Chapter Four

Sierra found an empty table in the crowded cafeteria. But as soon as she sat down with her tray, Carlos and his friends swooped down next to her. She scooted the other way but couldn’t blot out Carlos’s wink.

“You don’t have to sit so far away, Brown Eyes. We’ll make room for you.”

Carlos’s friends chimed in. “Come on, baby. Move a little closer.”

Sierra hid a shiver. They always called her sweetheart and whistled as she walked by. But Sierra wasn’t pretty or popular. She kept her eyes on her lunch, building an invisible wall around her. She could feel people looking at her and laughing, even from other tables. Of course they were laughing. Everyone liked Carlos’s jokes.

He only gave her a minute before he slid through her invisible wall, bringing his tray with him. He hopped sideways on the bench. “Hey, Sierra.”

She kept her eyes on her tray and chewed on the rubbery chicken tenders.

The boys whistled and flicked their hands.

Emilio shot her a wolfish grin. “You’re cold, mamá.”

The bell rang and Sierra took a last swallow of juice. She waited for the table to empty so she could leave without Carlos’s friends laughing at her. Everyone left but Carlos.

“Leave me alone.” She threw the words out in a whisper and wished immediately she could call them back. She’d said something, and he’d repeat it to his friends now. Wherever she went now, they’d be circling her, needling her, seeing if they could get her to say something else.

“Sure, Sierra.” Carlos gathered up his tray. He said it quietly, as if he meant it, but his trouble-making smile told her that wasn’t the end of it.

She stood to pick up her notebook, but it was gone. There was no sign of it on the table or the floor or anywhere in the almost-empty cafeteria.

As Sierra dumped her tray, a girl named Jazzy breezed by her, looking ahead at Carlos. “You show him, Sierra. That’s right, girl. Carlos is too big for his britches anyway.”

 

As the crowds flooded out of the school for the day, Sierra plodded up the stairs to the second floor. She looked into a classroom, wondering why this teacher she didn’t even know wanted to speak with her. He had his back turned to her as he flipped through a stack of papers on a shelf.

She coughed. “Mr. Foster? You wanted to see me?”

“Sierra. Come in.” He picked up a notebook off his desk. Her notebook. “I found this on Emilio’s desk. It’s yours?”

He didn’t hand it to her when she nodded. Instead, he turned one of the student desks around and, after sitting, pointed her to the desk across from him. When she sat down, he handed her the notebook but slid one piece of paper out, keeping it on his desk.

He leaned back. “Sierra Wright, you’ve been holding back on us.”

She looked at the haikus she’d written for English.

“Is that how you were supposed to do the assignment?” he asked.

“I did it right.” Her voice came out too mousy. She lifted her chin. “Ten haikus. Five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables.”

He leaned in a little closer as if he didn’t believe her. “Are you sure?”

She nodded and cast him a quick glance.

“You may be quiet, but you’re sure of yourself. I like that.”

She looked away.

“I’ll be honest with you. These poems are terrific. It’s a good bet Mrs. Velasco didn’t get another set as good. Only one thing kept you from getting an A on them.”

She chained her gaze to the desk.

“Right, Sierra?”

Why was he doing this? Just because he’d found her notebook? He wasn’t her teacher.

“What was your grade for this?”

Sierra looked at the wall, imagining a window and a sky outside, imagining she could fly away.

“Look at me, Sierra.”

She didn’t. The silence lasted so long it seemed alive. She opened her palm, as if the quiet might settle in her hand.

Finally, in a soft voice, he said, “You can’t get an A for work you don’t turn in. I’m sorry if I’m getting personal. But C’s and D’s, Sierra? A quick glance through that notebook told me you’re capable of making A’s in the advanced classes. At the very least.”

She closed her palm.

“Look at me.”

He waited until she had to look up.

“I’ve seen you in the halls and crossing the street on your way home. I know you were new here last semester, but I haven’t seen you speak to anyone yet. Now I can see you’re angry with me. What I’m wondering is whether you’ll tell me off.”

She started to stand up. She didn’t have to put up with this. But he began to read her first haiku aloud.

“White egrets rising, from still waters at sunrise, stretching wings for flight.”

Her words sounded strange in his bass voice, fluid. She could hear the rustle of wings and the splash of the creek. She looked at her backpack but didn’t pick it up.

“That was good,” he said. “But I think you can do even better. Write ten more haikus. Write your heart out, Sierra, and you’ll have an A. If you turn them in.”

“You’re not my teacher.” She hated that her voice shook.

“Mrs. V. and I are friends. You have my word. She’ll give you an A.”

When she didn’t answer, he went on. “You have a choice, Sierra,” he said. “One choice will build your life up; another will tear it down. You’re a smart girl, and I think you’re going to make the right choice.”

What right did he have to talk to her like that? She grabbed her paper and walked out.

 

Sierra sat on the stairs outside her apartment, crumpled in a heap, balling up the poems in her fist. She didn’t want to write her heart out. She didn’t want anyone even looking at the first poems, much less another set. But she knew deep-down solid in her bones if she didn’t do it, he’d be looking at her all over again, calling her name and demanding to know why. Maybe even in front of other students.

She pulled the paper onto her knee and smoothed it flat. The poems made pictures. They were nice. That’s what haikus were: nice. No one wrote their heart out in seventeen syllables.

A neighbor walked by the rusted playground. “Buenas tardes,” he called out.

“¿Es un día caluroso para dar un paseo, no crees?” Sierra smiled across the way at him.

