Gabriela Speaks Out

by Teresa E. Harris

  “Okay. Right. That’s good, Isaiah,” Mama replied, looking slightly confused. She turned to me. “Gabby?”

  I took a deep breath, faced Kelly, and pointed at Isaiah. “What he said.”

  Mama and Daddy laughed. With one more wave they were gone, and Isaiah and I began making our way to Kelly’s front door.

  “Let’s rock this,” I said, echoing what Mama sometimes said before I went onstage for a dance performance at Liberty.

  This time Isaiah pointed at me. “What you said.”

  Okay, so it turned out Red’s teasing really was just teasing. So far, sixth grade was actually completely awesome. For the first time ever, I had a locker. The sixth-grade teachers had designed laminated name tags and taped them to the front. My name tag was written in purpley pink, my favorite color. And none of my classes in the morning, including my homeroom, were in the basement. In fact, they were in Kelly’s newer wing, with hallway after hallway covered in bright bulletin boards with signs that read things like WELCOME, SIXTH GRADERS! and YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS NOW!

  But even better than a locker and the new wing? I hadn’t seen Aaliyah Reade-Johnson once.

  By the time lunch rolled around, the tiny tap dancers from this morning had taken their bow.

  Isaiah and I met just outside the cafeteria, like we’d planned. I beamed at him. He managed a smile back, but there was something else mixed in. I couldn’t quite figure out what.

  “So I’ll get my lunch while you find us a table?” I asked as we headed into the cafeteria.

  When we first met Isaiah this summer, he’d whipped out the most pristine lunch I’d ever seen: perfectly packed snacks, juice in a thermos, and a cheese sandwich shaped like a star. I didn’t expect any less from him for our first day of school.

  “Actually,” he said, following me to the lunch line, “I’m branching out.” He made a lackluster gesture toward the cafeteria food in front of us.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. Who voluntarily branched out from star-shaped sandwiches to cold tater tots and soggy egg salad sandwiches?

  Isaiah placed a sandwich on his tray. “It’s what my mom was talking about when she was all, ‘Remember what we talked about?’ They say I get too fixated on things. Like never eating school lunch …”

  He took a helping of corn and made a face. I did the same. This wasn’t leftovers like Red had said, but it wasn’t fine dining, either.

  “They say they’re not trying to torture me or anything, but they feel like I should try different stuff once in a while.” The look on Isaiah’s face suggested that he thought his parents most certainly were trying to torture him. Or maybe he just didn’t like corn.

  We quickly paid and found our way to a table in the corner. Once seated, Isaiah reached into his backpack and pulled out a book titled In the Name of Justice: Voices of Black Activist Poets.

  “That looks like a cool book,” I said. “Red told me all about how black people used their words to fight injustices during the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movement.”

  If there was one thing Red knew, it was poetry, or, as he called it, “laying down rhymes” or “versin’ and vibin’.” And when he’d first come to stay with us, he’d wasted no time in spreading his love of versin’ and vibin’ by forming a poetry group at Liberty. At first it had just been Red, Teagan, and me, but it wasn’t long before the group recruited two more seventh graders, Bria and Alejandro, and eventually Isaiah.

  “Yeah, my parents told me the same thing about the civil rights movement when they gave me this book,” Isaiah said, staring down at the cover. “They want me to read more widely, learn about new things. Because, well, they think I’m a bit obsessed with Shakespeare.” He placed the book down on the table and then took a tentative bite of his sandwich.

  Isaiah was more than a bit obsessed with Shakespeare, but I wasn’t about to tell him that, not when he hadn’t even tasted the tater tots yet.

  “Well, I think branching out is a great idea,” I said, dunking a tot in ketchup. “Expand our horizons and all that, like Mr. Harmon always says.”

  The mention of Mr. Harmon made me suddenly aware of how Teagan wasn’t here eating lunch with us. I wondered what lunch at Main Line Tech was like. I imagined Teagan sitting across from some kid with big glasses talking about protons and HTML or whatever else geniuses study. And the important question: Were her tater tots as gross as these? I decided to text her right after school to find out.

  “You all right, Gabby?” Isaiah asked.

