by Bruce Ingram
Well, Ms. Hawk calls out the first word from The Odyssey word list: baleful, and Luke and Mia shoot their hands into the air and before you know it, Mia has spelled the word correctly and Luke says it means evil. Then comes precedence, harangue, and insidious, and Mia and Luke fall into this routine of her spelling the words and Luke giving the definitions and Jayla and I helping them construct good sentences. The game is awesome, and we absolutely dominated what Ms. Hawk says is Round One of the game. We are up by like 15 points at the end of the first round.
Then Ms. Hawk says that next is Round Two, that these words are going to be really hard from the A part of the dictionary, but that the words won't be on the quiz but they will count for the game. And Round II will give the teams behind us a chance to catch up. Some of the words are just unbelievably difficult to spell and define: alopecia and abecedarian for example, and the other teams start to catch up to us because the point value keeps going up every time someone misspells the word or gives the wrong definition. Then Ms. Hawk says the last two words are aardwolf and ailanthus, and Luke whispers to us he knows what they both mean, and for us to just sit tight and let the other teams guess wrong and for the points to build up, then when people start to get close to figuring out the spellings and definitions, he will step in and we will grab all the points and win the game and extra credit points.
And it happened just like Luke said it would. When the points got high for both words, Luke spelled them both right and said aardwolves were like hyenas and ailanthus was an invasive tree species from Asia. I thought how on earth did he know all that, and Ms. Hawk must have thought the same thing because that was the question she asked. And then she answered her own question. "Of course," she said, "one is an animal and the other is a plant." And those answers came from a boy who told me he got a D in Honors Science.
So we each win 10 extra credit points for the vocabulary quiz next Tuesday. Luke (I can't believe how he's acting so excited about school, well, at least, English) raises his hand to me and Jayla, and we both give him a high five and then he turns to Mia with his open palm, and she does the strangest thing. Instead of giving him a high five, she squeezes his hand for several seconds and has, like, this shy grin on her face. What's up with that?
Chapter Nineteen: Marcus
We come into the next to last regular season game of the year 8-0, and Caleb and me have been dominating all year. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can stop him and me. And what does Coach Dell do when we play Northwood on the road? He goes all conservative and calls three running plays to start the game, and its three and out for us. Then Northwood comes down and grinds out like this 20-play, 80-yard drive, and we're down 7-0, and I haven't even touched the ball yet.
Finally, Coach Dell wises up a little bit and calls a 7-yard slant for me across the middle, and Caleb throws the ball a little high and behind me, and Northwood's corner interferes with my route, and the refs don't call anything. I scream at the ref to get into the game, our center Paul gets in my face, and tells me to get to the huddle, and I look over to the sidelines and Coach Dell's eyes are shooting daggers at me. Next, Dell calls a deep route for me down the sidelines, but when I leave the corner in the dust and turn around to look for the ball, I see that Caleb has already been sacked. It's third and 17 and an obvious pass play, and Northwood's coach sends both safeties and a linebacker on the blitz, and Caleb gets happy feet and throws the ball way too soon to me, and I haven't even turned around to catch the pass when I see it sailing over my head.
Northwood then goes on another long touchdown drive. Our defense sucks. Our corners can't defend and our safeties can't tackle, and our tackles and guards can't get any pressure on the quarterback when he does throw, which isn't often, because their running game is so strong. We're down 14-0, and there's only seven minutes left in the half, and I still haven't caught a pass. There's got to be college scouts out in the stands, and they're not seeing how I can dominate a game.
On our second drive, Coach Dell again starts with a running play, which (and I could have predicted that) gets stuffed at the line of scrimmage. It was almost like Northwood has read our playbook. He calls a halfback draw on the next play and that makes all of two yards. My number gets called on third down, and I have to go across the middle just past the first down mark. Northwood has their best corner on me, and I see the safety sneaking up to double. I don't care, two guys can't stop me. I zip across the middle and just when the ball arrives, I leap, because it's a little high, and the safety hits me high on the shoulders and the corner crunches me in the back. All three of us are like suspended in mid-air in a hot, tangled mess, and I get my fingertips on the ball but lose it when we all crash to the ground. That's the last time our offense is on the field, because Northwood goes on another long touchdown drive and score to go up 21-0 with just 14 seconds left in the half. When we get the ball back, all Caleb can do is take a knee to end the half.
