by Beth Vrabel
“J. T.!” one of the other basketball players boomed. “What do you mean you’re not playing?”
Jackson ignored him. Ignored everyone. Except for whoever just walked in. His eyes followed that person as she glided into the classroom.
Any guesses who?
Sarah Trickle. Perfect Sarah Trickle, with her perfect coppery red hair in two perfectly imperfect messy braids and her perfect little face with its perfect little freckles in perfect little constellations across her perfect tiny nose. Sarah Trickle was not even looking up from the tiny book in her tiny hands, with a perfect little smile as she read, not noticing how everyone in the entire classroom barely breathed as she moved past them in a perfect little vanilla-scented breeze. She was so cute, like a precious doll you’d cup in your hands and then put on a high shelf. I glanced down at my gnawed-on fingernails and my long legs bruised up from missing the pedal at Mom’s spin class. I ran my hands across my hair; it felt like clumps of hay.
“What are you reading?” asked a girl named Patricia. She was always hanging around Vile Kara Samson and Sarah, like a sad little puppy hoping to be invited inside. Patricia yanked out her side pony and began whipping her hair into braids.
“Oh,” Sarah said, like she was so stinking surprised someone would care what she was reading. As if she had no idea anyone even noticed she had entered the room. “It’s a chapbook.”
“Chapbook?” Patricia asked, the word all muffled because she was holding the braid in her mouth while she fished around for the hair tie she had dropped.
“It’s what you call books full of poems,” called out Jackson from across the room.
Sarah’s perfect little face bloomed with a perfect little blush. Not the roaring red splotches my face got when Jackson Thorpe so much as sneezed in my direction. No, her face just grew all shiny for one second and then went back to its regular pearly sheen. “You know about poetry?” she said softly.
“I write a little.” Jackson shrugged. Now I could see the black T-shirt had a graphic on it—an old-fashioned typewriter.
“I love poetry.” Sarah smiled. Jackson smiled back.
“It’s really the language of the soul, know what I mean?” he said. “A way to be your authentic self.”
If I hadn’t already thrown up on Sarah, I could’ve done it right then and there. I heard one of the basketball players groan.
Over the groan, Vile Kara Samson turned away from flirting with that meathead Wade and said, “My mom’s going to pick us up from basketball practice tonight, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sarah said.
Across the room, Jackson half stood. “You’re playing basketball this year?”
Sarah smiled, and, I kid you not, the fluorescent lights twinkled against her teeth. “I thought I’d give it a shot.”
Jackson grinned. “I’m playing, too!”
The boys around him hooted. Sarah put her chapbook on her desk and told Kara she was heading to the bathroom. Kara picked up the chapbook, leafed through it, and rolled her eyes.
“Class, class!” Mr. Harper called out, despite Ricky pulling a store-bought muffin from his bag and noisily removing the plastic wrapper. Mr. Harper paused, brought his hand to his mouth in horror, shook his head, and then clapped again. Ricky raised his eyebrows at me, but I was too shaken by that Jackson-Sarah exchange to react.
“Class,” Mr. Harper said again. “We have some important business to talk about this morning.”
Everyone settled down. Jackson Thorpe sat in his seat instead of on top of it.
“I’m about to hand some of you a piece of paper. I want it to remain facedown on your desk until I say to turn it over.” Mr. Harper cleared his throat. “This is your last year before high school. You won’t be considered or treated as if you are a child anymore. And, for many of you, it’ll be a year you’d like to begin not just as freshmen, but with fresh slates.” Mr. Harper snickered. When his eyes landed on Ricky’s mass-produced baked good, he shuddered again.
“As such,” he continued, “we’re going to spend a lot of time this year working on citizenship, preparing you for your role as a steward of the community. This means volunteering. You and a partner will choose a place in which to volunteer throughout the first semester, so make sure you pick an organization that’s important to you and one in which you feel you can make a difference.” As he said this, Mr. Harper placed a slip of paper on each person’s desk. Nope, that wasn’t correct, I quickly realized. He put a slip of paper on each girl’s desk. He glanced around when he got to Sarah’s empty seat.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Jackson cut in.
