Chapter Sixteen
Aadita
Wednesday, October 11
Aadita sat on her bed Wednesday night and studied the three tiny kittens in her hand. They were tiny, no bigger than grapes, and the one with the missing ear had the cutest expression, like it wanted nothing more than to rub against your arm and purr its heart out.
The kittens had been living with her since Monday, and Aadita had thought about naming them, but she knew they already had names given to them by Mrs. Herrera. Besides, they weren’t hers and she had every intention of giving them back. But when? When it was safe, she supposed. When Lila had returned the photograph of Mrs. Herrera’s favorite teacher and when the Hatchet thief placed the book back on the shelf that held Mrs. Herrera’s special collection of special things. When everyone stopped being so strange.
“Aadita, how is your history project coming along? It is due next week, correct?”
Her father stood in the doorway. Aadita closed her hand over the kittens, although she knew her father wouldn’t notice the tiny creatures, or have a second thought about them if he did.
“You look tired, Papa,” she said. “You shouldn’t travel so much.”
Her father smiled. “It is part of my job, and besides, I get to travel to many wonderful places.”
“Which you say you never really get to see.”
“I see them on my way to and from the airport,” her father said. “It’s meeting the people I find interesting.”
“You mean meeting transportation management geeks.”
Her father smiled. “That is precisely what I mean. We get to talk about all the things that would bore our families to tears if we discussed them over the dinner table.”
Aadita wished she could tell him about the kittens in her hand and ask for his advice, but she was afraid her father might not understand. He would be upset with her for stealing. But what she did on Monday morning really wasn’t stealing, it was saving. Not that she expected anyone to know the difference.
It had been such a strange Monday from the very start. Normally Aadita’s mother dropped her off at school at the usual time, but on this particular morning she had a dentist appointment, so she e-mailed Mrs. Herrera to see if Aadita could come to homeroom class twenty-five minutes early. Mrs. Herrera, it turned out, had a faculty meeting, but said she would leave the classroom unlocked for Aadita. Which was how Aadita came to be snuggled up in the book nook reading The War That Saved My Life when Lila and Rosie came to the door and started arguing about whether or not Lila should come in. “We’re partners in crime,” Rosie had said, and Aadita had shivered. What sort of awful thing were they about to do?
A few seconds later Lila (who clearly did not want to do this) raced into the room, grabbed the photograph from Mrs. Herrera’s special shelf, and raced back out again.
“Here, you take it,” Aadita could hear her saying to Rosie in the hallway, to which Rosie had responded, “No way! I’m not going to get caught with stolen goods.”
Poor Lila, Aadita thought. She should have stayed friends with Ellie. Aadita would like to be friends with Ellie, but Ellie didn’t seem to need any friends. She was so independent!
Aadita was about to sink back into the reading pillows when a sudden fear entered her. What if someone tried to steal Mrs. Herrera’s kittens? She had to admit that if she was tempted by anything on Mrs. Herrera’s special shelf for her special things, it was that tiny family of kittens, especially the one with only one ear. She would never steal them, of course, but what if someone else did? Her heart would break.
The idea to take the one-eared kitten into her protection was sudden and impossible to resist. Aadita had always had a fondness for broken things. Once, last year when she was shopping with her mother at Target, she asked her mother to buy a doll with a cracked face. Aadita didn’t actually play with dolls anymore, and her mother rarely made impulse purchases, but she’d felt so sorry for that doll that surely no one would ever want or buy.
She looked up at the clock. She had five minutes before Mrs. Herrera was supposed to return from her meeting. It would only take her thirty seconds to grab the kitten, but then what would she do? Run away, like Lila and Rosie? But why? And besides, wouldn’t Mrs. Herrera expect her to be there when she got back?
You are becoming overexcited, Aadita told herself. Just take the kitten and put it in your backpack. When everything is over—when Lila returns the photograph and the danger is past—you will return the kitten to its home. Very simple.
She walked over to the shelf as though she were only mildly interested in examining its contents. Should anyone come in, they wouldn’t give her a second thought. She considered humming or whistling, but that would be overdoing it. No, she was just stretching a bit to wake up, taking a look at these half-interesting objects.
She glanced behind her, then snatched the little kitten, which she quickly deposited in her pocket. That was all she intended to take, but then the other two kittens looked up at her with such longing.…
She took a tissue from the box on Mrs. Herrera’s desk and wrapped the three kittens in it before depositing them into the front pocket of her backpack. “Be safe,” she whispered as she zipped up the pocket. “I will return you to your home soon.”
Taking a deep breath, Aadita turned to go to her desk, only to find herself facing Sam Hawkins, who was staring at her from the doorway. Then, like a flash, he was gone, and Aadita wasn’t sure whether she’d really seen him or just imagined it. If it really had been Sam, what was he doing back at school? More importantly, would he tell Mrs. Herrera that Aadita was a thief?
Moments later the others started trickling in—Cammi and Carson, Ben, Bart and Stefan, Henry—and Aadita felt her face flush. She’d never been guilty of a crime before! Did it show? Fortunately, no one looked at her at all except for Stefan, who smiled. Aadita smiled back and quickly opened her notebook so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone else.
When Mrs. Herrera reported to the class that some of her things had been taken, Aadita tried to look as surprised as possible, doing her best not to glance in Lila’s direction. Of course she was genuinely surprised when she learned that one of the items was Hatchet. And, oddly, she was relieved. Now she knew she’d made the right decision in rescuing the kittens. Clearly there were thieves all around her.
That afternoon she’d hidden the kittens away in her desk drawer. If her mother found them, Aadita would say they were a gift from Ariana.
By Wednesday, Aadita had begun to feel horribly guilty. Every day since Monday, Mrs. Herrera had locked her classroom during lunch and recess. She didn’t trust the class anymore, and this made Aadita feel not only like she’d done something truly terrible, but like she’d done something harmful to others.
