I thought it sounded really cool and fantasized about what it’d be like to take over an abandoned house, clean it up, and fill it with cupcakes!
Amanda once again cut into my brain drift. “Your story about the girl with cancer was really cool,” she said. “Showed a lot of initiative. I want you to think about writing a positive story about Detroit. Even though our school is outside the city, what happens in Detroit affects all of us. Just like what happens to those girls you wrote about affects all of us in some way. So think about a story idea. We can talk about it later.”
When the meeting was over, my head was spinning.
Which was why, half an hour after I got to the bakery, I was surprised when Mrs. Wetzel told me I had a call. I thought it might be someone wanting to talk about another catering job.
Instead, it was Grandpa. A very unhappy Grandpa.
“Brianna Diane Justice…”
Uh-oh. This couldn’t be good. Diane had been the name of my grandmother—his wife. He did not use it lightly.
“I thought I told you to call me when you left school…”
Aw, dang!
I said, “Oh, but I—”
He cut me off. Didn’t even listen. He said, “Oh, but nothing! I told you to call me when you left the school, Brianna. I told you to call me when you got to the bakery. What if something had happened? What if you were in trouble of some kind?”
No matter what I said, I was wrong. After a few seconds, I stopped trying to say anything. When he finished yelling at me, I went back to my workstation. Took my phone out. I had been trying to explain that my phone was dead. Soon as I plugged it in and sat it on the counter, it beeped. I had three texts—one from Daddy, two from Mom. All were yelling at me.
You’d think that’d be enough stink to throw on a girl for one day. Sadly, you’d be wrong. A few minutes before it was time to go home, in walked the Brattley Brats!
Like always, Beau hung back. Braxton came over to the cupcakes. He leaned over the display case, peering into the glass. He whispered, “I’d like to order a vanilla cupcake with a side order of sixth-grade presidential failure.” His voice was low and sweet, like he was talking to a snake at a tea party.
So, staring through the other side of the case, I made my voice all singsong-y and bright. “Sorry, but we’re all out of that flavor. However, I did just bake a batch of get-over-yourself muffins. Maybe you’d like a dozen?”
He stood. I stood. He glared hard. I glared harder.
Stalemate.
I couldn’t help noticing then that Beau didn’t do… anything. Just stood there, looking back and forth between me and his brother. And this was the dude Braxton wanted to take over the sixth grade?
Braxton made his usual stink-face of disapproval.
He said, “You’re the one who needs to get over yourself. Have you even picked a topic for your speech yet?”
That stung. I hadn’t. I tried not to let it show. But it did.
“I knew it!”
“Don’t worry about my speech,” I said, weakly.
He turned and headed for the door. They bought no cupcakes. Braxton said over his shoulder, “When you fail, Mr. G. is going to be so disappointed! I might not even say I told you so.”
Thursday, October 30
While most everyone was talking about a zombie apocalypse and how to survive, or just planning what they were doing for Halloween, I was feeling even more pressure.
From my family getting all pissy because I’d forgotten to call Grandpa, to having my classmates whisper about whether I was a lousy leader, to a few of my best friends acting like idiots—it was all getting to me.
In my Home Ec class, things sort of just bubbled over and went SPLAT.
Everybody knew how I felt about our teacher, Mrs. Bwöring. She pronounced it “baring.” Said the w was silent. I wished she would be silent. It was supposed to be a cooking class, but all she did was talk about budgets and meal planning. She sucked all the life out of a class I’d hoped would be my favorite.
When I got to class, my head ached and so did my shoulders. My hands and arms, too. My whole body just felt tired. I couldn’t stop thinking about all we had to do to get ready for the D.C. trip. And as soon as I walked into class, Mrs. Bwöring was on me.
“No gum chewing in class, Miss Justice.” But I wasn’t. Chewing. Gum!
Then:
“Stop dragging your feet, Miss Justice.”
And then:
“This isn’t a bake sale, Miss Justice. I am trying to equip young minds with tools for the rest of their lives.”
What can I say? I just sort of snapped.
I slouched in my seat, crossed my arms over my chest. I said, “Do you even know how to cook?”
Several heads turned in my direction. Mrs. Bwöring stopped in the aisle, her back to me. She turned slowly, looking at me.
She took a step closer. Acid burned in my stomach. I was so wrong. I knew it. This was not leadership behavior. But something was pushing at me from the inside. It was like I couldn’t take one more thing.
Mrs. Bwöring was tall. Like NBA tall. She had dark skin and dark hair that she tied in a bun. She always wore dresses and flats. Now she stood towering over my desk, her shadow long and ominous.
For some reason, her standing over me just made me madder.
I looked at her, and it was on.
“This is the worst class I’ve ever taken!”
“MISS JUSTICE! You will show me proper respect or I will send you to see the principal.” I jumped to my feet. It was like I’d been completely possessed by some back-talking spirit.
Glaring up at her, I said: “Please! Oh, please! Send me to Principal Striker’s office. At least there I won’t have to look at your ugly flowered dresses or smell the moldy mothballs!”
