Nikki and Deja Page 3

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What is it you don’t understand?”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “You’re going to underline the subject of each sentence once and the predicate twice.”

  “What’s a predicate?”

  Deja’s hand flies up.

  “Yes, uh . . .”

  “It’s Deja, Mr. Willow.”

  “Oh, yes. Deja?”

  “Ms. Shelby-Ortiz taught us all about predicates last week. And we had lots of practice. Ralph wasn’t paying attention. He never pays attention and he’s always asking for help ’cause he wants the teacher to do the work for him.”

  It’s a mouthful, and she nearly runs out of breath. The whole class has turned to stare at her, even Antonia, who has put herself squarely in the good-kid group by being super obedient.

  “Thank you, Deja,” Mr. Willow says. “So, anyone who needs extra help, you can join me at the kidney-shaped table.”

  At least ten of Nikki and Deja’s classmates stand up and carry their chairs to the kidney- shaped teacher table. They have to bunch up, and this causes a logjam around the table. Mr. Willow squeezes through a small opening between chairs and settles himself in the part of the table that curves inward.

  Deja shakes her head and gets to work.

  Then the most awful thing happens. Right before lunch, Deja sees the “Kick Me!” Post-it stuck to the back of Mr. Willow’s jacket as he’s writing the week’s spelling words on the board. Someone must have put it there when everyone was crowded around the teacher table.

  Kids are snickering, and not even under their breath. Mr. Willow turns around with a puzzled look on his face. He scans the room, but suddenly all the kids have returned to their workbooks to give the impression that nothing’s going on. When he turns back to the board, the laughter begins again. Deja looks over at Nikki, whose eyes have grown big and who has her hand over her mouth. Deja wants to scream, “Stop it!” What they are doing is mean, and Auntie Dee has always told her how most people get up in the morning hopeful and wanting to do their best. When a person is mean, it’s because they’ve forgotten that or they don’t know it in the first place. Thinking about Mr. Willow putting on his jacket that morning, not knowing that some bad kid was going to put a mean Post-it on it, makes Deja want to cry.

  Mr. Willow continues writing on the board. Then, miracle of miracles, he takes off his jacket, without looking away from what he’s writing. He places it on Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s desk. If only she could get to that jacket, Deja thinks. She is pondering the ways she might do this when Richard begins his stupid cough thing. At first, no one pays attention. Mr. Willow does not even look up. But then Carlos coughs too. Still, that seems okay. No one pays attention. All the students just continue writing in their workbooks. Then Richard coughs again.

  Deja looks up with suspicion. She looks around the classroom. Nikki is frowning and looking around also. Antonia and Casey glance over at Carlos and then Richard. Antonia rolls her eyes and gets back to her workbook.

  Richard coughs a third time, and then Ralph coughs twice.

  Now Carlos, Richard, and Ralph start up a coughing chorus. Ayanna joins them, and Keisha gets in on it as well.

  Mr. Willow looks around. “I want everyone who’s doing that coughing to stop. Right now.”

  The coughing stops. But in four or five minutes, another version of it starts up. Ralph tests a little cough, more like a loud clearing of the throat. Richard clears his throat next, and then Ayanna.

  Mr. Willow just shakes his head and continues writing on the board, apparently deciding to ignore it, but more and more kids join in and it gets harder and harder to ignore all that clearing of throats.

  “I’d like to see some order,” Mr. Willow says feebly.

  Some of the kids do show him some order. That’s when Deja gets her idea.

  She looks at the jacket in a little pile on the desk. She notices her letter sticking out of the pocket. He has read it! She glances over at Nikki. Nikki has returned to her workbook, but she must feel Deja’s stare because she looks up and meets Deja’s eyes. Deja points to Mr. Willow’s jacket with the letter sticking out of the pocket. Nikki mouths, “Wow.”

  Deja knows just how she’s going to get that Post-it note off Mr. Willow’s jacket before he can see it. She raises her hand, and when Mr. Willow notices, he looks relieved that someone is actually following the rules.

  “May I sharpen my pencil again? The lead broke.”

  “Why, certainly,” he tells Deja, and then goes back to writing more spelling words on the board.

