My Year in the Middle

by Lila Quintero Weaver

  Willa snaps at her, “Hey, y’all aren’t supposed to do that at school!”

  This gets Mrs. Underwood’s attention. Pumping her arms, she charges over to Missy. “Put that away. Politicking is against school regulations.”

  Missy says, “Were you for Brewer? He lost last night, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Did you hear me?” Mrs. Underwood snaps. “I said it’s against regulations.”

  Missy says, “You know we’re not coming back next year, don’t you?” She pauses. “Soooo, really, I don’t think you ought to be bossing us anymore.” The whole class freezes. Even Phyllis looks shocked at what Missy just said to a teacher.

  In a dead-calm voice, Mrs. Underwood says, “Have it your way, Missy, but count on a drop in your conduct grade. And a letter from Mr. Abrams to your parents.”

  Missy snorts. “Ooh, I’m scared!”

  Mrs. Underwood whips out her grade book. It takes a minute for everybody else to stir again. Some girls waste no time sticking their Wallace buttons on their shirt collars, like they don’t give three hoots. Mrs. Underwood’s spell has been broken, and they’re free to do as they please.

  Abigail’s got a button, too, but she hasn’t pinned it on her shirt yet. We still haven’t talked since the party, but now I make a beeline for her. “Don’t tell me you’re going to wear that.”

  “I might.” She gives me a huffy look.

  “You supported Brewer!”

  “So? There’s nothing wrong with having a Wallace button.”

  “Yes, there is! Wallace is bad for Alabama. Don’t you remember your father saying that?”

  “Oh, Lu. Don’t be a child. Wallace has good ideas, too.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Did Conrad brainwash you or something?”

  She leads me by the arm to a far corner of the gym. “Bless your heart, the party wasn’t much fun for you, was it?” Her eyes are baby blue as ever, eyes I used to trust.

  “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “Is this about being a wallflower? Next time, you should sit out games that are meant for couples. Then you won’t get your feelings hurt and end up showing off with somebody’s brother.”

  “Next time? Ha! There’s not going to be a next time.”

  “Oh really?” Her jaw goes hard. “If that’s how you want to be, I’ll make double-dang sure you’re not invited to any more parties.”

  “So you’re in charge of who gets invited to parties?” I cock my head and narrow my eyes at her.

  “Have a little gratitude, Lu. If it hadn’t been for me pleading with Phyllis, you wouldn’t have been invited to hers.”

  Blood rushes to my cheeks. “In that case, guess I have you to thank for the great time I had.”

  “No need to be sarcastic,” says Abigail. “Not even Belinda will want to be your friend if you’re all nasty like that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not even Belinda’? She’s sweeter and smarter than anybody! You better take that back!”

  Her eyes bore holes in me. “I’ll take it back when I’m good and ready.” With a firm grip on the Wallace button, she stabs it to her lapel. “There. Happy now?”

  Miss Garrett announces, “For the next ninety minutes, you’ll have to put distractions aside and concentrate on what you’ve learned this year.”

  Man oh man, talk about distractions. This morning, we found out Mr. Abrams suspended the boys who got sent to Coach Williams. He thinks they were all involved in the locker-room fight that ended with Sam’s broken collarbone, but that can’t be right. Anybody that’s ever been around Spider would know he stops fights. For Spider, just being suspended is bad enough, but it also means he’ll get zeroes on his exams and get kicked out of the math club. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that his uncle might decide he’s too radical to be on the radio!

  Willa mutters, “We’ve got to do something!”

  “Like what?” Belinda says.

  “Let me think on it.”

  As kids finish their exams, the stack of papers on Miss Garrett’s desk grows taller. She has her red pen out, grading them. Out the window, I see dark clouds moving in. Gosh, I hope the weather’s good for Field Day tomorrow. “Angry drops pound the pane”— that’s from Belinda’s poem about spring. One of these days, I’m going to sit in her bedroom and go through her poetry notebook, start to finish. Or better yet, spend all day with her under the cedar tree at Oakwood Cemetery, with birds nesting in the branches and butterflies dropping by for a visit.

  Marina told me I should get myself a friend with brains and gumption, and by golly, I’ve got at least two, Sam McCorkle and Belinda Gresham.