She was standing outside the classroom door after recess, looking through the window and wondering whether Mrs. Herrera would let the class back in if she brought the kittens back, when Henry came up and tapped her on the shoulder.
Henry was always tapping her on the shoulder. Or bumping into her. Or lifting up a piece of her hair when he walked past her desk and saying, “Smooth!” or “Shiny!” Aadita tried not to mind. She thought it must be hard to be Henry, jumping around all the time, unable to keep himself under control.
“The classroom is locked,” she said when he tapped her again.
“I don’t want to go in,” Henry replied. “I want to stay out. I wish we went to an outside school. We could put up tents when it started to rain.”
Aadita giggled. Pokey-punchy Henry irritated her, but the Henry with the wild imagination didn’t. She liked that Henry.
“So…” Henry took a step so he was standing beside her and they were both peering into Mrs. Herrera’s dark classroom.
“Yes?” Aadita said.
“The dance? The Fall Ball? Would you do me the honor?”
Aadita looked at Henry, who was still looking through the window, but now his face was blushing a furious red. Henry wanted to go to the dance with her? How did that happen? Was it a joke?
“Are you pulling a prank on me, Henry?”
Henry shook his head. “This is not a prank or a joke or a trick. It is a question about whether or not you want to go to the Fall Ball. Very straightforward. Very no strings attached.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Aadita said. She wanted to explain more, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. It was always this way at school. At home she could talk and talk, but at school the words got swallowed up before she could say them.
“Henry,” she tried, but still—nothing.
“Don’t explain, don’t explain!” Henry turned and exploded down the hall. “Stop talking! You can stop talking now.”
Aadita opened her mouth to call after him. And still—nothing.
She had wanted to tell him she wasn’t allowed to go to dances. Her mother had been very clear at the beginning of sixth grade. No dances, no boy-girl parties, no boyfriends. “I remember your sister’s sixth-grade year very clearly,” she’d said. “It all begins in sixth grade. All the romantic nonsense that you are far too young for.”
Maybe she should write him a note. Dear Henry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…
But she had hurt his feelings! She’d hurt them very badly.
Aadita looked through the window into Mrs. Herrera’s locked-up classroom and started to cry. It was unbearable to her that she had hurt Henry. That he thought she didn’t like him. That he had been brave and asked her to the dance and she had had to say no.
The girls’ room was just down the hall. When Aadita got there, she splashed water on her face. The bell was going to ring in five minutes, and she didn’t want to go to math all red-eyed and weepy. But every time she thought of Henry’s hurt expression and the fact that she would never be able to explain to him why she’d had to say no because every time she tried he would run away, the tears came back.
The door slammed open, and Lila—her fellow thief—stormed in. She looked like she was crying or was about to cry. But why? Was everyone crying today?
“Get out of here!” Lila yelled, and Aadita took a step back from the sink, not sure what to do. She couldn’t go into the hallway looking like this, her face full of tears. Besides, who was Lila the thief to tell her to do anything?
Lila leaned in, making her face even meaner than before. “I said, get out of here, you jerk!”
Aadita flinched, but the only move she made was to pull a paper towel from the paper towel dispenser and dry her hands. Should she tell Lila she knew about the photograph? Should she confess her own crime as well?
Lila grabbed Aadita by the arm and dragged her to the doorway. “Go cry somewhere else, crybaby! Why won’t you leave?”
Aadita pulled back her arm. What was wrong with everyone lately? Was the whole world going crazy? She felt sorry for Lila, she really did. Such a stupid choice to become friends with Rosie and Petra! She should say something to help Lila. She should reach out the hand of friendship, offer to go with Lila to Mrs. Herrera, where they could both admit to the terrible things they’d done. Then maybe all the tears would stop. Well, Aadita still had Henry to cry over.…
Her eyes filled with tears yet again. Perhaps she should go to the office and pretend to be ill.
Lila opened her mouth, like she had more yelling to do, but then she sighed loudly and said, “Just go, okay? Please?”
Aadita nodded. She walked toward the door. But before she opened it, she turned to Lila and said, “I think you are nicer than you behave. I think you should find nicer friends.”
Lila stared at her. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She looked sad.
Aadita decided it was just a very sad Wednesday, and there was nothing to be done about it except get through it. And try to avoid Henry, which was easy, because Henry was clearly trying to avoid her.
Her father was still standing in the doorway, looking at Aadita with a concerned expression. She wished she could tell him everything. She wished she could hand over all her problems to him like a basket of math equations for him to solve. Her father was very good at solving math equations.
But her father could not solve the problem of Henry’s hurt feelings or do anything about the fact that Henry would never speak to her again or look at her or lift up a strand of her hair and say, “A bird’s wing!” He couldn’t solve the problem of when to return the three little kittens. He couldn’t make Mrs. Herrera unlock her door during lunch and recess. He couldn’t keep Mrs. Herrera from being in trouble with the vice principal for doing—well, whatever it was that Mrs. Herrera had done. Aadita didn’t believe any of the rumors that she’d heard, but she worried nonetheless that one day she would arrive to school to find another teacher in Mrs. Herrera’s place.
Aadita wasn’t sure if she liked sixth grade, not if sixth grade was a place where her father could no longer sit on the edge of her bed and tell her how to solve her problems the way he’d always been able to before.
“Don’t look so sad, Papa!” Aadita said, trying not to feel so sad herself. She crossed the room to give her father a hug. “My project is almost done and everything is good!”
Her father rubbed the top of her head. “If you are sure…”
“I’m sure, Papa,” Aadita insisted, although she was only sure of one thing, and that was that somehow, some way, she had to give the kittens back.