All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook

by Leslie Connor

  Jessica felt relieved to know he had a friend. That part hadn’t been easy. A lot of questions might be asked. Rumors might be whispered behind the slender back of a boy who called a correctional facility home.

  Well, the day was coming—or was supposed to be coming—that she and Perry would both leave Blue River.

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Is something wrong? Something you can tell me?”

  “No, no. I am just never going to be a ‘Yay, September!’ mother,” Jessica said as they passed the warden’s office. “I’m only lending you to that school because I’m nice. I’m really going to miss you today.”

  “I’ve got the camera. I’ll bring you pictures.”

  “Boy, that was the best gift ever,” she said, and not for the first time. The camera was a hand-me-down; the benefactress was Zoey Samuels, who had somehow ended up with two. The camera had been a boon for a locked-in mother who ached not to be locked out of those hours her son spent on the outside.

  Jessica and Perry accidentally brushed hands as they walked. He looked up and gave her a comforting half smile.

  Her boy had not seen her in her tiny locking room this morning. She noted it as a win. It was one of the ways Jessica preserved hope. You do a lot of that when you have fifteen years to serve—parole after twelve. If everything goes right.

  chapter four

  WELCOME

  The middle school is three times the size of the elementary Zoey and I went to. Miss Maya brought me to the open house last week. The hallways were jammed with kids and their parents. But Mom pointed out that the school building is much smaller than the Blue River campus. I started finding my way around that place as soon as I could walk. I figure I won’t get too lost in a school. It’s a good thought to be having as Miss Maya turns into the parking lot. The schoolyard is already busy even though she has brought me here teacher-early. I see a lot of new faces.

  We stand under the clock in the foyer. Miss Maya shifts her tote on her shoulder. I tuck my thumbs under the straps of my pack. “Okay, Perry. I’m off to my classroom,” she says. “You have plenty of time before you have to be in yours. You remember where you’re going, right?”

  “Room 208. Second floor.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you for Language Arts in my room this afternoon and here in the lobby at the end of the day. Actually, I bet we’ll cross paths a few times. I’ll wave to you,” she says. She turns, and all her ropy rows of hair swing and follow her like a curtain.

  “I’ll wave back,” I say.

  I turn around and there is Zoey Samuels. Her hair is pale and her skin is tanned. She was away all summer.

  “Perry!” she says. “Hey, Perry! Come on. I want to show you something.”

  I follow Zoey up the wide stairs to the second floor. “Hello. Hope you had a nice summer . . .” I use an under-mumble like Bid Ed’s. It’s for when you don’t expect an answer. When we reach the landing, Zoey stops and turns. She points to a set of high windows where a whole lot of morning light is streaming in.

  “Sun,” I say. “Huh. It was supposed to rain all day.” I am thinking about the report I gave during the all-rise.

  “That’s why I rushed you up here. Check it out.” Zoey is pointing upward. Someone has stuck colored cellophane letters to all the windows. WELCOME. Zoey shuffles backward and presents the floor to me with both hands. “Look!”

  The colors from the windows are being sun-cast on the floor at our feet. Welcome is spelled upside down and backward. Zoey sticks her leg out, and a purple M curves over her shin. “Is that cool or what?”

  “It’s cool,” I say. I start to haul my pack off my shoulder. “I should get a picture of the welcome message for my mom . . .”

  The landing darkens. Welcome disappears. Zoey and I look up at the window. Large spatters hit the panes. “Aw, rats!” she says. “Well, maybe the weather will clear later this week. You can get the shot then.” She tags my shoulder. “So listen, I found out that we don’t get seated alphabetically.” She says this like it’s the best news in the world. “Even though you are C for Cook and I’m S for Samuels, we can sit together. But we better get in there before it fills up. Come on!”

  Zoey is quick, weaving around kids in the hall. She is through the door to the classroom. I’m caught in a bottleneck, but I can see between shoulders. She lands her backpack onto the top of one desk and sits down at another right beside it. Claims two with one blow. When I finally get to her, she pulls out the chair with her foot and waves me into it.

