by James Howe
It’s just the Gang of Five this time. Kelsey’s mom doesn’t like her being out on school nights, and DuShawn, well, DuShawn got kind of weird when Addie and I talked to him about the new party idea. Not that I blame him. What it went like was this:
Addie: DuShawn, guess what? We’ve come up with a whole new approach to the Freedom Party. You’re going to love it.
DuShawn: Cool.
Addie: It’s called the No-Name Party, and what we need is a list of all the names you’ve ever been called.
DuShawn: Names?
Addie: Yes, names. Put-downs. You know what I’m talking about.
DuShawn: Uh-huh. I get your drift. You’re thinkin’ because I’m black I’ve been called names.
Addie: Haven’t you?
DuShawn: No.
Me: Never?
DuShawn: No. I mean, I know there are bigots out there, okay. And maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve never had to deal with it.
Addie: Well, but will you still run for president on our ticket?
DuShawn: Why do you want me to run, Addie?
Addie: I told you. You’re smart and ...
DuShawn: And black, you said so yourself.
Addie: Well, yes, I guess so, but that’s not...
DuShawn: That’s not what? You got no end to that sentence. And you got eyes that see no further than the color of my skin.
Me: Where are you going, DuShawn?
DuShawn: I’m going to think this over.
Addie: Well, but, you won’t let us down, will you?
DuShawn: Who’s lettin’ who down, Addie? There’s somethin’ for you to think over.
“Do you think DuShawn’s going to back out?” I ask Addie as I’m slashing a red line through KNOW-IT-ALL.
Addie shakes her head, exasperated. “I hope not,” she goes. “I tried calling him before coming over here, but his sister said he wasn’t home. I don’t know why he’s being so sensitive. He said himself that the color of his skin is just a fact. The way he said the color of my skin is—”
“Like peach ice cream,” Skeezie pitches in. “Or was it the inside of almonds? The dude is a poet. I’ll tell you something else, Addie: The dude likes you.”
“What?!” Addie makes a mess of the circle she’s drawing and crumples up LARDO).
“Print that one out again,” I tell her, “It’s one of my favorites.”
“I do not know what you’re talking about,” she informs Skeezie, getting that tight-lipped look of hers that makes me think of Ms. Wyman. “There is no way DuShawn Carter likes me. And I’m not saying that because I’m white and he’s, you know...”
“The color of night,” says the Skeeze.
“Shut up!” Addie goes. I am detecting her peach ice-cream cheeks turning the shade of raspberry sherbet. “I am saying he couldn’t like me because he’s always picking on me. Spitballs and whoopee cushions and last week he was poking me all through social studies. I could hardly—”
“Breathe?” I go, and Skeezie and Joe and I crack up.
“You guys! This is what I get for having three boys as my best friends.”
“Count your blessings,” says Joe. “Girls’d tease you worse. I mean, if we were girls, the whole school would know you like Colin by now.”
Joe looks up from REE-TARD and goes, “Oops.”
Silence takes over the room and holds us hostage. Addie glares first at Joe, then at Skeezie.
“You told,” she says. “I can’t believe you told.”
Skeezie runs a hand through his hair. “I, uh, well, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of came out.”
“It just kind of came out? How lame is that? I can’t believe you told them, Skeezie. You promised.”
“Don’t get mad at Skeezie,” says Joe, “and, anyway, we’re your friends, too. How come you’re keeping secrets from us?”
All of a sudden it’s Addie who looks like she’s been caught. She glances down at FREAK and meticulously circles it.
“I thought you guys would laugh at me” is what she says when she finally speaks. “I’ve never liked a boy before.”
“So?” Joe says. “Bobby likes a girl, nobody’s laughing at him.”
“Not to his face, anyways,” says the Skeeze. I throw a marker at him.
Addie looks at me. You can see she’s relieved to get the attention off her. “Who do you like?” she asks.
“Kelsey,” I say, her name coming out like no big thing.