  Sam’s new desk is empty now. He proved Mrs. Townsend right when she said he had a backbone made of steel. “Watch and see,” she told us at the picnic table that afternoon. Sometimes shy people are pretty gutsy, deep down. Sometimes they’re not, but then they put their minds to it and figure out how to grow gumption. Maybe that’s starting to happen to me.

  Miss Garrett is busy punching numbers into her adding machine. Now and then, she stops to write in her grade book. Pretty soon, she’ll reach “Olivera, Luisa.” My final grade will be an A — I’m sure of that — but this’ll come on account of my report on the stinking rally. Ugh. I didn’t belong there and never should’ve gone. When Abigail brought it up, maybe I cared more about fun stuff than right stuff. But that was then.

  Guess I’m supposed to feel a jolt of electricity or hear a drumroll in my head, like something straight off the Sly and the Family Stone record. But for me, it doesn’t work like that. All I can hear is my heart, pounding like a son of a gun.

  Before I can chicken out, I walk up to Miss Garrett’s desk, where I let loose a lungful of air. She glances up at me. “What is it, Lu?”

  “I think you shouldn’t give me extra credit for my report.”

  “Excuse me?” Her eyebrows look like question marks.

  “It’s just that going to a Wallace rally wasn’t a good idea. I don’t feel good about getting credit for it.”

  Miss Garrett shakes her head. “What’s happened to you lately, Lu? I gather people like your sister have been talking to you, putting all kinds of thoughts in your head?” She’s not smiling. “I can omit the report from your grade, but you’d better be sure. Without that extra credit, your grade will drop and you may even lose your place on the honor roll.”

  I bite my lip. “I know, but it can’t be helped.” Mamá and Papá won’t like it one bit when they find out I didn’t make the honor roll. But I think they’ll understand when I explain.

  “All right. If that’s the way you want it, but I must say, this is a costly mistake.” When she sees that I haven’t changed my mind, Miss Garrett picks up her red pen and turns to my name in her grade book. She sighs a long deep sigh that sends the daisies on her desk into flutters.

  I sigh a long deep sigh that sends me floating free as a kite.

  I did it. I got myself some gumption.

  When the bell rings, Willa announces her plan. It could mean that we’ll miss our buses, but Angie says her mom will give us all a ride home.

  We knock on the door of Mr. Abrams’s office. Willa charges in first, with Belinda, Angie, and me right behind her. Willa gets right to it. “Spider doesn’t deserve to be suspended. He’s always breaking up fights, not starting them!”

  We all nod along with her. Maybe Spider did clown around with Robbie over the paper airplane, but he’d never throw fists. Never.

  Mr. Abrams pushes his glasses down to the tip of his nose and eyes us like we’re naughty children. Belinda seems only a little shy when she says, “Sir, if you don’t believe us, please go ask the math teacher.”

  Angie adds, “Or Miss Garrett.”

  “Or just ask Sam what happened!” Willa exclaims.

  Mr. Abrams harrumphs and reaches back behind a file cabinet. “Well, what do you all say about this?” Out comes a James Brown poster that I recognize, the one with SAY IT LOUD: I’M BLA
CK AND I’M PROUD stamped across a map of Africa, except now the poster’s got torn edges and missing corners, like somebody ripped it straight off the inside of Spider’s locker. “Think I was born yesterday? This is what I call stirring up trouble. We can’t tolerate this kind of malarkey, now can we?”

  I’m fresh from talking with Miss Garrett, so it seems like speaking up would come easy now, but I’m almost as scared as ever. With my knees going to jelly, I finally open my trap. “But that’s freedom of speech, uh, Mr. Abrams, sir.” In my head, I’m replaying all the stuff Marina told Papá at breakfast that day after the antiwar protests. “Um, it’s why we have the First Amendment, sir.” But it doesn’t come out anything like when Marina says it. Biting my lip, I wonder if I made things better or worse for Spider.

  Mr. Abrams rumbles and grumbles. With a voice dry as leather, he says a bunch of stuff about radicals and hippies invading his school. “Can’t have that.” But then he thanks us for coming in. Yes, thanks us. He might not mean it, but still, a teensy shot of hope races through me. Maybe Spider will get justice after all.