  I nodded, but the thought of Teagan had made me feel heavy, like I was carrying half a dozen dance bags filled with tap shoes made of cement. I didn’t want anything to ruin my awesome first day, so I changed the subject and said, “Let’s come up with a limerick about this yucky food.”

  At once, Isaiah’s face broke into a smile. He wasted no time diving right in. “There once was a school named Kelly. It served lunch that was really smelly. Watered down corn. Tater tots half-done. I think I’d rather have pork belly.”

  “Ew!” I cried, collapsing into a fit of giggles.

  Isaiah laughed along with me, and I couldn’t help thinking that if Teagan couldn’t be here, I was sure glad it was Isaiah who was.

  After lunch, Isaiah and I had our first math class together. Our teacher, Mr. Newman, stood at the front of the room and droned on and on about the rules and regulations. Whenever he turned to write something on the board, Isaiah and I passed limericks to each other.

  “Math is a fundamental area of study, which is why I expect …”

  As Isaiah scribbled down another poem, my mind drifted back to the Aaliyah math Teagan had done for me last week. An 8 percent chance of having class with Aaliyah. Teagan should’ve said I had a 0 percent chance of seeing Aaliyah at all, I realized happily. There was one period left in the day and so far, I hadn’t laid eyes on her.

  The bell rang and it was officially time for the eighth and final period. Social studies with a teacher named Ms. Tottenham, who was waiting at her classroom door, smiling at us like she’d never been so happy to see a group of people in her life. She had fruit-punch-colored dreadlocks piled on top of her head in a massive bun, and freckles dusted across her smooth brown cheeks. She wore a long dress covered in a design that looked like splotches of paint, and both of her wrists were piled high with bracelets that made a sound like the chime above Liberty’s front door whenever she moved her arms.

  “Good afternoon, Gabriela,” she said as I approached her class.

  I stopped in my tracks. “H-How d-do you know m-my name?” I wasn’t like Teagan, famous throughout the district for being a whiz.

  If possible, Ms. Tottenham’s smile grew even wider. “I saw you on the news this summer,” she said, talking about the segment that had featured our park performance for Liberty. “You’re something of a local celebrity, are you not?”

  My face grew hot. A local celebrity? Me? “N-Not r-r-really,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t help but smile a little as a ripple of pride washed over me. I slipped past Ms. Tottenham and into the classroom.

  For the second time in less than a minute, I stopped dead in my tracks. My smile melted off my face as my stomach lurched.

  Aaliyah Reade-Johnson sat in the front row. Right smack in the middle.

  At first she didn’t see me. She was too busy organizing her supplies on her desk, moving her notebook until it was perfectly centered and then taking her time sticking her pencils neatly in the desk’s groove.

  An 8 percent chance. I must have jinxed it. I kicked myself inside and wished more than ever that Teagan were standing here beside me. She’d link her arm through mine and together we’d march right by Aaliyah’s desk without so much as a backward glance. But Teagan isn’t here, I reminded myself. I’d have to face Aaliyah all by myself.

  That is, of course, if she realized I was here.

  Don’t let her see you, Gabby, I told myself, and hurried quickly to a desk in the back. But that desk had a name tag on it. So
did the rest of the ones in the back row. I looked around for my own name tag. Don’t let my seat be near Aaliyah. Don’t let my seat be near Aaliyah. The chant played over and over again in my head, pounding out a rhythm as rapid as my heart. I didn’t find my name tag in the second-to-last row or the third one, either.

  At last I spotted it, propped up on the desk behind Aaliyah’s. My heart sank even further, this time right into my shoes. Maybe she wouldn’t turn around at all for the entire school year and notice me sitting there. I inched slowly toward my desk.

  Aaliyah turned around. Our eyes met. For a moment she stared at me blankly and I thought that maybe she’d decided to let go of whatever it was that happened in fifth grade that had made her hate me.

  “H-Hi,” I said. I pointed awkwardly at my desk. “I-I’m h-here.”

  “That’s nice,” Aaliyah said, sounding like she thought it was anything but. She made a big show of looking around. “What happened to your sidekick?”