“Kelsey’s nice,” Addie says. “Quiet, but nice. Are you going to ask her to go out with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m going to ask Colin if he wants to go to the dance with me. That is, if a certain party who shall remain nameless but whose initials are Skeezie Tookis ever comes through on certain promises he made.”
“I did come through,” Skeezie protests. “I put a note in his locker and I told you that tomorrow I’d put in another one. And, anyways, nobody asks anybody to the dance. You just go.”
“Unless you’re going out with somebody, then you go with that person,” Addie says, like she’s all of a sudden in charge of the rules of the world. “If I could just find out if he likes me, then I could ask if he wants to go out with me. And then we could go to the dance together.”
I start humming “Someday My Prince Will Come,” to which Skeezie and Joe pitch in their vocal contributions.
“I knew you’d laugh at me!” Addie cries. She stands up and, I swear on a stack of pancakes, stamps her foot. This really gets us to cracking up, and Addie yells, “Morons!”
“Morons!” goes the Skeeze. “That’s one we forgot!”
“Cretins!” says Joe. “Numbskulls!”
“Idiots!” I yell. “Jerks!”
Addie can’t help herself. She forgets her anger and joins in. “Birdbrains!” she hollers. “Turkeys! Chickens!”
“Now those are really foul names!” Skeezie says, and before you know it we’re all whooping it up and running to the computer to add these names to all the others.
16
COVERING THE school with our handiwork takes planning, since we don’t want anybody catching us at it. We don’t even try putting the signs up before classes start, on account of Addie and me getting stopped the day before. Instead, we each stick a bunch of them in our binders, along with a roll of tape. Then we all find a reason to be excused from one class or another, sneak the papers and tape out from under our shirts, and get those signs up faster than Ms. Wyman changes moods. By some kind of miracle, not one of us gets caught. We think. By lunchtime, there are over sixty No-Name signs running along the corridors of Paintbrush Falls Middle School. It’s all everybody’s talking about.
Everybody, that is, but us.
This is because the minute the Skeeze opens his mouth to say something, Addie shushes him so hard he practically tosses the dessert he’s just stolen from her back on her tray.
“We can’t talk about this here!” Addie admonishes the three of us. “We have to keep a low profile!”
Her words make me think she is maybe going into her business exec mode, but it turns out she’s got more on her mind than the No-Name Party.
“So?” she asks Skeezie, leaning across the table and taking back the chocolate-chip cookie he is trying to hide from her.
“I took care of it,” says the Skeeze. He squeezes the words out of the corner of his mouth like a hit man.
“Took care of what?” I ask.
Skeezie eyes Addie with a should-l-spill-the-beans look.
“Go ahead,” Addie tells him. “They know anyway.”
“Gee, trying to figure out what you two are talking about is as much fun as picking scabs,” Joe gives, all sarcastic-like. “Tomorrow let’s all bring decoder rings and we can send each other secret messages.”
“Hardy, har,” goes the Skeeze. Turning to Addie, he says, “I put a note in his locker that says, ’The person who likes you will be waiting by the flagpole at three-fifteen.’”
; Addie gets all bug-eyed and says, “Does this mean I actually have to show up? What am I going to say? What if there are other kids around? How will he know it’s me?”
“Nobody hangs out by the flagpole, that’s why I picked it. What you say is your business.”
“I never knew you to be at a loss for words,” I point out to Addie.
I’m expecting Joe to chime something in, too, but he’s looking down at his lunch like he’s not even in the room with us anymore. Then all of a sudden he comes back to life and says, “Oh, guess what? I found a note in my locker.”
“I didn’t put it there, I swear,” says Skeezie.
“I wasn’t worried,” says Joe. “I know who it’s from.”
“Who?” asks Addie.
“Kelsey. Who else would it be?”
“Kelsey likes you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh.”
“What did the note say?” i ask, not really sure I want to hear all the lovey-dovey stuff Kelsey is writing to Joe.