  Deja starts across the room with her pencil. It doesn’t really need sharpening, but it’s a good excuse. Just as she’s lifting Mr. Willow’s jacket to get the Post-it note off, Carlos says, very rudely and very loudly, “Hey, Mr. Willow, can I go to the bathroom?” The teacher turns around, and his eyes zoom in on Deja with the Post-it in one hand and her other hand on his jacket.

  “What are you doing?” he asks. Suddenly he looks very tired.

  “I—I,” she stammers, not knowing what to say.

  Mr. Willow steps toward her quickly. He takes the note out of her hand, reads it, and then looks at Deja with an expression that’s full of sadness. His shoulders slump. “This is serious, I’m afraid. Who’s office monitor?” He looks around. Every- one is stunned into silence. Rosario raises her hand with a scared look on her face. Mr. Willow writes a long note on a piece of paper. It seems to take forever for him to finish. “Please take Deja and this note to the office. Ask Mrs. Marker in the office to give the note to the principal.”

  “Mr. Willow—” Nikki starts. But Mr. Willow holds up his hand and looks so serious, she stops midsentence.

  “Please take Deja to the office.”

  Deja doesn’t know what to say, so she decides to say nothing. Actually, it’s going to be better to explain everything to Mr. Brown, the principal. So she follows Rosario out of the room. She’s sure she’ll be able to explain the true situation to Mr. Brown, easily.

  Mrs. Marker is busy with a parent when they get to the office, so they have to stand in front of the counter in silence for a long time. Then after the parent leaves, the phone rings and they get to listen to Mrs. Marker’s conversation, which is pretty interesting. Someone’s home on suspension and Mrs. Marker is trying to explain to the parent that the only way the student can come back is when the parent has a meeting with the teacher. She has to explain this over and over in different ways. Deja finds it really interesting, and by the way Rosario is standing there with just her eyes moving, she knows Rosario finds it interesting as well.

  Finally Mrs. Marker gets off the phone and looks down at them. Rosario hands her the Post-it and the note from Mr. Willow, and she reads them. “Okay, Miss Rosario, you can go back to class, and Deja, you can have a seat and wait for Mr. Brown to speak with you.”

  Before Rosario goes, she hands Mrs. Marker something else. It’s the letter Nikki and Deja had written. Deja is surprised. She hadn’t noticed Mr. Willow giving it to Rosario. She’s puzzled, too. Why did he think the letter had anything to do with her? They had given it to Mr. Willow anonymously. Deja sits down to wait.

  Soon, she’s ushered into Mr. Brown’s office. There are pictures of Mr. Brown at different school events. In one he’s holding a huge pumpkin; in another he’s handing a kid the spelling-bee champion trophy. She takes the seat in front of his desk and looks around. Mr. Brown is busy reading the note from Mr. Willow that Mrs. Marker has given him. He picks up the Post-it and turns it over in his hand. There’s a picture of a woman and two kids on Mr. Brown’s desk, angled toward Deja just enough that she can kind of see them. She guesses that they are his wife and children. Deja thinks about that for a moment.

  “Well,” he finally says. “My, my, my, and I thought I’d seen everything.”

  Deja frowns.

  “In all my years, I’ve never seen such an example of disrespect.”

  Deja’s
not sure what he means, but she’s sure it’s not good.

  “I can’t imagine what you must be thinking to try and pull something like this.” He holds up the Post-it with a really disgusted look on his face. “Putting this on the back of your teacher’s jacket. This is very, very serious.”

  Deja starts to protest, but Mr. Brown holds up his hand.

  “And it seems,” he continues, “you and the rest of the class have been doing everything you can to show your teacher disrespect and to give this school a bad name.”

  “But Mr. Brown, I didn’t do anything. I was just trying to help.” Deja finally found her voice.

  “Are you saying you didn’t have this Post-it in your hand?”

  “Yes, I mean, no, I mean . . .” Deja is so flustered she doesn’t know what she’s trying to say. “I was taking it off his jacket,” she finally blurts out. “And it was Nikki and me who wrote that letter to Mr. Willow and put it on his desk. That other note Mrs. Marker gave you.”

