That wasn’t the worst of it, however. Middle school’s poorest sport—that would be Braxton Brattley—managed to surpass even his own low-down dirty dirtiness.
Despite being in seventh grade and having no reason to be here, he’d hooked up with his brother and a few others to mess things up even more!
At one house, they asked for fifty dollars and the guy actually paid it. When another group of kids showed up and asked to clean the same man’s garage, he was shocked to learn that the rate was twenty dollars. He got so angry that when Mr. G. arrived to try to straighten everything out, he had to refund the dude’s cash entirely and apologize.
Brattley and his Band of Boneheads didn’t stop there, though. They also offered to do yard work, even though we weren’t supposed to be doing yards. So, of course, someone from the homeowners association stopped by and asked what they were doing.
Those little trolls had the nerve to get smart with the lady and told her to mind her own business. Then they BURNED THE LEAVES.
Uh, hello! Leaf burning is not cool. And IT’S AGAINST THE LAW.
The homeowners association lady was not happy. She called the police.
The police were not happy. They tracked down Mr. G.
Now Mr. G. was even more unhappy.
He was yelling at all of us, but some kids weren’t listening. It reminded me of something he said in class about pantomime and how it worked in ancient Rome. How actors would do them in these open-air theaters. And how Roman audiences were notorious for talking during the show, kinda like what happens if you go see a scary movie out at Northland Mall.
He said the actors had to gesture a lot so the audience would understand.
Lauren must have been thinking the same thing. She leaned over to me, whispering, “If Mr. G. waves his hands around any wilder he’s going to fly back in time.”
All I could say was, “Guuuuuuurl!”
We tallied up our earnings and left the park in silence. Having Mr. G. look so disappointed was a big letdown.
By the end of the weekend, I smelled like grass, dirt, and despair. Our combined total for three days’ worth of fund-raising opportunities:
$155 for cupcake sales
$200 for garage cleaning
$80 for yard work
$435 total
Not terrible, but… math don’t lie. We were going to have to come up with something a lot better or we’d never earn enough by our deadline.
When Katy’s one-eyed cat hopped onto my bed, I didn’t even bother shooing it away. And don’t tell anybody, but when a few tears of frustration slid down my cheeks, the mangy little thing licked my face, and I didn’t even mind. I buried my fingers in its fur and drifted to sleep wondering what I could do to make our trip a reality.
Monday, October 27
Gossip tickled the hallways and dangled in the air like moss on cemetery trees. (That’s both a metaphor and a simile. When you spend four hours on a sofa with your dad watching horror flicks over the weekend, you get these kinds of thoughts.)
A lot of the gossip had to do with me and how it didn’t look like I could raise enough money for our trip.
My life had gone from everybody telling me I was awesome on Friday (after all the attention about the newspaper article), to being the latest victim of the Mumble Mafia—kids who talk about you right in front of your face, only they mumble it. The Mumble Mafia are the worst kind of bullies. I didn’t have time for that.
So when two girls and two boys in sixth grade started that nonsense, I shut it down.
They were, like, “Mmm-hmm, she need to go somewhere and get some better ideas before nobody makes it to D.C.”
I was standing right there. RIGHT. THERE. But they couldn’t be bothered to just turn and look at me. No, they had to start mumbling to one another. Let me tell you, middle schoolers and future middle schoolers. You let kids like that bring you down and you don’t even have a name anymore.
So I was, like, “Um, first of all, none of you are even on the list to go to D.C., so what’re you even talking about?”
And one of the girls was, like, “Um, excuse you, but nobody was talking to you.”
I got right in her face. Not yelling. Not cursing. Just standing my ground.
I said, “All of y’all need to be way more worried about your own business rather than trying to talk about me or anybody else. Oh, and by the way, you really need to do something positive with that breath!”
Then I walked away. When you drop a bomb on the Mumble Mafia, just walk away.
