Well … it isn’t new. It’s how she felt when she was with Modessa. Exactly.
She pushes her fingers to her temples, troubled by the memory of Elena’s wide, blinking eyes. Troubled by the notion that sometimes you can choose what to run away from, but other times, maybe, you can’t. And just say a girl is trapped—or not even a girl, necessarily. Pretend, for the sake of argument, that anyone is trapped: man, boy, girl, or child. If a fellow human being is trapped, and you know it, is it an option to look away?
It’s a question Milla wishes she could un-ask.
Ms. Perez. She’s nice and funny, and she’s always willing to listen when Yaz has a problem. She gives good advice, too. Plus, Ms. Perez is soooo pretty. She’s got glossy brown hair and sparkling eyes and a teasing smile, and she wears stylish clothes—usually skirts and cute tops—which she pairs with unfailingly stylish shoes, the sort of shoes that Yasaman admires and yet suspects she’ll never be able to wear, because she’d trip.
It’s true that Ms. Perez is on the chubby side, but Yasaman doesn’t care about that. Yasaman doesn’t think anyone should care, especially not Ms. Perez herself. Ms. Perez does, though. She’s not happy with the way she looks, and the way Yasaman can tell is because whenever Yaz compliments her, Ms. Perez finds a way to not fully accept it. This morning Yaz told Ms. Perez how much she liked her gold hoop earrings, and Ms. Perez sort of laughed and said, “Well, with earrings, it’s hard to go too terribly wrong.” Then she caught herself—that’s how Yasaman read it—and added, “But thank you, Yasaman. What a sweet thing to say.”
“I’m not just saying it,” Yaz insisted. “They’re beautiful.” She wanted to say more: that Ms. Perez herself is beautiful, and she shouldn’t be so hard on herself, and that one day she will find her “Mr. Right,” despite her glum prediction that she won’t.
Yasaman knows this very private detail about Ms. Perez because she heard Ms. Perez talking about it to Ms. Viney, the art teacher. Yaz wasn’t eavesdropping. She just happened to come in from morning recess to get a drink of water one day, and since the water fountain is next to the art room, and Ms. Perez happened to be in the art room, chatting with Ms. Viney, well, Yaz couldn’t help but overhear.
It was girl talk between two friends, not teacher talk between teachers. It wasn’t meant for students’ ears.
But it went into Yasaman’s ears anyway, and it reminded her of an idea Yaz had had a while ago, but never did anything about. Maybe now’s the time?
Ms. Perez has always been extraspecial nice to Yaz, after all. Yaz would never say this out loud, but she’s pretty sure she’s Ms. Perez’s favorite student. Never before this year has Yaz been any teacher’s favorite. Usually she’s “smart, quiet, well-behaved Yasaman” and nothing more.
She wants to be something more. She longs and yearns and aches to be something more … only she’s not sure what that “something more” would be, exactly. Or how to make it happen. How to become more, in the way that some things—caterpillars transforming into butterflies, for example—do so easily.
Certain things are easy for Yasaman. Computers, math, knowing right from wrong. But other things are hard, like wanting to stretch and grow, but not knowing how. Yaz wonders if the “not knowing how” part is related to another aspect of her identity—namely, the “being different from everyone else” part.
Ms. Perez is different from everyone else, too, and maybe this is why she and Yasaman have such a strong connection. Yasaman is different because of her religion. She and her little sister, Nigar, are the only Muslim kids at Rivendell. Ms. Perez is different because of her appearance. Thousand Oaks, California, is bursting at the seams with slender blond women who do yoga every day, while Ms. Perez is just plain bursting at the seams. That’s Ms. Perez’s joke, not Yasaman’s.
But no, Ms. Perez is not blond and skinny. She’s a brown-haired Hispanic woman who has curves and round rosy cheeks and an overall … softness. Soft is good, Yasaman thinks.
In the fashion magazines her cousin Hulya buys and hides in her sock drawer, the models are so brittle and hard-edged that Yaz feels bad for them. Sometimes they look mean with their jutting elbows and cocked hips and too-sharp cheekbones, and sometimes they look hungry. Sometimes both. If someone were to hug them, they look like they might snap right in half.