  “Really?” Mr. Brown says. He looks at her closely as if he doesn’t believe her, but then he says, “You know, I’ve never had any problems with you, Deja. I know your aunt is hard working, while at the same time trying to raise you with good values. But I’m finding it hard to believe that this letter is from you, and that you had nothing to do with the Post-it with such strong evidence against you.”

  “Mr. Brown, Nikki and me . . . we wrote that letter yesterday and put it on Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s desk this morning for Mr. Willow to find.”

  “How can I know that’s what happened?”

  “Mr. Brown, you can ask Rosario. Mr. Willow gave the letter to her to give to Mrs. Marker. I never opened it, but I know what’s in it.”

  Mr. Brown opens the letter. “Okay. Tell me what it says.”

  Deja remembers it word for word. She begins: “Dear Mr. Willow, We hope this letter finds you well. There’s some stuff that went on today in our class that you probably don’t know about. . . .”

  Deja recites the entire letter, ending with: “Signed, Anonymous.”

  Mr. Brown is smiling when she finishes. He stares out the window for a moment. Then he says, “I have a solution to this problem, but I need to speak to your substitute first. I think we can get this all straightened out.” He finds a blank paper, takes a while to write something on it, folds it in half, and then staples it. “You may go back to your class. Please give this to your teacher.”

  Deja takes the note, wondering what’s in it. But the staple keeps her prying eyes from finding out.

  As she walks down the hall, it feels as if every person who looks up to see her go by knows that she’s just come from the principal’s office. She feels guilty, though she’s done nothing wrong. And when she enters her classroom, all activity stops and everyone looks her way. Deja sees that Mr. Willow had been letting the class make get-well cards for Ms. Shelby-Ortiz. The room was noisy as she approached the door. Now, once again, you could hear a pin drop.

  She walks straight over to where Mr. Willow sits at the desk correcting work and hands him the note from Mr. Brown. Everyone watches her with interest. Then they watch him.

  He reads the note and nods at Deja. “You may go back to your seat, Deja.”

  “Can I get some paper to make Ms. Shelby-Ortiz a get-well card?”

  Mr. Willow nods again and goes back to correcting papers.

  At the art table, Deja gets a tube of glitter that already has the glue in it, along with markers and construction paper—purple, since that’s the closest color to lavender, and lavender is Deja’s favorite color. The class seems to have lost a bit of its bluster. Carlos looks over at her nervously, perhaps wondering what she told Mr. Brown. Deja thinks the Knucklehead Club probably realizes it went too far. Because now Mr. Brown knows there’s a problem in Room Ten.

  It’s a relief when the dismissal bell rings. Half the class jumps up and starts going to the cubbies without permission, grabbing their backpacks, and running to the door. Some even push and shove.

  “I’d like to see some order,” Mr. Willow says feebly.

  Deja and Nikki gather their backpacks and wait for Mr. Willow to say, “Okay, you may go.”

  “I’d like to see some order,” Mr. Willow says again.

  A few of the kids do show him some order.

  “Okay, you may go,” he says.

  5

  A Change Is Coming

  “What happened in the principal’s office?” Nikki asks the second they leave the schoolyard, as if the question is about to make her burst.

  “I didn’t get into trouble,” Deja says. “’Cause I proved that we were the ones who had tried to help Mr. Willow. That we were the ones who wrote that letter.”

  “How did you do that?” Nikki asks.

  “I knew what was in it. Even the part that said, I hope this letter finds you well.”

  Nikki is quiet, thinking about this.

  As they near their houses, Deja gets a little bubble of excitement in her stomach. She gets to walk Ms. Penelope today. Auntie Dee promised she would save Ms. P.’s walk for Deja.

  “You want to do homework at my house?” Nikki asks as she heads up the walkway toward her porch.

  “I’m going to walk Ms. Penelope first.”

  “Can I come?” Nikki asks.

  “Sure. We just have to be back in thirty minutes.”

  They decide to walk up to Marin, then over to Ashby, then down to Maynard, and then back to Fulton, their own street. “That way, we can go by Mr. Delvecchio’s and get some hot pops,” Deja says. Her mouth waters at the thought of the cinnamon and ginger suckers that are round like Ping-Pong balls, only a little bit smaller.