Mr. Harper nodded, put down the paper, and continued. “By the time you finish high school, you’ll be required to proactively help the community—see a need and fulfill it. That’s a new requirement for your incoming freshman class. Think about joining—or even making—an organization or club that would enrich the school or wider community.” He accidentally put two papers on my desk, so I handed one to Wade, sitting behind me, and motioned for him to pass it to Kara. “As an example, a group of new ninth graders created something called the Reckless Club, which focuses on ways to be inclusive.”
Wade plucked the paper from my fingers and threw it onto Kara’s desk. “You’ve got the Pipi Touch!” he shout-whispered.
I rolled my eyes.
Kara’s mouth twisted as she picked up the paper. “Oh, grow up, Wade.”
Wow, had Kara “Everybody Run, Pipi’s Coming” Samson just stood up for me? Maybe some people can evolve. Maybe I wouldn’t even need this whole redemption thing. I smiled at her in appreciation. But Kara didn’t glance my way. The moment Wade turned back around, still with a cocky grin on his face, Kara pegged him on the shoulder. “Gotcha!” She laughed.
“No fair! No tag backs!” Wade groaned.
“Say it next time,” Kara said.
I huffed out of my suddenly itchy nose and focused on Mr. Harper.
“When it’s your turn to come up with a club, consider giving it a name that makes sense.” Mr. Harper sighed. “Something direct.”
“Oh,” Ricky called out, his voice garbled by the muffin. “Like how The Great British Baking Show is just about British people baking.”
Mr. Harper gasped. “It’s about much more than that, Ricardo, which you’d understand if you watched. And I know you haven’t because no one who has ever watched The Great British Baking Show would desecrate their bodies with a mass-produced lump of gluten disguised as a muffin.” He shuddered and continued putting papers on girls’ desks. “I’m passing out a list of places where you can volunteer,” he said. “We’ve got exactly twelve boys and twelve girls in this class. How delightful! Girls, I’ve written the name of a boy who will be your partner on the page in front of you. Okay, flip!”
Universe! Tasha swore you’d provide. I’m counting on you! PROVIDE! I took a deep breath and flipped my paper, squishing shut my eyes and praying I’d see Jackson Thorpe’s name across the top. Maybe I could make this Pipi Touch thing work to my advantage. He’d be my partner and we’d spend so much time together, he’d be forever Pipi Touch infected. We’d live alone on a little island, isolated but in love. We’d—
No such luck. Ricky Salindo. I sighed.
Ricky was nice and all—I’d known him since kindergarten, and he was one of the only people who had never ridiculed me. Even when he and Jackson were kind of friends, back in fifth grade during their gaming phase, Ricky never actually seemed to join in on the make-fun-of-Pipi train. They stopped being friends in seventh grade, though, when Jackson was going through his jock stage and picked up a bunch of new friends.
So, it wasn’t a bummer that I was paired with Ricky. It was just a bummer that I wasn’t paired with Jackson Thorpe. I knew down to my bones that he would someday realize I was the great love of his life.
I glanced over at Jackson Thorpe. He leaned a row over and snagged a sheet from Patricia’s hands, trading it with the still unturned sheet on Sar
ah’s desk.
“But…” Patricia muttered.
Jackson turned away from her as Sarah strode back into the room.
I walked slowly over to Ricky, plastering a smile on my face. “Looks like we’re partners.”
“Yep.” He rolled up the wrapper to his muffin and tossed it into the bin a row of desks over. “Fight the enthusiasm.”
“What?” I handed him the sheet, which included a list of places we could volunteer.
“Nothing,” he muttered, but his ears were really red. “Okay, so, looks like we’ll spend an hour every Tuesday and Thursday morning wherever we decide to go. Northbrook Retirement Home, the Met Food Pantry, Northbrook Primary Kindergarten—”
“Kindergarten!” I blurted, but it came out echoey. I looked around—Sarah and Jackson had both said kindergarten at the exact same time as me. Thank you, Universe!
