My Storied Year

by Katie Proctor

  10

  My (Sort Of) FiestaLand Story

  The next three days are great. Maya’s in the office for in-school suspension for the iPad incident and Travis Beaker has the flu. Mr. Mark found a lame reason to pull me out of class, like he’s checking on me. I don’t mind though; it’s kind of nice.

  For morning meeting, Ms. Luna has written on the board:

  “It’s hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

  ~Theodore Roosevelt

  Denzel nudges me and smiles. We both know where this is going. He’s getting good at saying exactly what Ms. Luna wants to hear, so he says, “I think he’s saying that even if we fail, trying is always better than not trying, right?”

  Ms. Luna beams at him. “Yes, Denzel! Anyone else?”

  Since Denzel pretty much summed it up, the rest of us just stare at our hands.

  “Okay,” she says. “Let’s try this. Can anyone talk about what it feels like to fail?”

  “Like failing a test?” Millie asks. “That feels bad. Especially when my dad sees the grade.”

  “Yeah, failing a test sucks,” Jason agrees. “Doing bad in a soccer game feels pretty bad, too. My team gets mad when people mess up. Especially when we lose.”

  “But isn’t soccer fun to play even if you have some hard times on the field?” Ms. Luna asks.

  “Yeah,” Jason says, “it’s my favorite thing to do.”

  “So just think how sad it would be if you never played soccer just because you were afraid of messing up.”

  “You’re right,” he agrees. “I’d still want to play.”

  Kyla is happy to have her iPad back. I worried a little that she might be mad at me, since it was my dumb sister who took it, but if anything, she seems to be even more friendly. I wonder what Mr. Mark told her.

  At the beginning of English, we sometimes do this “Status of the Class” thing, which is tied to our reading workshop. Everyone tells what book they’re reading and if they like it or not. Sometimes people recommend books for the class to read. Mrs. Parkman does not make this part optional, so even Duke shares.

  Usually he says about one sentence and he reads books from the actual adult section of the public library, so no one knows what he’s talking about. Today, though, he’s holding a book that looks like it came from our library. On the front cover is a kid with a paper bag on his head, holding a baseball glove. It almost looks interesting.

  Almost.

  Duke clears his throat so that his words come out less squeaky. “I’m reading Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt. It’s about a kid named Doug who moves to a new town. His dad is a jerk and his brother has gone to war. Nobody likes Doug at first. I didn’t really either, but he’s growing on me. There’s just something about him.”

  Duke looks different than I’ve ever seen him—almost excited, happy. And the way he talks about the book makes other people excited, too.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Parkman says. “That’s one of my favorites. What are you learning from Doug so far?”

  “That sometimes everyone just needs a really good friend, one who likes you for you, no matter what other people think.” Duke looks right at me for one second as he says this. I look away, running a hand through my hair, which is getting ridiculously long.

  “Such an important lesson for all of us! Thank you so much for sharing, Duke!”

  Now, Mrs. Parkman’s continuing her graveyard story. It’s good so far. I like how she uses words like “bushwhacked” instead of “walked” and how she makes us keep guessing what’s going to happen by writing things like, “no one said a word, like we all knew this place was important.” I mean, she has written three whole pages and we still haven’t made it into the graveyard yet! But the class is still silent. No one even fidgets.

  I peered around my daddy’s legs, which were covered in insect bites and scratches from the mesquite thorns. In front of him, about three feet away, sat a very old, crumbled stone wall. As I inched my way toward it, I realized it wasn’t very tall, only up to my belly button.

  Grandpa shouted, “Yes! We found it!” I looked over at my little sister. I could tell she was scared; her eyes were squeezed shut and she was clutching my mom’s hand so tightly I thought it might fall right off.

  Over the wall, I spotted some large rocks, standing upright and curiously placed, like someone put them there on purpose. My heart dropped into my stomach the second I realized I was standing in a graveyard of some kind.

  The funny thing is that we all knew where the story was heading, but we all gasp anyway. Mrs. Parkman smiles and puts down her pen. Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “No! You can’t stop! What happened next?”

  Everyone turns around to stare at me. My cheeks feel like they’re on fire. The other kids are shocked that I said something other than “who cares” or “duh,” my usual go-to responses. Erin looks at Mrs. Parkman with a newfound respect. “Whoa, you made Dragon care about your story,” in the same way she would say, “Whoa, you climbed Mount Everest.”

  Mrs. Parkman pretends she doesn’t hear Erin and looks right at me. “I’m so glad you asked! But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for my lesson on Very Good Endings to find out!”

  We all groan, including me. Mrs. Parkman starts talking about the best ways to build suspense in writing, but I stop listening. It’s getting close to lunch, and I’m hungry.

  Really, though, I’m wondering about that graveyard. Why was it on some abandoned island? Did that mean that no one could ever visit the graves?

  I feel a memory creep into my head. At first, it’s foggy around the edges, but then it comes in clear as day, like someone adjusted the antenna on my brain.