  Zoey Samuels is always on a mission.

  chapter five

  A TALE OF SURPRISE

  Zoey Samuels was mad when she moved here. Mad about her parents’ divorce, and mad that her stepdad was trying too hard with her and coming off like a big fake. She was mad about the house she had to leave, and mad about having to start at a new school in the middle of the year. She was mad that it was snowing. I never would have found out all of that if it hadn’t been for Big Ed.

  Zoey sat by herself at lunch. That’s pretty much what I did too. Not because I don’t like people—I do. But a lot of things changed right around fourth grade. Kids started to talk about karate and music lessons, soccer teams, and playing for the ice hockey club in David City. Those were all things I couldn’t do. Fourth grade is also when the trouble with Brian Morris began, and it was all because of the one-mile run. That’s the first year they timed us in gym class. Brian didn’t like the way that turned out.

  He’s one of those kids who other kids magically follow, so if you get in trouble with him, it sticks on you. Brian is also the boy who started calling Zoey Samuels Mad-Zoe. That stuck to her.

  I watched Zoey sitting alone for a few days. Then I went over and stood beside her with my lunch tray in my hands and said, “Welcome to Butler County. I’m Perry Cook. I live in Surprise. It’s a tiny place.”

  “Isn’t everything tiny?” she said.

  “Well, it’s a tiny place and it has a funny name. I’m guessing you’re not from around here.”

  “Not at all,” she said. She rocked her head and rolled her eyes. She probably wanted me to go away.

  “Do you want to know why they call it Surprise?” I asked.

  Zoey Samuels looked right at me. Her mouth twisted to the side. She pointed to the seat across the table, so I sat down. “Okay, tell me. Why is it called Surprise?”

  I could have told her the real story. I had written a report about it in third grade. But I liked Big Ed’s story better. “It’s because of the snow,” I said. We both looked out the cafeteria windows at the January whiteness. “But the snow is not the surprise. It’s what you find when the snow is gone. All the stuff you never even knew you lost. Like a mitten that you dropped. Or a dollar bill. Or a letter that you meant to mail. You look down on the ground and things are—”

  “Flattened,” Zoey said. She smacked her palms together. “Stuck to the driveway. Or frozen to a rock under a bush,” she said. “And so . . . you should give yourself the dollar bill because you’re the one who found it. And you should just open the letter and pretend it’s from you to you. Because it’s been there so long that you will have forgotten what you wrote, and when you read it . . .”

  “Surprise!” I said.

  Zoey Samuels cracked up.

  She’s been my best friend ever since. I’ve never been to her house, and she can’t come home with me after school. But Zoey knows exactly where I live. She knows why too.

  She’s never said a bad thing about it.

  chapter six

  SWIPE

  It is lunchtime in the new school. My meal card won’t swipe. The cashier tries again and again. Her name pin says “Miss Jenrik.” She’s not very old. In fact she looks like she should be down the block at the high school. She has pink spiky hair and long earrings with feathers at the ends. She is wearing rings on every finger. Each time my card fails she shakes her head and something on her jingles.

  “Did
you activate this?” she asks. She gives my card a hard look.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Did it go through the washing machine?”

  “Not yet,” I tell her.

  Zoey is right behind me. She laughs. Miss Jenrik laughs too as she squints at the display on the machine and wiggles all her rings at it.

  “I don’t know why this thing is asking me for a code,” she mumbles. “I’m new on the job. But I haven’t seen this all day . . .” She punches a few buttons. She tries the card again. The line is backing up behind us.

  I tell Zoey, “You should have gone first. You could be eating by now.”

  Zoey leans around me to speak to the cashier. “Hey, what if we swipe my card twice? Just for today.”

  “It’s not going to let us do that.” Jingle-jingle. “Hmm . . .”

  The line is pressing on Zoey now. I’m pretty sure the edge of someone’s lunch tray is in her back. She plants her feet like she’s holding our ground.

  “What gives?” someone asks from the back of the line. I look and see a tall boy with his empty tray clamped in one hand. He points to himself with the other. “Starving here!”