Not Ms. Perez. Ms. Perez is the perfect softness for hugs, and that brings Yaz back to her excellent but so far un-acted-upon idea:
Ms. Perez’s “Mr. Right” could be Mr. Emerson. It’s perfect. It’s glorious! They’re both single, they’re both super cool (in a good way, not a too-cool-for-school way), and they both live right here at Rivendell, practically. Not really, but close enough.
If they got married, they could carpool together!
If they had kids, their kids could attend Rivendell and be with their mom and dad every day! And if they ever needed time away from Rivendell and their kids, Yasaman could babysit for them!!!!
Yaz shivers with the deliciousness of it. She needs to come up with specific matchmaking strategies. She’ll get Violet, Milla, and Katie-Rose to put on their thinking caps, too. Plan Teacherly Lurve … activate!
In the meantime, Yaz will bask in the pleasure of being Ms. Perez’s favorite student, a position that comes with secret perks. Like right now, she’s organizing Ms. Perez’s bookshelf, since she finished her math quiz early and turned it in before the rest of the class. Some kids might not see organizing a bookshelf as a perk, but that’s why they’re not Ms. Perez’s favorites.
Yasaman studies the jumble of books jammed willy-nilly onto the shelves. She taps her lip with the knuckle of her thumb. Ms. Perez’s desk is only three or four feet away, so she leans over and whispers, “Alphabetical or by subject matter? Or by reading level—that’s another way you could go. What do you think?”
Ms. Perez glances up from last week’s vocabulary tests, which she’s grading. “Um … alphabetical,” she says. She returns to her stack of papers, but having been interrupted, she seems to have lost her flow. She puts down her pen, which is purple. Ms. Perez always grades in purple, never red.
“Hey,” she whispers. “Do you think we could sneak out and go to Starbucks instead?”
Yaz smiles.
“I’m serious,” Ms. Perez says. “I hate grading. I hate it with a mad passion that makes me want to throw dishes at someone. Or vocabulary books.”
“I’ll grade them for you if you want,” Yaz offers.
“I might take you up on that,” Ms. Perez says.
Yaz glows. She is an excellent grader. She rocks at spelling, and she has neat, teacherly handwriting.
Katie-Rose, on the other hand, has deplorable handwriting. When Katie-Rose turns in an assignment, it looks as if it’s been attacked by a pencil-wielding raccoon. Katie-Rose doesn’t care about neat handwriting. She only cares about getting the answers right, which she does.
Modessa struts to the front of the room to turn her quiz in. She gives Yasaman a disdainful glance as she passes. Yasaman doesn’t drop her eyes as she once would have, but it takes effort. Modessa is mean, and one of the people she enjoys being mean to is Yasaman.
The same is true of Modessa’s best friend, Quin. And speak of devil—or iti an çomaği hazirla!, as her baba would say—here comes Quin to turn her quiz in.
“Brownnoser,” Quin whispers to Yasaman.
Yasaman is too classy to respond, but … yuck. They leave a bad taste in her mouth. Plus they’re supposed to read quietly or work on homework until everyone is done, but they don’t. They put their heads together and whisper, bothering the kids who are still working.
Ms. Perez glances in their direction, and they shush. But the second Ms. Perez returns to her grading, Modessa and Quin return to their whispering. Modessa fishes something out of her backpack. A book. She doesn’t read it, but passes it to Quin. They whisper and snicker, and then—uh-oh—they swivel their heads toward a girl named Elena.
Yasaman’s stomach clenches. They be
tter leave Elena alone, or she’ll … she’ll … well, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. But Elena is a sweet girl, and she played a crucial role in the Snack Attack the flower friends launched last month. Elena was a hero, really, and Yaz will always be grateful.
The target of the Snack Attack was the snack passed out to Rivendell’s students during morning break. Every day it was the same: a handful of bright orange crackers called Cheezy D’Lites, which had zero grams of cheese per serving but were chock-full of partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil and orange dye. The goal of the Snack Attack was to get rid of those Cheezy D’Lites, thus making Rivendell a Cheezy D’Lites–free zone.
Without exactly mentioning their true agenda, the flower friends got permission from the principal to give a schoolwide presentation about staying healthy. Then Katie-Rose gave a stirring speech about the evils of factory farms, and Elena, whom Milla had asked to bring her potbelly pig, Porkchop, to the assembly, stepped forward to show the school what a healthy pig looked like.
