Quite an Undertaking: Devon's Story

by Barbara L. Clanton

  Mme Depardieu must have had supersonic hearing because she yelled at me, “En français seulement, Devón.”

  In the light of Rebecca’s eyes, I had forgotten the French-only rule. How could I explain to my teacher that I couldn’t think because Rebecca made my insides all jittery, and that she smelled like roses which completely fogged up my brain?

  “Pourquoi l'Angleterre? Le Pays de Galles?” Rebecca asked as if she didn’t notice my complete meltdown.

  “Oh, uh, je suis en partie galloise.” I hoped Mme Depardieu didn’t yell at me again for my “Oh, uh,” because for a second I forgot the French equivalent, “euh.”

  “I didn’t know you were part Welch,” Rebecca whispered in English. “My family is mostly from dee Islands, mon.”

  I giggled at her new Jamaican accent.

  “My mother’s mother was from Jamaica, mon.” She dropped the Jamaican accent and switched to a French one. “J'aimerais vraiment y aller un jour. Now you don’t have to ask me that question, do you?”

  I laughed and wrote down, “Jamaica” on my own worksheet.

  She read the second question from the sheet, “À quelle fac veux-tu aller?”

  What university? That was an interesting question because only about sixty percent of the kids going to Grasse River High School actually went to college. I planned to be part of that sixty percent, so I said, “Plattsburgh State.” I didn’t know how to say Plattsburgh State in French, so I said it with a French accent.

  Rebecca laughed. “I want to go to NYU. L’Université de New York.”

  “You do? I mean, vraiment?”

  “They have an amazing dance program at NYU.”

  “You can major en danse?”

  “Bien sûr,” she said as if everybody knew that. “I want to get une licence in Fine Arts.” We had lapsed into a mixture of French and English—Frenglish I guess—side-stepping the French-only rule because Mme Depardieu had unknowingly handed me a way to get to know Rebecca faster than smiles and waves across the noisy cafeteria.

  “C'est super, ça! You’re in the dance troupe here, right?”

  “Oui, mademoiselle Devón. Oui. Are you coming to my concert?”

  Of course. Every single performance. “Quand est-ce?”

  “In about a month. The week before Noël.”

  “Christmas, cool.” Even the thought of watching Rebecca dance on stage wasn’t enough to stop the realization that this would be the first Christmas without Grandma. Rebecca and I had been leaning close together, so Mme Depardieu wouldn’t hear our Frenglish, but my sudden heartache made me sit back and pull away.

  “Devon, what’s wrong?”

  “Christmas.”

  She seemed to understand because she grabbed my hand. A perverse side of me actually enjoyed having her console me in my pain, but then my pain overtook even that. As she held my one hand, I cried behind the other. Images of Christmases past came pouring into my mind. Grandma always gave me and Missy an extra fifty dollars each that we weren’t supposed to tell our parents about, and we never did because it was our secret with Grandma. Grandma and I had lots of fun secrets. Like how she always wanted to be my partner on Sundays when we played bridge after dinner because she and I could cheat really well and not get caught. If I hadn’t been so choked up I might have laughed at the memory.

  Rebecca’s squeezed my hand while she murmured in French, “Oui, je sais, c’est difficile! Courage, Devón, courage.”

  Listening to her whisper sympathy to me in French brought me back to the present. I did that breathing thing she’d taught me and got myself under better control.

  “That’s it,” she encouraged. “You’re okay, now.” She squeezed my hand one last time.

  “Merci.” I cleared my throat and, even though I didn’t want to, I said, “I think we’d better finish our questions.”

  “Only if you’re okay.”

  I looked into her deep brown eyes. “I’m okay with you here.” Something softened in her eyes, and I would have gotten lost in them if the other students weren’t in the room. She continued to hold my gaze for an overlong moment, but then pulled away and looked down at her desk.

  Crap. I had overstepped. I got too pushy and scared her. What an idiot.

  I felt the tension spread around us like an early-morning fog, but we managed to finish the worksheet just as the bell rang. Rebecca stood up. “Jessie said okay to a basketball interview, by the way. Do you still want to do it?”

