Nikki and Deja Read online

  Deja finishes up her journal entry and puts it away.

  “Ralph,” Mr. Blaggart says in a booming voice, “go to the front of the class, please, and take your journal with you.”

  Ralph stands up slowly, frowning. He closes his journal and brings it up to the front of the room.

  “Everyone, quiet. Let’s listen to Ralph read his entry.”

  Suddenly, Ralph looks concerned. His eyes get all shifty and he has a little frown on his face. He takes a long time finding his entry. He flips pages back and forth.

  Stalling, Deja thinks.

  He finally comes to the page and brings the book up to his face so he’s practically hiding behind it. From behind his rather messy-looking journal comes a mumbling, stumbling voice. Deja can’t even make out what he’s saying. Neither can Mr. Blaggart, apparently, because he walks over to Ralph and lowers his journal so all can see Ralph’s mouth. Ralph then has a problem reading his own handwriting. Deja can never understand how someone can write something and then not be able to read it. But there’s Ralph, standing up there in front of everyone, squinting at his own words as if he’s never seen them before.

  “‘Every . . . Everyone . . . ’ No, I mean, ‘Everybody has to work because everbody, ’ I mean, ‘Everybody has to work . . . ’”

  There is a long pause while he squints at his journal page. Deja yawns and looks around the room. Beverly is looking at Ralph with her mouth hanging open. Rosario is drawing hearts on her journal cover, Richard is playing with the zipper on his jacket (which he should have hung up on the peg below his cubby), and Mr. Blaggart is standing there with his arms folded, waiting. Ralph continues:

  “‘. . . to get money to buy things like (squint, squint) food.’”

  The class waits for the rest of Ralph’s entry. Silence. He closes his journal and looks at Mr. Blaggart.

  “Is that it?” Mr. Blaggart asks from the back of the room.

  “Yes,” Ralph declares, as if that’s a reasonable answer.

  “Even though you’ve been writing for the last twenty minutes?”

  Ralph doesn’t answer.

  “You can finish it during recess.” Mr. Blaggart looks around as if he’s trying to decide who should go next. Suddenly, Deja wishes he would pick her. Hers would sound so good in comparison to Ralph’s. It’s all she can do to keep her hand down.

  “Richard,” Mr. Blaggart announces.

  Richard looks up, surprised. Slowly, he picks up his journal. Slowly, he gets out of his seat. Slowly, he walks to the front of the class. He takes even more time than Ralph in finding the right page. When he finds it, he stands there staring at it. The class waits. Mr. Blaggart waits. After a few moments of watching Richard staring at his page, Mr. Blaggart walks toward him and looks over his shoulder at the journal page. He takes it out of Richard’s hand and holds it up to the class. Blank. Some kids start laughing. Some look down at their own journals and immediately start adding to their entries.

  The recess bell rings then, and Mr. Blaggart moves to the door. “Pencils down,” he orders, and looks around the room to see that all pencils are down. Deja smiles at her nearly full page of writing. She looks at Nikki, who has a smug smile on her face as well.

  “When I call your team number, open your journals to today’s date and bring them up here and get in line.” Everyone straightens up then. “Team One!”

  Team One lines up at the door with their open journals.

  “Team Two!”

  When all the teams—excluding Ralph and Richard—are lined up at the door with their open journals, Mr. Blaggart goes down the line checking them. “You go back to your desk and start writing,” he says to Keisha. “You, too,” he says to Carlos. Willis and Rosario have to go back to their desks as well. The rest of the students are dimissed after they stack their journals in the classwork tray.

  The grumbling starts immediately and continues all the way to the handball court.

  “That teacher is mean,” Ayanna says. “I can’t wait until Ms. Shelby-Ortiz comes back.”

  “I’m sick of having to do all that running first thing in the morning,” says Antonia.

  “Maybe if we’re extra bad, he’ll leave just like Mr. Willow,” Casey suggests.

  “He’s not Mr. Willow,” Deja reminds them. She doesn’t think anything could scare Mr. Blaggart away.

