9
Hail Caesar? Hail No!
Have you ever done something even though you knew in your bones how wrong it was?
I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. Something I almost never did. I was a planner. A girl with a clipboard. In the back of my mind, I knew how angry my parents would be and how upset the school would be if I got caught. Not to mention how dangerous it was.
But I needed to do something that was totally not me. And it felt like it wasn’t even me doing it!
So I did it. Took off from school and caught a city bus out of the ’burbs and into downtown Detroit.
My heart pumped hard and fast. An hour and ten minutes later, when we got to Grand River Avenue, I climbed off the bus and hopped on this train called the people mover that went all over downtown.
Am I nuts?
I can’t be here!
It was like the good part of me was fighting with the lost and confused and ANGRY me. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about how frustrated, confused, and angry I was until I started climbing off that bus.
When my phone vibrated, I sucked in some air. Grandpa. I sent back a text.
Here was supposed to be the library. Lying made my head hurt. I slumped low in the hard plastic seat of the elevated train. It grunted along the tracks, stopping just long enough to let passengers on and off. My mind kept replaying the last several days.
My failure at raising enough money for our trip, no matter what I did.
Having Mrs. BORing get all up in my face.
Becks leaving the honors program. Why?
The questions pinged around my brain. A tightness squeezed from my chest to my stomach. Outside, the sky stretched over us, gray and sad, like a pale face in despair.
It was time to make a decision. Too late to turn back now, to avoid getting in trouble. Might as well make the most of it. At least, that was what I hoped.
So I started to pay attention to what I was passing, looking for all the things I loved about Detroit. Like the Atheneum Suite Hotel. Mom, Katy, and I stayed there once for a girls’ weekend. We had massages and got mani-pedis. It was awesome.
I realized we must be in Greektown. I got off at the stop and raced down the steps. Lunch at school had consisted of gray lumpy stuff poured over brown lumpy stuff. I’d eaten an apple. Now my stomach didn’t just growl—it roared.
The New Parthenon Restaurant served the most amazing gyros. It didn’t take long to get served. I must have been hungrier than I thought, because it was like that gyro had never even existed, I’d eaten so fast. When I felt full, I looked around the room.
Ancient Rome stole a lot of ideas about everything from the Greeks. So it wasn’t any wonder that the decor of the restaurant, which was supposed to look Greek, also resembled a lot of the pictures we’d seen of ancient Rome.
It was weird, you know? All school year, Mr. G. had been telling us this stuff, trying to get us ready for the D.C. trip and the competition. Learning the vocabulary words, looking at photos of old buildings, we just thought of it as homework.
But here I was in Greektown, seeing how the influence of ancient Rome and Greece affected modern times.
“You sure finished that up!” said the waiter. His eyebrows were fat and bushy. He had a mustache like Luigi in Mario Kart. I felt stuffed—it was the best gyro ever.
I calculated his tip, deciding to leave 20 percent. Sometimes when people ate inside Wetzel’s and I brought them their cupcakes, they’d give me a tip. Tips were awesome!
I asked if I could snap some photos of the decor with my phone. Before I left, it was starting to get darker, and I didn’t have a clue what to do next. Running away to downtown Detroit had not been on the “To Do” list on my clipboard. But remembering the cool photos I took inside, I decided not to waste my journey into the big city.
I thought about the newspaper assignment Amanda had given me. Maybe instead of a regular story, I’d do a story in pictures. Show the sights and places that had meaning to me. I could even highlight the ones with the architecture or design elements we talked about in Mr. G.’s class.
Using my phone’s camera, I started walking and taking photos of any buildings or architecture that stood out. The Second Baptist Church of Detroit was a historic landmark. Although the architecture had nothing to do with what we were studying, I took a picture of myself in front of it anyway. Grandpa told me how this church was part of the Underground Railroad, back when Harriet Tubman was helping slaves escape from the South. Whenever I saw the old church, it made me feel proud. When Grandma was alive, we’d come to services here sometimes.
I kept walking, lost in thought. Thinking about the speech I was supposed to write—a speech about having purpose and leadership. Thinking about people who’d been enslaved and fought for freedom. Thinking about the people who fought to get them freedom.
I did so much thinking, I lost track of time—and where I was. When I started paying attention again, I saw that the tall buildings were blocking the sky, and darkness was creeping around me. I started to get self-conscious, feeling like my brightly colored pants and hoodie—fluorescent blue and neon pink—glowed.
I watched as women in business suits rushed from building to building up and down the sidewalk. Some wore slick pantsuits with low-heeled boots, or skirts and blazers under stylish wool coats. Even young women who looked like they might have just gotten out of college wore crisp white shirts tucked into neat black jeans with boots and leather jackets.