Porkchop was a big hit. A two-hundred pound hit, to be exact, but in the end things got slightly chaotic, because two annoying boys named Preston and Chance added an unsanctioned dead-chicken dance to the presentation, and Porkchop got upset and escaped from Elena’s grasp and galloped all over Rivendell’s commons, snorting and grunting and making the preschoolers shriek.
Regardless, Porkchop was a champ, and Elena was a champ for bringing him. So yay, Elena! And boo, Modessa and Quin. Boo for whisper-snickering in Elena’s direction when they’ve already made fun of her plenty.
They keep whisper-snickering, and then—uh-oh. Modessa does an eyeball thrust at Quin, a bossy eyeball thrust that seems to mean go on, stupid, and Quin reaches over and taps Elena’s shoulder. Elena jumps, and Yasaman presses her lips together.
Quin gives Elena the book from Modessa’s backpack. Elena looks at it, and spots of color rise on her cheeks. She tries to return the book to Quin, but Quin sits on her hands. Elena leans out of her seat and tries to make Modessa take the book, but Modessa looks hard at Elena and shakes her head.
Just put it on her desk! Yasaman urges Elena silently. Who cares if Modessa officially accepts it? If it’s meant to humiliate you or get you in trouble, which I’m sure it is, then just get rid of it, whatever it is!
Modessa scribbles something on a scrap of paper, balls it up, and tosses it onto Elena’s desk. Elena uncrumples the note and skims it. Elena is a farm girl, which means she spends a lot of time outside, which means her skin is tanned even in October. Yasaman has never seen Elena look pale, and she wouldn’t have thought it possible if she didn’t see it with her own eyes. But Elena’s face, flushed and ruddy just moments ago, drains of color.
Modessa’s lips curve up. Her expression reminds Yaz of Hulya’s hungry fashion models.
Yasaman fidgets. Should she go to Ms. Perez and tell her that something’s going on, something not good? But what would she say? She doesn’t know what they’re up to. She has no proof that they’re up to anything.
They are, though. Modessa jabs Quin, who jabs Elena. Elena slides out of her seat, her shoulders hunched so high that they practically graze her ears. She grips the book. Her knuckles are white. Her fingertips, to make up for it, are purply-red.
Elena, no! Yaz thinks. Her muscles poise as if she might spring to her feet, which is alarming, because Yasaman’s not a spring-to-her-feet sort of girl. She’s a watch-and-listen girl, and right this second, she’s also a heart-in-her-throat girl. She wants to stop whatever bad thing Modessa is setting Elena up for from happening, but she doesn’t know how. A job like this is much more suited for Katie-Rose, only Katie-Rose is bent over her math quiz, scrawling her raccoon scribbles.
Elena walks to the front of the room. She walks to Ms. Perez’s desk, and Yasaman experiences a whoosh of relief. She should have trusted Elena to be able to take care of herself. She should have trusted Elena to be brave enough to tell on Modessa and Quin, even if they are Modessa and Quin.
Elena hesitates, then drops the book onto Ms. Perez’s desk. Yasaman is light-headed and almost wants to laugh.
“It’s for you,” Elena tells Ms. Perez in a faint voice.
Huh? Yasaman frowns, because that’s not what you say when you turn in a contraband book. That’s what you say when you give someone a gift. Is Elena …? Why would Elena …?
From the back row, Modessa clears her throat. Elena glances over her shoulder, and Modessa does an eyeball thrust that leaves no room for misunderstanding. Do it, Modessa’s eyeball thrust means.
Yasaman’s heart flops as she realizes that whatever cruelty Modessa has in mind involves not only Elena, but her beloved teacher as well.
“It’s, um, a present,” Elena says. She sweeps her arm out. “From all of us. From the whole class.”
No, it’s not! Whatever that book is, it’s not from the whole class, and it’s definitely not from Yaz. She tries to speak. Not even a squeak comes out.
“Really?” Ms. Perez says, and because it’s Elena who’s giving it to her, she doesn’t suspect a trap. She picks up the book, and Yaz knows what will happen next. Ms. Perez will read the title out loud, because that’s what regular people do when they’re given a gift and have no reason to suspect foul play.
“The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets,” Ms. Perez reads aloud. She inhales sharply, and Modessa and Quin titter. Elena twines her hands around each other, around and around and around.
Yasaman feels helpless. She doesn’t know how to save her teacher.
“How lovely,” Ms. Perez says, and Yaz furrows her brow. Elena stops her twining.