Coach Dell gives us a pep talk during the half, but I can't listen to what he is saying, I'm so mad at him and the defense and the overall play calling...just everything. Things just totally fall apart in the second half. Northwood goes up 35-0 by the end of the third quarter, and their coach benches their starters, and Coach Dell benches both Caleb and me and most of the offensive line for the fourth quarter. It's scrub time all the way around, and the final score is 42-0. I catch two freaking passes for the whole game for a total of 11 yards, and the college scouts go home without seeing what I can do.
Then when I get home that night, Mom and Dad have had a chance to look up my grades online for the first nine weeks, and they're not happy with my D in English and a C on everything else except for a B in history and in math. They complain that I should have made an A in math and history, and everything else should have been at least a Β or a high C. And Dad rips into me for not keeping my temper under control and for yelling at the ref during the game. Didn't he see that stupid call or was he watching some other football game. I decide to tell him that, I was so mad. Then Dad and Mom ground me for a week, which means I have to break my date with Kylee on Saturday night because Joshua and I were going to double date. What a rotten, gosh awful night.
Chapter Twenty: Mia
I did something that maybe I shouldn't have, but I don't regret it. Mama and Poppa always tell me not to be too "forward" toward boys, but I squeezed Luke's hand in English class. We had just finished playing this new vocabulary game that Ms. Hawk created, and Luke was the captain, and I was one of the girls on his team. He picked me to be on his team! How great is that! I was hoping he would.
Well, anyway, we won the game and got 10 extra credit points for our vocab quiz next Tuesday. It's always nice to get extra credit, even though I made a high or middle A in all my classes the first nine weeks. The other students on Luke's team, Elly and Jayla, really helped out during the game, but Luke and I did most of the work on spelling the words and defining them correctly. So when we celebrated winning at the end of the game, Luke gave Elly and Jayla high fives, but when he held his hand for me to slap, instead I squeezed it and held on to it for just a second or two. I like him so much, he is the type of boy who has a really good heart and would treat a girl well. He got this funny look when I squeezed his hand, but then he gave me the sweetest little shy grin. It just made my heart melt.
Camila and Hannah have been teasing me non-stop about Luke, but I don't care. They say that I now spend my whole lunch period with him on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, which is true. They tease me that Luke is a terrible dresser, and that's true, too, that I must like "fixer upper" guy projects. But then Camila said that he is "pretty cute," and then I began to think that maybe they're sort of jealous that I am spending those lunches with him. I care what they think, but I don't care...does that make sense? I just like being with him. The more time we spend together during lunches, the more he opens up, and the more relaxed he seems to be with me. I don't think he's ever talked to girls much before me.
Of course, Tuesdays a
nd Thursdays are mostly helping Luke with his math work, but our Friday get-togethers have changed from just reading online to reading a book and discussing it. Luke finally went along with my idea for us to have a two-person book club, that on Fridays we would discuss the book that one of us had chosen for the two of us to read the week before. The deal is that I choose one book that I think he would like; then the next week, he chooses one that he thinks I would like. I just thought that if he would try reading some of the books off the college bound reading lists, that maybe that would make him want to go to college more. That maybe he would see how interesting books can be...that it's fun to learn.
So the first book I chose was Walden. It's about this man who goes off to live in a cabin in the woods for about a year. Luke just loved that book, he said he had no idea that it would be so good. That he could see living like the author and writing about deep thoughts and life and stuff. Luke then said that the line, "The sun is but a morning star" was one of the most interesting things he had ever read, that it made him think about the future and possibilities. This is coming from a boy who told me at the start of this year that he would probably drop out of high school like his father did. Then he said he had chosen a book that he thought I would like, The House on Mango Street, which is by a Hispanic woman.