  On the morning of Field Day, the school lawn is swarming with people. Coaches drag sports equipment from here to yon, teachers fire up concession stands, and band members practice formations. Some kids are checking racecourses and warming up for events.

  Belinda and Angie and I take a light jog around the driveway, where we spy some puddles left by last night’s humdinger of a rain shower. The rain washed away all traces of the chalk line, but before long, Mrs. Underwood will lay down a brand-new one, and we’ll listen for the breeeeeeee of her whistle.

  “Are you nervous?” I ask the other girls.

  “Nah,” Angie says.

  “A little,” Belinda admits.

  Right this moment, Tina Briggs must be barreling down the highway toward Red Grove. The very idea gives me the heebie-jeebies, and even though Belinda says, “Shoot, Peewee, she’s probably more scared of you than you are of her,” I don’t buy it. No way is Tina Briggs scared of me.

  Paige comes by to wish us well, which is awfully nice of her. So far today, she’s the only white sixth-grader to speak to me. She figures Sam won’t show up at all, what with his arm in a sling. “He can’t throw horseshoes.”

  “Or play the tuba,” I add.

  Paige says, “Can I tell you something? I left Phyllis’s party right after you. I called Mother to come pick me up.”

  “How come?”

  “All that hateful stuff made me sick. But see, everybody can’t be like you and Sam.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yeah, gutsy — going over to sit with the black kids.”

  “Gutsy, my foot! It took me forever to work up the nerve.”

  “So you’re not mad?” Paige says.

  “Not at you.”

  “At who, then? Missy?” I let that go without answering. Missy’s around here somewhere. Earlier she had Phyllis and Abigail trailing behind her like a couple of puppy dogs. All three showed up for Field Day in Bobbie Brooks shirts with Wallace buttons stuck on the lapels. I guess Abigail is going to East Lake after all.

  Suddenly, Willa lets out a shriek and points. Here comes Spider, bounding across the grass, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and bell-bottomed jeans. A bunch of us wrap him in a bear hug, and I don’t care who sees me doing it, Libby or Missy or anybody. Even Paige hugs him, and I think I might just cry about that.

  “Hey, now! Don’t y’all fret. They tried to suspend me, but it didn’t stick,” Spider says.

  “But what happened?” Angie asks. “Was Nick the one who pushed Sam?”

  “Yep,” he says. “And yesterday, when Mr. Abrams finally paid Sam a visit, he got the whole story. That’s how come me and Robbie and Tommy aren’t suspended anymore.” He grins. “But never mind all that mess. Y’all girls are fixing to make some folks eat dirt, and I’m here to cheer for you!”

  Across the back lawn, events of every sort are underway, like chin-up contests and softball tosses. And now the teachers’ wheelbarrow race is off and rolling. The Greshams are strolling all over the school grounds, checking out this race and that relay, waiting for Belinda’s turn to run.

  After the boys’ baton relay, Angie runs her sprints, coming in second on two and winning the last one. Belinda’s single-lap race is next. The Greshams hurry to the chalk line to watch, and I’m right behind them. At the start, seven girls spread across the driveway. When the whistle sounds and the rest of the pack thunders off, Belinda sticks to her game plan. She runs smooth and relaxed, like everything’s under control, and like she has an Olympic coach whispering in her ear. That ponytail of hers points like an arrow saying, Here she is, a winner! I keep my eye on that ponytail as long as I can, till Belinda rounds the first curve and disappears behind the building. Then it’s nail-biting time. As the seconds fly by, I imagine her blitzing past the flagpole, then in front of the school sign, then in sight of the ball fields and around the last bend. Finally, Dr. Gresham hollers, “Here they come!” and soon Belinda appears, arms and legs chugging like the wheels on a freight train. She’s ahead of the rest by bunches. Angie and Willa and Spider and the Greshams and I jump up and down and scream like a herd of banshees. When her feet cross the line, we scream even more.

  About then, a voice behind me announces, “Y’all, this is my cousin, Tina Briggs. She’s third in the state.” Everybody turns around and freezes, staring like she’s a martian. She’s not a martian; she’s a tall, copper-haired girl with bangs cut so long you can’t see her eyebrows. Chills run all through me. She looks fast. Way faster than anybody I’ve run against so far.

