Hide and Seek (3 page)

“Very well, thank you,” Razi mumbled, staring at the ground.

Keisha could tell that seeing Mrs. Jenkins reminded Razi of his problems at school.

Mrs. Jenkins untucked Razi’s chin and cupped it in her hand. She leaned back so she could look into his eyes. “We’re going to decorate our treat bags today, and I need someone to demonstrate making pumpkin faces. But he must be cheerful.”

“Oh! Oh!” Razi waved his hand so wildly, he bonked Keisha on the head.

“Mrs. Jenkins?” Keisha slipped the ball out of her pocket and passed it to her.

Razi was so busy trying to be chosen, he didn’t notice.

“Just in case,” Keisha said.

“You’d best line up, dear.” Mrs. Jenkins put the ball into her coat pocket. “I see the fifth graders going to their classrooms.”

Keisha kissed her brother on the top of his head before running across the playground. As long as you were in line when your class went through the big glass doors, you were not considered late. Keisha caught up to Zeke and Zack just before they went into the building.

“You’re always here before us,” Zeke said.

“No she’s not,” Zack argued.

“Yes she is.”

“No. Yesterday she wasn’t.”

Keisha put one hand on each of their shoulders. At least something was going the way it was supposed to this morning. Daddy called Zeke and Zack the Z-Team. They were nice to everybody else, but they almost always disagreed with each other.

“I was just talking to your dad. Hamburger and fries? I thought you were for sure about Washington and Adams.”

“It depends on how we did on our social studies quiz. Mom is hoping for the food because that would be easier to make.”

“She likes construction more than sewing.”

“And fast food more than cooking.”

The Sanderses lived a few houses down on Horton Street, so the boys came over a lot while Mrs. Sanders attended classes at Grand River Community College to get her associate’s degree in botany. The Z-Team liked to check in after school to see what smells were coming from Mama’s kitchen.

As soon as Mr. Drockmore took attendance, Keisha did her morning freewriting about Harvey the barking menace and how his bad behavior would make sure she never got a puppy … ever! Now if Mama let them have a pet, they would have to get a hamster or, at best, a kitten. But you couldn’t take a kitten to obedience class, could you? Kittens didn’t stand by the door with tails thumping, waiting for you to come home and take them out for an adventure. Maybe they wouldn’t get any pet at all.

After freewriting came math, and after math, the students worked on science observations. One of the things Keisha liked most about Mr. Drockmore was that he sometimes let students choose their own project teams. Aaliyah, Jorge, Marcus and Wen were Keisha’s friends
and
her science project team. Today they were studying the density of water at different temperatures. Yesterday they had frozen colored-water ice cubes
Today they were watching what happened when they dropped the ice cubes in a jar of hot water.

“Oooh. It looks like a red jellyfish.” Aaliyah pointed to the melting ice cube. Little tentacles of color were coming out of the bottom. “Speaking of red … does anybody know where I can get a piece of red carpet?”

“It’s getting less dense as it melts,” Wen said as she wrote in their observation notebook.

“What do you want a red carpet for?” Marcus had his head down. He was drawing a jellyfish on a piece of copy paper. Later they would paste it in their science notebook. Marcus had earned them a lot of extra credit points that way.

“I’m going to be a red-carpet celebrity for Halloween.”

“For real?” Marcus stopped drawing and looked up at Aaliyah. “Which one?”

“I thought you were going to be Sojourner Truth,” Wen said.

“I
could
use the extra points … but have you seen the way that woman dressed? She’ll ruin my reputation in the neighborhoods!” Even though Aaliyah lived in the Garfield Park neighborhood, she thought of Alger Heights, where Keisha lived, as her home, too, since her grandma—whom all the kids called Moms—lived
in Alger Heights and Aaliyah went to Moms’s house most days after school.

“There’s a sign outside Verhey Carpet saying that they sell squares for fifty cents,” Wen informed Aaliyah.

“You could be Sojourner Truth at school and Beyoncé when you trick-or-treat,” Marcus pointed out.