  Not really, I thought, but if I can be closer to you, then yeah, I want to do it. “Okay, sure.” My inner voice screamed at me to run as far away from Jessie as possible.

  “How’s lunch tomorrow?”

  “Cool.” It was a date, but with the wrong girl.

  I STUDIED THE list of questions for my interview with Jessie as I ate half of Gail’s tuna fish sandwich. She and Travis sat as close together as two people reasonably could, although I think she would have been in his lap if she could have gotten away with it.

  Gail leaned toward me. “So which one are you interviewing?”

  “Oh, Jessie Crowler.” I pointed to Jessie’s back four tables away. “She’s the captain of the girls’ basketball team.”

  “Senior?”

  “Yeah.” I took the last bite of her sandwich. “Good sandwich today.”

  “Amazing things happen when I make lunch.”

  Jessie turned around and looked toward me and Gail. I caught a quick glimpse of Rebecca pointing at me and saying something to Jessie. When Rebecca noticed me looking, she smiled and waved. I waved back and tried not to let my permagrin take over my face.

  Jessie and Rebecca stood up from their table and headed my way. I shoved Gail’s plastic sandwich bag and my used napkin into her empty paper lunch bag and stood up to meet them. I’d eat my little bag of carrots later.

  Gail leaned toward me. “She looks like a guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Jessie. Look at her.” She whispered, “She’s probably a lezzie.”

  Gail’s words were an invisible slap. I stood up and said tersely, “I’ll be back later.”

  “Okay, later.” Gail was oblivious to my coldness and went back to hanging all over Travis.

  I rolled my eyes behind Gail because she had completely missed my subtle departure. We used to talk to each other every day on the phone, but now that she had Travis we only talked once in a while, and she usually ended our calls with something like, “Oh, I’ve got another call. It’s Travis,” or “Travis is picking me up, so I have to get ready.” At first that kind of stuff hurt my feelings, but I got used to it. I mean, I had no choice. On top of all that, I didn’t know if my best friend could accept me for who I was.

  I met Jessie and Rebecca in the aisle. “Hey,” I said to Rebecca and nodded to Jessie.

  Rebecca introduced us. “Devon, this is Jessie. Jessie— Devon.”

  Jessie stuck out her hand, so I shook it. She had on tight black jeans and a white long-sleeved t-shirt. Her t-shirt did nothing to hide her strong muscular body. The gold chain around her neck held a colorful pendant in the shape of Africa. The red, green, and yellow stood out against the white shirt. Gail was wrong. Jessie didn’t look like a guy. She looked like an athlete.

  “Should we go outside?” I gestured toward the door. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Sure.” Jessie led the way. She shoved the door open with so much force that I didn’t know if she was trying to impress me or Rebecca.

  Jessie sat down at the table closest to the door. Rebecca sat next to her, and I grabbed a seat across from them. I couldn’t tell if my hands shook from the cold or from nerves.

  Before any interview I tell my subject that anything said was fair game to be quoted, and if they didn’t want to be quoted, they should say, “off the record,” and I’d put my pen down.

  Having given Jessie my disclaimer, I opened my notebook to the list of questions. “The team is supposed to do really well this year. What are your bigge
st challenges?”

  I thought she might say something cocky, but to my relief she thought about my question for a second and answered, “Well, Stone Lake always gives us trouble. We split with them last year, so we’ve learned never to take any team lightly. You know? On any given day...”

  She had such a tough exterior that her thoughtful and honest answer surprised me. Maybe I shouldn’t have judged her so quickly. I mean, I didn’t even know her.

  “There must be a lot of pressure on you in particular. Senior, captain.”

  “I guess so.”

  I don’t think she expected this question, but I waited for her to elaborate. A good interviewer knows when to stay quiet and let the subject keep talking.

  She continued, “Everybody relies on me, ‘cuz I’m the point guard.” She hesitated again, and I could sense the pressure she must have felt. I hoped she’d elaborate because I had no idea what a point guard did. She added, “But once I get scoring, I’m pretty unstoppable.”

