“Becca, close your mouth. I can see your tonsils,” Mrs. Gundeck says.
“No, you can’t,” Becca replies giddily. “I don’t have tonsils!”
“It’s true!” Carmen says. “She got them taken out when she was seven!”
“Class,” Mrs. Gundeck says. She claps the preschool clap: clap-clap-clapclapclap. No one echoes the pattern back to her, because ha ha, they’re having too much fun being wild.
Violet rises from her desk, her inappropriate hovering over her seat. When Mrs. Gundeck isn’t looking, Violet slides in a crouched position into the aisle.
The kids near her notice, but Violet can’t worry about them. She can’t worry about Carmen, who gapes at her as she sidles past, and she can’t worry about Preston, except to stomp on his toe when he opens his mouth as if to ask what the heck she’s doing, creeping to the back of the room like a spy.
“But, Mrs. Gundeck, the reason I want to know the German word for ‘teeth’ is because I have something to say about teeth,” Thomas explains.
“No,” Mrs. Gundeck says.
“About your teeth, Mrs. Gundeck!” Thomas presses. He stands up from his desk, which is a blessing, because it distracts the kids from Violet. “And it’s a good thing, I promise.”
“Sit down, Thomas,” Mrs. Gundeck says.
Violet is within touching distance of Cyril, who is so focused on what he’s writing that he doesn’t notice. She could grab his notebook right now, but she tells her itchy fingers to wait. Let Thomas finish his joke about teeth, she says silently. And when everyone laughs . . .
“Please, Mrs. G?” Thomas says.
“Fine,” Mrs. Gundeck says, giving up. “Go ahead, Thomas.”
He places his hand over his heart. “Mrs. G, your teeth are like the moon.”
“Awww,” Preston says. Tonsil-free Becca can’t stop laughing. Violet snakes her hand toward Cyril’s notebook. Closer . . . closer . . .
“Do you want to know why?” Thomas asks.
“I do not,” Mrs. Gundeck says.
“Because they only come out at night!” Thomas says. “Just like the moon!”
Max moans and puts his head in his hands.
Becca says, “Huh?”
“Like a vampire! Get it?”
“No,” Becca says.
“You mean a werewolf,” Max says. “A werewolf’s teeth only come out at night. You showed me that joke in your joke book.”
“A werewolf,” Mrs. Gundeck repeats. “Thomas? Did you just call me a werewolf?”
“Aw, Mrs. G, you know I was just—”
Mrs. Gundeck bares her teeth and growls, and people scream, especially Thomas, because it’s freaky when a crotchety old German teacher turns one of her student’s jokes back on the student himself. Mrs. Gundeck belly-laughs, and the class joins in, loud and out of control and still recovering from the shock.
This is Violet’s chance, and she takes it. She snatches Cyril’s notebook, and his pen scars the paper, leaving a painful blue gash.
“Hey!” he yelps, but everyone is laughing at Thomas and Mrs. Gundeck, and no one pays attention to Cyril, anyway, which gives Violet a pang. Her eyes go to him, full of remorse even though she had to do it. But his eyes, they’re . . .
Not something Violet can look at right now.
And she’s not giving back the notebook, not until after she’s read it. And anyway, Cyril won’t cry, because Cyril can’t cry. Cyril is incapable of crying.
“What did you do?” Carmen asks as Violet slides back into her desk. She glances at what Violet’s got. “Is that Cyril’s notebook? Did you steal Cyril’s notebook?!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet says, her voice catching. “I told him I’d proofread a story he wrote. Now, shush.” She’s shaking with adrenaline, and with other things, too, like the image of Cyril’s eyes, and the emotions she saw there, which she assumed he didn’t feel.
With trembling hands, she opens his notebook, because she has to. Cyril’s writing is cramped and small, but surprisingly neat. Block letters. Dark, like he presses down hard on the pencil.
“All right, class, we’ve had our fun,” Mrs. Gundeck says. “Back to work, or I will bite you all.” She passes out a “Body Parts” worksheet, and as the others chatter quietly and fill out the answers, Violet looks through Cyril’s notebook for answers of her own.
She starts at the beginning, skimming for mentions of her or her mother. Anything. It’s tricky to decipher, though. It’s written in some sort of code.
