“I don’t think my grandma can even sew a button on a shirt,” Holly admits.
I look at my sack with pride and point to sections of it. “See here.” I show Holly and Carmelita. “She used pieces from a shimmery bridesmaid’s dress, an old, sequined prom dress, and this piece is lace from a tablecloth that came from Spain.”
“Wow.”
“It’s got buttons and sparkles from old shoes and hats, along with pieces of earrings and necklaces and bracelets. It’s made of satin and silk and velvet, too.”
“I wish I had a purse just like it,” Jasmine says. She looks at her plain plastic purse.
“This sack deserves a shinier school, don’t you think?” I say as I toss it over my shoulder. I look at our big, brown building.
“So do we,” Carmelita adds.
“Nobody has any fashion flair in our school!” I complain. “We should be allowed to wear creative colors like fuchsia and guava and persimmon.”
“I’m not even sure what those colors look like,” Jasmine admits.
“They ought to let me design the school uniforms and be in charge of the way things are done at school! Kids would break their necks to come to my school,” I say.
“I’d be first in line,” Carmelita says with excitement.
“No blue and white?” Holly asks hopefully.
“Not a chance! Mondays would be strawberry days, where everybody — even the boys — has to wear shades of pink! And pink bubble gum would be given to everyone for the bubble-blowing contest!”
We all crack up.
“Pink lemonade and strawberry jelly doughnuts would be served for lunch!” I declare.
“What about Tuesday?” Holly asks, dancing with excitement.
I think a minute. “Tuesdays would be green days. Only green notebooks and pencils allowed. And everybody would have to wear jade-colored tennis shoes and bright emerald nail polish.”
The girls giggle.
“What about lunch?” Carmelita asks.
“Pea soup,” I say because that’s the first thing that comes into my head. But I hate peas.
“Yuck!” Jasmine and Holly say together. They hate peas, too.
“Okay, lime Jell-O instead,” I decide. “And mint ice cream. We’d work outside and sit on the soft green grass.”
“And on Wednesday?” Jasmine asks. She looks excited.
“Wednesdays would be orange!” I exclaim. “A million-dollar prize would be given to the student who comes up with the word that rhymes with orange.”
A couple of other girls gather around, listening to my imagination, so I climb up on the top step and pretend I’m giving a speech.
“On Wednesdays, orange sherbet would rule in Sassy’s School. And orange juice and orange crayons and orange-flavored lip gloss.”
They cheer and wait for me to continue. I love this.
“Tell us about Thursday, Sassy,” Holly demands.
I scratch my head, then tell them all, “Thursday always seems like a purple day to me. Only boysenberries and grapes and other healthy purple fruit would be served at my school on Thursday. Except for the grape lollipops everyone would have to lick all day. Purple toenail polish and purple underwear would be required.”
The group surrounding me gets larger. They are listening and clapping.
“And Friday?” Carmelita asks.
I hold out both my arms like the preacher does at our church. “The sun would have to shine every Friday because that would be yellow day!”
“Yellow’s my favorite color,” Holly says.
“We’d have lemon meringue pie and pineapple juice for lunch. Yellow roses and tulips and marigolds would be in every classroom! And in art we’d use only yellow markers and crayons and paint!”
I can almost see this place. It’s, like, real in my head.
“Tell us more, Sassy,” Jasmine begs.
“In Sassy’s School, all the walls would be decorated with colorful pictures, all the teachers would play really cool music in the classes, and we’d never have homework!”
The growing group of kids around me cheers, and then the bell rings. All of a sudden my sparkly bubble pops.
Dressed in matching blue-and-white uniforms, we drag ourselves into our classrooms with the cracked windows and dusty floors. I’ve never seen the color fuchsia anywhere in that building.
As we troop into the building, I ask Jasmine, “What color would you use to describe the walls of our school?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Tuna-fish pink!”
We crack up. “You think we’ll have strawberry jelly doughnuts or lemon meringue pie for lunch?” I ask as we get to our classroom.