That Thursday, Ricky sat next to me on the little bus heading to kindergarten. Mr. Harper arranged it so we could catch a ride on the kindergarten bus at the beginning of the day—which wasn’t completely humiliating at all. Across from us was a little girl with thick, dark hair. She stared at us, barely even blinking, like Ricky and I were exotic animals in a traveling zoo exhibit.
“Just like old times,” Ricky said. “Riding this bus, I mean. Only you’re not wearing those little shoes with the buckles anymore.”
The sun was streaming in the windows of the bus, making Ricky’s black hair glow red along the edges. His smile was mostly just out of the corner of his mouth, and for a second he did look just like five-year-old Ricky. “You had on a Thor T-shirt,” I said. “You wore it almost every day.”
His smile stretched farther and he laughed, but mostly out of his nose, giving me a whiff of his peppermint gum. “Yeah. I was such a little weirdo.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got that department down, my friend.”
Ricky shrugged. “All kindergarteners are weirdos.” He gestured around the bus. We were in the second row. In front of us was a kid wearing a button-down shirt, his hair parted down the middle and slicked to the sides. The boy narrated everything the bus driver did as if he were a commentator in the Olympics watching an ice skater. “Now he’s turning the wheel a little bit. Now his foot is pushing the pedal to the floor. The sun is shining in his eyes. He’s muttering now for me to be quiet. Oh! Wow! Wheel’s turning! Wheel’s turning!”
“But some are more weirdo-ey than others.” I laughed.
Ricky half smiled again, and his eyes narrowed. “Why did you want to volunteer in kindergarten so badly? I mean, you don’t exactly look back fondly on that year.”
I snorted. “I don’t look back fondly on any year.”
Ricky watched me, waiting for a longer answer. Should I tell him my plan? Tasha had said we were going to need to seize any opportunity. I had called her last night (despite her why no text? message). I told her how I was determined to scratch kindergarten off my list by the end of the day. To pull it off, Ricky could be useful.
“I just want…”
Ricky’s eyebrows popped up.
“… to make a difference,” I finished. “To make sure no other little weirdo stays a weirdo beyond kindergarten.”
“I dunno,” Ricky said. “These guys seem to like being weirdos.”
Narrator Kid raised his voice to be heard over the noise in the bus. “Now he’s pushing forward the lever and we’re braking, folks. We. Are. Braking.”
“For now, maybe,” I said as we gathered our backpacks and moved toward the aisle to exit the bus. Jackson Thorpe and Sarah Trickle were already by the school doors. Jackson had his hand on his chest and seemed to be reciting something—poetry, most likely—while little girls gathered around Sarah as if she were Snow White. “But, someday? They’re going to want to be like those two.”
Chapter Five
The first half of volunteering at the kindergarten was a blur—Miss Gonzalez, the teacher, put each of us in different positions around the room. Sarah had to get the kids out of their coats and show them how to hang the coats on their hooks. Jackson and Ricky were in charge of helping the kids do their “morning work” (today: coloring a picture of a tree). I was supposed to take lunch orders. This meant showing the kids pictures of different lunch options—ham sandwich, hamburger, or salad.
Miss Gonzalez told us that the first couple weeks of kindergarten were like herding kittens, but that the kids would get the hang of the system by the end of the month. She was optimistic, for sure, that Miss Gonzalez. Most of the kids couldn’t even remember if they liked ham sandwiches.
A freakish number of them chose salad.
“Why would you pick a salad over a hamburger?” I asked one little girl. She had her hair in two pigtails and freckles covered her face.
She shrugged. “Croutons.”
Behind her, three other kids in the salad line nodded solemnly.
“You’re all choosing salad so you can eat the croutons?”
They nodded again. “And eat cheese,” Pigtails said. “My sister is a second grader. She told us all about the croutons.”
After the Pledge and a “meeting,” during which three kids shared interesting facts about themselves (including that one of them has a dad whose breath smells like queso, leading to several minutes of excited exclamations of “queso breath!” “queso breath!”), Miss Gonzalez sent all of us out to a little courtyard “to burn off some energy.”