  “Well, look who’s holding things up.” I know that voice. It’s Brian Morris, and he’s leaning out of the line to sneer at me. “Not so fast today, are you?” he says. As if I ever sprint through a lunch line.

  Miss Jenrik asks me, “Did you pick up this card here in the school office?”

  I lean forward and tell her, “It was mailed to me. From the state.”

  “The state? Oh! This is an assistance card!” She seems to get louder with each word. “You’re on assistance! That’s why it wants a code.”

  Zoey lets a puff through her lips and shakes her head.

  Brian Morris makes a duck-call with his hand from behind us. “It’s Perry Crook!” he squawks. “Escaped from Surprise!”

  Miss Jenrik’s head snaps up when she hears that. Her face turns five shades of red beneath her pink hair.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she says. She’s very quiet now. “My fault. Totally my fault.” She puts in a code. My card goes through.

  Zoey and I sit across from each other at the very end of a long table. We both lean into the cranny where the table folds out from the wall. Zoey is giving her hot macaroni a cold stare. She’s mad about the card. I’m thinking that the harder won a lunch is, the more I want to eat it. I’m also thinking that soon I won’t have a card from the state. When Mom is paroled, my card will be like everyone else’s.

  “She didn’t mean it,” I tell Zoey. I pick up a forkful of noodles.

  “She was loud, Perry. Megaphone loud.”

  “But she was just glad she figured it out. Tomorrow will be a breeze.”

  “She could have done better,” Zoey says. “Way better.”

  “Hey, Zoey,” I say, “where did you get that ring?”

  “Trying to change the subject?” She twirls the ring as she speaks.

  “Yeah,” I say. I can’t hide much from Zoey.

  “Stepdad Tom gave it to me,” she says. “He bought it in the gift shop at the bed-and-breakfast we stayed in this summer.”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “I suppose,” she says. “But it’s like I’ve told you before, he gets me things that I don’t really want or need—like the camera,” she says, leaning up a little.

  “I’m glad he got you the camera.” I say it with a shrug and a grin.

  “It’s not just the gifts with Tom. It’s that he has to talk about why he gave them. ‘This ring is to celebrate the vacation we took as a fam-i-ly . . .’” Zoey grumbles. She starts to imitate Tom. “‘Isn’t it so great how far we’ve come, Zoey? You and your mom and I, we have made ourselves into a fam-i-ly . . .’ And then there he is this morning asking, ‘Are you going to wear your new ring to school today, Zoey? Huh? Huh?’ I felt bad because I didn’t even think about putting on the ring this morning, Perry. But I pretended that I did. Mostly to make my mom happy.”

  I’ve met Zoey’s mom a couple of times, just to say hello at the window of her car in the school parking lot. But I’ve never met Stepdad Tom. I don’t always understand exactly how Zoey feels about him. But I know that he is her biggest thing to need to talk about.

  “It’s been two years, Perry,” Zoey goes on. “He still does it. He still talks about how great we’re doing. You want to know what?” (She is going to tell me.) “The best times are when he says normal things like, ‘Please pass the rice.’ That’s when I feel like we are a family.”

  I nod my head. I think I get the part about Tom trying too hard.

  Zoey says, “It is a very cool ring though.” She props her elbow on the table and tilts her fist toward me. “Put your face up to the stone, Perry. Don’t put your chest into your macaroni,” she warns. “Get real close. See your reflection? It’s like a mirror in a fun house. Your nose gets really big. See?”

  “Oh yeah!” I say. She is right. I am one giant nose-face with tiny eyes way up high. I crack a smile and see giant horse teeth in Zoey’s ring. It’s too funny. I drop my ridiculous face into my hands.

  “Made you laugh!” Zoey is triumphant.

  Zoey says that I never laugh. I say I’m just quiet about it.

  Four boys come to sit at our table, including the loud, tall, hungry one. I shift over and slide my tray back in front of me like I’m making more room. But I am stuffed into the wall already. They are talking about what team everyone is on and about which school they came from. There’s some whispering, and they keep looking at me. Then up comes Brian Morris to sit with them. He knows where I live. He probably told.

