Charmed in equal measure by Charlie’s THIS fist and Sam’s use of “geez-o-criminy,” Katie-Rose vowed then and there to use both bits of clevernesses as often as she could during the school day.
With “geez-o-criminy,” she’s had huge success, sprinkling the phrase into practically every sentence that comes out of her mouth. When Ms. Perez calls Yaz up front and asks her to go on yet another note-running errand, Katie-Rose mutters, “Geez-o-criminy. Enough with the notes already!” When Natalia Totenburg asks what set of math problems they’re supposed to be working on, Katie-Rose flings her hands into the air. “Geez-o-criminy, Natalia!” she cries. “You expect me to know? What am I, a game-show host?”
The THIS fist is proving to be a tougher nut to crack. The “T,” the “H,” the “I,” and the “S” are ready and waiting. Katie-Rose inked them onto her knuckles on the way to school. She hasn’t been able to use them, however. It isn’t Katie-Rose’s fault. It’s just that violence isn’t allowed at Rivendell. Not even fake violence. Not even mock and ironic fake violence.
I *will* find a way, she thinks, drumming her fingers on her desk. “Mwahaha!” she says, trying to sound like a hardened criminal. And then again for good measure: “Mwahahahaha!”
“Do you need a lozenge?” Natalia whispers, only it comes out lothenge because of her lisp.
“What?” Katie-Rose says. She glances around the room, startled to find that she’s not in a smoky café at all. Nor is she dressed in all black; nor is her face cloaked in the shadow of a wide-brimmed fedora.
“A lothenge,” Natalia repeats. “For your thore throat. Another exthellent tip ith to uthe a neti pot. Do you have a neti pot? Neti potth are awethome for loothening phlegm.”
Preston turns around from his desk. He cracks up. “Yeah, Katie-Rose. For your phlegm.”
Katie-Rose sticks her tongue out at him.
“I do not have phlegm,” she informs Natalia.
“Then why were you clearing your throat?” Natalia asks.
“I wasn’t. It was my—” She breaks off. One can’t say “It was my evil laugh” to a girl like Natalia. She would never understand.
Preston now clears his throat repeatedly and with enthusiasm. He sounds as if he’s hocking up a dead frog.
“Shut it,” Katie-Rose tells him.
Preston draws back as if he’s scared. “Ooo. Prickly, prickly.” He leans toward Natalia and pretends to be whispering to her, but it’s clear his words are for Katie-Rose. “So much phlegm,” he says with a sigh. “Maybe that’s why she’s so grumpy, do you think? Or … maybe she’s so phlegmy because she’s such a grump!”
Katie-Rose narrows her eyes. Natalia just looks confused.
“No,” Natalia says. “Phlegm ith a liquid thecreted by our mucuth membraneth. It cometh from the lungth. It’th in the thame family as thputum, if you mutht know.”
“Ah,” Preston says. “Thputum. I mean, sputum. So Katie-Rose is full of sputum?”
“I said shut it!” Katie-Rose growls.
Preston grins, and Katie-Rose glares. Then she gets an idea, and she grins, but sneakily, keeping her grin on the inside. She clenches her hand into a fist.
“If your phlegm ith green or dark yellow, you need to thee a doctor, Katie-Rothe,” Natalia says.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Preston says. “Is it, Katie-Rose? Green or dark yellow?”
“Stop messing with me, Preston,” Katie-Rose warns, hoping he doesn’t. If only she knew how to crack her knuckles. Cracking her knuckles would be an excellent gesture to throw in about now.
“I don’t think I can, because now I’m really curious,” Preston says. “Let’s talk about its consistency. Would you describe it as gelatinous or more like Cream of Wheat?” He waggles his eyebrows. “Or Cream of Sputum. Mmmm.”
All right. That’s it. Katie-Rose crosses from her desk to his and says, “I told you to shut it, Preston, and you didn’t listen, and now you have to face the music. You mess with me”—she thrusts her Sharpie-decorated fist in front of his face—“and you mess with this!”
Preston’s brow furrows, and then clears. And then he cracks up, starting with a chuckle, which builds to a chortle, which crescendos into the full-out, desk-slapping laugh that only fifth-grade boys with the most obnoxious personalities can pull off.
