The Big Day

Dewey arrived at school right on time. He wondered what he would find.

Just yesterday, Dewey and his friends could hear only the sound of their own breath and footsteps. Now, the corridors stirred with a cloudy brew of voices and laughter. The wide empty hallways gave way to moving legs and swinging arms. As Dewey got closer to the heart of their handiwork, the movement and air around him shifted.

Here, matchstick legs with rolled down socks, blue jeans, and a scattering of Crayola colored tights stood still. The air hung with anticipation. Dewey and the others expected the garden to generate a big buzz. Instead, the silence of wonder and awe greeted them.

“Whoa,” whispered Colin to Dewey when they found one another. “Maybe they haven’t seen the signs yet?”

“Still.” remarked Dewey, who had expected a rush for the garden goods and a lot of laughter at their signs.

“Let’s go where some signs are and see what’s going on there.”

They found kids gathered around their signs talking to one another.

“Yeah, I agree,” said seventh grader Lukas. “Why are we suffering under these conditions?” The only thing Dewey really knew about Lukas was that masking tape with the words “chicken nugget” held his glasses together.

“How come they took away our vending machine, actually? They never talked to us about it. We should tell the student government to have a meeting. Do we have a student government?” Ava asked.

“Of course we do,” Paloma said. “Who do you think plans the dances?”

Seraphina approached Colin and Dewey. “We definitely caused a stir,” she whispered. “Students all over campus aren’t going to class. I think the administration is going to call an all-school meeting.”

Dewey’s eyes got big. He could feel an “okay, what’s next?” coming on. He stood there really hoping she didn’t ask that question.

“Okay, then. So . . . what’s next?”

“Well, I think we have backers now. We should be ready to make a case at that meeting.”

“Make a case saying what?” asked Colin.

“You gotta show them we can conserve paper in some other way. And Seraphina and I should prove that they don’t have to take our vending machine for us to have a garden. Somehow. We gotta do our research.”

“Research? Meeting? We need more time!” wailed Seraphina. “We don’t even know what we’re going to say!”

“Okay, you go ask Mrs. Mayoral if we can have the meeting tomorrow, not today. Tell them a bunch of students are asking for more time to get ready before the meeting, so she doesn’t think it’s just us.”

“What? No! Why me?”

“Okay. We’ll rock, paper, scissor it. Colin, let’s go.”

The first time, they all did rock. The second time, Dewey guessed they’d all do rock again, so he did paper instead, and he and Seraphina both lost to Colin.

Seraphina and Dewey now went up against one another. “Rock, paper, scissors.”

“Rock,” the both called out in unison.

“Rock, paper, scissors.”

“Paper,” again in unison. They both laughed.

“Rock, paper, scissors.” This time Dewey lost, his paper to Seraphina’s scissors.

“Fine,” huffed Dewey. “I’ll do it.”

“I was going to make you do it anyway. It was your bright idea to ‘just let it unfold.’”

The bell rang to go to class though, and Dewey was saved by the announcement over the loudspeaker that told the students there would be a school-wide assembly tomorrow morning to discuss the recent activities and developments. No one went to class. More and more students gathered around the garden to stare at its temptation, but no one dared enter it.

“I think we need to get them started,” suggested Colin, and he walked in, took a carrot cookie, and began to munch.

“Yeah!” Moses walked into the garden. “Isn’t that what the administration said? We’re supposed to harvest our snacks?” He grabbed a bag of chips off a vine and tossed it to Amelia who laughed eagerly.

Colin, Dewey, and Seraphina looked to one another. Now the other kids caught on. Before long, the garden hopped and buzzed with kids feeding on the bounty that the three of them had sown.

“Careful not to step on the other seedlings,” cautioned Paloma as she bent down herself to harvest some “broccoli.”

“It’s easy not to. It’s all laid out perfectly. It’s brilliant!” cried Moses, stuffing a “bell pepper” into his mouth and opening a bag of chips.

Dewey, Seraphina, and Colin smiled.

🌱

That night, each of the three vending machine gardeners sat busy, digging for information to help their cause. You’d think Seraphina, who’d been researching, collecting, cleaning, labeling, trimming, and displaying her rock collection for the past five years, would be the best at it. She had field notebooks filled with words like diaphany, but when she sat down at the computer and entered a search for “Ladera Linda” and “vending machines,” all she could feel was her throat tighten and a growing desire to throw something across her room.

“Just come over here,” proposed Dewey.

So Seraphina and Dewey worked together at Dewey’s house.

