Gabriela Speaks Out

by Teresa E. Harris

  I threw my dance bag in the corner and flopped down in my furry chair so hard it almost tipped over. Maya scurried out from underneath and ran off, but not before giving me a glare worthy of Aaliyah.

  Oooooo, that glare. It made my skin prickle just thinking about it. I knew that even with my stutter, I could be just as good an ambassador as Aaliyah. But now she’d gone and ruined any chance I had at winning on my Sixth-Grade Initiation platform.

  And to think I’d felt sorry for her when the older kids nicknamed her Lonely Loser and made fun of her hair.

  Suddenly, I was so angry I couldn’t even sit anymore. I sprang up, and this time the chair did tip over. I kicked it for good measure, only to remember how sore my feet were. The sound that came out of my mouth rivaled Maya’s angriest yowl.

  I had to find a way to beat Aaliyah. The question was, how?

  “Hey, cuz.” Red popped his head in my door. “Everything okay in here? I heard a noise like a raccoon fighting a—”

  “It’s fine,” I said, picking up the chair and setting it down harder than I meant to. “I m-m-mean, it’s not.” As I sat back down and Red took a seat against the ladder of my loft bed, I told him all about this morning. “S-So now all those sixth-sixth graders are sure not to vote for me, and I just hate, hate, HATE it that Miss-Perfect-Hair, Meanest-Glare Aaliyah Reade-Johnson is going to win!”

  Red laughed, which wasn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting. “Look who’s spinning verses in her fury again.” He pointed at me.

  I smiled. “Seriously, though, Red. I need to beat her. I don’t know how it’s possible on my platform without those sixth-grade votes, but maybe I can find a way to get more seventh- and eighth-grade votes, or maybe—”

  Red was slowly shaking his head, a smug look on his face.

  “What?”

  “I knew it. I knew you’d come crawling back to ol’ Red eventually.”

  What in heaven’s name was he talking about?

  He wiggled his eyebrows, and I suddenly remembered what he’d said at poetry group the other night. If you change your mind about your platform, he’d told me, I have some unbeatable ideas. You know where to find me.

  “Can you really help me?” I asked. “Can you guarantee I will beat Aaliyah?”

  Red sat up taller and looked me right in the eyes. “If you’re trying to take down your enemy?” He kissed the fingertips on his right hand and then his left. “My platform is unbeatable.”

  “Tell me,” I said, jumping down to sit on the floor beside him. “Now. P-Please.”

  As Red told me more about his idea, I had visions of every single sixth, seventh, and eighth grader voting for me. This was an unbeatable platform.

  “You’re gonna need new flyers, though,” said Red after we’d talked it through. “I can go get my laptop—”

  “New flyers tomorrow night,” I said, already at my desk and opening up my own computer. “I’ve got a new speech to write!”

  In It to Win It

  In this to win this

  From start to finish

  Margins? The slimmest

  I’m talking landslides

  The winning side

  When I emerge victorious

  It will be so obvious

  I was in it to win it

  From start to finish

  And you know what?

  I did it

  The next day, in between classes, I took down a bunch of the flyers Isaiah and I hung the day before. I had to make room for the flyers with my new platform. My winning platform that guaranteed I’d get enough votes to beat Aaliyah. I did a pirouette right there in the almost empty hallway, not caring at all if anyone saw.

  “Um, is there something you want to tell me?” Isaiah asked me later at lunch. “We hung a lot of flyers yesterday and now they’re gone. What gives?”

  “Well, I had to take them down because I made some small changes to my platform.”

  “Changes to your platform?” Isaiah repeated slowly. “What kind of changes?”

  “Necessary ones. And I made changes to my speech, too.” I dug in my bag for my new speech. “Maybe you can help me with it? You can give me some feedback.”

  Isaiah looked like I’d just asked him if he wanted to eat school lunch every day for the rest of his life. “What was wrong with your old platform?”

  “It wasn’t going to work,” I said, putting my speech back down. “Not after what happened yesterday.”