“‘SIHT’? You want me to mess with ‘SIHT’?” he says. “I’m sorry, Katie-Rose, but I don’t know what that means.”
Other kids in the class turn to see what’s so funny, and Katie-Rose feels her cheeks heat up. Yaz still isn’t back from Mr. Emerson’s room, and Katie-Rose feels very alone. She’s been the kid that others have laughed at far too many times.
She tries to hold her head high. “You mess with me, you mess with this,” she says in a low voice. She shakes her fist at him so that he can read the word. It’s only four letters long. It’s not that hard. “Stop trying to make me look stupid.”
“Stop trying to make yourself look stupid,” Preston says, pushing her fist out of his face. “Read it and weep, hotcakes.”
Katie-Rose reads the word written on her hand. The word she herself wrote on her hand. She frowns, because her knuckles do spell “SIHT,” only with an upside-down “T.” “SIH.”
Oh, crud. She thinks back to this morning’s car ride, when she carefully sketched and darkened the letters “T,” “H,” “I,” and “S” on her knuckles, all capitalized for easier reading. It looked right at the time, with her fingers flat on her jeans. THIS, her knuckles spelled, with the “T” on her pinky and the “S” on her forefinger.
But in fist form, with the fist in Preston’s face …
She slinks to her seat, shoves her hand beneath her opposite bicep, and buries her head in her arms. Kids are still laughing. They’re laughing enough that Ms. Perez is telling the class to settle down, not that anyone’s listening.
“Hey,” Preston says. “Katie-Rose. Hey.”
She ignores him. He’s a jerk, just like that bully at the park, and she’s an idiot for ever, ever thinking anything else.
“It’s funny,” Preston insists.
“You mess with me, you mess with SIHT!” Preston’s friend Chance says in a gangster accent.
“Dude, shut up,” Preston tells him.
“Preston!” Ms. Perez says. Judging by her tone, she’s been trying to get his attention for a while. “Do I need to come back there? What is going on?”
“Nothing,” Preston says. “Everything’s cool.” He drops his voice. “But geez, Katie-Rose, you really are prickly. Learn to take a joke, will you?”
A tear squeezes out of Katie-Rose’s tightly shut eyes. Prickly girls don’t cry, she tells herself, but it does no good. Maybe because prickly girls also lie.
the whiteboard: Gasser. Noun. Something that is extraordinarily pleasing or successful, especially a funny joke. Violet smiles, knowing that Katie-Rose would find the word “gasser” particularly pleasing. “Did you hear the gasser I told Milla before class started?” she’d say, trying it out. “Hilarious. I about split my gut from laughing so hard!”
Even if Katie-Rose hadn’t told Milla a gasser, she’d say that. Katie-Rose doesn’t care if something’s real or make-believe, just as long as it’s entertaining and involves Katie-Rose in a starring role. Oh, and one other small detail: just as long as the FFFs (and for the most part no one else) are her audience.
Katie-Rose adores her tribe of flower friends forever, and she’s fiercely loyal to the friends as a foursome. She has little need for other people, however, and she has strong opinions about not allowing others into their circle. She’s afraid they’ll mess up the mix, that’s what Violet thinks. But she also thinks, Sorry, Charlie. Sometimes we all have to share.
Mr. Emerson turns and faces his students. “Someone use ‘gasser’ in a sentence, please.”
“That gasser was so stinky it about blew my leg off!” Thomas calls out. People laugh.
“N-n-no,” Mr. Emerson says. “Read the definition
first.”
“‘Don’t light a match around a gasser or you’ll blow your head off?” Thomas says.
Mr. Emerson pushes his hand through his hair. “Thomas. If I go to the trouble of giving you a word of the day, a glorious word of the day, then you will use that word of the day properly. You will rehearse and absorb and practice that word until it is part of you. Do you understand?”
“It’s already part of me,” Thomas says. “The gas part, anyway.” He looks from student to student, egging them to laugh. “Am I right? I’m right, right?”
“Your wit delights us all,” Mr. Emerson tells Thomas. “Write down a sentence using the word ‘gasser,’ everyone. On a piece of paper, using a writing utensil of your choice.”
Thomas tries to speak.
“Thank you, but no,” Mr. Emerson says. “Write. Your. Sentence. And after you’ve done that, pull out your ‘Where I’m From’ poems and work on those.”
