Awesome Blossom

  “Violet,” she says to Violet.

  Violet is whispering back and forth with Hayley, but she stops when she sees Yasaman. “Yaz!” she says with a smile.

  “Can I speak with you for a moment?” Yaz says. “Privately?” She makes eye contact with Hayley. “No offense, Hayley.”

  Violet gets up and goes with Yaz over to the reading nook. Mr. Emerson sees them do it, and he opens his mouth as if to tell Yaz to return to her class and Violet to go back to her seat. Then he changes his mind, it seems, because he shuts his mouth and shifts his gaze. Maybe he’s slowly realizing that if he and Ms. Perez are going to use Yaz as their messenger, they can’t get all that mad if Yaz pays a brief visit to her friend while doing their deliveries?

  Yaz and Violet act like they’re picking out books. They drop onto two beanbags and hold their pretend books (which are real, they’re just not really reading them) in front of their faces.

  “What’s up?” Violet says. From behind the cover of her paperback, she wiggles her eyebrows at Mr. Emerson. “More notes?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t have enough time. Okay?”

  “Um … okay. What do you want to talk about? And why couldn’t you say it in front of Hayley?”

  Yaz hesitates.

  “Oh,” Violet says. “Is it about Hayley?”

  Talk, Yaz tells herself. Use your words. And she does, even though it’s scary. “Yesterday … on the playground … you kind of abandoned me, Violet. You just walked away.”

  Violet puts up no fight. “You’re right. I am so sorry.”

  “I was talking to you. We were in the middle of a conversation. And you just … walked away! Is Hayley that great? Really? So great that you’d just, you know, pick her over me?”

  “No!” Violet says. “I would never pick her over you, Yaz.”

  Yasaman’s face feels hot. She drops her book to her lap. “Then why did you?”

  “Yasaman?” Mr. Emerson says, feigning surprise. It’s not very convincing. “Oh, excellent, you’re still here. Would you swing by my desk? I have a—”

  “Note for you to send back,” Yaz and Violet say together. Violet laughs, and it breaks the tension. Yaz smiles a small smile.

  “What did you girls say?” Mr. Emerson says.

  “Nothing. Be right there,” Yaz says. Her smile fades, and she waits for Violet to answer.

  Violet sighs. “During recess, when I left you and went to Hayley …”

  “Yes?”

  “I felt like I needed to save her,” Violet says in a hard-to-read tone.

  “Um, okay. But you didn’t need to save me?”

  “You don’t need saving,” Violet says. “Do you?”

  “Yaz, come on up here,” Mr. Emerson says. “Time for you to get back to your own class.”

  “I felt jealous,” Yaz says, speaking quickly. “I still do feel jealous. And—”

  “You shouldn’t,” Violet says. “I went over there because I was worried Modessa was being mean to her. To Hayley.” She drops her voice. “But I don’t think she was, and then Hayley kind of acted mean to me—”

  “She what?” Yaz says.

  “Yaz,” Mr. Emerson says, his tone suggesting that he’s let her dillydally for long enough.

  Yaz pushes herself up. “I’m coming! One sec!”

  “But we worked it out,” Violet says. “Me and Hayley. We talked, and … yeah.”

  Yaz doesn’t know what that implies. We talked, and … yeah? Yeah what?

  “Oka-a-ay,” she says, hating herself a little for what she was about to ask. “But do you pick me, or do you pick her? Like, if you could only pick one of us, who would it be?”

  Violet’s eyebrows pull together. “It would be you, Yaz. Duh.” She pauses. “Do I have to pick?”

  “Yaz. Now,” Mr. Emerson says, sparing Yasaman from answering.

  She scurries to Mr. Emerson’s desk and takes the note he offers. (Big surprise.) She tells him that yes, yes, she’ll give it to Ms. Perez, and she leaves the room with her head down, not making eye contact with anyone.

  In the hall, she exhales. She presses her back to the wall, and she stays there for two full minutes, or maybe even three. A whirlwind has passed through her, stirring up all sorts of emotions. She isn’t at all sure how she feels about how things went with Violet just now.

  When she opens her eyes, she opens the note, unfolding it carefully. She’s done it once already, so why change her ways now? Anyway, maybe it’ll be a good distraction.

  Hola, John. I think our sweet little Yasaman might be reading our notes. Do you?

  Yasaman’s blood runs cold. Oh, fudgsicle, she thinks. But she keeps reading.