“According to what it says here, the school district is participating in some U.S. Department of Agriculture program, ‘Smart Snacks in Schools.’ It has a lot of rules about what the snacks should be like. That’s got to be part of what’s going on.” Seraphina began.

“It says snacks should be ‘less than or equal to 200 calories, 200 mg of sodium, and with total fat and sugar less than—’”

“Or equal to?” interrupted Dewey, smiling. “Do you know what I just heard you say? I got, blah, blah 200, blah blah, 200, less than or equal to, blah, blah, blah.”

“Yes,” Seraphina continued, “. . . with a total fat and sugar of less than 35% of calories. Per serving.”

“Exactly. Blah, blah blah, blah, blah, 35%, blah.”

Meanwhile, Colin began his search setting out to prove that rigging the toilet paper rolls didn’t save paper. His findings, though, were proving otherwise.

“What?!” he called out to no one when he discovered that the Quilted Northern® paper mills alone produced enough tissue to wrap around the Earth’s equator 1 1/2 times—every day! EVERY DAY!

Colin Facetimed, and Dewey propped up his phone so everyone could see each other. “Hang on, Colin. Just in the middle of a thought here.”

“Ha!” laughed Seraphina. “Nice to know you’re thinking between the blahs.”

“Hmm,” continued Dewey. “Let’s apply it. Potato chips.”

Seraphina typed them into her search.

“Mmm. Potato chips,” hummed Colin. “I’ll be right back,” and he headed off to the kitchen to forage for a salty snack.

“Let’s see,” reported Seraphina. “160 Calories, 90 from fat . . .”

“Oh, that’s not bad! What percent is it?”

“Um . . . 16%!”

“What about the salt? The sodium?”.

“170 mg!”

“Hey! I think the Wellness Committee can list Potato Chips on their ‘Smart Snacks’ document. Excellent. What else? Let’s try something else. You pick it and I’ll search.”

CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

“Colin! Are you doing any work over there?” demanded Dewey.

“A man,” CRUNCH CRUNCH, “must fortify himself,” CRUNCH CRUNCH, “to think.”

“Just hang up,” Seraphina implored. “I can’t concentrate.”

“We’ll call you back.” Dewey hung up.

“Okay,” she said. “How about Twix Bars?”

“250 calories. Out. Give me another.”

“Snickers?”

“Nope. 250. I think candy bars are out. We never had much candy in our vending machine anyway. Why are you looking at candy? Try cookies.”

“Oh! Chips Ahoy. Those are good.”

“That’s better,” Dewey approved nodding his head slowly as he read. “Calories 160, total fat 11%, sugar is 11 grams. Hmm. They don’t say what percent that is of the calories. Now we need to do some math,” Dewey stared at Seraphina, waiting for her to be the “we” in that equation.

“Haha! Okay. Move over. Let’s see. If the sugar is 11 grams, and the—”

Dewey’s phone rang. Colin was Facetiming them again.

“Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.”

His face disappeared from the screen.

“Colin? Where’d you go?” Dewey held up the phone to show Seraphina the screen, which showed Colin’s room, but no Colin.

“I can’t find it. I’m dead. I’m dead meat. My dad’s gonna kill me.”

“What?” Seraphina asked. “Colin, what’s going on?”

“I can’t find my retainer. Seriously. My dad is going to go berserk. I already lost one. I can’t lose this one.”

“Well, when d—” Dewey interrupted himself. “Colin! Come back to the phone. I can’t talk to you this way. Where are you?”

“Under the bed.”

“Why would your retainer be under the bed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Colin, come out, sit on the bed, and talk to us.”

Colin’s frantic face appeared on the screen.

“When did you have it last?” Seraphina asked

“I took it out to eat the chips,” recalled Colin, nodding slowly. “I think. Oh, I don’t know.”

Dewey muted the phone. “This is no good. We’re never going to get anything done, and he’s not going to finish his research! I’m going over there to help him find it.”

“What? Now? And leave me with all of the work?” objected Seraphina the tight feeling returning to her throat.

Colin could be heard talking to them in the background, but they were missing his words as they spoke.

“Okay, then come with me,” suggested Dewey, throwing up his arms.

He unmuted the phone.

“Uh huh,” he replied as if he’d been listening all along. “We’re coming over. We’ll find it. Calm down, though, would ya?”

“Where’d he go?” Seraphina asked. Colin had left the screen again.

“Who knows?” shrugged Dewey. “This is going to be a long night.”