***
It was lunchtime. We were in the cafeteria. The food stunk.
“Let’s get ready,” Courtney suggested, hopping up from the table.
Study period was next and we wanted seats by the window. When we walked past the trash bins and discarded our leftovers, the bell rang. We raced upstairs to the library and picked a table near the corner window. The room had once held classes before it was turned into a library. Bookshelves lined the entire room even underneath the windowsill.
Birds chirped in the nearby trees. The afternoon sun shone brightly, leaving yellow patches along the windowsill. A ladybug landed on the edge of the window, and the shadow of a butterfly crossed Courtney’s back.
I pulled out my assignment pad and placed my book bag on the floor. I flipped the cover. Math, do pages 27 through 29. Science, know section two of chapter five. Social studies, read about the functions of our government. English—I didn’t even want to look at my English notes. One assignment covered a page and a half in my pad. After what Janot told me, I could see why she was upset about teachers photocopying tests. There must be some way out of this.
I rubbed my forehead. How did they expect us to do all this at once? I couldn’t even remember everything we went over in class. Religion exercise, label on your map the countries that Saint Paul traveled. Reading, five paragraphs on pages 16, 17, and 18.
Sweat poured, my head throbbed, and I could feel my heartbeat race. I moaned.
Everybody stared at me.
I slumped farther down in my chair.
“Who’s ready to start their paper?” Cheri asked as she opened her notebook.
“I don’t even know what to write about,” Tanya said.
She wasn’t the only one, I thought, closing my assignment pad.
“We don’t have to do it in a specific way?” she asked. “Just write down whatever we want?”
“You were there when Sister gave out the assignment,” Cheri said. “Didn’t you take notes?”
“I took notes,” I said, sliding my assignment pad over to Tanya.
She lifted the cover, opened her notebook, and gripped her favorite purple ballpoint, the one that she was not allowed to use in class. “Where is it?” she asked me.
“Under English.”
She lifted the next page and studied the print. “Exactly what on here is the assignment?” she asked with one hand extended.
“Everything you see under English,” I explained.
Her eyebrows arched. “All this?”
Courtney leaned over. “It’s simple. She just uses a lot of words to make it look hard. All we have to do is find something that’s important and write a composition about why it’s important.”
“What did you find?” Cheri asked her.
“We’re not supposed to discuss our homework before we turn it in,” Courtney stated, busily straightening her loose-leaf paper.
Quietly, Cheri went back to her own work, her finger sliding across the textbook page, stopping only to gather information into her notebook.
Maybe I could do my paper on Cheri and how devoted she was to her schoolwork. The time and effort she put into those boring lessons which were now packed away inside her brain much like my schoolbooks and old notes were packed away inside my bedroom closet.
How could she remember all of that stuff? Maybe she just had a lot of practice at studying. But if I pointed that out about Cheri, Sister would expect the same from me.
I rested my chin in my hand and watched the shadow of Cheri’s head darken her paper. What made Cheri smart? Was it her background? Maybe I could write about her family. Her parents were from South America, and even though she’d never been there, Cheri knew a lot about the continent.
I could write the paper on Puerto Rico where Courtney and Adrian were born. I could talk about living on a tropical island. But would Sister consider that important?
Then I noticed Tanya still copying down the assignment. Her grandparents were from the West Indies where her parents were now living.
I always pictured her grandmother, Mrs. Gordon, living on a warm tropical beach where cool waters splashed down the side of the mountains into the black volcanic sand. She didn’t have to wait for summer to go to the beach; she was already there.
I thought of her grandmother eating ice cream and cool fresh tropical fruits while dipping her feet into gentle waves from the ocean. She would be enjoying the same ocean at St. Vincent Island’s coast as I would soon be dipping my feet into.
Tanya shook the kinks out of her writing hand and continued copying the notes.
When Tanya was out of uniform, the bright colors she often wore reflected more on her grandmother’s beauty as a seamstress than on Tanya’s appearance in them. But Tanya did have a pretty smile. Her soft round face complimented her short curly hair. However, when her mouth got started there was absolutely nothing anybody could do to make it stop.
“Hey Justine,” she called, bobbing her head up. “Why don’t you do life with Tyrone? Have the whole class going into hysterics.”
I sighed. “Hey wait a minute,” I said, sitting up. “I can do mine on families. You know, why relatives are important?”
Everyone was quiet.
“Justine,” Courtney said, “the way I heard it, when Terence first came into your life all you wanted was to send him back.”
“I don’t mean me; I mean parents: Why they think their kids are important.”
“My parents don’t think kids are important,” Tanya said. “They think we’re expensive.”
“How would a nun know how a parent feels about their kids anyway?” Courtney asked.
A light began to shine. “Exactly,” I said. “So how could she flunk me?”
“Oh no!” Tanya cried, wiggling my homework pad. “Do you see this?”
“No I can’t see it, Tanya,” I said, reaching for it.
“It says we got a math test today.”
I snatched my hand back. “Say what?”
“You wrote it down right here,” Tanya said, pointing at the top of the pad.
“Don’t you remember she told us two weeks ago it would be today?” Cheri said.
“How am I supposed to remember something from two weeks ago?” I blurted, glancing at her history book. “And why aren’t you studying?”
“Already did last week,” she told me. “It’s not good to study too close to the day of the exam. Scrambles your brain.”
I groaned. “What class is next?”
Everybody looked at each other.
“Math,” Courtney said.
I yanked my book bag apart and dug for the math book. I slammed it on the table and ripped the pages open.
The bell rang.
I looked up at the clock. “No, no, it can’t be!” I cried.
“Come on,” Courtney said. “Let’s get it over with.”
She slung her book bag over her shoulder and headed out the door with Tanya trailing behind.
“Hey wait a minute,” I said, struggling to catch up. “You still have my assignment pad!” As if it would make any difference now.