Looking down at myself again, I realized how young I looked. I’d never thought about it that much, but maybe how you looked did affect what people thought of you. Maybe part of moving away from being just a baker to being a leader meant wearing clothes that didn’t provide their own light source.
Movement and color caught my attention, coming from a large picture window. When I drew closer, I saw that it was a dance school. Girls of all different sizes wore tights and leotards. They were stretching. Looked like they were on some sort of break.
Then I got that strange feeling you get when someone is staring at you, a prickling along my scalp. A set of bright blue eyes was on me.
It was Red!
She gave me her usual half smile and nodded toward the door. I walked down, waited. In a few minutes she stepped outside.
She wore a black hoodie over her black leotard. Pink tights went straight down into black high-tops. She’d pulled on a pair of loose-fitting white sweats that stopped just below her knees.
I didn’t know what to say. “Um…”
She jumped in. “Yeah, um, so you caught me. This is my secret identity. By day I’m a regular middle school student. By night, I’m a crime-fighting ballerina in the city.”
She shrugged.
I shrugged.
“How long have you been, um, saving the world?” I asked.
She said, “I started when I was three. Since I just turned twelve—”
“Nine years!”
“Wow, Justice! You’re so quick with math. No wonder you’re our leader.”
We both laughed. Then she asked, “What’re you doing down here? Are your folks around?” She looked both ways trying to spot my parents.
“Aw, you know, just sort of hanging out, I guess,” I said.
Her gaze grew more intense. One eyebrow lifted.
I felt guilty. “What?”
She took a step back, the half smile back in place. “Nothing! Nothing! Just surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“Hey, I’m surprised to see you, too! Blueberry Hills’ best-known goth girl wears a tutu. Gotta think about that one,” I said, laughing.
She smiled, then her face grew serious. “Would you mind if we kept this between us?”
“Sure,” I said. “But, I mean, if you’ve been doing this for nine years, I’ll bet you’re awesome. Why hide it?”
She said ballet was something in life that was just hers. She didn’t have to be great and she didn’t do it for recognition. “I do it because when I dance, it’s like I can hear my soul. Feeling my muscles stretch beyond reason makes me feel more alive than anything in the world. I… It’s personal.”
“I won’t say anything to anyone. Promise.”
Her break was over. She rushed back inside. The glow of pink light rushed from the window and spilled over me on the darkening sidewalk. The instructor had the girls line up in rows, their backs to the window. Red’s dark-cherry hair was piled into a knot on top of her head.
It didn’t take long to see that Red was a magnificent dancer. Her ankles appeared incredibly thin, yet they were strong enough to hold her as she spun in tight circles or leaped through the air. Watching her made me feel like I could hear Red’s soul speaking, too. All of the dancers moved as though their bodies were weightless.
Whatever was going on with me, this rebellious funk or whatever, it was time to let it go. I needed to let myself fly. And I knew I didn’t have to run away to feel free.
Wish I’d thought of that sooner. ’Cause when I turned around, another set of eyes was staring at me. And they were not bright and blue.
They were angry and brown.
How had I forgotten Cadillac Place was just across the plaza? See, the old General Motors Building had been turned into government offices. Among them, a branch of the FBI.
My mom worked there. Only, she wasn’t at work anymore.
She was standing on the sidewalk, staring right at me!
Friday, November 7
Jail can teach you a lot. And that’s for reals!
Mom went ballistic when she found me in front of the dance studio downtown. She practically hyperventilated, she was yelling so much. I was put on punishment “until further notice,” which I figured meant until I was old enough to drive.
The worst part had been the Big Question:
Why?
And… What were you thinking, Brianna? What would make you do something so reckless?
Mom, Daddy, Grandpa—even Katy. They all asked me separately. And I didn’t know what to say! It should have been so easy to have one of those made-for-TV moments. Me breaking into tears and confessing, “Gee whiz, Mummy and Papa, I feel so gosh-darn overwhelmed. And I’m having trouble with my friends because they’d rather act like middle school idiots than the smart young women we were back in fifth grade!”
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t admit any of that. Not without looking like a total loser.
Daddy looked so hurt and disappointed, I did have to tell him something that wasn’t a complete lie. So I told him how concerned I’d been about my speech and how worried I was about trying to raise enough money for our trip. He kind of bought it, I think, because he wanted to.
Mom, on the other hand, would have put me right in prison if one would’ve taken me. And I was in trouble at school, too.
Anyway, after several days of no TV, no music, no baking for fun, Daddy said if I wanted to go do some work for fund-raising, I could.