Despite that negativity, I still had sixth graders coming up to me with elaborate schemes to make money—ideas that had no chance of working.
One boy suggested a hip-hop car wash. He said we could ask famous rappers to come down and help us raise money. He said he saw it once on his favorite TV show. I told him I’d get right on that.
A girl told me she thought it would be great if we held a dog wash. Like a car wash, but for dogs. Not a completely lame idea, I thought. Until she informed me that she wouldn’t volunteer because she didn’t like washing dogs, but she would bring her dog if we did it.
At least one good thing happened. Becks and Sara both sent texts first thing Monday morning.
From Becks:
I <3 YOU BREE-BREE
And Sara’s text was a photo of the four of us from third grade. Back then, Sara wore her hair in pigtails. Her eyes were a little red. This one kid in class, Todd Hampton, I called Toady Todd because when he was pushing kids around, his voice croaked like a frog’s. Anyway, he was teasing her, calling her “black Japanese.” Because her mother is African American and her father, Korean. Anyway, when kids made fun of her, slanting their eyes, she’d cry. And that day, boy was she crying. But Becks and I told her she was beautiful. We squeezed our cheeks together and made goofy faces at the camera. We were sisters.
In the photo, all four of us stood with our cheeks pressed together. United. Like we were one person.
Sara’s text read:
ALWAYS SISTERS, ALWAYS LOVE
I thought about the three friends at the hospital. Their photo in the paper, how they shared a look of complete oneness. It reminded me of this photo of the four of us. Only… looking at the old photo on my phone’s screen, I realized how different we all were now. It was like looking at four girls I used to know. Weird, right?
At least we weren’t fighting anymore. We even made plans to go to the movies on Saturday. And when I was moping about the trip, Becks said, “Don’t get all worried like you always do, Brianna. We’re going to make it. I just know it. I can’t wait ’til we get to D.C. It’s gonna be sick!”
Her enthusiasm made me feel better—and worse. Better because it showed she still cared about the trip. But what if the trip didn’t happen at all?
Civics Journal
Ancient Rome and Middle School
Pantomime in ancient Rome started as a form of theater.
It was popular for the Romans to put on plays, but the audience was usually so loud that the actors couldn’t be heard. So they had to learn to tell the story with big gestures and colorful set pieces.
Now, that is definitely like middle school. Only, in our version of pantomime, it’s like all of us middle schoolers are the actors AND the audience. It’s like we’re constantly trying to put on a show so others will know what we think or how we feel.
Our lives are one big show.
And most of the time, we’re not sure if anyone is listening.
8
Furies
Tuesday, October 28
Baking helped to chill me out, but it didn’t solve my problems. Becks and Sara, even though they apologized, were still acting weird. And when I asked them if they wanted to help with my first catering job, they were, like, “We’ll see.”
Hmph!
Although I was tired of everybody acting like money was the only thing that mattered to me, I did need to focus on how to make enough money for our trip. And if I didn’t com
e up with a killer speech for the conference, our school might not win the thousand-dollar prize, either.
In Civics, Mr. G. once again ran down what was expected of us at the conference.
He said, “Young people! Young people! May I have your attention, please!” Whenever he called us “young people” in that high-pitched tone, we knew he wasn’t playing around.
He went on and told us how we were expected to conduct ourselves. How we would have the opportunity of a lifetime.
“You will be given access to the inner workings of the American government. You will participate in workshops, take day trips, and have the opportunity to show your knowledge during a lively competition on comparing our governmental structure with that of the ancient Romans,” he said.
Then he turned to me, his eyes shining like he was crossing the finish line while carrying the Olympic torch.
He said, “Brianna, I don’t want to put too much pressure on you. Amanda finished second in the speech category, but that doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing. I believe in you. Just do your best!”
Sooooo, no pressure there, right?
Truth was, I really wanted to win. Braxton Brattley had definitely not won when he was sixth-grade president. If I brought home first place, it would shut him up for good!