By now, several kids were laughing and hooting. I got my wish. Kicked out of class. At first, I was glad. GLAD! My newfound bad-girl moment had my veins on fire with rebellious joy.
Then I got to the stairway and realized I could get expelled—or worse, removed as class president. I nearly passed out. I was slumped against the wall outside the girls’ bathroom when I felt my phone vibrate in my book bag. Using your phone during school is an offense punishable by death or something, but I figured I was already in trouble. What did it even matter? I reached over, fished it out of my bag, and saw I had a text.
From Lauren? How could she already know what happened?
Then I read it and my heart stopped. The message had nothing to do with me. It read:
Did u hear? Becks is leaving honors program.
I felt as if a switch had flipped. Becks was going to leave me all alone in Lame Land?
Tears stung my eyes. My heart beat an angry rhythm in my chest. Back in fifth grade, I never would have fought with a teacher. And Becks never would have quit something that she was good at. But I was learning more and more that fifth grade was a long time ago.
The Land of Fake-Believe was no fairy tale. I needed to get far, far away!
Civics Journal
Ancient Rome and Middle School
Back in ancient Rome they loved their gods and goddesses. There was a group of goddesses called Furies. You know, as in fur-i-ous?
Anyway, right now, I feel like I’m down with the Furies. Feel like my insides are getting squeezed to death. The ancient Furies were all about revenge. Maybe that was the same for me. I was angry, not just at my Home Ec teacher, but at my parents, all my other teachers, the other students, and myself.
Today, I am a Fury.
For real!
9
Hail Caesar? Hail No!
Have you ever done something even though you knew in your bones how wrong it was?
I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. Something I almost never did. I was a planner. A girl with a clipboard. In the back of my mind, I knew how angry my parents would be and how upset the school would be if I got caught. Not to mention how dangerous it was.
But
I needed to do something that was totally not me. And it felt like it wasn’t even me doing it!
So I did it. Took off from school and caught a city bus out of the ’burbs and into downtown Detroit.
My heart pumped hard and fast. An hour and ten minutes later, when we got to Grand River Avenue, I climbed off the bus and hopped on this train called the people mover that went all over downtown.
Am I nuts?
I can’t be here!
It was like the good part of me was fighting with the lost and confused and ANGRY me. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about how frustrated, confused, and angry I was until I started climbing off that bus.
When my phone vibrated, I sucked in some air. Grandpa. I sent back a text.
I’m here.
Here was supposed to be the library. Lying made my head hurt. I slumped low in the hard plastic seat of the elevated train. It grunted along the tracks, stopping just long enough to let passengers on and off. My mind kept replaying the last several days.
My failure at raising enough money for our trip, no matter what I did.
Having Mrs. BORing get all up in my face.
Becks leaving the honors program. Why?
The questions pinged around my brain. A tightness squeezed from my chest to my stomach. Outside, the sky stretched over us, gray and sad, like a pale face in despair.
It was time to make a decision. Too late to turn back now, to avoid getting in trouble. Might as well make the most of it. At least, that was what I hoped.
So I started to pay attention to what I was passing, looking for all the things I loved about Detroit. Like the Atheneum Suite Hotel. Mom, Katy, and I stayed there once for a girls’ weekend. We had massages and got mani-pedis. It was awesome.
I realized we must be in Greektown. I got off at the stop and raced down the steps. Lunch at school had consisted of gray lumpy stuff poured over brown lumpy stuff. I’d eaten an apple. Now my stomach didn’t just growl—it roared.
The New Parthenon Restaurant served the most amazing gyros. It didn’t take long to get served. I must have been hungrier than I thought, because it was like that gyro had never even existed, I’d eaten so fast. When I felt full, I looked around the room.
Ancient Rome stole a lot of ideas about everything from the Greeks. So it wasn’t any wonder that the decor of the restaurant, which was supposed to look Greek, also resembled a lot of the pictures we’d seen of ancient Rome.
It was weird, you know? All school year, Mr. G. had been telling us this stuff, trying to get us ready for the D.C. trip and the competition. Learning the vocabulary words, looking at photos of old buildings, we just thought of it as homework.
But here I was in Greektown, seeing how the influence of ancient Rome and Greece affected modern times.
“You sure finished that up!” said the waiter. His eyebrows were fat and bushy. He had a mustache like Luigi in Mario Kart. I felt stuffed—it was the best gyro ever.
I calculated his tip, deciding to leave 20 percent. Sometimes when people ate inside Wetzel’s and I brought them their cupcakes, they’d give me a tip. Tips were awesome!
I asked if I could snap some photos of the decor with my phone. Before I left, it was starting to get darker, and I didn’t have a clue what to do next. Running away to downtown Detroit had not been on the “To Do” list on my clipboard. But remembering the cool photos I took inside, I decided not to waste my journey into the big city.
I thought about the newspaper assignment Amanda had given me. Maybe instead of a regular story, I’d do a story in pictures. Show the sights and places that had meaning to me. I could even highlight the ones with the architecture or design elements we talked about in Mr. G.’s class.