  Ah, there was the ego I knew she had. I nodded and happily quoted her exact words. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Well, off the record...” She paused while I put my pen down. “There’s pressure on me to represent.” Without smiling, she struck a hip-hop pose with one hand on her chin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m black, and I play basketball.”

  Again, I waited.

  She continued. “It’s such a cliché, you know? Being black and playing hoops.”

  She was baiting me. I just knew it, but I didn’t know what she wanted from me. Did she want me to make some kind of comment about her being black? I decided not to say anything. When I didn’t answer her, she looked at Rebecca. “What are you gonna do? Right, babe?”

  My mind screamed, Babe? Did I hear that right? Jessie called Rebecca babe, and Rebecca had simply shrugged her shoulders.

  “Becca,” Jessie pulled a five-dollar bill out of her jeans pocket, “go get me a creamsicle.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now.”

  Rebecca hesitated for a second, but then got up and left the table. She didn’t look at me which made me even more uncomfortable.

  I cleared my throat. “I imagine, uh, all those things would create a lot of pressure on you.” I swallowed hard. “Let’s go back on the record.” Are you going out with Rebecca?

  As if to answer my unspoken question, Jessie snapped, “On the record, Raines. Be careful.” Her eyes burned a hole in my face as she poked the metal table with each word. “Be real careful with Rebecca.”

  I swallowed hard and eked out, “What do you mean?”

  Jessie stood up abruptly. “I’m warning you, Raines. Don’t play with fire. Interview over.” She stomped back across the gravel and slammed the cafeteria door open. It was only when the door shut again that I realized I’d been holding my breath.

  Chapter Five

  The Maplewoods Mall

  ON THE WAY to Wednesday’s French class, I smiled when I heard Jessie call Rebecca babe again in my mind. I thought about coming out to Rebecca, but then again, maybe Rebecca wasn’t gay, and she and Jessie weren’t really together. Maybe my mind had made up those things. Part of me—well, most of me—didn’t buy the “just friends” things, though. Gail and I had been close friends since fourth grade, and we didn’t call each other babe. More like dork or nimrod, but not babe. Jessie slipped, or maybe she said it on purpose to let me know they were together.

  I shook my head as I walked down the hall to French because my troubles were small compared to the rest of the world. It was Veteran’s Day and a lot of kids, both guys and girls, joined the military right out of Grasse River High School, so it was one of the town’s biggest holidays. We had a moment of silence during homeroom for some former students killed in the war in the Middle East. The announcement bummed everybody out, but it made me wish I could have gone to the parade that morning. Maybe Rebecca would have wanted to go, too, but the parade kicked off at 11:00 in the morning when we were stuck at school. My dad told me they always had the parade on November 11 at 11:00 because that was the date and time they signed the treaty ending World War I. Rebecca and I would have had to cut school to go to the parade anyway, but I didn’t think Rebecca was into cutting school.

  I settled into my usual seat and waited for her to walk in. I tried to hide my excitement when she smiled at me and headed to her new seat in the back of the room.

  “Bonjour, Ms. Journalist. Comment va le journal?”

  “Bonjour, Ms. Dancer. The newspaper’s fine. I finally got the varsity golf article from Joey Pitone, so now I have all of them. I’ll tell you what, being an editor ain’t easy. Some of these people can’t place a comma if their lives depended on it.”

  When she laughed, the sweet sound yanked my perma-grin from the depths where I had stuffed it. I could dedicate my life to making her laugh.

  She said, “That must be a tough job, but promise me one thing.”

  Anything. Everything. “What?”

  “If I ever misplace a comma, be gentle. Okay?”

  I burst out laughing. Several kids looked at me, but I didn’t care. I know my smile took over my whole face. “I will always be gentle with you.” Whoa, did I just say that? I hadn’t meant to flirt. It just came out.

  Rebecca seemed to take my flirting in stride, though. “Toi, oui, Devon Raines, I’m sure you would.”

  Mme Depardieu called the class to order. We were going to read some kind of short story in the textbook, all in French, of course, and then answer questions on a worksheet.

