by David Gordon
As usual, Sami had the seat to herself on the school bus. The other kids avoided her, but not because of her uncool clothes and short haircut. They avoided her for other reasons, and those reasons will soon be clear to you.
Sami stared out the window. It was hard to see things clearly because the windows were thickly layered with dirt. Washing school buses, cars, and just about everything else had been forbidden for almost a year now, so most things were filthy. She tried wiping the inside of the window, but of course that did not help. She wished she could open the window and wipe it from the outside. It would be worth getting her hands dirty for a clear view. She had tried doing it once, but the bus driver had thrown an enormous fit, yelling at her and threatening to make her walk to school. So all Sami could do was watch the shapes and colors go by and pretend they were wonderful things. That black rectangle zooming past the bus became the Batmobile; the big red circle on top of a pole became a giant lollipop; the shapes walking along the sidewalk were ghosts.
When the bus stopped at the corner of another neighborhood, Sami saw a row of orange blobs and wondered what they were. Then she realized that they were Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. They were not made out of real pumpkins, of course, but out of plastic. No one sold real pumpkins that year because they needed a lot of water to grow, water farmers did not have. Sami was not into Halloween anymore. She had gone out trick-or-treating by herself last year, and it was lonely and no fun at all. This year she planned to stay home.
The bus passed a very long and high, green wall. Above the wall Sami could see fuzzy shapes that looked like towers, so that she imagined she was looking at a castle. Actually, she knew that she was looking at Water World, and that the towers were some of its enormous water slides. She sighed. Water World had been closed for almost two years now, ever since the city began to tell everyone how much water they could have and when they could have it. They called it “rationing,” and that was just the start of the problems.
When the bus finally squealed to halt at the school and opened its doors, the kids poured out onto the sidewalk. They were laughing, yelling, talking and pushing. Sami had to shade her eyes for a moment. Even though it was still early in the morning, the sun was bright and hot. Last year she would have wandered out onto the playfield to cool off a bit on the grass and sit under a tree. She looked at the playfield. Now the trees had almost no leaves. And even those they had were browning at their edges. And of course the field had not been watered all year. She watched as the funnel of a dust devil appeared at the far edge of the field and twisted its way across it, swirling dirt and dead grass up into the air.
“Hey! Catch!”
Sami turned to the voice and a soccer ball smacked into her chest. Two boys sat on a low wall. Beneath them was carved the name of the school: Salt River Junior High School. The boys laughed and pointed at her.
“Oops, I thought you were a boy!” This was Alejandro Garcia. Because his father was a police Lieutenant, Alejandro seemed to think that he could do whatever he wanted to do to the other kids. He had been bugging Sami since they were in 1st Grade. Now they were a few weeks into the 6th Grade and he was still bugging her. She had not understood why he did this until, at a back-to-school night, she saw Alejandro’s father slap him in the head because the teacher said he had not been doing his class work. So somehow it had made sense to Sami that Alejandro thought he could be that way too. Even so, after five years of being tormented by him, she was pretty sick of it.
The other boy was his best friend, Mike, a kid with big shoulders and small eyes. He hopped off the wall to retrieve the ball. Sami had been through this many times before with Alejandro and Mike, and with other kids, too. You could not say that she was used to the teasing. You never really get used to being teased. It still hurt and made her angry. But she had been in plenty of fights over this before and it had not changed a thing. So these days she just tried to ignore them. Sami stuck her tongue out at the boys and walked on.
Sticking out her tongue made Sami aware that it was dry. She was thirsty. She looked over at the drinking fountains. All of them had been wrapped in bright yellow duct tape so that no one could use them. If she wanted a drink before class she would have to go to the cafeteria, and she would have to hurry.
She started running through the hallways, weaving around the other kids. Mrs. Deefer, the school counselor, wagged a finger at Sami and warned her, “Walk, young lady!” Sami slowed for two steps, then ran on.
When she finally slipped through the doors of the cafeteria she found herself at the end of a line of kids, all waiting for a drink of water. At the front end of the line two cafeteria ladies were handing out water in small paper cups. Annoyed, Sami blew out a puff of air, and stamped her foot. The tall 8th grader standing in front of Sami turned around and scowled down at her. “What’s your problem?” he said.
