by Lorri Horn
“Look, you guys. Look.”
They brushed the dirt off from their hands and knees, and the pair stood back with Dewey.
“Holy narwhal!”
“Wow. We did all of this? I’m pretty impressed with us!”
“The last thing to do is add the repellers.” Dewey pulled two of them out of the last box.
“We probably only need one, but I got two just to be safe,” he said.
“You got batteries for them, right Dewey?” asked Seraphina, worried. “Dewey? Right?”
Dewey stood dead still. Batteries. “Ugh. No. No!”
Colin took one out of the box and fiddled with the battery compartment to open it up.
“Colin, it says right here on the box, ‘requires four lithium metal batteries.’”
“They’re here!”
“Let me see!” Dewey raised his arms high over his head. “Clara! The best assistant EVER!”
They set up the two pest repellers at either end of the garden.
Then they all stood rapt and still.
Dewey broke the silence. “Well, I’d say our work here is done. Or just begun. Or something. But we should go get a big burger and see where all of this takes us tomorrow!”
“Where all of us takes this,” Seraphina, almost in a trance, jumbled Dewey’s words.
“Help me pack up this box, and let’s get out of here. I can hardly wait until tomorrow.”
“Until tomorrow, I can hardly wait.” Seraphina did it again.
The Big Dewey
Dewey’s mom sat in her fuzzy pink robe sipping on iced coffee and pointed to a bowl of oatmeal she had made for him. She usually wore contact lenses, but she had glasses on this morning. She pulled her messy morning hair back in a ponytail. This has the potential to be a nice moment, she thought. No Pooh Bear or Stephanie meant maybe they would have a quiet couple of minutes to themselves. It had been a while.
“Dewey? We should do something this weekend.”
“Sure, Mom. Okay. What do you want to do?” Dewey took a bite of his oatmeal which tasted thick and cold, as usual, because he never came down to breakfast soon enough.
“Anything you like. What sounds fun to you?”
Dewey couldn’t concentrate on this conversation. His thoughts drifted to school and how teachers and administrators would start arriving soon and see their signs and the garden.
“Dews?” his mom prompted again.
“Huh?”
“This weekend?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Whatever you want, Mom.”
“Whatever I want? Well, that’s great! Let’s go to the botanical gardens.”
“I hate the botanical gardens,” replied Dewey, plopping his porridge back in his bowl.
“Are you going to eat that or just build a sand sculpture?”
“A sand sculpture?”
“Dewey, eat your breakfast.”
Dewey’s mom had hoped for more pleasant breakfast talk.
“Dewey.”
“Huh?”
“Do you have something on your mind, son?”
“Not really,” and Dewey scooped up a big spoonful of oatmeal and took a bite. “Mom? Who is the Dewey you named me after, again?”
“John Dewey!”
“But who was he?”
“Oh, probably the greatest educational thinker of his era!”
“So he was a teacher?”
“Yes, he was a teacher. But he was also a philosopher and an educational reformer.”
“And you guys like him.”
“We guys love him! You know, your dad and I love the idea of education and social reform. Go out and change the world; education to transform. It’s why really, in his heart, your dad has always wanted to teach, and why I still would love to open a school one day.”
Open a school? This was news to Dewey. He knew his mom used to teach before he was born. Now she spent her time—well, he had no idea what she did with her time.
Anyway, this was all very nice, but he wasn’t expecting such a long answer right now and felt sorry he’d gotten her started.
“Hey, Google,” Dewey called out. “What time is it?”
“The time is 7:20 am,” reported the robotic assistant.
“Oh, I gotta go! I need to brush my teeth still.”
“Go!” she encouraged. “I got it,” she added to indicate she’d clear his place for him.
He gave her a warm smile.
The Big Day
Dewey arrived at school right on time. He wondered what he would find.
Just yesterday, Dewey and his friends could hear only the sound of their own breath and footsteps. Now, the corridors stirred with a cloudy brew of voices and laughter. The wide empty hallways gave way to moving legs and swinging arms. As Dewey got closer to the heart of their handiwork, the movement and air around him shifted.
Here, matchstick legs with rolled down socks, blue jeans, and a scattering of Crayola colored tights stood still. The air hung with anticipation. Dewey and the others expected the garden to generate a big buzz. Instead, the silence of wonder and awe greeted them.
“Whoa,” whispered Colin to Dewey when they found one another. “Maybe they haven’t seen the signs yet?”
“Still.” remarked Dewey, who had expected a rush for the garden goods and a lot of laughter at their signs.
“Let’s go where some signs are and see what’s going on there.”
They found kids gathered around their signs talking to one another.
“Yeah, I agree,” said seventh grader Lukas. “Why are we suffering under these conditions?” The only thing Dewey really knew about Lukas was that masking tape with the words “chicken nugget” held his glasses together.
“How come they took away our vending machine, actually? They never talked to us about it. We should tell the student government to have a meeting. Do we have a student government?” Ava asked.
“Of course we do,” Paloma said. “Who do you think plans the dances?”
Seraphina approached Colin and Dewey. “We definitely caused a stir,” she whispered. “Students all over campus aren’t going to class. I think the administration is going to call an all-school meeting.”
Dewey’s eyes got big. He could feel an “okay, what’s next?” coming on. He stood there really hoping she didn’t ask that question.
“Okay, then. So . . . what’s next?”
“Well, I think we have backers now. We should be ready to make a case at that meeting.”
“Make a case saying what?” asked Colin.
“You gotta show them we can conserve paper in some other way. And Seraphina and I should prove that they don’t have to take our vending machine for us to have a garden. Somehow. We gotta do our research.”
“Research? Meeting? We need more time!” wailed Seraphina. “We don’t even know what we’re going to say!”
“Okay, you go ask Mrs. Mayoral if we can have the meeting tomorrow, not today. Tell them a bunch of students are asking for more time to get ready before the meeting, so she doesn’t think it’s just us.”
“What? No! Why me?”
“Okay. We’ll rock, paper, scissor it. Colin, let’s go.”
The first time, they all did rock. The second time, Dewey guessed they’d all do rock again, so he did paper instead, and he and Seraphina both lost to Colin.
Seraphina and Dewey now went up against one another. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
“Rock,” the both called out in unison.
“Rock, paper, scissors.”
“Paper,” again in unison. They both laughed.
“Rock, paper, scissors.” This time Dewey lost, his paper to Seraphina’s scissors.
“Fine,” huffed Dewey. “I’ll do it.”
“I was going to
make you do it anyway. It was your bright idea to ‘just let it unfold.’”
The bell rang to go to class though, and Dewey was saved by the announcement over the loudspeaker that told the students there would be a school-wide assembly tomorrow morning to discuss the recent activities and developments. No one went to class. More and more students gathered around the garden to stare at its temptation, but no one dared enter it.
“I think we need to get them started,” suggested Colin, and he walked in, took a carrot cookie, and began to munch.
“Yeah!” Moses walked into the garden. “Isn’t that what the administration said? We’re supposed to harvest our snacks?” He grabbed a bag of chips off a vine and tossed it to Amelia who laughed eagerly.
Colin, Dewey, and Seraphina looked to one another. Now the other kids caught on. Before long, the garden hopped and buzzed with kids feeding on the bounty that the three of them had sown.
“Careful not to step on the other seedlings,” cautioned Paloma as she bent down herself to harvest some “broccoli.”
“It’s easy not to. It’s all laid out perfectly. It’s brilliant!” cried Moses, stuffing a “bell pepper” into his mouth and opening a bag of chips.
Dewey, Seraphina, and Colin smiled.