  Hola, John. I think our sweet little Yasaman might be reading our notes. Do you? She’s been looking at me in a strange way…

  So she might be on to us, is what I’m saying. (!!!!) What should we do?

  xxx,

  Maria

  And then, from Mr. Emerson:

  Yasaman? Yasaman Tercan? You think Yasaman Tercan is reading our personal, private notes?

  Yasaman thought, after reading what Ms. Perez wrote, that she couldn’t feel any worse. She was wrong.

  Hmmm. I hope she’s not, but she might be. And if she is …

  Here it comes. Suspension. Jail, or possibly juvie, if they decide to have mercy on her.

  What will her ana think, and her baba? And her elderly büyükbaba and büyükanne, and her gazillion of halanin and amcanin??? She will be a disgrace to the Tercan family name! Even after she gets out of jail, she will be put back in jail—in her bedroom! And … oh my goodness. Her baba will probably take away her computer. Not probably. Definitely. Geez-o-criminy!

  She opens her scrunched-shut eyes and reads on:

  … well, I can hardly blame her, can you?

  What?

  We are pretty fabulous, you and I. Fabulous, intriguing, mysterious. Compelling! Impossible to ignore! Undoubtedly the most epically spectacular couple in the twenty-first century, wouldn’t you say?

  Yasaman presses her lips together. Really, Mr. Emerson? Really? she thinks. He and Ms. Perez are adorable, but really?

  And, let’s face it. We might have set her up. Not on purpose, and Yaz should know better than to read anyone’s private correspondence. Yasaman, of all people, should know this.

  But she’s a good kid. You know this, and so do I. I trust she does, too. Whaddaya say we cut her a break? To answer in the affirmative, simply don’t reply to this note. We should stop anyway (delightful though it is).

  See you at lunch.

  —J

  Yasaman has never experienced a last-minute reprieve before being shot to death by a firing squad. Yasaman has never faced a firing squad at all. But if she does, and if an official-looking woman runs to the Head Fire Squad Shooter at the last minute, murmurs into his ear, and then he commands the rest of the firing squad to put away their weapons …

  How she feels now is how she imagines she would feel if such a thing were to happen: Breathless. Lightheaded. Hot and cold at the same time.

  According to Mr. Emerson, she’s a “good kid.” As little as three days ago, she would have nodded vigorously and said, “Yes, yes I am! I am a good kid!”

  Then came all the secrets.

  Then came the firing squad.

  Then came the official-looking woman who stopped the firing squad from firing.

  Yasaman feels like she’s been given a second chance at being the kind of person she wants to be.

  She feels like she’d better use it.

  one else. Not Natalia (“I actually think Becca was looking for you,” says Katie-Rose). Not Becca (“Natalia’s over there. She’s, ah, been looking for you,” says Milla, softening the lie with a smile). And not Hayley.

  “We’re kind of in the middle of something,” Violet tells her, fiddling with the plastic zipper on her ziplock sandwich bag. She doesn’t meet Hayley’s eyes. Neither does Yasaman, Milla notices
. Milla herself does look at Hayley, but Hayley doesn’t look back at her. Hayley is focused entirely on Violet, as if she’s trying to unpeel her with her eyes.

  “Um, okay,” Hayley says. “No big.”

  She walks away and finds somewhere else to sit. Katie-Rose couldn’t care less, based on her cheerful demeanor. But Violet and Yaz … Something is up with them. Yaz looks—well, surely Milla is wrong, but Yaz looks on the verge of tears. And Violet? Who turned Hayley away even though all along she’s been the nicest to Hayley? Violet’s mouth is a grim line, and her cheeks are flushed. Not just her cheeks. Her whole face.

  What’s going on? Milla wonders. What just happened???

  “So, my friends, watch and be amazed,” Katie-Rose says as she unpacks a tribe of teensy hedgehogs and sets them on the table.

  One teensy-weensy hedgehog perches on the edge of the table. Two teensy-weensy hedgehogs perch on the edge of the table. Three teensy-weensy hedgehogs perch on the edge of the table.

  “Whoa,” Yaz says when Katie-Rose has unpacked six teensy-weensy hedgehogs. Six hedgehogs and no sign yet of stopping.

  “That’s a lot of hedgehogs,” Violet says.