Still, none of that mattered if we couldn’t even pay for the trip. I turned my attention back to raising more money.
Grandpa offered to drive me out to businesses that agreed to donate their bottles and cans so I could recycle them for cash. In Michigan, that’s ten cents per can or bottle. Not exactly gold bars, but if you do it enough, it starts to add up.
When I wasn’t doing homework or thinking up speech topics, I was raking leaves, even cleaning our garage. I also wrote letters to supermarket chains and other local businesses trying to see if we could get sponsors. The letter-writing had been Mr. G.’s idea.
“Baby, you’re looking a little tired,” Mom said one night. She was standing in my bedroom doorway; I was seated on my bed, legs crisscrossed, going over a list on my clipboard.
“Lots to do, Ma!” I said, without looking up.
“I spoke with your uncle Al in D.C. He’s looking forward to seeing us when we go down there next month,” she said. Mom was one of the chaperones for our trip. I glanced up.
“Me, too, Mom. But, please, no offense, I need to work. I have so much to do!”
She said, “Well, it’ll have to wait. It’s bedtime.”
I said, “But…”
She didn’t even try to listen. Just turned off my light switch. It made me so mad, I hopped up, flipped it right back on. Kept on working. She just didn’t understand how much pressure I was under.
I wedged my earbuds in my ears. I was singing along with an old Mariah Carey song. Well, trying to sing along, as I read over the next steps of my plan:
Recruit a few more kids to register for trip—more kids paying means more money coming in.
Reread back issues of Executive, Jr. magazine. (In case I am chosen for an interview, I want to know how to play it!)
Figure out our “purpose.” (As president of the sixth grade, I feel we’re pretty weak in the “purpose” area. I’m not even sure I know what it means, really, but explaining our purpose is the whole theme of the speeches.)
I never even heard Mom come back into the room.
She looked at me, that one eyebrow—I call it the Executioner—cocked and loaded. She gave me such a nasty stink eye I needed a tetanus shot.
I took out the earbuds. Turned off the iPod. Slid my books and clipboard to the floor and slipped under the cover. She flipped off the lights—again.
“Don’t make me come back in here, little girl.”
Hmph!
I was not a little girl. I was a businesswoman. A leader.
So why did I secretly wish she would rush back in and tell me exactly how to fix the sixth grade?
Wednesday, October 29
A happy surprise was waiting when I walked into journalism class.
Mrs. G. called me to her desk.
She said, “Brianna, I’d like you to consider joining the newspaper club.”
The newspaper club was mostly seventh and eighth graders. Sixth graders joined by invitation only.
I said, “Really?”
“Really!” she replied.
BAM!
After school, I texted home and told Grandpa I wouldn’t be on the bus. Told him I was staying after school for a club meeting.
Me:
I can walk to the bakery from here.
Grandpa:
Call me when you leave the school. Don’t text, Brianna. Call. Then call me when you get to the bakery.
Me:
Okay.
The only other sixth grader I saw when I entered Mrs. G.’s classroom was Red.
She gave a little wave. I waved back. Eventually, we wound up sitting together. I think maybe we were both a little intimidated. And we both would rather die than admit it.
“Um, you know you’re the star of the rumor mill,” I said.
She gave a fake shiver and wiggled her fingers together.
“Oh, yay!” she sang out. “So glad to keep y’all entertained.”
“The one about your daddy being a rancher and your mother being a former Miss Texas—that’s one of my favorites,” I said.
She shrugged. “That one’s almost true. My favorite is the one about me faking this accent to get attention. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love the way folks talk back home, but it’s not like I’m running around looking for ways to draw attention to myself.”
I laughed. “Uh, no offense, dude, but you’ve gotta be kidding me. You’re dressed in head-to-toe black and your hair is Kool-Aid red. Guuuuurl, you are not incognito.”