  “Okay …” Isaiah said, still looking skeptical. “I guess let’s hear your new speech.”

  “All right.” I took a deep breath. “Here goes. Want to be able to use your phone during recess to b-blog, ’gram, and ch-check your newsfeed? My name is Gabriela McBride, and I’m look-looking out for your tech needs! You might be asking me, what does a vote for Gabby mean? Well, I’ll tell you! It m-m-means cell phones at recess and access to online videos on the school computers! That’s right. A vote for Gabby McBride means all tech, all the time!” I stopped and looked up at Isaiah. “A pretty good start, right?”

  Isaiah looked like he’d just found a mystery hair in our meat loaf. “What even was that? You said small changes; those were huge! What happened to the other speech?”

  “I t-told you. I m-made some ch-changes.”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t just a few changes. That was a whole new speech and a whole new platform. You’re just going to forget all about Sixth-Grade Initiation? Real nice, Gabby. If there was a Shakespearean word for ‘sellout’ I’d use it now.”

  Some tap dancers started pounding in my chest. “B-B-But after what happened yesterday, I wasn’t going to get enough votes with that platform. Or at least not enough votes to beat Aaliyah. And after what she ssssaid … I m-m-mean … I d-don’t see why anyone would vote for me on that platform to stop all the bullying when I c-c-couldn’t even stand up for you, or to Aaliyah.”

  Isaiah put his fork down. “Gabby. You know what Aaliyah said isn’t true. You just needed a minute to find your words.”

  I pushed some soggy green beans around on my tray. “It’s a little true.”

  Isaiah sighed. “What would make you feel more like a winner, Gabby? Making Kelly better for kids like us or beating Aaliyah?”

  “B-Beating—” I stopped. My face grew hot. “B-Both, I g-guess. But—I figured I’d run on a d-d-different platform and show everyone that Aaliyah was wwwr-wrong about me and then maybe when I’m Ambass-Ambassador I can—”

  He held up his hand as if to say, “Stop talking.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Here I was, trying to win against the girl who had cut me down the way that boy had cut Isaiah down—the girl who had made fun of me while I was trying to stand up for him. Isaiah should know more than anyone how much Aaliyah’s words had hurt me. For the first time in a few days, I wished Teagan was here with me.

  “You know,” I blurted out, “if Teagan was here right now, she’d be all about helping me with my new platform.”

  The look on Isaiah’s face told me he hadn’t expected me to say that as much as I hadn’t expected it to come out of my mouth. But I was on a roll.

  “If you’re not going to help me, I-I … I don’t have to sit here!” I grabbed my lunch tray and other stuff and stood up. “I’ll see you in math.”

  If Isaiah wouldn’t help me with my new speech, I knew exactly who would. I took a deep breath to calm down the tappers and then knocked on Mrs. Baxter’s door.

  “Come in,” she called.

  It was kind of hard to hold on to my lunch tray and open the door to Mrs. Baxter’s office, but I managed. Mrs. Baxter sat at her round table, Ms. Tottenham across from her.

  “Oh,” I said. “I d-didn’t kn-know—”

  “The more the merrier, Gabby,” Mrs. Baxter said, and got up to pull out a chair for me. “What brings you here today?”

  “I was wondering if you could help me with my speech for Sixth-Grade Ambassador,” I said, sitting down. And then, with a quick glance a
t Ms. Tottenham, added, “If that’s not against the rules.”

  “It’s not,” Ms. Tottenham assured me. “But what exactly is wrong with your speech, Gabriela? I thought it sounded great the other day at our meeting.”

  “Well, I have a different speech now. I changed my platform a little.” I pulled my speech out of my backpack, and immediately Isaiah’s words came back to me, as though they were written on the paper in front of me. If there was a Shakespearean word for “sellout” I’d use it now.

  Well, if there was a Shakespearean word for being unhelpful, I’d call Isaiah that.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Baxter said. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

  I cleared my throat and searched for a spot to look at over my teachers’ heads—a trick Mrs. Baxter had taught me if I got nervous when speaking in front of a crowd. The T-shirt she pointed out that first day caught my eye. Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

  Just yesterday, beating Aaliyah had seemed impossible, but that was before I had this unbeatable platform.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Gabby,” Mrs. Baxter gently said.

