6
Spartacus
Tuesday night, October 21
My day kept running through my head. Words crawled over one another and tangled around my brain. When I closed my eyes, I saw those three girls with semi-bald heads, lip-glossed smiles, and eyes fierce, afraid, alive.
Sleep just wasn’t happening.
At eleven thirty, I gave up the tossing and turning and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Daddy was still awake. “Hey, Peanut. Why’re you up?”
He was making one of his masterpieces. Daddy didn’t do simple sandwiches; he made edible art.
He said, “Perhaps you need a nice light sammy!”
When I was little, he always called sandwiches “sammies.” It made me laugh back then—still does.
After pushing a number of ingredients my way—gourmet cheddar cheese from the deli, freshly sliced turkey, a fancy brioche roll—he asked about my day. Daddy worked second shift at the hospital, so I didn’t get to see him much anymore during the week. I told him about the laurel leaves, and the aggravating kids at school.
“My Home Ec teacher hates me, too,” I said, pouring myself a glass of iced tea. I offered him one, too.
“Get me the lemonade,” he said. “And I bet she doesn’t hate you.”
“I’m pretty sure she does. Daddy, I’m getting a C in her class.”
He pointed with his elbow. “Plug in the George Forman, baby. I’m gonna cook this sandwich. A C? That doesn’t sound like you.”
I told him I knew it didn’t sound like me, and he told me I needed to work harder. “Maybe she just wants you to see things her way for a change. You know, you’re just like your mother sometimes. You can be a little stubborn.”
“Not true!” I said, but laughed.
It was time to change the subject before I got myself into trouble.
So I told him about the new girl whose drawly voice reminded me of Grandma.
He said, “My mama had a world-class drawl.” He pushed his thumbs into a head of lettuce, then ripped it apart. Daddy didn’t cut lettuce with a knife. He said cutting it made it turn brown faster. I got my love of cooking from him. He taught me how to bake cupcakes and cookies. I loved hanging out with him in the kitchen.
Talking to him about what was on my mind came naturally while he cooked. So it wasn’t surprising that before either of us took our first bites I was telling him about the article in the Free Press.
When I mentioned the girl with cancer and her friends, what he said knocked me out of my socks. Well, it would have if I’d been wearing socks.
He said, “I know Lacy. She’s in the children’s ward of our hospital. She’s one of my patients.”
I was crisscrossing my brioche bread with bright yellow mustard. Several thin slices of turkey clung to one another as I slapped them onto the bun. An idea was forming.
I said, “Daddy, I need your help.”
He took a big bite of his creation. “Let me see what I can do,” he said.
Wednesday, October 22
After school, Grandpa picked me up. Sara and Becks wanted to know why I wasn’t taking the bus, but I just said, “Tell you later!”
I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was up to, in case it didn’t work out. My heart was beating fast. I bit my lip, tried to play it off like everything was easy-peasy. But I didn’t feel easy.
Grandpa pulled into the pickup circle, and the assistant principal waved me along. Didn’t want to hold up traffic. The ride didn’t take long. Luckily, I’d already written out my questions on my trusty clipboard.
We had to take two elevators and follow a blue line, then a yellow one. Finally, we rounded a corner, and there they were.
“Here she is!” Daddy said when he saw me.
My stomach twisted into knots. Daddy was standing beside two of the girls from the photo in the Freep, and they were all leaning over a third girl in bed.
The three bald friends. This was my idea: Instead of just writing a basic counterpoint, maybe, if I could talk to the actual, real girls, I could write a whole article.
Deep breath!
I said, “Hey, y’all.” When I’m nervous, I get all loose with my vowels.
They all said hi.
Daddy introduced me, then totally embarrassed me by telling me to go wash my hands, “thoroughly.” Then he explained that because of Lacy’s illness, it was easier for her to catch colds and whatnot. He didn’t want any middle-school cooties hopping off me and sticking to his patient.
In the bathroom, I took a few more deep breaths. Mrs. G. always said that good journalists speak for their communities. I wanted to speak for Lacy and her friends. Which meant first I needed to speak to her and her friends.
So we talked. I told them about my school; they told me about theirs. Lacy was seated in a bed that sort of reclined. A tube hung from a bag on a pole and looped up to a spot on her chest. I could see pale stubble on her scalp where her blond hair had been.