All through August, the entries say “nothing,” with one exception.
And after the words, a star:
Oh no, she thinks. She skims for other entries with stars and finds one a few pages later.
In addition to her front-desk duties, Pam is the lunch lady. Usually, when kids go through the lunch line, they grab their own milk, but on this day maybe Cyril forgot, and so Pam had to ask?
A blanket of fear drops over her heart, but Violet keeps reading.
No stars for that one, Violet notes. Maybe because Ms. Westerfeld is the principal. Maybe because principals are just too . . . principal-y sometimes.
And then comes a big entry. Violet gets a sour taste in her mouth.
Violet knows what’s coming next. She does. She does not know, however, that the “V,” which stands for Violet, will be decorated. With wings. The “V” has wings.
It goes on. The fight with Modessa and Quin, and Violet telling them how uncalled for their behavior is (did she really say that? uncalled for?), and finally ending with this, which Quin said after Violet grabbed her wrist to stop her from poking Cyril again:
Oh oh oh, Violet thinks. She stole Cyril’s notebook . . . and his eyes, when she snatched it . . . and all this time, what he’s been writing hasn’t been mean at all. It’s been . . . starry. Golden. Winged.
Finish, she tells herself. The day in the office, when he was on the mat. What did he write about her on the day in the office?
Her breath is shallow as she reads the entry:
There are three stars after that entry. Then there’s more, like Ms. Westerfeld checking on him, and Preston walking by and making a mean joke about Cyril being a preschool baby on a preschool baby mat. And Violet, the whole time she’s reading, she thinks, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I didn’t know.
At the bottom of the page, Violet appears. Again, there are wings on the “V,” but they’re no longer blazing and strong. This time they’re folded in.
The words next to her name are
She closes the notebook, her vision blurry. She stands, walks to Cyril’s desk, and holds out his notebook.
Cyril doesn’t take it.
“Here,” she whispers. “I’m . . . sorry.”
“Violet?” Mrs. Gundeck says. “Is there a problem?”
Before she can answer, Cyril grabs his notebook. Then he yanks the cover off and tears the pages out, shredding them into bits. His breathing is labored and his face is red.
Thomas says, “Dude.”
Becca laughs nervously.
“Cyril?” Mrs. Gundeck says.
“Cyril?” Violet echoes. “Will you just . . . will you please just look at me?”
He won’t. He rips and shreds and crumples.
The whole room grows silent, except for the ocean roaring in Violet’s head. Cyril is no longer swimming in it, because he’s no longer swimming, period. He’s floundering, thrashing, gasping.
Drowning.
monkey climb from tree to tree to get bananas. Well, she’s supposed to be, but her monkey has gotten no farther than the first tree.
Ms. Westerfeld said yes to the “nutrition presentation” Milla proposed, and after hearing for herself how passionate Milla was, she suggested inviting the younger grades and the preschoolers to come listen, too. Milla was temporarily elated, but once she got to keyboarding class, her elation evaporated like steam.
The game she’s supposed to be playing has a sound track of jazzy jungle d
rums. The monkey is cute and rascally, and if Milla types the letter U like she’s supposed to, he hops from one tree to a higher tree. And there are bananas on that higher-up tree! Yum!
But instead of typing U, she types M, and a coconut plummets from above. It knocks the monkey from the tree, and he screeches when he hits the ground.
Ms. Karbula, the keyboarding teacher, is helping Carmen place her hands in the right position, and Milla knows she’ll be busy for a while. Carmen can’t for the life of her come to grips with putting her pinkie on the semicolon key.
Milla navigates away from Keyboard Climber and goes to LuvYaBunches.com. She’ll make another stab at a blog entry, she decides. Because all these sad feelings . . . she has to let them out somehow, and talking to a computer is better than talking to no one.
Words appear on the screen: Post an entry?
Milla takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts typing.
Milla looks at the words on the screen. She uses Select All to highlight the entire entry and hits Delete.
Perez’s room while everyone else—including Katie-Rose, who glares at the ground rather than look at her, and including Chance, who succeeds in tripping Katie-Rose since Katie-Rose isn’t watching where she’s going—files out.