Ms. Perez has the attention of the whole class by now, which is surely part of Modessa’s plan. But Ms. Perez smiles. She smiles! She holds the book face-out so that everyone can see, then turns it back and flips to a random page. She reads a paragraph or two to herself, or pretends to. She turns the page. Her eyebrows go up.
“Oh my,” she says. Her eyebrows form full-on peaks. “Oh my.”
Modessa’s legs are crossed, and she pumps her top foot up and down. Her prank isn’t playing out as she hoped, it seems. As for Yasaman, her chest is tight, but not as tight as it was. She’s not sure what Ms. Perez is up to, but she seems to be quite capable of saving herself.
She flips another page, and her eyes widen. “Well, what do you know,” she murmurs. “I never would have guessed that.”
Modessa can’t stand it. “You never would have guessed what?” she demands.
Ms. Perez lifts her head. “Hmm? I’m afraid I got distracted.”
Modessa huffs. “What does it say? The book we gave you?”
Ms. Perez crinkles her nose at Modessa, as if Modessa is just the cutest thing ever. “Oh, nothing you don’t already know, a skinny thing like you.”
Modessa blinks. Elena, meanwhile, slinks away from Ms. Perez’s desk, scooting sideways along the wall and ending up by the reading nook. Her foot bumps Yaz’s beanbag, and she almost stumbles. She glances down, and her eyes widen when she sees Yasaman’s expression.
Neither “quiet” nor “well-behaved” comes close to describing how Yasaman feels. “Furious” is closer, but even “furious” isn’t enough.
“Why?” Yaz mouths, hoping Elena can sense the full heat of her disdain.
Flustered, Elena hurries to her seat, while at the front of the room, Ms. Perez keeps reading the book, or pretending to.
“So many tips in here,” she murmurs. “And you think I need all this help, Elena and Modessa?”
Elena’s eyes fly to Modessa. Modessa folds her arms over her chest. Quin doesn’t seem to know how to react. Should she feel lucky Ms. Perez didn’t call out her name, or jealous that she called out Elena’s?
“Uh, whatever,” Brannen says, tilting back on the rear legs of his chair. “But just so you know, I don’t get why Elena said that book’s from all of us. It’s not from me, and I don’t know why you need help, anyway.”
“Yeah” and “It’s not from me
, either,” say most of the kids in the class. They chirp their innocence like baby birds, and Yasaman chirps along with them. So does Katie-Rose. Everyone wants Ms. Perez to know that they had nothing to do with The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets.
“Wait,” Ms. Perez says. “So is it just from Elena and Modessa, then?” She scans the room. “If anyone else chipped in, speak up. I certainly want to give credit where credit’s due.”
Quin sinks in her seat.
Modessa opens her mouth, perhaps thinking to claim that she, too, knew nothing about the book until this second. Then she scowls. She’s probably remembering that she gave up any claim to innocence when she asked, “What does it say, the book we gave you?”
She mirrors Quin’s slumped posture.
“I see,” Ms. Perez says. “Well, thank you, Modessa and Elena. I’ll write you an actual thank-you note, of course, as I’m a big believer in good manners. Or, no, I’ll write your parents a letter, because parents always enjoy hearing nice things about their children, don’t they?”
She smiles. It is a teacherly smile that says, Perhaps you’re not as clever as you think you are, are you?
Modessa looks livid, as if Ms. Perez set out to shame her instead of the other way around. Elena’s bottom lip trembles as if she might cry.
“All right, class,” Ms. Perez says, closing the awful book about dieting. “You’ve got five minutes to finish your tests, so get back to work, please.”
Throughout the room, kids do as she suggested, with two noteworthy exceptions. Well, three, counting Yasaman. But Yasaman’s not interested in her own reaction. She’s interested in the reactions of Katie-Rose, who rotates one-hundred-and-eighty degrees in her seat to gaze at Modessa, and Modessa, who seems unable to resist the laser beam intensity of Katie-Rose’s gloat.
Katie-Rose and Modessa have a “history,” just as Yasaman and Modessa do. What Yasaman endured was relentlessly humiliating, but what Katie-Rose suffered through was worse.
Yasaman watches Katie-Rose smile at Modessa, and—HA!—Katie-Rose so totally wins their face-off, because omigosh, Modessa loses her composure and sticks out her tongue.