Joe pulls a neatly folded piece of paper out of his pocket and reads in his best going-for-an-Oscar movie-star voice, “‘I wish I could be like you. If I were, I would tell you how I feel.’” He refolds the paper and goes, “Barf.”
“That’s it?” Addie asks.
Joe nods. “She’s a girl of few words. What am I going to do, you guys? I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but... Bobby, you like her, why don’t you ask her to go out with you?”
“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Just like that, I’m going to go up to her and say, ’Hi, I know you like my friend Joe and all, but will you go out with me? Let me remind you that you did smile at me one time for one-millionth of a second, and, oh, here’s a major selling point: Joe doesn’t like girls and I do.’”
Addie gets this serious look on her face. “You know, it’s just possible that Kelsey does like you, Bobby. She could easily have mixed up your locker with Joe’s. They’re right next to each other.”
“Forget it,” I say.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” says Addie. “She strikes me as the cautious type. She wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.”
“Here’s what you should do, JoDan,” goes the Skeeze, picking chocolate chips out of a cookie. I look down at my tray. My dessert is missing. “You should cool it with her. Y’know? You’ve been real chummy with her lately. You don’t mean nothin’ by it, but she’s getting the wrong message, know what I mean? You gotta not encourage her.”
“Gee,” I say, “you should write an advice column for The Easel.” That’s the name of our school paper. Do not ask.
“Dear Skeezie,” Joe goes as the bell rings and we start picking up our trays whilst I snatch what’s left of my cookie out of the Skeeze’s mitt, “I am in love with this dynamite girl who sits next to me in social studies but I don’t dare tell her because I’ve got this real bad zit on the tip of my nose and besides which I have b.o. and halitoshus...”
“Halitosis,” Addie butts in.
“Whatever,” goes Joe, scowling at her. “Anyway, I cry myself to sleep every night because I am already twelve years old and have never known love. I do not want to die an old maid, or whatever it’s called if you’re a guy. Please help me, O great wise one of the seventh grade. Sincerely yours, Zit-Face Zach.”
Skeezie clears his throat. “Dear Zit-Face, Find yourself a nice girl with zits and b.o. and bad breath. Believe me, they’re out there. Good luck!”
From here the conversation plummets as we start heaving truly gross made-up letters at Skeezie and he tosses back replies that are in such bad taste we have no choice but to make barf noises, when all of a sudden we stop talking altogether and get to listening with all our ears because there is this sort of buzz going on around us. Everybody’s saying, “Who put these signs up?” And some of the kids are quoting the words and laughing, but others are quoting them and saying stuff like, “I was called that in fourth grade and I really hated it.”
We listen to hear if anybody’s figured out who put them on the walls, and to our surprise most of what we hear is conjecture that it’s the school itself that’s behind it. Nobody figures it has anything to do with the student council elections or the group formerly know as the Freedom Party.
“This is so cool,” Joe says, and Addie shushes him and Joe calls her Wendy and she swats him and he swats back and Skeezie goes, “Girls!” and they both turn and swat him, and Mrs. DePaolo, who happens to be walking by just then with a sweater draped over her shoulders, says, “None of that now.” And we all go, “It’s okay, Mrs. DePaolo.”
By the end of the day, we are all agreeing that what’s happening is pretty cool. The plan is that we will let the signs stay up one more day and then on Thursday we’ll hit the walls with posters for the No-Name Party.
Right now, though, it’s time for me to get to Awkworth & Ames, and I’m at my locker stuffing my backpack while Addie is chittering away behind me like a nervous bird, asking the time every five seconds because she’s worried about timing her appearance at the flagpole just right, when all of a sudden DuShawn and Tonni are in our faces and DuShawn is going, “Addie, I got to talk with you.”
And at the same moment, Ms. Wyman pops her head out of the door and calls out, “Ms. Carle, a word with you, please.”
Panic takes over Addie’s features like a rash.