“Marcus, a fourth-to-fifth cannot be seen in the Halloween line dance with an old-lady shawl and a funny hat. I have a reputation to protect. Besides, Alicia Keys is my girl. Beyoncé is too la-di-da.”

“I know what you mean.” Wen closed the notebook. “Abigail Adams wore the same funny outfit.”

“I think school should be school and Halloween Halloween,” Marcus said. “Maybe we should have a revolution.”

The Fantastic Fifth Graders, or FFGs, as Mr. Drockmore called them, had begun the year studying American history. The unit finished right around Halloween, so everyone in class knew a lot about the American Revolution and the period leading up to the Civil War.

“But it’s a tradition,” Wen said.

“Well, isn’t that what revolutions are for?” Marcus asked. “Making a change?”

Social studies was in the afternoon, after lunch. With only a few days to go before their presentations on
Friday, students were busy making the posters they would use to give their oral reports. Mr. Drockmore had let them draw numbers to choose their famous person. Keisha had drawn number six, and she got her first choice. She loved learning about Phillis Wheatley because Keisha liked to write, too, and Phillis had this great flowy handwriting that was fun to copy. Though it was amazing that Phillis could be brought to America as a slave and learn English like a native speaker in less than a year and a half, Keisha didn’t really get her poetry. Grandma called it “highfalutin.”

The classroom was quiet while they created, except for the squeak of markers and the sound of cutting construction paper. Mr. Drockmore was busy at his desk, filling in his planner.

“Mr. Drockmore.” Marcus stood up as if he was going to make a speech. Everyone turned to look at him. Mr. Drockmore closed his planner.

“Mr. Pearce.”

“Permission to address the assembly.”

“Permission granted.”

Zeke and Zack scooted their chairs closer to Marcus, who held up a piece of paper and read: “We the people of the fifth grade of Langston Hughes Elementary, in order to form a more perfect Halloween, establish new
traditions, ensure a good time, provide for FFG creativity, remain consistent with other grades’ costumes and secure the blessings of future generations, do request to establish that we can wear our favorite costumes on Halloween and give our oral reports in them, so that we can rock the line dance, have more fun and only make one costume.”

Wen and Keisha looked at each other with a wide-open-eyed giggle. Would it work?

Mr. Drockmore clapped his hands. “That’s a very nice play on the words of the Constitution, Marcus.”

“We helped him during lunch,” Zeke said.

Zack raised his hand. “Yeah, we thought about staging a revolution, but then we decided to ask first.”

“What I don’t understand”—Mr. Drockmore twisted the cap on his whiteboard marker—“is why you don’t like the idea. Last year’s Fantastic Fifth Graders seemed to really enjoy this assignment.”

“We’re different,” Zeke added. “We like science better.”

Mr. Drockmore smiled. “And what does science have to do with not dressing up as your famous person?”

“Engineering is science, isn’t it?” Zack asked. “Our mom said she’s going to have to turn into a construction engineer if we have enough social studies points.”

“And why is that?” Mr. Drockmore asked.

“We really want to be a hamburger and French fries.”

Now Wen raised her hand. “Creating your own costume exercises your creativity. And you have always told us that scientists have to be good at imagining things that don’t exist yet.”

Keisha raised one hand and, with the other, pointed to the back of the room, to Mr. Drockmore’s poster of his hero, Albert Einstein. “Mr. Einstein did say imagination was more important than knowledge.”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Mr. Drockmore held up his hands.
“You’re triple-, quadruple-teaming me. Time-out. I’ll discuss this with you individually when you give me your progress reports. Then I’ll make a decision.” Mr. Drockmore opened his planning book again, signaling that it was time for the class to get back to their independent work. “I must say … you are a determined bunch of patriots.”

During afternoon recess, as Wen, Aaliyah and Keisha sat on one of the benches waiting for their turn to jump, Keisha told them all about Phillis Wheatley.

“During my conference, Mr. Drockmore said it was a great idea to recite one of her poems,” Keisha told the girls.

“Did you pick yet?” Aaliyah asked. “Practice on us.”