  Here goes, I said to myself, and began my speech. I made it all the way through, though it was a little bumpier this time because those tappers were still slamming away.

  But there was something else, too. Whenever I’d read my old speech—for the first time or the hundredth—I’d felt a spark, a glow, like someone had lit a thousand tiny candles inside me. When I read my new speech, though, there weren’t any sparks. Not even one. Maybe there would’ve been, though, if Isaiah hadn’t been so negative about it.

  I finished and looked at Mrs. Baxter.

  “S-So?” I asked my teachers. “Wwww-What do you think? How can I improve it? I rrrr-really want to win, so I’m o-open to any and all-all feedback—”

  I paused, because Mrs. Baxter and Ms. Tottenham exchanged a look like the one I already knew so well.

  “We can help you with the delivery of your speech, Gabby,” Mrs. Baxter said. “That’s not a problem. But I do see a different problem here.”

  “Wh-What?” I asked nervously.

  “Do you remember what you wrote on your index card as the reason you wanted to run for ambassador?” Ms. Tottenham looked me straight in the eye.

  “B-Because I wanted to get rid of Sixth-Grade Initiation and make the school more welcoming,” I mumbled. But before Ms. Tottenham and Mrs. Baxter could go full Isaiah on me, I went on, my voice a little louder. “But that platform won’t get me enough votes to win. N-N-Not after …” I decided it probably wasn’t the best idea to tell them about the incident in the hallway.

  “I n-n-need a platform that appeals to ssssixth graders and seventh and eighth graders!”

  “And that’s good thinking,” Mrs. Baxter said.

  So what was the problem?

  “Gabby,” Mrs. Baxter continued. “Tell me what you did for Liberty this summer.”

  A wave of heat rose within me. I’d already told Mrs. Baxter about Liberty. Why was she asking to hear about it again instead of helping me with my speech? In as few words as possible, I repeated the Liberty story for Mrs. Baxter and Ms. Tottenham.

  “And why were you so willing to do all that for Liberty?” Mrs. Baxter asked.

  What on earth did Liberty have to do with running for ambassador?

  “Think, Gabriela,” Ms. Tottenham said gently.

  It didn’t take me long to find the answer. “Because I-I l-love Liberty … and it-its community.”

  “So much that you’d do anything for it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And people could tell that,” Ms. Tottenham said. “I donated to Liberty after seeing you on the news. I found it hard not to.”

  My heart skipped a beat. My words had done that?

  “I guess now you see the problem, Gabby,” said Mrs. Baxter. “You think you can’t win on your own platform, but you’re not passionate about this one.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. I needed to beat Aaliyah—I was passionate about that—but Mrs. Baxter held up her hand just as Isaiah had earlier. “If you really think there should be access to tech all the time, run with it. But if you don’t believe in it, no one else is going to, either.”

  “But maybe if you can help me say the words with more … more sss-sparks—”

  “Speech therapy can’t add passion, Gabby.” Mrs. Baxter made a steeple with her hands and pressed them to her nose. “Only you can do that.”

  Ms. Tottenham sighed. “I know you want to win, Gabby, and if you don’t think you can win on your old platform, fine. But I’m not so sure you’d win on this one, either. Why don’t you give that some thought, and then we’ll be happy to help you with your speech.”

  “Earth to Gabby,” Daddy said that night at dinner.

  I blinked hard and then glanced around the table. Mama, Red, and Daddy had already filled their plates. I slowly took a scoop of broccoli from one of the many serving bowls parked in front of me.

  “What’re you thinking so hard about?”

  “My platform,” I said, and left it at that.

  “Your new, awesome-sauce platform, cuz! Did you tell them about it?” He tipped his chin toward Mama and Daddy.

  I shook my head.