“Addie,” says DuShawn, “I’ve been thinking—”
“DuShawn is out,” Tonni goes, finishing the sentence for him.
“Let me tell it!” DuShawn says, to which Tonni rolls her eyeballs.
“You’re dropping out?” says Addie. “You can’t drop out.”
“Who says I can’t?” DuShawn gives back, looking like he’s just been waiting for something to get angry about. “Tonni’s right about you. She says you’re just—”
“What’s Tonni got to do with this?” says Addie. “Can’t you think for yourself, DuShawn?”
“I am thinking for myself. And I don’t want to run on your fool ticket, okay? That’s the bottom line, okay?”
“Tell it,” Tonni mutters, and she takes hold of DuShawn’s elbow. “Let’s go, DuShawn. Come on, we’re outta here.”
Addie clicks her tongue and is about to say something else when Ms. Wyman gives her a holler again, and Addie asks me the time again and I tell her to get a watch, but give her the time, anyway, which is five minutes past three, and she says, “Please, please go to the flagpole and tell Colin to wait.” But I cannot do this on account of my job, and fortunately she does not ask Joe or Skeezie on account of Ms. Wyman is out in the hall now, advancing, and Addie is saying, “I’m coming, Ms. Wyman. I’m coming.”
With one last look at us, she mouths, “Forum. Five-thirty.”
To which we all nod as she disappears into the ogre’s lair.
Skeezie turns to Joe and says, “Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Fixing Addie up with Colin and ail.”
“I told you it was okay,” Joe goes.
“Hey,” says the Skeeze, “I’ve got an idea. Maybe you should go meet Colin at the flagpole.”
To which Joe says, “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
17
Addie:
Okay, okay, I know we have to talk about what we’re going to do now that DuShawn has dropped out, but I have got to tell you what happened with Colin. It is too amazing!
Skeezie:
What’s amazing is that you manage to talk so fast and write everything down at the same time. How do you do that? Hey, look who’s working here today. It’s HellomynameisSteffi. Maybe we’ll actually get our food before—
Addie:
Skeezie! I am trying to tell you something.
Bobby:
I’ve got something to tell, too.
Addie:
Okay, but me first. Please, you guys. Please.
Joe:
Begging is so not you, Addison. But go ahead.
Skeezie:
Yeah, shoot. Addison, huh? I forgot that’s your real name.
Addie:
That’s right, Schuyler. Anyway, let me tell, will you? So after I got through talking to Ms. Wyman, who only wanted to talk math with me, for heaven’s sake, like that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, well, I was a few minutes late getting to the flagpole, and Colin was walking away, so I—
Joe:
Did you tell him the notes were from you? About you, I mean?
Addie:
No, I never mentioned the notes. He was leaving, so I walked faster, you know, to catch up, and then I said, “Oh, hi, Colin,” like it’s just coincidence or something that we’re meeting there.
Skeezie:
That doesn’t make sense.
Addie:
Well, I didn’t want to appear desperate.
Joe:
Dear Skeezie, Today I ran after a boy as he was trying to get away. I tackled him and we both landed in the mud. Do you think I appeared desperate?
Addie:
Ignoring you, I go on. So he said, “Oh, hi, Addie.”
Joe:
It’s good you’re writing this down. The dialogue so far is priceless.
Addie:
Still ignoring you. So I say, “What are you doing here?” And he says, “Oh, I was just waiting for somebody.” And I say, “Oh, really?” And he says, “Uh-huh.” So then I’m thinking, “What do I say now?” But he says, “Do you want to walk together?” Could you die?
Skeezie:
Wow, what is that? Like first base or something, walking together?
Addie:
You’re jealous.
Skeezie:
Not a chance.
Addie:
So we’re walking and he tells me he thinks that I’m the one behind the signs that are up around school and he says he thinks it’s really great and he thinks I’m the smartest girl in the whole class and he really respects me, like my stand on the Pledge of Allegiance and all, and then he asks me if it’s true.