Grandpa barely said two words to me, though, as we drove around collecting cans. That was tough. I loved Grandpa so much. I’d never thought about how crappy it’d feel to disappoint him. My whole body was starting to ache, no doubt from guilt. I’d done something really stupid and now my whole family was looking at me like I was brain damaged.
School was just as bad. I was virtually Mrs. Bwöring’s servant. I had to apologize in front of the whole class and move my desk up front. Next to hers. Like I was planning a jailbreak and this was her version of maximum security. Still, I felt way guilty about mouthing off to her the way I did. It was just like going off on that kid on the bus—only ten times worse.
And after my mother informed Principal Striker about me leaving school without permission, he decided that it, plus talking back in Mrs. Bwöring’s class, should get me a five-day in-school suspension. That meant during lunch I had to sit onstage with other school law-breakers.
Yep! Onstage in the cafeteria. No eating with your friends. You just sit there in a chair with your lunch while everybody walks past looking at you. It was like being in a horror movie and a jail movie, combined.
Sharing the stage of shame with me were several kids I knew, including a dude in the seventh grade who thought it would be hilarious to buy one of those electronic cigarettes and bring it to school. Then record himself puff-puffing away in the boys’ bathroom. Another kid, another sixth grader, was on lockdown for skipping school. Unlike me, though, she didn’t get busted by her mother. Oh, no! Like the smoker, she got busted because she was posting photos of herself online. When she was supposed to be in class. How did I end up in this group? I felt so stupid.
Just as I was feeling even more sorry for myself, I heard “Pssst! Pssst!” and looked down. Lauren was at the foot of the stage. If one of the cafeteria monitors caught her, she’d be toast.
My eyebrows knotted. I whispered, “What?”
“Paul Geidel!” she whispered back.
Paul who? I shrugged, unable to hide my smile. Lauren was so… Lauren.
She said, “Paul Geidel holds the record for the longest time served in prison—sixty-eight years, two hundred forty-five days. Maybe I could put a nail file in your cupcake and you could pick a lock to freedom.”
Her shoulders bounced up and down as she laughed at her own cleverness. Oh, that Lauren.
She looked around and spotted Mr. Ortiz holding one boy practically by the collar. Lauren glanced up at me on the stage. She whispered, “You heard from Sara or Becks today?”
I could tell she had something else to say. If you knew Lauren, you could always tell when something was up.
Lately, Sara and Becks had been almost invisible. I didn’t see them in the halls and they didn’t even answer my texts much anymore. Not that I’d had a chance to text all that often. All I’d been allowed to do was go home, to school, and to work at the bakery. Because I had to skip newspaper club, Amanda Keene had been forced to give my assignment to someone else. I’d texted with Sara a few times, but Becks had not texted back. And at school she was becoming more and more distant.
“What’s up with them?” I half whispered down to Lauren.
Before she could answer, Mr. Ortiz placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Going back to my table, Coach!” Lauren said, without looking at him. He glared at me, then turned his back. Lauren looked back, then mouthed, “I’ll text you.”
Mr. Ortiz got a call on his radio. It crackled loudly. The voice was Principal Striker’s.
“Could you send Brianna Justice to my office?” he said.
Even though I wasn’t wearing handcuffs or shackles, I felt restricted as I trudged down to Principal Striker’s office. I also felt hot and cold at the same time. Principal Striker made me wait five minutes, sitting right in front of him, while he shuffled some papers around and ignored me.
A phone buzzed on his desk. He answered, listened for a second, then said, “Bring them in.”
He stared at me over the top of his glasses. His eyes were dark and stern. When the door swung open, his voice boomed, “Come in.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Braxton and Beau.
Braxton looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. After a second, he spoke first. “Principal Striker, thank you for seeing me and my brother,” he said, glancing over at me, scowling.
He said, “I just want to do what’s right for the school, Principal Striker.” Then he went on to make this speech about why Beau should be appointed president of the whole sixth grade because I was a bad role model.
It almost made me laugh, until I saw the look on Principal Striker’s face. A cold line of sweat popped onto my forehead. I felt myself start to shake on the inside.
What was happening?
I’d worked so hard.
My heart raced and I crossed my ankles to keep my knees from knocking. Did Beau Brattley want to be class president so badly that he’d gone to his brother to cook up this… this foolishness? I was about to say something, but Principal Striker cut me off.
He said, “There’s no question that Miss Justice has exhibited behavior unbecoming of a class official.”
I wanted to protest. But my throat was so dry. My face felt hot, but my skin felt cold.
What Principal Striker said next left me feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach.
He looked right at me. “Brianna, maybe you shouldn’t be president of the sixth grade.…”
I felt myself getting light-headed. My heart raced.
Then everything went dark.