“Aren’t you coming?” Ricky asked Miss Gonzalez.
“No, I’m going to watch from the window.” Then she muttered to us, “Tire them out. Please tire them out.” I checked the clock. We had been there for only twenty-two minutes.
Remember the mission, I reminded myself as I surveyed the courtyard. Redemption or revenge. I sighed a little as I took in the scene. Already, in this first week of school, I could pinpoint who was the future Sarah Trickle. The little girl’s hair was curled in long ringlets and her headband matched her tunic. Her running shoes had small bows that coordinated with her leggings. She looked like she had jumped out of an American Girl catalog as she stood in the middle of the playscape, laughing at something someone said. Five other little girls stood a distance back from her in a half circle. They also laughed, but mostly kept their eyes on the future Sarah Trickle, copying her pose when she bent at the waist and when she covered her mouth with her hands.
It was as easy to spot the future Jackson Thorpe. He was the stocky little boy with the spiky blond hair pumping his arms as he led the dozen or so kids chasing the actual Jackson Thorpe around the playscape. All of them wore athletic gear. All of them laughed like running was something enjoyable and like they barely noticed the attention they were getting, even as they wove directly between the girls.
And then there were the rest of the kids.
Somewhere among them was the future Pipi McGee, waiting for me to save her from her fate. Which one, which one?
I turned around and smacked straight into Pigtails.
“Do you have a dog?” she asked.
“What? Me? No. I, um, have a turtle, though.”
Pigtails’s nose crinkled. “Someday I’m going to have a dog.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. I spotted Ricky, sitting in the shade reading a thick book that was resting in his lap. Behind him, three kids stood in a strange, still formation. One had his foot sticking straight out, wobbling with a frozen smile on his face. Next to him, another boy stood with arms outstretched and stiff. A girl sat cross-legged on the ground between them, her eyes wide open as they glided side to side, making sure the other two weren’t moving, either.
Ricky peeked up from his book and saw my confused face. “They’re playing statue.” He shrugged. “It’s a game I made up with my little brothers and sister.”
The foot-sticking-out kid fell to the side. “You lose, Marvin,” Ricky said.
“Oh, come on!” Marvin pleaded. “Let me play again!”
“Oh, all right,” Ricky said, the corner of his mou
th twitching. “Just remember, no moving, no talking.”
Marvin fell back into place.
I strode over to them, Pigtails shadowing me. “You’re an evil genius,” I told Ricky. “You know that, right?”
Ricky grinned, then looked back down at his book. “What are you looking for?” he asked as I scanned the playground again.
I chewed my lip. “You know, anyone who feels left out.”
Ricky’s mouth twitched. “What are you up to?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice light.
He folded over the corner of his page and closed the book. Crow Reaper.
“Hey, Tasha loves that book!” I said.
Ricky’s forehead crinkled. “Yeah, I know. She recommended it.”
I kept my eyes on the playground. Now the future Sarah Trickle was braiding the current Sarah Trickle’s hair. Jackson and his crew ran circles around them.
“The stuff you were saying earlier,” Ricky said, “about looking out for weirdos…”
Pigtails pulled on my shirt. “Someday I’m going to have a dog,” she said again.
“Yeah, I know.” I glanced back at Ricky, feeling my cheeks flame. “I think it’d be cool to find a kid like me, I guess. Impart some wisdom.”
Ricky’s shoulders shook as he kept in his laughter.
“What?” I stomped my foot.
“Your wisdom?”
“Shut up.”
“It’s going to be a great dog,” Pigtails continued.
About two feet in front of us a little boy sat on a patch of blacktop—his chin resting on his palms—staring into space. Was he the McGee? Full of imagination, deep in thought, still waters running deep? I sat down next to him.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
The little boy shifted. Yellow sidewalk chalk on his fingers looked extra bright against his dark skin, especially when he smudged it across his cheek as he shrugged. “Legos, mostly.”