It really made me feel good that Luke was thinking about and respectful about my Hispanic heritage, but by the Tuesday when we met in the library to go over his math work, I had to tell him that Mango was one of the worst books I had ever read, that all it was about was this stupid girl's hair and hats and it was just excruciating to read. Luke then laughed, and he said the book was the most boring thing he had ever read, so we decided right then to dump it and read something else. We went to the librarian, Mrs. Kendel, and she suggested George Orwell's 1984, which is about this dystopia in the future. We're going to read Animal Farm in Ms. Hawk's class second semester, and Mrs. Kendel said reading 1984 would help us understand the other book better.
I'm hoping that Luke and I can keep getting to know each other better...that maybe next year we can start dating. I would never ask him out, but I think I can show him that I would be fun and interesting to have around...that I would make a good girlfriend. Next fall when we get back to school, I could sort of hint that it might be fun for us to go do something sometime. That wouldn't be too forward, I hope. His daddy has all these used cars at their house, Luke has told me, so he would have something to drive, and we both should get our learner's permits next year. I worry that Poppa might not like me dating a white boy, and I'm not sure how Mama would react. Luke's not a fixer upper guy, he's a boy with real potential. I really believe that.
Second
Nine Weeks
Chapter Twenty-One: Luke
I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, so a couple of weeks ago I asked Granddaddy if he would take me hunting. He told me he had never hunted, and I said I knew that, but that I had taken a hunter safety class in eighth grade and passed the class (you can bet I studied for that class and aced the test). And all I needed was a licensed adult to take me hunting, and he could take a hunting safety class online, and we could go. Then Granddaddy said what are you going to hunt with, and I told him I had been thinking about that, too, and maybe he could give me my Christmas present early—a crossbow. I told him I had read online about Parker Thunderhawk crossbows, and that maybe that bow could count as both my Christmas present and my 15th birthday present for next year.
Granddaddy laughed and said he could do all that, but we still didn't have a place to go. And I told him that I ride my bike around a lot and that a neighborhood about a half mile from our house had all these houses on like five-acre lots, and there's this wooded hillside with a creek behind all those houses, and I had seen the deer coming out of the woodlot into those backyards in the evenings, and maybe some of those people would let me hunt with a crossbow in their backyards. Granddaddy laughed again and said okay, and then I said I needed one more thing and that was a popup blind to put in one of those backyards, so the deer couldn't see us or smell us so easily. Granddaddy said he would try to find one at the flea market or a used one on eBay.
Granddaddy asked had I asked my dad about all that, and I said no, that he was angry or working most of the time, and I already knew that his answer would be no. That Dad had always said no when I asked him to take me fishing, and that I was going to ask my granddaddy first about taking me hunting. Granddaddy then told me he had been meaning to have a serious talk with me for a long time and now was as good as any. He said that he did not raise Dad to be the way he is, and they had had some arguments about me. Then he asked me how much I knew about what happened with Dad when I was seven. I said I knew a little.
When I was seven, the police came to our house one night and arrested Dad. Mom was shaking, Dad was angry but he wasn't doing much talking back to the police, and I was scared. Mom has never worked except to help Dad with his cars, and Mom kept asking after the cops took Dad away where we were going to get money to pay the bills. Later, I asked Mom why the police had arrested Dad, and she said that they had accused him of being a part of a stolen car parts ring, a chop shop she called it. That my father would beat the charge in court. Dad didn't have to go to prison after the trial; he always has bragged to me that he "beat the rap," that he was too smart for the cops. So I guess that means he was guilty but the police couldn't pin the crime on him.