  Of course I avoid Ricky like the ever-living plague. It’s enough that out of the corner of my eye, I can see him smirking and licking his chops at me. Also, I’m wanted elsewhere, because Mrs. Underwood is dying to give me a pep talk. “You’ve got what it takes, Olivera. She ain’t got nothing on you. Nothing at all.”

  But I’m no dummy. Tina’s got plenty on me. Good and plenty.

  It’s almost time to line up for the race when I hear Belinda yelp. “Looky who’s here, Peewee!”

  First thing I notice is Marina jumping up and down, calling my name. Just behind her are Mamá and Mrs. Sampredo, waving and blowing kisses. Next to Papá is a boy with his arm in a sling. He’s got old-fogy glasses perched on his nose, and his lip is swollen to twice its normal size. Seeing him makes my heart go boom.

  Papá rushes over and takes hold of my face with two hands. “Remember what you’ve practiced, hija. Listen for instructions from Marina and me, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, Papá, I know.” Mamá and Marina and Mrs. Sampredo smother me with hugs and squeezes. As for Sam, with that swollen mouth of his, all he can manage is a goofy-sounding “Cheering for you.”

  It’s crazy how one second you can feel all warm from hugs and smiles, and suddenly you’re chilled to the bone. That’s what standing next to Tina does to me. While I do my warm-ups, I catch sight of Tina’s shoes. Sure-enough track shoes. And look at her legs: muscles out the wazoo. Compared to hers, mine are little ole lollipop sticks. Plus, her name’s been in the paper, and what’ve I got in that department? Squat.

  Well, not exactly squat. I’ve got Madeline Manning whispering in my ear, plus friends and family rooting for me. And six weeks’ worth of practice laps on this very driveway, not to mention all the hill runs that Belinda and I have done on weekends. I’m as ready as I can be, even if my fluttery stomach hasn’t gotten the message — or my legs, which haven’t stopped doing the jitterbug since Tina showed up.

  We approach the chalk line. On the school lawn, scads of folks are busy chucking horseshoes at pegs in the ground or sloshing water in a bucket brigade. In other words, not giving a plug nickel about this race.

  Mrs. Underwood says, “On the count of three, then my whistle. Ready?” We nod.

  Mrs. Underwood sends the whistle to the moon, and we’re off.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. That’s Tina’s track shoes d
igging for every stride. Slam, slam, slam — that’s my sneakers following right behind her. Pothole full of rainwater, see ya. Crabgrass patch, hasta la vista. Teachers’ parking lot, catch you on the next lap. I may not have fancy track shoes, but I do know this driveway.

  Tina and I hang side by side all the way through the first curve, and that’s when she stomps on the gas. Oh my gosh, she can run! It’s not Panic City yet — she’s still within reach, I think. I think. Trouble is, I don’t know how fast her gas tank empties … or if it ever will empty.

  When we come up to the flagpole, Marina is at the curb, eyes on her watch, just like on Sunday. As I pass, she flashes the too-fast sign, but heck, I can’t slow down — Tina’s already ten strides ahead and we still have a whole lap to go after this one! Suddenly, I’m scared cold. Where are you, Madeline Manning?

  After a while, the rhythm of my feet reminds me of what she’s always told me. Stay calm, stay smooth. Stay calm, stay smooth. Her words seep into my addled brain, and I keep moving, even though my heart’s going tickety-tack.

  Here comes the far bend. The whole school lawn squirms with people all a-bustle. On the baseball field, they’re doing a throw-and-catch relay. Balls slam into gloves. Whack, whack. Kids scurry around with soft drinks and hot dogs. Teachers in their goofy shorts line up for tug-of-war. But this is all happening in the corner of my eye. I’m homed in on Tina, trying to match her, stride for stride, and doing war with the nervous bumblebees that have sprung loose in my head.

  The chalk line is in view now, and Tina’s still going like gangbusters. Her track shoes dig into the asphalt as she plows through the line, starting her second lap. Papá’s there with his watch for the half split. He makes the slow-down sign — same as Marina did — but do they realize that Tina’s never going to slow down?

  Bunches of kids are cheering now: “Ti-na, Ti-na, Ti-na, Ti-na!” Now she turns into a rocket. Up ahead, Sam is watching from the edge of the driveway. His good arm pumps in the air and he yells, “Go, Lu!”