  “Sss-Sidekick?”

  Aaliyah rolled her eyes. “Teagan Whatsherface.”

  I was quite certain Aaliyah knew Teagan’s last name, but I just muttered, “M-Main L-Line,” and slid into my seat.

  She turned back to face the front of the room, just as the remainder of the class came pouring in. When Zuri Moore and Victoria Thornton realized their assigned seats were on either side of Aaliyah, they sucked their teeth. Zuri muttered, “Perfect. Just perfect,” under her breath. If Aaliyah heard this, she didn’t let on.

  “There’s mine!” Josiah Benton cried from the front of the room. He took off at a run, his backpack slamming into Aaliyah’s desk on his way and sending her perfectly arranged notebook and pencils flying. There was a collective “Ooooh,” and then silence. Victoria snickered.

  “Sorry,” Josiah mumbled, and then he hurried away so fast you would’ve thought someone lit a fire beneath the soles of his brand-new sneakers.

  Glaring at Josiah, Aaliyah retrieved her belongings, arranged them neatly on her desk again, and then reached up to smooth her always-perfect bun. No matter what—gym, recess, a strong gust of wind—I’d never seen a single strand of Aaliyah’s hair out of place. Teagan used to say that was because even Aaliyah’s hair was scared of her. Then she’d collapse into a fit of giggles and laugh until her face was beet red. The thought of Teagan’s laughing face made a smile spread across mine.

  “Something funny, Repeat?”

  I looked up to find Aaliyah turned all the way around in her seat again, glaring at me now, her eyes narrowed beneath her thick, dark brows. I knew that look well.

  “Wh-What? I-I-I w-w-wasn’t—”

  “Good afternoon, boys and girls!” Ms. Tottenham declared as she entered the classroom and closed the door behind her.

  Aaliyah turned back around, but not before she got in one last dirty look at me. I sank down as low as I could in my seat, feeling heavier by the second, as Ms. Tottenham spread her bangled arms wide and said, “Welcome!” She beamed at us. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lovlier group of faces. I hope you all are ready for sixth grade, which I have always considered the best year ever.”

  It could’ve been, I thought. Until I ended up having social studies with Aaliyah Reade-Johnson.

  “Wait,” Isaiah said when we met up outside school to walk home at the end of the day. “You have social studies with, um, Alison Reaves-Jackson?”

  “Aaliyah Reade-Johnson,” I hissed, and looked around frantically. It would be just my luck for her to think I was laughing at her and talking about her, all in the same day.

  “And who is she again?” Isaiah asked.

  “My mortal enemy,” I replied, hiking my backpack higher on my back.

  Isaiah’s eyes went wide. He stared at me and said, “You’re exaggerating, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s the ab-absolute-solute w-worst,” I declared, and I told Isaiah all about how Aaliyah had come to our school last year, when fifth grade was already half over, and how there wasn’t a day that ended in “y” that Aaliyah wasn’t glaring at someone. Okay. Not just any old someone. Me.

  “And you’re saying she gave you that nickname because she hates you for no reason?” Isaiah asked.

  I nodded. I filled Isaiah in on how, when Aaliyah first arrived, she’d wasted no time talking over the teacher and hogging every class discussion. And that was just her first week. By the end of her third, she’d taken to raising her hand every time the teacher asked a question and answering even if she wasn’t called on. Some of the kids in class called her the Know-It-All. Others called her scary.

  “And then one day Teagan and I looked up, and she was standing over our lunch table!” I said.

  “And?” Isaiah pressed.

  “And she said, in this bossy voice, ‘I’d like to sit here.’”

  “And?” Isaiah again.

  Just the thought of it was making my stutter act up. “And then we st-stared at her, because we weren’t ex-expecting, I mean … I tried-tried to answer her, but I-I kind of st-stuttered and then s-she said, ‘Whatever, I didn’t want to sit here anyway, Repeat,’ and she st-stomped off.”

  “That’s it?” Isaiah asked. “That’s why she hates you?”

  “Yes.”

  Isaiah shook his head. “There’s nothing scarier than he who hates without reason. Well, in this case, she.”