  “Yup,” Katie-Rose says, and a childhood memory of watching Sesame Street floats into Milla’s mind. She thinks of the Count, the purple Muppet dressed in black, with pointy fangs and a love for arithmomania, which for the Count just meant counting things.

  He counted his teeth: “One teeth! Two teeth! Why do I have no more teeths?”

  He counted potatoes: “One po-tay-toe, two po-tay-toes, three po-tay-toes, four! Five po-tay-toes, six po-tay-toes, seven po-tay-toes, more!”

  Once, on a tiny little island, the Count counted coconuts. Another time, he counted cupcakes. Another time, he counted apples. “One! One apple! Two! Two apples! Three! Three apples! Yes! Yes, three apples!” And then his trademark laugh, which wasn’t a hah but an ah, as Milla remembers it: “Three apples! Ah ah ah!” But then Cookie Monster stole one of the apples and gobbled it down, and the Count had to start his counting all over again.

  Katie-Rose reaches nine hedgehogs, and Milla thinks, Nine! Nine hedgehogs! Ah ah ah!

  That has to be all of them, or almost all of them. How many hedgehogs were in that lumpy bag of Preston’s?!

  “Why is everyone staring at me?” Katie-Rose says, though she knows perfectly well. She pulls out a tenth hedgehog and sets it on the table with the other nine. Milla wonders which is the first hedgehog Preston gave her, last night at the Olive Garden. She wonders if Katie-Rose even has an inkling that Preston is the hedgehog giver.

  “What are their names?” Yaz asks.

  “The hedgehogs?” Katie-Rose says. She beams. She goes down the line of hedgehogs, patting each one on the head and saying, “Mona Bubbles, Mona Bubbles, Mona Bubbles.” Ten times she says, “Mona Bubbles.”

  “They’re all named Mona Bubbles?” Violet says.

  “Yiperee, Bob!” Again she pats her bitsies on their heads. “Isn’t that right, Mona Bubbles? Mona Bubbles, Mona Bubbles, Mona—”

  “We get it,” Milla says. She isn’t mad at Katie-Rose anymore, but she isn’t in the mood to let her go on and on, either.

  “Why?” Violet says.

  “Well, I will tell you,” Katie-Rose says, in a special “important” voice she reserves for certain situations. A voice that implies, AND NOW I WILL BE SPEAKING OF IMPORTANT-NESS, AND I WILL DO SO FOR QUITE A WHILE, AND THERE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE SIDETRACKS. BUT THEY, TOO, ARE MADE OF IMPORTANT-NESS!

  “The reason they are all named ‘Mona Bubbles’ is three-pronged,” Katie-Rose begins.

  “Like a fork?” Violet says.

  “A fork,” Yaz says. “Ha.” She smiles at Violet, but it’s an odd smile. A trying-too-hard smile?

  There’s something going on between Yaz and Violet, Milla realizes. She wonders what it is.

  “Yes, like a fork,” Katie-Rose says irritably. “Now, if you’ll be so kind as to let me continue—”

  “Right, sorry,” Yaz says. She looks several tables over. “Only, why is …?” She cuts herself off.

  “What?” Milla says. She cranes her neck and spots Modessa and Quin at a table about five yards away. Hayley is with them. Okay, obviously Hayley went to them when Violet sent her away.

  But Elena is sitting at a separate table all by herself. Well, there are two fourth graders at the far end of Elena’s table, but they’re not talking to Elena, and Elena’s not talking to them.

  “That’s weird,” Milla says.

  “Does anyone want to hear about my three-pronged reason for naming my hedgehogs?” Katie-Rose says. “Anyone at all?”

  Violet’s eyes are hollow. She’s gazing at Elena, too. Or possibly Hayley.

  As for Yasaman, she’s gazing at Violet. She looks miserable, and her chicken shawarma sits untouched.

  “Maybe you could tell us later, Katie-Rose.” she says. “I think we’re all a little distracted. Right, Violet?”

  Violet doesn’t hear her. Either that or she decides not to respond.

  “Violet?” Milla prods.

  “Huh?” She comes back alive inside her eyes. “What? Sorry. Um—yeah. Yeah, sure.” She pauses. “What am I saying ‘yes’ to?”

  “Nothing,” Yaz says, casting down her eyes.

  Violet knits her eyebrows.

  Katie-Rose scowls.

  Milla jumps in, saying, “Yaz was just suggesting that we hear about all the Mona Bubbles another time. She wanted to know if that was okay with you, Violet.”