  “Hey,” says the tall boy, “how about tomorrow you take your assistance card to the back of the line, Blue River Boy.”

  Yep. Brian told.

  I wonder what else he said, because he makes stuff up. He told the whole fourth grade that I sleep in a cell with no mattress, that I only get white bread and water for supper.

  The boys are staring. Zoey’s jaw is set off center. She doesn’t like it when people are into my business.

  She looks at me. She jabs her straw onto the table and pushes the wrapper down into a tight accordion. She slides the paper across the table right in front of Brian Morris. She uses her straw to wet it with a dot of milk. It grows.

  She looks up at Brian and says, “Worm?”

  chapter seven

  THE FIRST TIMED MILE

  When we ran our first timed mile in fourth grade, the gym teacher told us it was a fitness test required by the State of Nebraska. “Don’t worry. But do your best.” That’s all he said. Right away I got it into my head that I wanted to finish first. So did Brian Morris.

  It wasn’t that close; I think I bested him by ten yards. I’d done a lot of running at Blue River. Mr. Halsey had taught me to breathe, hoo-hah, hoo-hah, and to exhale every time my left foot landed. It worked. I was already walking off that run when Brian barrel-brushed me and almost took me down. Instead, he stumbled, and he’s the one who ate dirt.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  Brian got to his feet, still fighting for breath. He rubbed the long muddy smudges on his arms and legs. Then he let me have it—bad language. He even spit on the ground near my feet.

  “You’re fast because you run from prisoners all day,” he said.

  I got one of those ice-cold rushes inside—the kind that keep spilling through you. No one had ever said anything like that to me.

  “I don’t run from them. I run with them.”

  Brian twisted up his face. “What?”

  “With the residents. There is a track at Blue River. I run—”

  “I’d rather be dead than live at a prison!” Brian swept past me, knocked me in the shoulder. I had to step backward to keep my feet underneath me.

  Dead? Really?

  That night at the Blue River supper table I told everyone within earshot that I had the fastest timed mile in the fourth grade.

  “Yeah, Perry!
Victory feels good!” Mr. Halsey put his long arms up in a big V.

  “It felt good. But only for a few seconds,” I said. “This kid, Brian Morris, was mad. Like he wanted to punch me in the gut. I think I should let him win next time.”

  Every single rez shouted, “No, no, no!” Mom was firmly with them.

  “But if it will make him feel better?”

  “No! No! No!” It was practically an uprising.

  Even the warden stopped by the table to see what was up. “What has you all so excited and united?” she asked.

  Eggy-Mon, who loves a rhyme, clicked his fingers from behind the serving counter, and repeated, “Excited! United!”

  Mom said, “You should always do your best, Perry. Stay proud of yourself!” She gave me a nudge. “Besides, if you let Brian win, he might sense that’s what you’re doing. That won’t make him feel better.”

  “Hmm. You know what else Brian said? He said he’d rather be dead than live at a prison.” Everyone fell silent. Mom hummed a sigh and clicked her tongue.

  “You know, Perry, before I came here, if I thought about being incarcerated—if I tried to imagine it—my mind would shut down on me after just a few seconds. I couldn’t bear the thought. It seemed deadly. Maybe that’s what Brian really means.”

  Last year, in fifth grade, we ran the mile again. At the starting line, Brian Morris told me he’d bury my sorry butt, and he did—by three seconds—fair and square. I’m curious as to how this year will go. I want to win.

  I also want to keep Brian Morris off my back.

  chapter eight

  JUMPERS

  I’m sitting outside my bedroom door in the Upper East Lounge right outside Warden Daugherty’s office. This is the smallest lounge at Blue River. That’s because Big Ed and his Special Projects crew from the woodshop walled off part of it to make my bedroom. I know the story because Big Ed likes to tell it.

  “The residents were so sore about it!” He laughs. “They grumbled about losing the morning sun.” (It sure does flood in on a clear day.) “Everybody said, oh, what’s Blue River need with another broom closet? Or, is that warden going to hog the light to expand her own office? What’s going in there?”