Kids bend over their notebooks. Violet intends to do the same, but a movement at the door catches her attention. It’s Yasaman, again, hovering just inside Mr. Emerson’s classroom for the third morning in a row.
Is she bringing Mr. E another note? She is. Violet can see the scrap of paper between Yaz’s clenched fingers.
“Yasaman, my little flower,” Mr. Emerson says. “Do you come bearing good tidings?”
Yaz shoots Violet a quick smile before going to him. While Yaz and Mr. Emerson speak in whispers, Violet quickly composes not just one but three word-of-the-day sentences, each using “gasser” in the right way:
1) Did you hear the gasser Katie-Rose told Milla? I about split my gut from laughing so hard!
2) I wonder if Yasaman thinks it’s a gasser when Mr. E calls her a little flower.
3) Thomas’s gassers aren’t as funny as he thinks they are, but they’re not totally un-funny, either.
With that out of the way, she tears a clean piece of notebook paper out of her spiral. If Mr. Emerson and Ms. Perez can pass notes in class—because that’s what they’re basically doing, right? With Yaz as their messenger?—then so can Violet.
She taps her chin with her pen, then scribbles this message:
Hayley—
Want to eat lunch with me today? With me and my friends?
Violet (the girl sitting next to you)
She folds the note into a triangle and tosses it at Hayley’s desk. Hayley glances at it, then glances at Violet.
At the front of the room, Mr. E claps Yaz’s shoulder in a wrapping-things-up sort of way. Yaz heads out, waving at Violet as she passes.
“Bye,” Violet mouths.
She turns back to Hayley, but … huh. Violet’s note is gone. The note is gone, and Hayley is plugging away at her sentences or her poem, one or the other. Red curls hang in front of Hayley’s eyes, making it hard for Violet to see Hayley’s expression.
Violet swallows. Where is the note?? Why does Violet feel so naked all of a sudden???
Hayley continues to write, but as she writes, she jerks her head in a very deliberate sort of way. A look down, silly sort of way.
Violet does, and her muscles relax. There’s the note, right on top of Violet’s spiral. Only it’s still in its triangle shape. Did Hayley even read it?
One way to find out, she tells herself. She slides the note onto her lap and unfolds it using small, deft movements. Hayley did read it! She read it and wrote Violet a reply, too.
Sure, it says below Violet’s lunch invitation. Sounds fun.
Oh. Wait.
Sounds like a GASSER, that is.
—H
A grin stretches across Violet’s face. It starts off small and keeps growing.
goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. She stops by the water fountain and leans against the wall to catch her breath. Her heart pounds: bam bam bam. Her face feels flushed, and when she wipes her forehead, her fingers come away damp with sweat. All this, and she isn’t even in PE!
She’s in the hall, midway between Mr. Emerson’s room and Ms. Perez’s room, that’s all.
She’s on the way back from running an errand for her beloved teacher, that’s all.
An errand that involved delivering a note to Mr. Emerson. Just a note from one teacher to another, that’s all.
And she’s a good girl—a very good girl—so when Mr. Emerson asked her (again!) to hold up while he penned a reply to Ms. Perez’s note, she said yes, and that’s all there was to that interaction. There’s nothing unusual or blush-worthy about being an errand girl for her teachers. What could possibly be unusual or blush-worthy about that?
Except.
“Oh my goodness gracious,” Yaz says aloud, her voice the faintest breeze stirring the air molecules around her. “What have I done?”
She sinks to the floor, sitting on her bottom with her knees pulled close. The note she’s supposed to return to Ms. Perez dangles from her hand, which dangles from her wrist, which is connected to her forearm, which is propped on her knee. So many bones holding her body together, some of them big and others as small and delicate as a snail’s shell.
Yaz remembers learning that there are twenty-six bones in a human foot. Surely there are as many (if not more!) in a human hand. It’s mind-boggling. And if there are twenty-six or more bones in a human hand, then how many bones are in an entire human body? Add in a second human, then a third, then a classroom full of humans, a city full of humans, a continent full of humans …
And bones are only one piece of the puzzle! There are tendons to consider, too, and joints and muscles and skin and … and … ligaments, and every single part of a person’s body matters when it comes to holding that body together.