Granddaddy said I knew more than he thought I did, and then he asked if I knew about the family curse that the men had. I said I wasn't sure, and Granddaddy said that the men in our family had a problem with alcoholism. I told him that Mom had made me promise over and over ever since I was 12 that I would never drink alcohol, and I had promised her I wouldn't, and I never had tried it like some of the guys in school had...that I would keep that promise to Mom forever. He said that was a good promise to make, and he told me to keep it, too. Then Granddaddy teared up, and he said he had been a drunk and had only stopped drinking when I was born, that he vowed to Grandmother that I would never see him drink or drunk, and he had always kept that promise to Grandmother and me. He said Mom had made Dad stop drinking not long after they had gotten married, and that he had told her he would and he had kept that promise to Mom. I knew that Mom never allowed any alcohol in the house and that she never even used any to cook with, but I didn't know about the other stuff.
Granddaddy said "now you do," and that he would buy me the crossbow for Christmas and as my birthday present and take care of the blind...but that it was up to me to find somewhere to hunt and then he would take me hunting. I told him I would get on it right away. I wanted to ask Granddaddy if Dad was still doing illegal things, but I was afraid to...that the answer might be yes. Dad talks all the time about me dropping out after high school and working with him with the cars, but I don't want to work for him. I worry that he would do something shady, and I would get arrested along with him. If I ever find somebody to marry me and we have kids, I am never, ever going to do something illegal and have the police arrest me and have my kids see their dad hauled away.
The very next day after school, I rode my bike to the neighborhood; it's the same one where Elly lives. I stopped at her house first, and she answered the door when I rang the bell. She had this really surprised look on her face when she opened the door, then she smiled at me...that smile that she smiles to everyone. She just takes my breath away when she smiles at me. I tried not to stutter about why I was there and managed to get out that I wanted to talk to her dad. He was pretty gruff when I asked him to hunt and he said no. Then I took off and visited three more houses; the first two said no, but the third man said, sure come on over.
As soon as my crossbow comes, I'm going to practice with it every morning after I go running before school. I'm going hunting for deer with my granddaddy...how awesome is that!
Chapter Twenty-Two: Elly
The strangest thing happened the other day after school; I heard a knock on
the door and went to answer it, and there stood Luke. I was absolutely blown away. The first thing I thought was has he come over to see me, was that what he was doing? And how would I feel about that if he had come over to maybe see me and flirt a little.
I'm not going to lie, the boy I think I most want to get to know better is Caleb. He lives right down the street from us, and he and his parents go to the same church that we do. Caleb is my ideal tall, dark, and handsome guy. My mom knows his mom pretty well, and Mom always says that Caleb is such a nice boy and so polite to her and would be perfect for me when I get older. I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad are going to let me date my sophomore year; mom has sort of been hinting around about that lately. But I worry that Caleb will not go for a frizzy-haired chubby legged girl like me; that all those JV cheerleaders are flirting with him all the time and how on earth is he going to notice me with all those other girls around him.
But sometimes I think that Caleb is not right for me, even if I wasn't a little overweight (Mom says I'm not overweight when I ask her, but what does she know). So then I start thinking about Luke, and the more I think about how he has changed this year, the more I think that he might be the boy I should concentrate on. Anyway, I think I might have some competition for Luke...if I did decide to sort of get to know him better.
Last Friday during lunch, I had to go to the library and renew a book for a Book Talk (we have to read a book every four weeks in Ms. Hawk's class and give an oral presentation on it), and I saw Luke and Mia sitting next to each other and reading. Mia smiled and waved to me, and I came over and they were both reading a book that said 1984 on the cover. I said I had to admit that I was a little shocked to see Luke reading something that wasn't about the outdoors, and Luke said it was a pretty good book and started talking about it. That really surprised me, too. Then Mia said she and Luke had formed a book club and were reading books from a college bound reading list or ones that Mrs. Kendel had recommended. I said that I didn't see them much in the cafeteria any more, and Luke shook his head yes and said that Mia was tutoring him on Tuesdays and Thursdays for his "math for dummies" class and "miraculously" he had a middle D average now. Luke then said that 1984 was "awesome and terrifying" at the same time, and said I might like it. Luke talking about reading classic, college level books; I mean, how shocking is that.