Keisha bit her lip. “Okay. ‘Ode to Neptune’ … um … ‘While raging tempests shake the shore, while Aeolus’ thunders round us roar, and sweep im—’ um, ‘impet—’ ”

“Impetuous?” Wen had listened to Keisha recite the day before at jump rope practice.

“ ‘Impetuous over the plain … be still, O tyrant of the main.’ ”

Ms. Tellerico, the principal, blew the whistle for first-half recess. The girls stood up and brushed off their bottoms.

“Our turn. I’m jumpin’ first,” Aaliyah said.

Keisha and Wen took the rope from Therese and Erica. Aaliyah was jumping before they even started to swing the ropes. “This is how you remember your report, Key. Look at me! Look at me! I plow and I plant and I chop down trees. Look at me! I’m so strong. I can jump rope all night long.” Aaliyah jumped out and took the rope from Keisha.

“That’s not exactly how her speech goes,” Wen said.

“I’m giving Sojourner Truth a makeover.”

“I think you should be Serena or Venus Williams for Halloween,” Keisha said. “Not a red-carpet celebrity. If Sojourner Truth were alive now, she’d be an athlete.”

“You could wear one of your mom’s tennis dresses,” Wen suggested.

“I do look good in white,” Aaliyah said. “And I’m almost as tall as my mom,
and
I could run between houses faster. Hmmm …”

Since the fourth-to-fifth wing had the last lunch-time of the day, the afternoon always went by more quickly than the morning. Just before the bell rang for the walkers, Mr. Drockmore told the class that he would review their comments
and
their social studies quiz grades and let them know his decision about the costumes tomorrow. Keisha tugged her backpack out of
her locker and lined up. Mr. Drockmore always excused the family elders first so they could go get their brothers and sisters before things got crazy. She ran across the playground to the K–1 wing, reaching it just as the children were lining up to march outside.

Mrs. Jenkins stood with the super-squeezy concentration ball held out in front of her. Razi was in line, pinching his lips together with his fingers. Uh-oh.

“The ball helped at first,” Mrs. Jenkins told Keisha when she got close. “Razi had a good morning, and I told him I was confident that he could have a Peaceful Corner–free day today. But during library time with Ms. Fontarelli, the ball got away from him three times. The last time, it rolled under the Dr. Seuss fish tank and, after retrieving it, he emerged covered in dust bunnies with a poor, dehydrated dead blue fish in his hand.”

Mrs. Jenkins paused to button up her blazer. “At that point, Razi exercised poor judgment, choosing to wave the fish in front of the three children he knew would scream the loudest. To top it off, he declared that he would bring the fish back to life with the abracadabra stick, and he went into Ms. Fontarelli’s desk without permission.”

Keisha put the super-squeezy concentration ball into her pocket. She noticed that Mrs. Jenkins had
buttoned her blazer up wrong, putting the top button into the second buttonhole. Should she say something to Mrs. Jenkins about that?

Mrs. Jenkins raised her hand so that all walkers knew to keep their mouths closed and their hands to themselves while walking outside. Keisha walked alongside the group. She then waited until Mrs. Jenkins released the walkers, grabbed the Razi hand that wasn’t pinching his lips and pulled her brother along toward home.

When they got in sight of the house, Razi broke away and rushed up the back stairs into the warm kitchen, where Mama, Daddy and Big Bob were sitting at the table with slices of ginger cake and cups of coffee. By the time Keisha got into the kitchen, his face was buried in Mama’s skirt.

“What is this?” Mama asked, rubbing circles into Razi’s back as he cried. “Did we spend more time in the Peaceful Corner today?”

“I wonder why they call it the Peaceful Corner.” Daddy put his hand on Mama’s. “Our little Razi-Roo never feels very peaceful when he’s in it.”

While Mama fed Razi bits of ginger cake and listened to the story of his day, Keisha cut her own slice and went to sit between Daddy and Big Bob
Grandma always said when you were having a not-so-Tallahassee day, you had to be on the lookout for good things to balance you out. Good things seemed to hover around Big Bob.