  “I wish Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s ankle would hurry up and heal. She’s way better,” Ayanna says. Then Ayanna begins chanting, “Come back, Ms. Shelby-Ortiz. Come back, Ms. Shelby-Ortiz.” Soon everyone has joined in. But not too loudly, in case Mr. Blaggart is lurking about.

  There’s a list of words on the board, all beginning with W. Mr. Blaggart has put the long list there for them to alphabetize. He has probably done this to keep them busy while he sips his coffee and reads his paper. It’s going to be torture because the words all begin with the same letter. The students will have to look at the second letter to see where each word goes, and then if there is more than one word with the first and second letters alike, they’ll have to look at the third letter. It’s all so confusing and boring.

  Deja sighs—but quietly. Nikki has already taken out her paper and numbered it. Oh, when will this day end? Deja thinks as she begins to number her paper. She just wants to get home, have her snack, and walk Ms. Precious Penelope.

  10

  Dear Ms. Shelby-Ortiz

  The boring and grim routine continues: morning constitutionals; journal writing (while Mr. Blaggart reads his newspaper); reading and answering questions in excellent handwriting to the sound of Mr. Blaggart turning his newspaper pages and working the crossword puzzle; then recess, which brings a little relief. Then there’s more work and all with no talking! It’s so boring, Deja can hardly take it. Plus, all the students are afraid to even move their chairs or cough, thanks to the Knucklehead Club.

  When is Ms. Shelby-Ortiz coming back? Deja wonders for the hundredth time. It’s been more than two weeks!

  Deja considers complaining to Auntie Dee, but then thinks that Auntie Dee might like Mr. Blaggart’s way of doing things. Especially if she tells Auntie about the antics the bozos tried to pull the first few days.

  The week before, having not learned his lesson, Richard broke his pencil lead. He requested permission to get another one. Mr. Blaggart let him come up to the desk for a fresh pencil from the pencil box once, but when Richard broke the lead a second time, he got a crayon to use for the rest of the day. That was funny, Deja thought, and it cured everyone of breaking pencil leads on purpose.

  On Tuesday, as if he just can’t help himself, Willis starts up with some fake-sounding coughing. Mr. Blaggart lets him do that all he wants, but then he has Willis sit on the bench to “rest” for morning recess, lunch recess, and during P.E. That cures him of his cough. Later that day, when Carlos scoots his chair a little bit too much, Mr. Blaggart has him complete his work standing up.

  On Friday, Deja goes to the office with the lunch count. Mr. Blaggart has made her lunch monitor. He stopped following Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s way of doing things after the first few days. He just calls out a name and has that person pass out paper or pencils or books, or go to the office, or whatever.

  While she is waiting for Mrs. Marker to take the lunch count out of her hand, Deja sees an envelope addressed to Ms. Shelby-Ortiz sitting in a basket at the end of the counter. It looks like it could be another get-well card, maybe from the other teachers. Deja stares at it. She examines the address. Jacaranda Lane! Ms. Shelby-Ortiz lives on Jacaranda Lane. Fifty-two eleven Jacaranda Lane! Fifty-two eleven, fifty-two eleven, fifty-two eleven, Deja says to herself over and over. It will be easy to memorize Jacaranda Lane because jacaranda trees with their beautiful lavender flowers are Deja’s favorite trees. She can easily imagine a lane lined with jacaranda trees on both sides, and at the end of that lane, her dear teacher’s house.

  Finally, Mrs. Marker comes to the counter and takes the lunch-count folder out of Deja’s hand.

  All
the way back to Room Ten, Deja says under her breath, Fifty-two eleven, fifty-two eleven, fifty-two eleven. When she returns to her seat, she can barely focus her attention on her multiplication fact sheet. Mr. Blaggart is letting them study their facts before a quiz. Those who can prove they’ve mastered their next table can then participate in P.E. Those who haven’t will have to bring their fact sheets out to the yard and sit at the lunch table and study some more. Deja’s on sevens. Those are hard. Nikki’s on eights. Deja looks over at Nikki. She’s putting her hand over the answers and testing herself.