She flashed a wicked grin, when Amanda, the girl in charge of the newspaper, said it was time to get started.
Amanda Keene was an eighth grader. When she was in sixth, she was class president, too. Her D.C. speech was amazing, and placed second out of a hundred and eleven at the conference, according to Mr. G. She was smart, well liked, and dedicated. The kind of girl I wanted to be when I got to eighth grade.
She seemed really motivated, too. A dry, heavy lump rose in my throat. I felt my skin prickle and a thin line of sweat bubble up on my forehead.
If I said the wrong thing in here, I could look like an idiot in front of a room full of seventh and eighth graders. SEVENTH and EIGHTH graders. And a former presidential goddess.
It’d be certain doom to look like a loser in front of her.
So I chewed on my lower lip and stayed quiet, as an assistant editor, a boy named Mark Canny, started talking about Detroit.
He said, “How many people here think they’re not from Detroit?” Several hands went up. I played it safe, keeping my hand low. Red didn’t say anything. We lived outside Detroit. About twenty minutes south, near Southfield, in Orchard Park.
Mark looked at the hands, nodded. Looked at Amanda.
She said, “Now, when the Detroit Lions made it to the NFL playoffs, how many people were cheering or trying to ‘represent’ for Detroit?”
Hmm… now even other seventh and eighth graders seemed to hesitate. Hands up? Hands down? No one seemed certain. Still, several hands shot up.
Again, Mark nodded. He looked at us for a long time.
He said, “We hear stories every day about how the city of Detroit went broke. What do you guys think of that?”
We talked about the city. How easy it was for kids like us, kids from the suburbs, to act all superior. Like people in Detroit were second-class citizens. I hated when kids acted that way. I loved Detroit! Had loved it since I was a kid. Going downtown in the summer to Hart Plaza for the festivals. Going to my favorite Greek restaurant for gyros. That spicy lamb meat grilled piping hot, placed on a soft pita, and topped with this tasty, creamy Greek dressing and onions. Just thinking about it was making me hungry.
One kid, a boy in eigh
th, said, “Nobody better say nothing bad about the city. We’re all Detroit. One hundred percent!”
Several kids clapped, including me. Thank you, eighth-grade dude.
Then Amanda said, “Brianna, I’ve heard you’re a little businesswoman, selling cupcakes at Wetzel’s. So what do you think about the new trend among Detroit businesses?”
My brain started to shut down. I was in total panic mode. Huh? What was she talking about? I was doomed! Was my mouth hanging open? Had the word loser tattooed itself onto my forehead?
As I bit on my lip, little flicks of information clicked in my mind. Gradually, the information bits turned into a story. Articles I’d read. Deep breath.
Please don’t sound stupid… Please don’t sound stupid… Please don’t sound stupid…
“You mean like the start-up businesses or the new businesses that move into abandoned houses and use them to test business ideas? Like that?”
Amanda and Mark nodded. So did several others. I could feel Red’s bright blue-eyed gaze on the side of my face. Another deep breath. I kept going.
I said, “I think it’s… awesome. If I were older, I might try something like that, too.”
Knots of fear twisted in my belly. A pressure inside me swelled. I couldn’t let these older, smarter kids think I was lame!
Amanda said, “See, Mark! I told you she was smart!”
It was like all the pressure in my body set off an explosion of joy inside of me. I was so relieved, I felt dizzy.
Since my aunt Tina was a business writer, I’d heard her and my dad talk about how so much of Detroit was in disrepair. Houses were left empty because people couldn’t afford to live in them. Crime was up because people didn’t have jobs and because poor leadership left the city too broke to pay for stuff like police officers or even streetlights.
It was a bad situation.
But Aunt Tina had told me about small businesses, like restaurants and clothes designers, who set up shop in these abandoned homes. They’d clean them up and get power and water running for thirty days or so and do their thing. Send out tweets and use other social media to let people know what they had.
President of the Whole Sixth Grade Page 6