine, and Jake is still talking about how I messed with his video and how Mr. MacDonald took his phone, so he can’t even check to see if Jackson Jo got back to him.
“Hey,” I say, “you’re the one who—”
“Just quit it,” says Esther. She’s looking at both of us but still turning the pages in front of her. “Jake took a video of Sibby and Sibby cut part of it out. Big deal.” She starts flipping the pages of her magazine really hard. “I didn’t do any of that, and now I’m stuck here thanks to you.” Esther looks up from her magazine at me. “And, Sibby, I still don’t get what you were so mad about last night. I was only trying to help. Whatever. I’m done,” she says and stands up. “I’m getting sick of reading about skateboarding, even if it is in Vogue.” She walks toward the bookshelf but her magazine falls off her desk as she moves past it.
She looks down but then just shakes her head and walks
past the magazine without picking it up.
A line on the cover says, “Interview with Jackson Jo, page 20.”
“I’ll get it,” I say and I reach for the magazine at the same time as Charlie Parker Drysdale reaches for a piece of folded paper that fell out of the pages. He opens the paper and makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
He looks up at Esther, who is talking to Hannah, and then he passes the paper to me.
It says, “Being alone.”
“Why’d you open this?” I whisper. “It’s what she wrote down. It’s about what she’s afraid of.”
Charlie Parker Drysdale rolls his eyes. “So? Why does everything have to be top secret with you?”
“Because it’s private,” I say.
Esther comes back and sits at her desk. She sees me holding the paper.
Jake is over at the rack where the skateboards are, and Hannah is still at the bookshelf.
“I…uh,” I start. And I wish I could figure out what to say, but sometimes when I try to say stuff about feelings it all comes out wrong, even when I don’t mean for it to.
As I’m thinking about what to say, Charlie Parker Drysdale keeps it simple. He tells Esther this: “You’re not alone.”
She smiles. Face and eyes. “Thanks, Charlie.”
And that’s when I decide that maybe his talking without thinking isn’t awful all of the time.
I look at him and whisper, “That was cool.”
He nods and then sits up straighter at his desk.
I decide to do what Charlie Parker Drysdale did and just say what I’m thinking. Here goes. “Esther,” I say. “What you wrote. Is that the reason you wanted to go shopping with me? And why you said we could move in to your cottage? Because you don’t want to…you know…be alone?”
“Mostly,” she says. “I thought it would be fun, and it’s not like my parents spend lots of time at the cottage. It’d be nice to have people there. People I like.”
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