“Not a chance!” she replies.
Even though our school is not fancy like my dream school, I really like my classes. My English teacher’s name is Miss Armstrong, and every morning she reminds us, “Fourth grade is the best!”
Of course, every teacher says that every year. I think it’s something they learn in teacher school.
When Miss Armstrong reads to us, her voice reminds me of saxophone music. It’s deep and rich and pretty. Her voice makes words sound like they’re dancing on fluttering leaves, all magical and mysterious. I don’t tell my friends stuff like that, however. I think they just hear ordinary words when Miss Armstrong speaks.
Miss Armstrong kinda looks like a saxophone, too. She’s thin at the top and curved at the bottom. She smells like tangerines. I’ve seen the citrus lotion in her top desk drawer.
“Good morning, Sassy Simone!” she says as I walk into the room.
“Hi, Miss Armstrong,” I reply. She greets every kid by name.
That’s another reason I like Miss Armstrong. She always calls me by my real name. Sometimes she uses both my names.
Every day, first thing in the morning, we have language arts. I like reading stories and writing them, too. It’s my favorite part of the day. But it’s still fun to see how much time we can waste before the teacher gets started.
“Can I go blow my nose?” Travis asks even before the teacher has a chance to say anything. He’s holding his elbow across his face. He asks this every single morning.
“No, Travis.” She answers him like he’s a mosquito on her neck.
“You got any tissue in that bag of yours, Sassy?” he asks me. When Miss Armstrong tells him he can’t go to the bathroom, he asks me for tissue. Every single morning.
“Yep!” I pull out a pink tissue. It’s clean, but it’s wrinkled. I come prepared.
“I hate pink Kleenex.”
“That’s all I have today,” I tell him. Actually, I have green and blue and yellow as well. But I give him the pink because it bothers him.
“Class,” the teacher says, “let’s get started.”
Then Carmelita leans over and whispers, “You got any hand sanitizer in your sack, Sassy? Travis sneezed on me!”
I pull out a small bottle and she rubs the gel over her hands. I use some, too.
“Can I borrow a pencil, Sassy?” Princess asks. I wish my mom had given me an elegant name like Princess. I give her a gold pencil with a new eraser.
“You got one more in there?” asks Ricky.
“Do I look like a store?” I whisper, but I dig down and find something for him anyway. I like to be needed.
“Let’s not waste any more time,” Miss Armstrong reminds us.
I reach into the pencil section of my Sassy Sack once more, and pull out a purple sparkly pencil and a notepad so I can write down what Miss Armstrong says. Teachers don’t want to admit it, but sometimes they forget what they tell us, so I always write it down.
Then I notice that Miss Armstrong is wearing one brown shoe and one blue shoe. They are the same style, with thick rubber soles on the bottom and a small button on the top, but they don’t match.
Jasmine notices at the same time I do. She looks at me, then points at Miss Armstrong, then she breaks into giggles.
I try not to laugh, but I can’t help it. Pretty soo
n Holly is holding her mouth, trying to hold in the laughs as well.
Travis figures out what we’re laughing about and can’t keep it in. “I like your shoes, Miss Armstrong,” he says loudly. He cracks up.
“Thank you, Travis,” she replies. Then she looks down.
“Oh, my!” she says. “It looks like I got dressed in the dark this morning! I was wondering what was so funny.” Then she sits down at her desk and laughs louder than the rest of us. That’s what makes her so cool.
After she wipes her eyes with a tissue, and some of her eye makeup comes off, she gets back to the lesson for the day. I knew we couldn’t stall her forever.
“Today we’re starting a new project. We are going to figure out who we are and write about it.”
“Don’t we already know that?” Travis asks. “I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, and there I was!”
Everyone laughs.
Miss Armstrong likes to answer a question with another question, especially when Travis is doing the asking. “So what did you really see?” she asks him.
“I could see I still don’t need to shave,” he says as he rubs his face.
She ignores the giggles from the class.