  As Mme Depardieu handed out the dreaded worksheets, Rebecca learned over and whispered, “I got my application.”

  “What application?”

  “The Karen Swanson School of Dance in New York. It’s a summer program.”

  “Cool. When will you find out?”

  “Well, I just got the application yesterday, but I have to send it back right away. If they like how I look on paper, my dance teacher, Ms. Adams, says they’ll ask for my audition DVD. She told me that if they ask for a DVD it means you’re ninety percent in.”

  “Cool. I hope they ask for your DVD.” I reached for my worksheet from the kid in front of me.

  “Me, too.”

  We read in silence and then answered the questions on the worksheet. I didn’t know all the words in the story, but I was pretty good at winging it. I hoped I could find a way to wing it with Rebecca because I desperately wanted to find out if she was gay like me.

  Mme Depardieu collected our worksheets with about five minutes left to the period. The way she tossed them into her “papers to be graded” basket told me we wouldn’t be getting them back anytime soon. When she sat at her desk and started typing on her keyboard, I knew the lesson was over for the day.

  “That was fun,” I said to Rebecca sarcastically.

  “Yeah, a real blast.” She rolled her eyes. “Actually, speaking of fun, we’re going to the mall on Saturday. Do you want to go?”

  I never realized how such a simple question could turn me inside out. Yes, yes, yes, I screamed inside my head. Omigod, Omigod, Omigod. I didn’t even care who the “we” referred to.

  “Sure,” I said with as much cool and calm as I could muster with my heart beating a thousand miles an hour. I tried to ask her what time, but the question caught in my throat. I coughed and tried again, “What time?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We’ve got a couple of days to decide, but Jessie usually likes to eat at the food court first, and Natalie, well, she doesn’t care when we go.”

  Jessie. Bummer. Of course, the “we” included her. She wouldn’t do anything to me with Rebecca right there, would she?

  “Okay,” I said, “let me know on Friday.” Most of me knew I shouldn’t go to the mall with them because of Jessie, but the prospect of hanging out with Rebecca made the stupid part of me take over.

  “Great.” She reached down into the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out h
er cell phone. Keeping it low under her desk, she asked me for my cell number. My insides started shaking as she punched the numbers in. She saved it and said she’d text me later with the details. She snuck her cell phone back into her backpack and then looked up at me with a grin as if we had just gotten away with something grand in Mme Depardieu’s class.

  The bell rang to end the period, and Rebecca stood up. I got up to walk out with her, but when I saw Jessie waiting in the hallway I sat back down and pretended to fuss with my backpack. I didn’t want to see if Jessie would shoot daggers at me again. I’d better get some thicker armor, I thought to myself, because in order to hang out with Rebecca, I’d probably have to hang out with Jessie, too.

  AS WE STROLLED into the food court at the Maplewoods Mall that Saturday, Natalie and I walked a step behind Jessie and Rebecca. They had picked me up at my house at around

  11:30 and by 12:15 we were in the food court trying to figure out what to eat. Jessie and Natalie went for Chinese, but I decided on the wrap place. Rebecca, seeming torn, opted to go with me. Ha! Devon 1, Jessie 0. I knew that was childish, especially since Jessie hadn’t sent me a single dirty look, but still, it felt good for a moment.

  When we regrouped at a table near the Chinese food counter, Jessie shoved a big spoonful of fried rice into her mouth and said, “Hey, we can’t always eat fried chicken and watermelon. Right, Devon?”

  Fried chicken and watermelon? What did that mean?

  Rebecca threw Jessie an exasperated look—one that said, “Behave.” That’s when I understood. Fried chicken and watermelon were supposed to be black foods or whatever, and I was white. I was the only white girl sitting at the table with three black girls. Maybe this was why Jessie hated me because I was white. That didn’t make any sense, though. She had white friends. I mean, her teammates on the basketball team were white. I decided to stay mute and not go for the bait.

  When Rebecca smiled at me in apology, I felt better. She did this, of course, when Jessie wasn’t looking. I smiled back and shrugged as if to say, “I’m not sure what I did to provoke that.”