Sami opened her eyes super wide and tilted her head. “Duh! I’m thirsty!”
The boy suddenly looked angry. He was not going to take being made fun of by a pipsqueak girl. He was just about to show how scary he was by saying something like “Oh yeah” or “Is that so,” when the school bell rang. As if a button had been pressed in his head, he immediately walked off, and the line of kids ahead of Sami broke apart and disappeared as they streamed out the doors, heading for class. Suddenly no one was between her and the cafeteria ladies. Sami hurried across the floor to the table.
“Can I have some water?”
They were already screwing the lids onto the bottles and cleaning up. Without looking up, one of them said, “You need to get to class. You don’t want to be tardy.”
“I’m thirsty!”
“You can get water in class. Hurry up now!” More adult hurrying. Sami stood there and scowled at the two ladies. This was Sami’s best angry face, and she was quite proud of it. But they were too busy with their work to look at her. Sami gave up, sighed, and headed for her classroom.
She trudged around a corner. Just down the walkway was her classroom, her only classroom. She was in junior high now, and should have been moving from room to room during the day for each of her classes. But the water shortage had messed up that, too. Kids moving from room to room would get hot and thirsty. So it was decided that they would stay in one classroom, with one teacher. Sami was quite bitter about this. She had been looking forward to junior high, to leaving elementary school behind, to carrying her books from class to class, to having different teachers, a schedule, and to being more grown up.
Sami's classmates were clustered at the bottom of the steps to the classroom, waiting to go in. She halted where she was, preferring to watch them from a distance.
Alejandro was trying to yank Ravi’s backpack off of his shoulders. Stephan, Marquette and Carlos were multi-playing “The Gathering Storm” on their PSPs and arguing about energy and hit points, and who was more awesome, Wolf Rider or Mr. Teeth. Ming was showing Juana her new pencils, the ones with photos of the latest pop stars on them. Pedro and Holly stood quietly, waiting. Toby was thumbing through Franklin’s latest “Starman” graphic novel, while Franklin thumbed through Toby’s new manga, “Samurai Citizen.” The rest of the kids talked and fidgeted. Noisiest was Tim, who kept his head shaved. He was clowning around for Ellen, trying to show her how strong he was. As usual, Ellen’s mother had carefully arranged her hair with sparkly threads and stars. Now Ellen was backing away from Tim, trying to keep him from messing up her hair. Ellen’s best friend this year, Maribel, was batting her hands at Tim, trying to protect Ellen from him.
Ellen had been Sami’s one and only friend last year. Then, for some reason, Ellen’s mother started dressing Ellen like a little grownup. This led to a lot of arguments between Ellen and Sami. How, Sami wanted to know, were they supposed to ride their bikes or skateboards with Ellen dressed in high heel sandals, a skirt, and a dozen jingly bracelets on her wrists? “That’s just dumb!” Sami had said. Ellen answered, “My mom isn’t dumb!” She stomped off home, and that was that. Sami’s last fri
end was gone.
The classroom door opened and her teacher, Miss Fox, stepped out. “Good morning, children.” She stood at the door, holding a large bag containing bottles of water, and quietly looked at the kids. As she did every morning, she was waiting for them to settle down and get in line. It took a full minute. Except for Tim, who had his back to the door. He was so busy trying to impress Ellen that he had not noticed how quiet and still everyone else had become. Miss Fox glared at the back of his hairless head, but that had no effect on him at all.
“Tim,” she finally had to say. The other kids giggled. Carlos poked Tim. He turned around, saw what was happening and was obviously pleased to have created a little trouble. “Join us,” said Miss Fox. Grinning, he cut in line in front of Ellen. Then Miss Fox saw Sami waiting at the corner. Miss Fox raised her eyebrows, the way you do when you are asking a question. But she was not really asking Sami a question. She was telling her, Well, get on over here, Samantha.
Sami sighed and walked to the end of the line. By then the kids were filing into the classroom. As they passed by, Miss Fox handed each of them a bottle of water and warned them, “Remember, this is all you get while you’re in school today. So go easy on it.”
But Sami had the top off her bottle before Mrs. Fox had finished her warning. And half of her water was gone before she even sat down.
Chapter 3
“Samantha!”