Her friends sat on either side of her. I could tell Reagan’s hair had been dark. Her head had dark orange stubble. Her eyes were greenish gray. Her smile was so wide that you almost didn’t notice the bald head.
Lacy’s other friend, Toya, was African American. At first, she looked almost bored, except she wasn’t. You could tell. She was fidgety. Angry. She had a little ribbon shaved into the very, very short hair stubble above her right ear. Her face rested on her hand and her elbow was propped on the bed. She was light-skinned, with large brown eyes. If you looked really close, you could see that she was scared. Actually, they all looked a little afraid.
I reread the questions on my clipboard. Mrs. G. had also said that a reporter’s story was only as good as her interview. If you don’t ask good questions, then when it’s time to write the story, you won’t have the right kind of information. It was the first time I’d actually interviewed real people who didn’t go to our school. I took another deep breath, then got to my list.
I learned Lacy Ann Hart was thirteen. She was an eighth grader at Bloomfield Hills Academy. She was in chorus and orchestra and she liked to draw horses. Only forty-one days earlier, she’d had no idea she had cancer. How scary is that? One day, she’s living life all normal and everything. Then, while playing volleyball in gym class, she got hit in the face. Her nose started bleeding and wouldn’t stop.
When they took her to the emergency room, Lacy had a lot of tests. That was when they discovered the cancer cells. She had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her treatment, called chemotherapy, was like taking a shot that lasted about thirty minutes.
For the second time in two days, I couldn’t help remembering my grandmother. She had cancer, too. Her cancer made her so sick that she died. Daddy said cancer didn’t always mean dying, though. He said Lacy had an excellent chance at survival. I hoped he was right.
I couldn’t imagine this girl dying. She was so young. Like me.
We all talked for a while. Laughed, too. They told me about Toya being an excellent volleyball player and Reagan singing in chorus with Lacy; I told them about D.C. and how we needed to raise money. I asked all my questions and finished the interview. When I was done, they all hugged me and we took a selfie together. It was like we knew one another, had known one another long before today.
“Thank you for doing this,” Reagan said. “I mean… a lot of grown-up reporters have talked to us, but it’s nice to talk to someone who understands what it’s like being in middle school.”
Like a switch being flipped, Toya’s laid-back expression suddenly blazed with intensity. Her caramel-colored cheeks flared a hot pink and the teeny-weeny orange ’fro almost glowed as she said, “You know what it means to have friends forever.” She clasped Lacy’s fingers. “Friends are way more important than hair!”
I worked really hard on my article. When Mrs. G. read it, she decided it was worth more space and attention than just a point-counterpoint that would run on the back page.
She made my article a front-page news feature on the digital and print versions of this week’s Blueberry Chronicle.
Everybody was talking about the article.
“What were they like in person?” they all asked. Mrs. G. said she was really proud. We even had a TV reporter show up to talk to me about why I wrote it. I kinda think Aunt Tina put them up to it after I e-mailed her a link to the school paper, but still, it was cool. Mrs. G. chimed in to say something about encouraging all her students to speak up, and I told them I just plain thought the policy was dumb and had to do something about it.
Sara hugged me. Lauren high-fived. Becks told me she was proud.
“I’d totally cut off my hair for you guys,” I said. “Anytime!” When Becks picked me up and twirled me around, I didn’t even put up a fight. Well, not much of one. We goofed around a little in the halls until the bell rang.
After that, the week got back to normal. In between homework and developing my new journalistic skills, I was still worried about how to raise enough money to get our sixth graders to D.C. Not to mention worrying about stuff like the speeches that all class presidents had to give AND trying to help us win the thousand-dollar scholarship for our school.
It was time to focus.
All week long, my classmates had been coming up to me telling me their ideas.
“Can we take a limo instead of a bus?” asked one boy about our transportation to D.C.
“What about sightseeing? Do you think we can rent a helicopter when we get there? I saw that once on the Discovery Channel,” said another kid.
“Know what’d be cool? If we flew to D.C. in a private jet,” said a girl from my Civics class.
It was as if they had no clue how money—or the world—worked. I was a businesswoman. I knew about adding and subtracting. I knew about the bottom line—that the budget is not negotiable.
Still, I was determined. I made a list of our upcoming fund-raisers:
I’d posted all the details in the Blueberry Chronicle, and they were approved by Principal Striker, so ha! No idea-stealing allowed, Braxton!