“What kind of mirror do we need to see inside ourselves?” Miss Armstrong asks the class.
“One with X-ray vision?” Jasmine suggests.
“A magic mirror?” Holly asks.
“Mirrors don’t show what you think about,” I say as I raise my hand.
“There you go!” Miss Armstrong says. “Good point, Sassy.”
I feel proud of myself.
“You mean like stuff that makes you scared?” Carmelita asks. “Like when it thunders late at night?”
“Exactly!” Miss Armstrong looks pleased.
Travis raises his hand. “Do you mean like stuff that makes you want to barf — like when my baby brother eats the food out of the dog’s bowl?”
“Uh, yes. Something like that,” the teacher says. I can tell she’s trying not to laugh at Travis.
“Can I write about how I miss my daddy while he’s in Iraq?” Tandy asks.
“Absolutely,” Miss Armstrong replies.
“How about how tough it is to be the smallest person all the time?” I ask.
Miss Armstrong smiles at me. “You’ll grow, Sassy. I promise.”
“When?” I ask.
“Well, not today. Be patient. Sometimes being little is a good thing,” the teacher says.
I sigh. Grown-ups always say that.
“When we finish our ‘Who Am I?’ projects,” Miss Armstrong says, “we’ll have a celebration. Maybe even prizes!”
“Are you bringing food?” Travis asks.
“Maybe,” Miss Armstrong says. “I promise it will be fun.”
“If you say so,” Travis says, shaking his head.
Miss Armstrong continues. “Let’s start by talking about our middle names. Sometimes that’s a good way to think about ourselves in a different way.”
“My middle name is Simone,” I tell the class proudly.
“Mine is Caramia. It means ‘dear one,’” Carmelita says.
“Adorable,” the teacher replies.
“So what’s your middle name, Miz Armstrong?” Ricky asks.
The teacher makes a face like she just sucked a piece of raw fish. “Fair enough. I’ll tell you.” She takes a breath. “My full name is Queen Lackawanna Cadillac Mercedes Armstrong. My mother had high hopes and great dreams for me.” She looks at the class over her glasses.
Nobody, not even Travis, makes a smart remark. I can tell he’s trying not to bust out laughing, though.
Then she says, “It’s okay, kids. I know it’s a mouthful. When I was in kindergarten, I had a really hard time learning to write my name!”
She laughs at herself so we don’t have to.
“Do you have a nickname?” Carmelita asks shyly.
Miss Armstrong grins. “My friends call me Queenie,” she tells us, “but I better not hear one of you calling me that!”
Princess raises her hand. “My mother says I’m her little princess, so I’m sorta like you. My middle name is Butterfly.” She looks proud.
“Lovely,” says the teacher.
“My nickname is Caramel,” Carmelita says. “It’s also my favorite kind of candy.”
“Yummy,” the teacher replies.
“What’s your middle name, Travis?” Princess asks him.
“Tree.” He kinda mumbles the answer.
“For real?”
“Yep, Travis Tree Smith.”
What’s wrong with grown-ups?
“My middle name is Heaven,” says Holly.
“That’s pretty,” Miss Armstrong answers with one of her cheerful teacher looks.
Holly explains, “It’s a combination of my mom’s name — Heather — and my dad’s name — Kevin.”
Now that’s my kind of creativity.
“What if all of us had names made up of our parents’ names?” Miss Armstrong asks the class.
Tandy raises her hand. “My mom’s name is Nayla and my dad’s name is Tony. That would make me Toenail!” Everybody laughs.
“What about me? My dad is Caesar and my mom is Esther,” says Carmelita. “That would make me Siesta.”
“That’s not so bad,” Ricky says, “but what about Jack and Kelly? That’s my folks’ names. I’d be called Jackal!”
“And Beatrice and Stillman?” Rusty adds. “My name would be Be Still Johnson.”
“Not a bad idea,” Miss Armstrong says. Rusty is always out of his seat.