“Yasaman?” Ms. Perez says when Yasaman is the only student left sitting at her desk.
Yasaman waves, which is kind of goofy. She shoves her hands under her thighs.
“Can I help you with something, sweetie?” Ms. Perez says. She comes over and perches on Yasaman’s desk. “What’s up?”
“Um . . .” Now that she’s here, alone, with her teacher, it’s as if there’s glue in her mind, which keeps her thoughts from coming out.
“Start with something easy,” Ms. Perez suggests kindly.
“I . . .” she begins. She remembers what she overheard Ms. Perez say on the playground, when Ms. Perez was chatting with Mr. Emerson and Yasaman went over to ask if she could go to the bathroom. Something about nutmeg and—unless she totally misunderstood—Mr. Emerson’s oven catching on fire?
“Did Mr. Emerson’s oven catch on fire?” she asks.
Ms. Perez laughs. “Oh my word, can you believe it? He left a potholder in it, apparently.”
“Why?”
“He was baking miniature pumpkin bread loaves to bring to the teachers’ lounge. They didn’t quite turn out, apparently.” She smiles. “John dubbed them ‘pumpkin bread–shaped disasters.’”
John, Yasaman thinks. John Emerson. “That’s funny,” she says. “Well, kind of funny and kind of sad.”
“True,” Ms. Perez says philosophically. “Life is like that, isn’t it?”
“But why?” Yasaman asks. In a smushed-together rush, she adds, “I’m-not-talking-about-snacks.”
“Hmm,” Ms. Perez says. “What are you talking about? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Well, like you said. Just life, and friends, and how sometimes everything starts off happy and then turns sad.”
Ms. Perez looks concerned, but not too concerned. Just the right amount of concerned to hopefully give good advice without making Yasaman start to cry.
“Are you and Katie-Rose having problems?” she asks.
Yasaman nods.
“Is Natalia part of the mix, too?”
Yasaman nods again. She’s surprised Ms. Perez knows, but then, there was the whole blowup when Katie-Rose got sent to the hall. So never mind. She’s not surprised anymore.
“Poor Katie-Rose,” Ms. Perez says. “And Chance and Preston aren’t making things any easier for her, are they?” She sighs. “Then again, she isn’t making things easy for herself, either.”
“It’s not her fault Chance and Preston are being mean to her,” Yasaman says loyally. “I hate it when people are mean.”
“I do, too,” Ms. Perez says. She tilts her head. “You’re a very nice person, Yasaman. You’re also a rule follower, aren’t you?”
What a strange thing to say. “Is that bad?”
“Not at all. It can make life hard, though.” She smiles ruefully. “Harder than it already is.”
Even stranger, Yasaman thinks. Don’t teachers want kids to be nice rule-followers?
“I try to be nice myself,” Ms. Perez says.
“You are nice.”
“I’m also a rule follower, believe it or not.”
“But you wear checkered stockings,” Yasaman says without thinking.
Ms. Perez laughs. Yasaman’s cheeks heat up.
“Small rebellions,” Ms. Perez says. “Sometimes, Yasaman, you need to figure out how to follow the rules and follow your heart, even when it comes to checkered stockings. And I think—and this is just me, now—but I think it applies to friends, too.”
Yasaman isn’t sure exactly what Ms. Perez means, but she thinks she understands the underlying feeling of it. Like, that maybe a person doesn’t have to be nice to everyone all the time. Or, maybe not that—nice is important—but maybe, in terms of friends, that you don’t have to be friends with someone to the same degree that they want you to be? Like, you can be one girl’s FFF and another girl’s “hi at school” friend, even if the “hi at school” friend wants more?
Ms. Perez runs the back of her hand lightly over Yasaman’s hijab. It’s the equivalent of tousling the hair of a non-hijab–wearing girl, Yasaman figures. It makes her feel warm inside.
“I guess what I’m saying is that what you think you’re supposed to do doesn’t always match up with what you want to do. Sometimes you have to do what your heart tells you to do.”
“Well, what I want is for Katie-Rose to like me again,” she says slowly, hoping Ms. Perez won’t laugh or react in some other way that makes Yasaman feel foolish.