  It’s so hard not to tell Nikki what she’s found out. She could just burst. She stares at her sevens table and pictures herself out on the yard studying. Why couldn’t she still be on fives?

  Mr. Blaggart soon has Beverly pass out the Facts Quizzes face-down. Everyone knows they’re only required to do the facts they haven’t mastered yet. Poor Ralph has been on fours for the last three weeks. He must not be studying. Deja’s been on sevens for just two weeks, but she’s suddenly feeling confident. She glances over at Ralph just as he looks down at a cheat sheet on his lap. Deja’s mouth drops open. Is he crazy? Has he lost his mind? He’s going to get caught and then . . . Deja doesn’t even want to think about it.

  Mr. Blaggart rings Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s bell and they’re off to the races. They have thirty seconds to finish their tables. Thirty seconds is really a lot of time, if you know the facts. Deja finishes with seconds to spare. Mr. Blaggart has Beverly collect the papers. He moves to the big Facts Quiz chart on the wall and starts with Casey. He checks her gold star in the eights column, then checks her paper. “Line up,” he tells her. Casey has made it to nines. Deja is only interested in her own paper, though.

  It takes a while to get to it. Finally, Mr. Blaggart has her paper in his hand. He checks the chart on the wall, sees that Deja is on sevens, checks her paper, and tells her to line up. She did it! She made it to eights! What a relief.

  When he’s gone through every paper, Ralph sheepishly raises his hand.

  “Yes, Ralph?” Mr. Blaggart says.

  Oh, no, Deja thinks.

  “You didn’t do my paper.”

  “You mean the paper that was on your lap?”

  Ralph drops his eyes, and Deja, surprisingly, feels sorry for him. Why doesn’t he just study?

  Shockingly, Mr. Blaggart says only, “You’re on the bench.” Deja wonders why he doesn’t seem angrier. Is Mr. Blaggart going soft? Does he even have a soft side?

  She thinks about this all the way to the kickball diamond. Mr. Blaggart—a soft side? She thinks about seeing him at the cleaners, about him having a wife or a daughter. She still can’t quite imagine it. But then she remembers: Jacaranda Lane.

  “I know Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s address!” she says to Nikki while they stand in line waiting for their turn to kick.

  “How?” Nikki asks.

  “When I was in the office, I saw a piece of her mail.”

  “Did you write it down?”

  “I didn’t have to. I have it memorized. Fifty-two eleven Jacaranda Lane.”

  “I know where that is,” Nikki says. “My cousin lives on that street. It’s on the other side of the mall. Wow. We know where Ms. Shelby-Ortiz lives.”

  “Let’s send her a get-well card,” Nikki says on the way home.

  “But we already sent her cards from the class. And what if she gets mad that we know where she lives?”

  “We can send it anonymous,” Deja says. “She won’t even know it’s from us.”

  Together, they walk Ms. P. up and down the block a few times. Then Deja puts her in the backyard and they settle on Nikki’s porch to write a letter to Ms. Shelby-Ortiz. After a while they come up with this:

  Dear Ms. Shelby-Ortiz,

  How are you? We hope you’re doing better. We hope you come back to school real soon because we’ve been having subs that are nothing like you and we miss you so, so, so, so, so much. Because you do everything just right and our class is better with you in it being our teacher. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz, please come back. If you can’t walk we’ll do everything for you. You can even teach us sitting down in a chair and we’ll be so good. If you just come back.

  Sincerely,

  Anonymous

  “I think it’s just right,” Nikki says.

  Deja agrees. “I’ll ask Auntie Dee to mail it for us tonight.”

  On the way to school the next morning, they decide not to tell anyone that they know where Ms. Shelby-Ortiz lives and that they sent her a letter asking her to hurry back. Everyone will just start begging for the address.

  Something is different in the air when they reach the schoolyard, Deja notices. Something peaceful.

  The class lines up neatly, all the students in their spots, mouths shut. Even the four knuckleheads, Willis, Richard, Carlos, and Ralph, are standing relatively still and keeping their hands to themselves. Everyone is nicely waiting for Mr. Blaggart to march them to the lunch benches to put down their backpacks so they can start their morning constitutional.