“I think mine is the worst possibility,” says Charles Painter. He has the deepest voice of any boy in the fourth grade. He sounds like a man when he talks.
“Tell us!”
“My mom’s name is Gloria and my dad is Damon. That would make me DayGlo Painter!”
Everybody, even the teacher, cracks up.
“No, I think I have the worst,” Travis says. “My father’s name is Mitchell.”
“And?” Holly says, curiosity in her voice.
“My mother’s name is Vonda.”
“That’s a nice name,” I tell him.
“Well, if you combine the two names.” He pauses. “They make … vomit!”
“Yeew!” we all cry out. “You win!”
“Let’s try to be just as creative with your personality projects,” the teacher reminds the class. Teachers always figure out how to make kids stop laughing and get back to work.
Everybody is quiet and working. Miss Armstrong grades papers at her desk while we work on our assignments.
That’s when Travis gets his head stuck in a chair.
Travis shatters the silence.
“Help!” he cries. He sounds pretty frantic.
He sits one row away from me, so I turn to his desk. He’s not there.
“Help!” he cries again.
I look behind his desk, and there, on his knees, is Travis. His head is stuck through the rungs of the chair behind him.
Miss Armstrong runs over to him. “How did you do this, Travis?” she asks.
Teachers always ask questions even though the answer is clear.
“I just wanted to see if my head could fit through that opening,” he explains.
“Why?” I ask Travis.
“Just because, I guess,” Travis replies. “It seemed like a good idea a few minutes ago.”
The rest of the class is hovering close, not sure if we should giggle or be worried.
“Sit down, children,” Miss Armstrong says quietly. “Let’s give him some space.”
“Get me out!” Travis calls out. He looks like a squirrel poking his head out of a hole in a tree.
“Let’s try to go backward,” Miss Armstrong suggests, “and reverse what you did to get stuck.”
Travis tries to nod his head, but he looks scared.
“I’ll hold your head and ears, and you try to pull back through the rungs of the chair. Are you ready?” sh
e asks.
“Yeah,” Travis says.
“Ready, set, squeeze!” Miss Armstrong says.
Travis grunts, but nothing happens. “Ow!” he yelps. “It hurts!”
“We’re going to need help,” the teacher says with authority. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Am I in trouble?” Travis asks. He sounds worried.
“No, dear,” Miss Armstrong replies. “But I don’t want you to get hurt, so I’m going to let professionals do this.”
“Will I be on the news?” Travis asks hopefully.
The teacher laughs. “Probably not. Class, talk to him and keep him occupied while we wait.” She hurries to the front of the room where I hear her call the principal and the emergency people and Travis’s mom.
We all sit on the floor around Travis. This is better than a cartoon on TV.
“Are you okay?” Carmelita asks. She wants to be a nurse when she grows up. She covers Travis with his jacket — well, the back half of him.
He looks like a horse with a blanket on his back, ready to go to the barn.
Rusty says, “I bet this gets us out of classwork for the rest of the day! Way to go, Travis!”
I dig down into my sack and pull out a pack of tropical fruit LifeSavers. The flavors are pineapple and mango and passion fruit. I don’t share those with anybody but because he seems to need it, I offer one to Travis.
“You want some?” I hold the package in my hand and offer it to Travis.
“Maybe later, Sassy,” he says. He has trouble shaking his head to say no.
Then I realize that offering him candy is a pretty dumb idea. His hands are on the other side of the bars, so if he eats the candy, I will have to feed it to him.
I think about it for a minute, then I use my thumbnail to open the roll of candy and remove the first one. It’s yellowish-orange, the mango-flavored one. I can’t resist. I pop it into my mouth. It’s delicious.
The second candy is lemon. He can have that one. I take it out of the roll, put it between my thumb and first finger, and gently place it on his bottom lip. He gobbles it quickly.
“Thanks, Sassy,” Travis says with feeling. “Can I have another one?”
I eat the passion fruit and pineapple candies, and I give him the lime-green one, which comes out of the roll next.