Using my phone’s camera, I started walking and taking photos of any buildings or architecture that stood out. The Second Baptist Church of Detroit was a historic landmark. Although the architecture had nothing to do with what we were studying, I took a picture of myself in front of it anyway. Grandpa told me how this church was part of the Underground Railroad, back when Harriet Tubman was helping slaves escape from the South. Whenever I saw the old church, it made me feel proud. When Grandma was alive, we’d come to services here sometimes.
I kept walking, lost in thought. Thinking about the speech I was supposed to write—a speech about having purpose and leadership. Thinking about people who’d been enslaved and fought for freedom. Thinking about the people who fought to get them freedom.
I did so much thinking, I lost track of time—and where I was. When I started paying attention again, I saw that the tall buildings were blocking the sky, and darkness was creeping around me. I started to get self-conscious, feeling like my brightly colored pants and hoodie—fluorescent blue and neon pink—glowed.
I watched as women in business suits rushed from building to building up and down the sidewalk. Some wore slick pantsuits with low-heeled boots, or skirts and blazers under stylish wool coats. Even young women who looked like they might have just gotten out of college wore crisp white shirts tucked into neat black jeans with boots and leather jackets.
Looking down at myself again, I realized how young I looked. I’d never thought about it that much, but maybe how you looked did affect what people thought of you. Maybe part of moving away from being just a baker to being a leader meant wearing clothes that didn’t provide their own light source.
Movement and color caught my attention, coming from a large picture window. When I drew closer, I saw that it was a dance school. Girls of all different sizes wore tights and leotards. They were stretching. Looked like they were on some sort of break.
Then I got that strange feeling you get when someone is staring at you, a prickling along my scalp. A set of bright blue eyes was on me.
It was Red!
She gave me her usual half smile and nodded toward the door. I walked down, waited. In a few minutes she stepped outside.
She wore a black hoodie over her black leotard. Pink tights went straight down into black high-tops. She’d pulled on a pair of loose-fitting white sweats that stopped just below her knees.
I didn’t know what to say. “Um…”
She jumped in. “Yeah, um, so you caught me. This is my secret identity. By day I’m a regular middle school student. By night, I’m a crime-fighting ballerina in the city.”
She shrugged.
I shrugged.
“How long have you been, um, saving the world?” I asked.
She said, “I started when I was three. Since I just turned twelve—”
“Nine years!”
“Wow, Justice! You’re so quick with math. No wonder you’re our leader.”
We both laughed. Then she asked, “What’re you doing down here? Are your folks around?” She looked both ways trying to spot my parents.
“Aw, you know, just sort of hanging out, I guess,” I said.
Her gaze grew more intense. One eyebrow lifted.
I felt guilty. “What?”
She took a step back, the half smile back in place. “Nothing! Nothing! Just surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Hey, I’m surprised to see you, too! Blueberry Hills’ best-known goth girl wears a tutu. Gotta think about that one,” I said, laughing.
She smiled, then her face grew serious. “Would you mind if we kept this between us?”
“Sure,” I said. “But, I mean, if you’ve been doing this for nine years, I’ll bet you’re awesome. Why hide it?”
She said ballet was something in life that was just hers. She didn’t have to be great and she didn’t do it for recognition. “I do it because when I dance, it’s like I can hear my soul. Feeling my muscles stretch beyond reason makes me feel more alive than anything in the world. I… It’s personal.”
“I won’t say anything to anyone. Promise.”
Her break was over. She rushed back inside. The glow of pink light rushed from the window and spilled over me on the darkening sidewalk. The instructor had the girls line up in rows,
their backs to the window. Red’s dark-cherry hair was piled into a knot on top of her head.
It didn’t take long to see that Red was a magnificent dancer. Her ankles appeared incredibly thin, yet they were strong enough to hold her as she spun in tight circles or leaped through the air. Watching her made me feel like I could hear Red’s soul speaking, too. All of the dancers moved as though their bodies were weightless.
Whatever was going on with me, this rebellious funk or whatever, it was time to let it go. I needed to let myself fly. And I knew I didn’t have to run away to feel free.
Wish I’d thought of that sooner. ’Cause when I turned around, another set of eyes was staring at me. And they were not bright and blue.
They were angry and brown.
How had I forgotten Cadillac Place was just across the plaza? See, the old General Motors Building had been turned into government offices. Among them, a branch of the FBI.
My mom worked there. Only, she wasn’t at work anymore.
She was standing on the sidewalk, staring right at me!
Friday, November 7
Jail can teach you a lot. And that’s for reals!
Mom went ballistic when she found me in front of the dance studio downtown. She practically hyperventilated, she was yelling so much. I was put on punishment “until further notice,” which I figured meant until I was old enough to drive.
The worst part had been the Big Question:
Why?
And… What were you thinking, Brianna? What would make you do something so reckless?
Mom, Daddy, Grandpa—even Katy. They all asked me separately. And I didn’t know what to say! It should have been so easy to have one of those made-for-TV moments. Me breaking into tears and confessing, “Gee whiz, Mummy and Papa, I feel so gosh-darn overwhelmed. And I’m having trouble with my friends because they’d rather act like middle school idiots than the smart young women we were back in fifth grade!”
President of the Whole Sixth Grade Page 7