Mr. G. made announcements asking for volunteers, too, so everything was all worked out. We had a plan; now it was time to execute.
For the bake sale, we would work in teams so we could cover more ground. Lauren and I would work at the main concession stand, Sara and Becks would work the home-field side, and Ebony Loudermill and Britney Dial would sell cupcakes in the stands on the visitors’ side during the game.
Sounds simple, right?
Everyone showed up pretty much on time. I gave Britney and Ebony a double-decker tray holding forty-eight cupcakes; I gave an identical tray to Becks and Sara.
Once they left, Lauren and I set up in the concession stand. The women selling fried chicken wings, catfish and white bread, French fries, hamburgers, and hot dogs, along with sodas, chips, and candy bars, were nice and helpful.
“I know you!” said a coffee-colored woman with curly brown hair. “You that little gal from the bakery. Wetzel’s.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
The women said they were all for a girl learning how to make money at an early age. They even high-fived me.
Cool Michigan air and a backdrop of a million stars made it the perfect night for football. The stadium was packed. Selling all of our cupcakes should have been easy.
By the start of the third quarter, Lauren and I had sold all of ours. We earned seventy-two dollars. Off to a good start, I thought.
Then, when the game ended, I needed to collect cash from everyone else.
So I found my way to Britney and Ebony.
“How’d you do?” I asked.
“We sold all our cupcakes, I think,” Ebony said. Uh… you think? They’re either sold or not sold. Be easy, I told myself.
When I asked for the money, they gave me sixty-five dollars.
“Where’s the rest?”
They looked at each other. Britney said, “That’s all we have.”
Um, what? I said, “Well, if you sold all the cupcakes, there should be seventy-two dollars.”
And she was like, “Um, I don’t know. I think this one dude, his name is Martel—”
“No, Brit,” Ebony cut in, “his name is Darnell.”
“Are you sure?” Britney asked.
“Yeah, it’s Darnell. He’s friends with my brother. He got, like, six cupcakes and was supposed to come back with the money.”
“I think he forgot,” said Ebony. Then, squinting really hard, like thinking was making her head hurt, she looked at Brit and said, “Maybe his name is Martel.…”
Really, girls? Really? I took a deep breath and told myself this was the kind of colorful story that would look good in a book about my life when I grew up to be famous and rich. So I didn’t karate chop anybody in the neck.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. “Thank you for your help. Hope to see you tomorrow at Oak Woods Park.”
The two of them walked away, still arguing over whether the non-paying boy was named Martel or Darnell.
It didn’t take long to find Sara and Becks. Sara’s pinkness practically glowed.
“So, how’d you guys do?” I asked, plopping onto the bleachers next to them. I was all ready to share the crazy story of Ebony and Britney, but the goofy look on Sara’s face stopped me. Becks was texting furiously, her face glowing in the phone’s light.
“Brianna, it’s so wonderful!” Sara said. “Becks got a date with Bakari!”
Ever have that feeling like you’ve stepped on a rake and got smacked in the forehead by the handle? Dwoing!
I felt so tired. “Becks, really. Congratulations. I’m happy for you. But I’ve got to get up really early tomorrow. If I can get the cupcake holder and the money from the sale, I’m gonna go. Grandpa texted. He’s waiting. Anybody need a ride?”
Sara looked at me and said, “Oh, the cupcakes.” She pushed the container to me.
“We didn’t get to sell all of them because Becks was texting Bakari, and I was helping her figure out what to say,” she said.
“We’ll totally help again next week,” Becks said. “Promise we’ll sell more next time.”
I opened the lid. Out of forty-eight cupcakes, only twelve were missing. The remaining cupcakes looked like they’d been poked and sat on.
“You only sold twelve?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
Sara stood quickly and wrapped her arms around my shoulders.
“You’re missing the important thing here, Bree. Becks is in love. It’s all so romantic. We’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
“Here!” Becks shoved a wad of cash into my hand, then she and Sara raced off toward the parking lot.
In my mind, I heard Red’s drawly voice saying, “Ouuuuuuusome!”
Yeah, a whole eighteen bucks. D.C., here we come!
Sometimes, being a sixth grader was so hard.
One good thing, though. I got a text from Toya, one of the girls from the hospital.