  My mom is smaller, thinner. She has thicker hair and it’s blowing around her face. She’s not limping, but there’s a tear rolling down her face. She’s carrying a bouquet of flowers and tells me to hold on to Maya. We all walk together to a gray stone that’s lying flat on the ground. I can’t read it, but I do recognize my own last name. Mom sets the flowers down and whispers, “Happy birthday, Mama.”

  Mama? So this was my grandma? Why’d she never tell me?

  I don’t have too much time to wonder about it, though, because it’s time for us to go write.

  Oh yeah, the FiestaLand story. By now, I’m supposed to have a plan for writing it, but I don’t. Just blank page after blank page, staring at me with their judgmental red and blue lines and an emptiness to be filled.

  I look up at the screen at Mrs. Parkman’s story. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention before, but now I see that she’s crossed out lots of words and replaced them with better ones. She even scribbled out a whole sentence. I like how she doesn’t care that it’s all sloppy. It reminds me of my secret poetry notebook.

  I don’t know how to get started. Mrs. Parkman obviously has this cool memory playing on repeat in her mind, but I got nothin’. I spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling. When she announces that it’s five minutes until lunch, I think back to the conversation with Kyla and basically write down everything she said, including the sister puking part. Maya could have puked; no one would even know.

  The Scorpion is the best ride at FiestaLand. It’s yellow. It goes upside down after you leave the dark inside part. My sister puked on it. It’s fun.

  There. Fine. It’s done. I tried. And that’s the whole point of that Teddy Roosevelt quote from earlier, right? Trying is better than not? Whatever.

  I scribble my signature “D” at the top of the page and toss it into my writing folder.

  At home that night, on the blue sticky notes Mr. Mark gave me, I write, grandma?, flowers, and headstone, and I stick them to the wall behind my recliner where no one can see.

  I had a grandma

  once.

  * * *

  But all that’s left

  are questions.

  * * *

  Did she have gray hair?

  Bake the best cookies?

  Cuddle bab
y Dragon?

  Sew me a baby blanket?

  * * *

  How’d she die?

  Why so early?

  Why doesn’t Mom say?

  * * *

  After the questions

  are asked out

  with no clear answers

  all that’s left

  is emptiness.

  * * *

  An empty chair

  at the table.

  * * *

  Empty sound in the house.

  * * *

  An empty look in Mom’s eye.

  11

  My Reboot

  A few days later, we are in our groups again. Mrs. Parkman hands Caden, Marisa, and me a stapled packet. Normally, more than one page of words makes me nervous enough to feel the frustration shutdown start to happen. But the first page has a lot of blank spaces and shorter sentences.

  “What is this?” Marisa asks.

  Caden says in his quiet mouse voice, “It looks like a script. Like where people have lines and talk.”

  “That’s right, Caden! This is called a transcript, and it’s going to let us listen in on a conversation.”

  She hands us each a yellow highlighter and walks away.

  Marisa takes charge. “Okay, I’ll read the part of Lillian. Who wants to be Anna?”

  I look down at my hands, avoid eye contact. Caden does the same. Marisa sighs, “Come on, guys. This looks like an interview. We have to read it aloud or it’ll be confusing.”

  I mumble, “Fine,” and use the highlighter to mark all of Anna’s lines. Secretly I’m thinking about how I have to get out of here.

  I realize all of Anna’s parts are questions. For some reason, it makes me think of that article we read where old people tell their stories. I say this when Mrs. Parkman comes to check on us.

  “Yes, Dragon! This is an interview between Anna and her grandmother Lillian.”

  Grandmother.

  The word hits me like a ton of bricks. I think of my hidden sticky notes at home. I think of that day in the graveyard. I think of the tight way my mom closes her mouth and looks away when I ask her about our family.

  I hear Mrs. Parkman ask, “What do you think they’ll talk about?” I don’t respond. I’m too distracted now. The others answer her, but they sound like they’re underwater. I can’t focus.

  “What would you ask your grandparent?” she asks next, and I blurt out, “I need to take a break.”

  I haven’t needed to do this since Mr. Mark and I made the plan. But I need to now. I cannot sit here and listen to Caden and Marisa go on about what they’d ask their perfectly nice and perfectly alive grandparents. I just can’t.

  Mrs. Parkman looks surprised, like she doesn’t understand what set me off. I close my lips to show her that I won’t tell, and she doesn’t ask. She smiles instead and says, “Okay, Dragon. Come on back when you’re ready.”

  I walk down to the office. I stop at the bathroom and splash water on my face to calm down. It doesn’t work. When I get to Mr. Mark’s office, I’m shaking.

  “Hey, pal! Come…” he starts off all cheery but stops short when he sees my face. “Wanna talk about it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, no problem. Just come in and hang out.”

  So I sit at his round table and stare at the wall. He has all these class pictures of kids he taught a long time ago when he was way skinnier and had blonde streaks in his hair. I almost laugh, but I’m still too… angry? sad? confused? I don’t know. My feelings are all jumbled up.

  Mr. Mark continues his work, just type, type, typing away. Every once in a while, he looks at me, raises an eyebrow like he’s asking if I’m ready to talk, then looks away again when I shake my head.