Same goes for friendships. Same goes for families. Same goes for communities and neighborhoods and congregations and jemaahs, which are the equivalent of congregations, basically, but for mosques instead of churches. So much goes into holding any relationship together, whatever the relationship’s particular flavor is.
Yaz thinks it’s amazing and beautiful and glorious that relationships exist, period. The fact that they’re complicated doesn’t matter one bit. That’s just the way relationships work, especially new relationships. And a new relationship, an early-days relationship that’s just starting to bloom … oh, it’s so amazing and beautiful and glorious!
That’s why she read the note. That’s all. Not to be sneaky or devious or bad.
So why is her heart thumping so crazily? Why is sweat dotting her hairline, right where her hijab meets her skin?
Oh my goodness gracious with gravy on top, she thinks. She is not equipped for a life of crime, that’s for sure. She’d die from the stress of it. She might die right now. Or if she doesn’t die, she might at least faint.
Katie-Rose would be so jealous if she fainted. No, not jealous, but mad. She’d be like, “Really, Yaz? You just had to faint right that second, with not a single soul watching? You couldn’t have waited until I was there to film you? REALLY????”
Yaz presses the back of her head against the painted brick wall. She closes her eyes, but she doesn’t faint. Instead, she breathes. In—one, two, three—and out. In—one, two, three—and out. She breathes and tells herself to calm down and tries to think.
You are not trapped at the bottom of a coal mine, she reminds herself. You are not being eaten by a wild lion that escaped from the zoo. You read an itsy-bitsy note passed between two teachers, that’s all. An itsy-bitsy note THAT HAPPENED TO BE A LOVE LETTER (!!!), that’s all!
She could drop the note. She could. She could separate her thumb and forefinger, and floof! The note would flutter to the ground, graceful as a butterfly.
Or she could read it again. Why not, given that she already has?
Oh my goodness, she thinks for the fourth or seventh or forty-ninth time. What would the Imam at her mosque say? Doing a bad thing is, obviously, bad. But if she’s already done the bad thing …
Well, doing it once is bad. Is doing it two times twice as bad?
Out of the blue, she remembers her sister’s poem, the one on the wall. The one that said, “Look at me. I am sweet and honest and don’t hide things.” Yaz was—is—proud of Nigar for being like that, and she thought she was that way, too.
Turns out she’s not, because look: There go her hands, her very own hands, unfolding the note again. And now her eyeballs, her very own eyeballs, travel over her teachers’ love letter for the second time, starting with Ms. Perez’s initial message to Mr. Emerson.
Hey there, my hottie-with-a-body, Yaz reads, and her pulse accelerates all over again. Because “hottie-with-a-body”? Hottie-with-a-body?! From her teacher to her other teacher?!!
Okay. Stop freaking out, Yaz commands herself.
She tries again:
Hey there, my hottie-with-a-body. I’m having my kids study their vocab while I pretend to write tomorrow’s quiz questions, but oh dear, I’m actually writing you, aren’t I?
I’m a devil. I know. But is it my fault you’re so cute?
Sure did have fun last night. Hope you did, too.
When do I get to see you again? Other than in the halls or the teachers’ lounge, I mean. It’s been less than twelve hours, and I miss you already! I miss your kisses. You’re an excellent kisser, Mr. Teacher Sir.
Yours,
Maria
Ah, Maria. Maria, Maria, Maria. I love saying your name—can you tell? Even if I’m writing it, I love it just the same. And I’m fairly certain you know how much I enjoyed our evening, too. I’m fairly certain you know that “fun” doesn’t come close to describing how magical it was, in so many ways. (And fine, fine, I’ll admit it once again: though the magic of the evening had little to do with your Magic Cookie Bars, the cookies (bars?) were indeed delicious, the coconut notwithstanding.)
You have converted me, Maria.
I am a changed man.
As for when I’ll see you again (and kiss you again, you better believe it!), do you have plans after school? Would you like—ahem—to study together, perhaps? You could come to my apartment, and this time I could be in charge of snacks. I make a mean plate of nachos, and by “mean,” I mean without a doubt the cheesiest, saltiest, ooey-gooey-ist nachos you’ve ever tasted. (And the manliest nachos you’ve ever had as well. I say this because it occurs to me that “ooey-gooey-ist,” while absolutely true, might possibly read as a tad bit, ah, epicene.1 Have I been spending too much time in the company of ten-year-old girls?)