  “Sure,” Violet says. “Whatever Yaz wants.”

  the playground for afternoon break—and “storm” is the right word for it, given the chaotic flood of whoops and leaps and near-stumbles as kids hurry outside. “Storm” is the right word for Violet, too, although Violet’s “storm” is a noun instead of a verb. Violet’s storm is internal, and she stays inside the building as the others rush out.

  Violet’s storm is a dark gray tornado whirling in the place her lungs live. It whirls and sucks the breath out of her, and without breath, she can’t speak. Without breath, she can’t breathe, but okay, it’s not that fierce of a tornado, or she’d be dead. Thwonk.

  Losing the power of speech is bad enough, though.

  Violet, without words, isn’t Violet.

  Violet, without words, is … anti-Violet. The opposite of Violet. A Violet-shaped husk, with a tornado inside instead of a girl.

  “Violet?” someone says tentatively.

  Violet is slow to respond. She knows that in reality, she still is Violet. Der. But she’s Violet-in-a-whirling-daze, and it takes her a moment to pull the pieces of herself together.

  “Yaz,” she finally says. She feels spacey. She imagines two Violets, both of them paper-doll cutouts. One is the surface Violet. The other is the real Violet, if there is such a thing. The two Violets are stacked on top of each other, but their alignment is a hair’s breadth off.

  By now, Violet and Yasaman are alone in the commons. Violet, Yaz, and some crumpled lunch bags that didn’t make it into the trash bag. Yasaman plays with the end of her hijab, a nervous habit that comes out when she’s worried, and Violet has the ungenerous thought that Yaz has already yelled at Violet once today (not that she actually yelled). But is Violet going to have to hear about it all over again, how she’s a bad friend for abandoning Yaz when Yaz needed her?

  They stand there. They’re within feet of each other, but the distance between them feels huge.

  “It’s Preston who gave Katie-Rose all those hedgehogs,” Yasaman says.

  Violet takes this in. Maybe she should care more, but right now, she doesn’t. “Okay.”

  Yaz swallows. Violet can hear it.

  Then Yaz sighs, and Violet can hear that, too. She also hears a rushing in her ears, and it’s the gray tornado saying wrong, wrong, wrong. The rushing sound builds, and it hurts. Violet doesn’t want to disappoint Yasaman, she doesn’t want to let her friend down, but the rushing keeps getting louder until—w
hoosh.

  It’s gone.

  Silence and clarity and the two Violets come together. She doesn’t want to let Yasaman down, but there is a right thing that needs to be done, and she, Violet, has to do it.

  “Yaz—”

  “Violet—”

  They both break off. Violet smiles. It’s a sad smile, but at least it’s not fake.

  “You first,” she says.

  “No, you,” Yaz says. “Please.”

  Violet takes a breath, then lets it out in a fast flow of words, the tail end of a spent tornado. “I can’t not be friends with Hayley. I can’t ignore her. I can’t tell her not to sit with us. You’re my best friend, Yaz—you and Milla and Katie-Rose—but Hayley might end up being my friend, too.”

  “Okay, but Violet—”

  “No. Wait. It’s just, I can’t treat her like Modessa treated me. Like Modessa still treats me. And I know, I know, Hayley’s her own person. She’s a big girl, and she can take care of herself. But can she? Or is that just something people like to say?”

  “Well, what I was going to say—”

  “Only I’m not sure it even matters,” Violet goes on, “because if I turn my back on Hayley, then I’m no better than Modessa. And I’m sorry, Yaz, but I am. I’m better than Modessa. So are you. So are all of us.”

  “I know,” Yaz says.

  “And Hayley’s new, and she’s had, like, a hard life, and maybe she isn’t perfect, but she isn’t an Evil Chick, either. Only what if she turns into one, and it’s our fault?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t exactly be our fault,” Yaz says. “Like you said, Hayley’s her own person … so wouldn’t it be her fault if she chooses to be an Evil Chick?”

  Violet narrows her eyes a little.

  Yaz says, “But … that’s not really what I meant to say. I mean … go on. Sorry.”

  “Take, for example, lunch today,” Violet says. “We told Hayley to go away, and she did, and she ended up with Modessa and Quin. She ended up with them, and Elena got left out. And sure, Modessa made that happen—she kicked Elena out or whatever—but we helped. We were part of it.”

  “Kind of, I guess,” Yaz says.