  I shuddered. Only an 8 percent chance that I’d have class with She Who Hates Without Reason and it had happened. And I had to sit right behind her, too.

  “Just ignore her, Gabby,” Isaiah said as we came to the end of Kelly Drive and made a left. “Take it from someone who has been made fun of a lot. You’ve just got to look at them and say—” He paused, as though trying to remember something. “‘Tried to make me stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’—But I don’t care! I’m still here!’” At these last words, Isaiah thrust his arms outward like he was trying to hug the world.

  I laughed. “That doesn’t sound like Shakespeare.”

  Isaiah dropped his hands back to his sides. “It’s not. We did a little independent reading in language arts this afternoon, and I decided to read some of that book my parents gave me.”

  “So, you’re branching out?”

  We came to the corner of Magnolia and Lilac. “I’m branching out.” Isaiah shrugged. “And the poems are not so bad. Most of them are pretty awesome actually, especially Langston—”

  SPLAT!

  A water balloon hit Isaiah full in the face, drenching him.

  “Wh-What—” I whipped around just in time for another balloon to come soaring over the hedges in front of the library and hit me square in the cheek. Then there was another and another, until Isaiah and I were absolutely soaked. My hair, plastered to my forehead, dripped a stinging combination of water and moisturizer into my eyes. I blinked hard, wiping at my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt, not daring to open them until I’d dried my face as best I could. And when I did, I saw Isaiah standing beside me, his eyes wide with shock, his new poetry book under his arm, now dripping wet. Kids were taking off in all directions, some of them running away and others doing the chasing. I recognized most of the kids running as sixth graders. The ones doing the chasing? Seventh. And off just in the distance, darting up Magnolia Drive, were two skinny figures, one with a frohawk and the other with long hair pulled into a low ponytail.

  Unmistakably Red. And Alejandro.

  “I-I c-can’t believe—” I spluttered.

  One look at Isaiah told me he couldn’t, either.

  I could not wrap my mind around it. Red and Alejandro pelting sixth graders with water balloons? My brand-new backpack was soaked, including the homework I’d already started when Ms. Tottenham gave us free time at the end of class. And Isaiah … he was having a hard enough time branching out without someone ruining his new book. I was so steamed, I was surprised the heat of my anger hadn’t dried me off by the time I got home.

  I made sure to leave my soppy sneakers
and socks out on the porch before I stormed inside and locked the door behind me. The house was dark. Daddy was still at work, Mama at Liberty. And Red? Oooh, Red, just you wait!

  And I did just that. Since tonight was going to be what I called a Double Whammy Monday at Liberty—poetry group and dance class—I changed into my ballet clothes, dried my hair, and sat down on the living room couch beside Maya, waiting for Red so I could give him a piece and a half of my mind.

  “Can you believe him, Maya?” I cried as I scratched her behind her ears.

  Maya only purred, but since Red had the habit of bursting into rooms all the time and scaring the fur off of her, I knew Maya was on my side—even if she couldn’t say it.

  I went to grab my phone from my still-damp backpack, ready to text Teagan. But she’d already texted me first: How was your first day?

  U won’t believe what Red did.

  She wrote back seconds later.

  What?

  He and a bunch of 7th graders pelted 6th graders with water balloons. Alejandro did, too.

  Teagan texted me back about a million angry-face emojis.

  And Aaliyah is in my social studies class.

  What?! But there was only an 8% chance! Don’t worry, Gabby. You can handle her. Remember fifth grade?

  I tried to imagine Teagan squeezing my hand like she did whenever Aaliyah called me Repeat; tried to imagine Teagan saying, “Ignore her, Gabby.” But all that felt so long ago already.

  How am I supposed to handle Aaliyah without you?

  I stared down at the question on my phone, a lump forming in my throat. Quickly, I deleted it and typed How was your first day? instead.

  A small part of me was hoping it had been terrible, so terrible, in fact, that Teagan would decide to abandon Main Line Tech completely and come to Kelly after all. Teagan would know how to handle Aaliyah and Red.

  My phone vibrated. It was awesome! My science teacher invented this super-special type of glue that NASA uses. NASA! How cool is that?