  While she is standing there, Deja thinks how nice it would be if Mr. Blaggart finally gave them Open Topic for their morning-journal writing. She imagines what she’d write. It would be about Ms. Shelby-Ortiz. She’d write about why she misses Ms. Shelby-Ortiz, and she’d entitle it “Ten Reasons Why I Love Ms. Shelby-Ortiz”:

  One: She’s nice.

  Two: She’s fair to everybody.

  Three: It’s fun saying her new name.

  Four: She has pretty clothes.

  Five: She has a really good grab bag that’s full of interesting stuff, not just pencils and erasers.

  Six: She lets us have pizza parties when we’ve been good for a while.

  Seven: She never yells.

  Eight: She wants us to do well.

  Nine: She lets us sit with our friends if we can stay on task.

  Ten: She likes us. All of us. Even when some of us are bad.

  Deja has a tiny smile on her face thinking about her list. She looks around the yard. The sky is blue and the clouds are fat and fluffy. There’s a slight breeze, and Auntie relented and put a regular brownie in her lunch as a special treat. Not one of those gluten-free, sweetened-with-applesauce brownies. As she thinks about it, she notices a small figure slowly crossing the yard, coming their way. Deja shields her eyes. It looks like Ms. Shel— Could that be Ms. Shelby-Ortiz slowly making her way toward them? Could that really be their beloved teacher, on crutches, coming their way after more than two long weeks? She has her teacher bag over her shoulder, the one with the long strap.

  Ralph breaks out of the line and rushes to help her. Carlos follows. Deja thinks she might be about to cry. That’s how happy she feels. She looks over at Nikki. She has a big surprised look in her eyes and wears a huge grin. Deja looks at all her other classmates. Some seem as if they’re in a trance. Then someone—Keisha, Deja thinks—starts chanting, “Ms. Shelby-Ortiz! Ms. Shelby-Ortiz!!!” Everyone joins in, and as their wonderful teacher hobbles toward them with her “helpers” beside her, the chant grows and grows until it fills the entire yard of George Washington Carver Elementary School.

  Visit www.hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Nikki & Deja series.

  It Was an Accident!

  Gavin is waiting for his new friend, Richard, to come over to play video games. Gavin likes Richard, his friend at Carver Elementary. Gavin had lots of friends at his old school, Bella Vista Elementary, but he knows that you have to start over whenever you change schools.

  In this new neighborhood, there’s a lot to get used to. There’s the new house and the new backyard and the new kids on his street who don’t even know that he is practically a soccer star. Well, maybe not a star, to be exact, but he thinks he’s pretty good. Anyway, Richard chose him for his team in kickball, so Richard’s a nice guy.

  Gavin has his socks rolled into a ball, and while he waits, he tosses the sock ball up hard until it hits the ceiling and comes back right into his waiting hands. />
  “That’s annoying. Why don’t you stop?”

  It’s Danielle, his sister. Unfortunately, she was not left behind at the old house.

  He tosses the balled socks up at the ceiling again just to spite her.

  “Ugh. You’re so annoying!”

  Luckily, she’s going across the street to babysit. Soon, Gavin hopes.

  Finally, the doorbell rings—and before he can get up to answer it, Danielle, Miss Big Eighth-Grader, Miss Big Thirteen Trying to Be Sixteen, opens the front door and stares down at Richard.

  “Yeah?” she says, in her new cool manner.

  Richard stares up at her for a few seconds. “Are you Gavin’s sister?”

  Without answering, Danielle calls over her shoulder, “Gavmeister, your friend’s here.”

  Gavin cringes. No one knows about that nickname at his new school. Danielle steps aside and lets Richard in. He tiptoes past her, probably a little afraid of her looming presence.

  “Hi,” he says sheepishly from the living room doorway.

  “Hi,” Gavin says. He throws his balled socks at the ceiling once more and catches them easily, hoping Richard’s impressed.

  “Are we still going to play video games?” For some reason Richard seems a bit unsure.