  I put my feet up on the table and lean back in the chair. There are exactly forty-eight ceiling tiles in this office and every one of them is filled with about a million tiny little holes. One is painted burnt orange and has a white shape that looks like a longhorn cow. I sit up a little and look at the cabinets. They are covered in terrible drawings of little kids with seventeen fingers and grown-ups with blue hair and misspelled words and capital letters in all the wrong places. But he’s taped these pictures up like they are his most prized possessions.

  After a long silence, Mr. Mark gets up and hands me a paper that is full of columns of numbers and words too big for me to read. “Hey pal, this needs to be shredded. But the thing is, the paper shredder is all the way down the hall and Ms. Linda over there gets mad if I use it without permission.”

  I look at him like what? He’s the assistant principal and Ms. Linda’s just the annoying chatty lady who sits at the front desk. All I’ve ever seen her do is eat donuts and gripe at teachers over the amount of staples they go through in a week. He needs permission from her?

  “So?” I say, challenging him.

  “So, what should I do?”

  “Um. Want me to tear it up for you?”

  “Sure, man. But only if you want.”

  I take the paper but turn my back on him, toward his giant whiteboard that’s covered in random notes. To be nice, I pull the trash can over to me with my foot so the paper won’t end up all over the floor. Mr. Mark seems like a clean guy. Plus, I don’t want to pick all that up anyway.

  It takes me a while, and I get into a rhythm that matches Mr. Mark’s typing. Type type TEAR, type type TEAR. By the time I’m done, I’m pretty sure not even a genius with ten hours of free time and five rolls of tape could put that page back together.

  The phone rings. I hear Mr. Mark say, “Okay, sure. Five minutes.” Then he hangs up.

  He walks over to examine my work and whistles his approval.

  “Better?”

  I nod. And the thing is, I do feel better, which catches me off-guard because most of the time it takes me hours to get over my stuff when I shut down. But I guess the quiet and not getting hassled by a grown-up for a while helps.

  “Ready for lunch? Your class is headed down in about five minutes. If we go now, you can have first pick of seats!” He grins.

  “Okay,” I say, and we walk together in silence down the long hallway to the cafeteria.

  12

  My (Sort Of) Good Ending

  Mrs. Parkman’s in a really good mood. She’s whistling a show tune from that old movie we watched last year about a girl and her dog who got sucked up by a tornado.

  “I took home y’all’s stories this weekend. I know, I know, they aren’t done and don’t worry, I didn’t grade them! I just wanted to take a peek. But you guys, they’re fantastic so far! I can tell you’ve been paying attention in class and working so hard.”

  Everyone sits up straighter, but I look down at the carpet. Not my story. She must’ve skipped mine.

  “Today, we’re going to talk about how to add a great ending!” Then she rambles for a while about asking your reader a question or ending with a special memory or a cliffhanger.

  “No way!” Kyla calls out. “There is no way that a cliffhanger is a good ending!”

  “You are entitled to your opinion, Kyla. Care to explain?” Mrs. Parkman asks.

  “It just makes me so mad when a book ends on a cliffhanger! I want to know what happens! It’s so rude of a writer to not tell the rest!”

  Before today, I’d never heard of a cliffhanger. I guess it means when a story doesn’t really end?

  Duke clears his throat and speaks up. He gets bolder every day. “In real life, some stories don’t really have endings. Or if they do, they aren’t happy, so no one needs to know them.”

  This stumps Kyla. “But in made up stories, we need an ending!”

  Jolie answers her this time. “But Kyla, these stories we’re writing are true stories, they’re about us.”

  “Oh, fine. But no one better use a cliffhanger because I’ll ask you a million questions about how it’s supposed to end anyway!” and she crosses her arms and shuts her mouth, as if she’s saying the discussion is closed.

 
Of course, Mrs. Parkman doesn’t let it go. “Let’s all think for a minute, though. Why would an author choose to leave the readers ‘hanging’?” She uses her fingers to make little air quotes on the last word.

  Oh. I get it now.

  It’s silent for a minute until Marisa can’t stand the quiet. “Maybe they want us to imagine our own endings?”

  Erin adds, “Maybe they just want to sucker us into buying the next book in their series.”

  Mrs. Parkman laughs and says, “Well, it works on me almost every time! Why else would they do that?”

  Millie says, “Maybe they want us to use the clues we have to make a good guess?”

  “Maybe that too,” Mrs. Parkman says before moving on. “In addition to all those kinds of endings, you can even end with a challenge to the reader, like give them an idea of what they could do. For example, if you talked about FiestaLand”—she looks at me, I look away—“you could write, ‘Next time you’re at FiestaLand, you should ride the Hornet of Doom!’”

  Is she saying this to be nice to me? To give me an idea? Because she knows I can’t think of an ending myself? Or was it just a random idea that popped in her head? Suddenly I feel like everyone’s looking at me. But Mrs. Parkman keeps chattering on about different endings.

  By the time she’s done, she’s filled up a whole poster with ways to end a story. Just like she promised, she writes Very Good Endings at the top.

  Then she pulls out her graveyard story and we all get quiet.