  He launched into a spirited summary of my tech campaign. When I was elected, I was going to make all his middle-school dreams come true, he said. He’d be able to watch videos of spoken word groups during his free period, and video-chat with Aunt Tonya during recess, which was great, because the time difference made it hard to talk in the evenings. He was talking so fast, little bits of broccoli were flying out of his mouth. And sparks were flying off of his words.

  He was making good points, too. Points I hadn’t had in my speech before. Maybe if I added those in I could find the passion my teachers were talking about!

  “May I be excused?”

  “Already?” Mama put her fork down. “You feeling okay? You hardly ate anything.”

  “Totally fine,” I said. I jumped up, quickly scraped my plate, and set it down in the sink. “Just excited to work on my speech!”

  Daddy said something but I hardly heard him; I was already halfway up the stairs.

  Ten minutes later, I had worked in all of Red’s great points. I read my new-and-improved tech speech to Maya, who had skipped the furry chair for once and parked herself on my desk.

  “I don’t know about you, Maya,” I said when I was finished, “but I’m pretty sure I felt a spark this time. Well, maybe.”

  Maya yawned.

  “Okay, maybe still zero sparks,” I admitted to her with a sigh, rubbing her behind the ears. “Maybe if I add more exclamation points?” I reached for my pencil, but Maya had rolled over on top of it, hoping I’d scratch her belly. I gently nudged her.

  Acting like I’d full-on shoved her, she jumped off my desk as if to say, “What ever happened to excuse me?” As she did so, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

  My Sixth-Grade Initiation speech. I picked the paper up.

  “It can’t hurt just to read it one more time,” I said to Maya, who was too busy settling down on her favorite chair to pay me any mind.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Gabriela McBride, and I’m running for the role of Sixth-Grade Ambassador, because I want to make Kelly Middle School the kind of place where all students feel welcome.”

  Immediately I felt the flicker of a spark. Relief washed over me, and then faded just as fast.

  Red wanted those tech things, and I wanted those things for Red, but not as much as I wanted Kelly to be a welcoming place for everyone. I didn’t want to say the words, but I knew in the end I would have to: The tech platform was a lost cause.

  “So now what, Maya?” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Maybe writing things out would help. I found my poetry journal on my desk and pulled out a pen.

  I run on my old platform—Passion, good
speech, but sixth graders won’t vote for me—not after what Aaliyah said in the hallway.

  I run on my new platform—No sparks … so not enough votes.

  No winning = no beating Aaliyah, and no showing the school I’m the leader Aaliyah says I’m not.

  Teagan always said there was no such thing as an impossible problem, but this one seemed pretty close to me. I checked the clock—probably a little too late to call Teagan now. I’d talk to her at poetry tomorrow—she’d know what to do.

  Okay, that’s all for today, poets,” Red said, clapping his hands at the end of poetry on Friday. “We’ll finish a little early tonight.”

  I had seven minutes until hip-hop. Could an impossible problem be solved in seven minutes? Maybe, with Teagan. But first I wanted to apologize to Isaiah. That afternoon at lunch, Isaiah had already had his nose in his newest poetry book by the time I sat down at our table. I tried to tell him how he’d been right—I’d been a total sellout, but he hadn’t looked up all period, and I couldn’t blame him.

  I put my journal away and stood up, only to find that Isaiah was already gone. I guessed I’d try to video-chat with him later.

  Teagan was still here, though, dragging her ten-ton backpack toward me. She’d arrived at poetry late, saying something about losing track of time while doing homework. Between my election stuff and her schoolwork, we’d hardly talked all week. Just seeing her here in front of me made me feel lighter, like I could do a switch leap and nail the landing without making any noise at all.

  Teagan, on the other hand, looked exactly like she’d been carrying around a boulder-sized backpack all week. Her footsteps seemed heavy. Her hair seemed heavy, if that was possible.

  “Teagan?” I asked as she let go of her backpack. “Are-Are you okay?”

  She nodded. Then shook her head. Then nodded again.

  I blinked. Teagan’s lip was quivering. Without thinking, I reached out and put a hand on her arm.

  “I …” she started. “I think it was a mistake to go to Main Line.”