“Yasaman,” Ms. Perez says firmly. “I know without a doubt that Katie-Rose likes you.” She pauses. “Is it possible that she thinks you no longer like her?”
“No,” Yasaman responds on autopilot.
Ms. Perez lifts her eyebrows.
“If she did think that, she’d be wrong.”
Ms. Perez laughs. “Well, people are wrong sometimes. People are wrong lots of the time. Anyway, liking people is easy. Trusting that they like you back is often harder.”
“So what do I do?” Yasaman asks.
Ms. Perez uncrosses her legs and hops off Yasaman’s desk. “Show her. Actions speak louder than words, you know.”
“But how?”
Ms. Perez raps Yasaman’s head. “That, sweet Yasaman, is up to you.”
next morning. Because of the Snack Attack presentation, scheduled to happen before morning break, and also because of the perfume attack, unknown to everyone except Yasaman, and scheduled to happen whenever Yasaman decides the time is right.
Everyone knows about the Snack Attack, but the perfume attack is her top secret plan to show Katie-Rose she likes her. She came up with it last night, thanks to Nigar, who used way too much body spray after her bath and turned herself into a walking stink bomb.
Nigar is clearly perfume-obsessed (it was just last Sunday when she spilled their ana’s perfume everywhere!), and one day soon, Yasaman will need to sit Nigar down and give her a sister-to-sister talk about how “just a dab’ll do it.”
But last night, Nigar’s smelliness was just the inspiration Yasaman needed.
Point one: Boys hate perfume. Yasaman could recall her baba’s scrunched up face when he came into the house last Sunday, and the memory made her giggle.
Point two: Perfume is supposed to smell like flowers, although it doesn’t always, and sometimes it is too strong, like for example the Enchanted Orchid body spray her büyükanne gave her after hearing the story of the spilt-perfume disaster. The Blushing Cherry Blossom body spray she gave Nigar is slightly better, but still strong. Yasaman’s baba said the girls were too young for perfume, but her büyükanne pooh-poohed him and said this way no more accidents would happen, since the Bath & Body Works body sprays came packaged in sturdy plastic bottles with spritzer nozzl
es.
Point three: Plastic perfume bottles with spritzer nozzles are the perfect revenge for Chance and Preston. They’ll be defeated with the fragrance of flowers—ha ha ha ha ha ha!
She pats the zippered pouch of her backpack, reassuring herself that both bottles of body spray are still there.
Her ana pulls into Rivendell’s parking lot and parks. She twists to look at Nigar, who has yet to unbuckle herself, and says, “Remember, today is the day you get your treat. If this morning is a good drop-off—and I know it will be—you’ll have filled out your entire chart!”
Nigar nods, clutching her Hello Kitty lunchbox. “Yes, because I am very proud of me.”
“I am very proud of you, too,” Yasaman says, patting Nigar’s chubby leg.
“As am I,” their ana says. “And do you remember what your treat is?”
“Tell me, tell me, tell me!”
“To drive to the ice-cream store and get ice creams! Won’t that be fun?”
Yasaman expects Nigar to say “Yay!” Instead, her sister’s face falls, and Yasaman feels a stab of alarm. Everything is supposed to go right this morning. That will be a sign that everything is going to go right for the whole day.
“Küçüğüm!” their ana says. “Don’t you want to go get ice creams?”
“Yes, but, Ana, I don’t know how to drive!”
Yasaman laughs along with their ana.
“I will do the driving, Nigar,” their ana says. “Your job is only to eat the ice cream.”
“Oh,” Nigar says. She looks at Yasaman and their ana, and since they’re laughing, she does, too. “But one day I will drive, and if my little girl has good drop-offs, I will take her for ice cream.”
She unfastens her seat belt and wiggles off of her booster. “And when I do, you can come, too, Ana.” She leans forward and taps Yasaman. “And you, because you are my bestest Yasaman.”
Yasaman smiles. It is going to be a good day. She just knows it.
she tilted her blinds so that she could see them from her bed. She gazed at them and gazed at them until she fell asleep without even realizing it, which is the best way to do it. Then, when you wake up, you don’t know what’s real and what was a dream. You kind of do, but not for sure.