  Ms. Precious Penelope trots along ahead of them, occasionally pulling at her leash, sometimes stopping to sniff the grass. Deja feels happy walking her dog.

  “Let me have the leash,” Nikki says.

  Deja passes it to her reluctantly. “You can walk her for a little bit.”

  Ms. Precious Penelope seems to sense the change and looks back and then stops.

  “I think she likes just me to walk her.”

  “Dogs don’t care who walks them. They just like to be walked.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never had a dog.”

  Nikki doesn’t answer. She holds the leash tightly when Ms. P. starts up again, as if she’s worried Deja might take it back.

  “Let’s go through the park,” Deja says.

  “But we have to be back in thirty minutes,” Nikki reminds her.

  “Going through the park is a shortcut.”

  Nikki and Deja turn in the direction of the park.

  “I was thinking about something, Deja.”

  Deja notices Nikki is keeping her face straight ahead, so it’s probably some kind of criticism. “What is it now?”

  “I think you should call Ms. Penelope Miss Penelope.”

  “Why?”

  “Because how can a dog be a Ms.? That’s what women call themselves so nobody’ll know if they’re married or not.”

  Deja frowns. “I like Ms. better than Miss. Just like Ms. Shelby-Ortiz. She’s married now and she’s still a Ms. Ms. is better. A dog can be a Ms.”

  They come to the corner, stop, and look both ways up and down the empty street before crossing.

  The park is full of joggers and skateboarders and bikers, and little kids who don’t have to worry about homework. They’re playing on the monkey bars and in the sandbox with their mothers nearby on benches. Ms. Penelope gets so excited to be in the midst of so much activity, she starts yapping loudly and trying to run off. Nikki holds on to the leash.

  “Let me have the leash now,” Deja says.

  Ms. Penelope seems to know when the leash is back in Deja’s hand. She settles down and prances along calmly, looking this way and that.

  Suddenly Nikki stops. She shields her eyes. “Is that Mr. Willow?”

  Deja follows her gaze and sees Mr. Willow ahead of them on the path, walking a big, bull-hea
ded, ferocious-looking dog. It’s one of those dogs that are built low to the ground. Mr. Willow is out of his usual school clothes—slacks and a crisply ironed shirt—and has on some kind of athletic wear. Not only is he walking a dog that looks like it would love to bite someone, right beside him is a young woman with a ponytail and one of those terry-cloth headbands.

  “That must be his wife,” Nikki says. “And look at that dog. It’s one of those scary kinds of dogs.”

  They follow along at a distance behind their substitute teacher. He looks so different right then, he could be a different person. They watch him laugh and then stoop to pet the top of his dangerous-looking dog’s head. Nikki and Deja glance at each other. How is it that teachers look so different when they’re not at school?

  “You know what?” Nikki asks.

  “What?”

  “He should bring that dog to school tomorrow. Just let it sit in the back of the class. Then I betcha even the bad kids will be good.”

  Deja bursts into laughter picturing Carlos and Ralph and Richard and Ayanna and all of the bad kids sitting perfectly still with their hands folded and their eyes big with fear. Nikki joins her, and they laugh all the way to Mr. Delvecchio’s.

  The next morning Nikki and Deja arrive at school early because Nikki’s mom has a dentist appointment and is able to give them a ride. As soon as they enter the schoolyard, they see four or five boys from their class in an excited huddle next to the handball court.

  “What’s going on with them?” Nikki asks, squinting.

  Deja shrugs. “Let’s go find out.” She leads the way. But she doesn’t walk directly up to the group. She sits down on the bench next to the court and the group of boys, and reaches down to tie her shoe. “Your shoe’s untied too, Nikki.”

  Nikki looks down. Her shoes have Velcro. But she sits down and pretends to do something with the Velcro strap. From their vantage point, they can hear the boys clearly. The boys are so excited they don’t even notice Nikki and Deja. Instead they’re busy interrupting each other, trying to squeeze in their own ideas for that day’s fun at Mr. Willow’s expense.