The man waved in the air, answering in rapid Spanish as he passed.

A voice below interrupted the conversation. “The old guy says you should see the heat where he’s from. This is nothing. But hey, you probably already knew that. Your Spanish is good.”

Sierra froze. Carlos stood at the security gate of the apartment complex. What was he doing here? When he punched in the code and walked through the gate as if he lived here, Sierra stood and hurried back into her apartment, shutting the door behind her. She closed the curtains and slid down against the wall, her eyes shut tight. She could hear him talking. She couldn’t hear what he said, only the rumble of his voice as he laughed with someone in the courtyard.

 

She didn’t turn new haikus in to Ms. Velasco. She was still looking for heart to put into the poems, she supposed. She slunk through the halls and tried to look invisible until the weekend. It didn’t work. She saw Mr. Foster everywhere—on the second floor, on the stairs, at the crossing after school. He always called out a greeting to her, but he didn’t ask about the haikus. Not yet, but he would.

Saturday she picked up the beaten page of haikus and walked to Mr. Prodan’s.

He wasn’t outside this time, and she didn’t see him through the library window. She gave a hesitant knock. She would have taken him for a morning person, but when he answered the door, his clothes were rumpled and his hair looked like he’d been sleeping.

He blinked at her as if he didn’t recognize her at first. “Ah, Miss Wright,” he finally said. “Come in.”

“I haven’t come at a bad time?”

“No, no,” he mumbled, leading her into the library. But there were circles beneath his eyes, and Sierra felt stupid for coming. As he slumped into one of the chairs, she noticed how European he looked—the frizzy, mussed hair; the heavy-lidded eyes and pursed lips.

“You are reading the book I gave you?”

She looked down. “Um, I read a few of the pages. I could make out some of the words.”

He slapped himself on the forehead. “Ah. I gave you the book in Romanian!”

Sierra grinned. He was an absent-minded professor. “I like it though,” she insisted. “I like looking at all the accents and loops. I wish I knew what the words meant.”

“But you must read it in English, of course.” He raised himself to pull a paperback from the shelf. The cover had gold lettering and had a picture of a wood trunk, viewed through a window. “You must keep them both.” He gave the book to her and flexed his hands as he returned to his chair.

“And you have brought something for me this time?” He nodded at her page of haikus.

She handed it over, and he sat down with it, smoothing it in his lap, taking his time. Sierra rubbed her hands along the arms of the chair. Mr. Foster had said the poems were good, but as Mr. Prodan scanned the ten haikus, she knew they weren’t.

“A teacher at school said I didn’t put my heart into them.”

He sighed. “You are fortunate to have such a teacher.” He gazed at her in silence, the paper poised in his hands. “Your teacher is right. I suspect these poems are not worthy of you.”

His words fell like heavy weights, and Sierra slouched in her chair. Somehow his opinion mattered, and she had foolishly hoped he would tell her they were good.

“This will not do.” He gestured wildly at her. “You hide yourself. You make yourself small and cover your face with your hair, yes? But if you have any heart to give, it is yourself. And you have not shown Sierra Wright in these poems.”

Her face grew hot. “How is a haiku supposed to show myself? Haikus are supposed to be about nature, not me.”

He stood and paced in front of her. “You do not need to imitate Basho, the great Japanese poet. What does Sierra Wright notice on the street that I do not? What brings her joy? What brings her sorrow? That will be a haiku of your heart.”

Sierra slumped more. The scene with the egrets had been important to her.

“You are angry with me, no?” Mr. Prodan said.

Sierra shook her head. She felt sudden, crazy tears about to fall, and that made her angry.

“It is good to be angry. There is passion in anger.” He waved the page at her. “There is no passion in this. No self.”

“I saw those egrets with my father!” Sierra heard the rise in her own voice and stopped.

“This time with your father was important?”

“One spring, he took me for walks along the creek by our house, just after sunrise. In the summer he went to Italy for a conference and he—he didn’t come home. He died over there. He was just—just gone.” Her tears began to fall, and Sierra furiously swiped at them.

He bowed his head, quiet. She was glad he didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything to say.

Finally, he clucked his tongue and said, “That would be a poem with heart, but it is not here.” He tapped the page. “I do not see a father and daughter. I do not see grief. I see only nameless egrets.”

“I’m supposed to write all of that in seventeen syllables?” Sierra sniffed.

“In seventeen syllables if you like, yes.” Mr. Prodan stood. “I have not had my breakfast. Do you wish for a true Romanian breakfast?”

He led her to his backyard, where they sat in patio chairs. They drank black-as-night Turkish coffee and ate jam-filled crepes that tasted like butter and homegrown strawberries.

“Were you a professor in Romania, Mr. Prodan?”

He looked out at the trees. “When I was a young man, I taught mathematics at a gymnasium. What you in America call high school. But for many years, the only people I spoke with were my colleagues in prison, and it was not maths we talked of. When I returned to society, my desire for teaching had vanished, and I worked in a bakery in Bucharest.” He moved his fingers away from him in a cutting motion.

Prison? But he didn’t give her the chance to ask any more questions. He stood, dumping the coffee grounds onto the vegetable garden that sloped away from the back door.

What she really wanted to know was if it was in prison his hands had been scarred. She wanted to know because she could see the memory—whatever it was—in the iciness of his eyes. But here he was standing in the sunlight with her.

They looked away from each other. She couldn’t ask about his story yet. She knew it was a story she would have to earn the right to hear. If she became his friend, if she came for more visits like this one, in time he might trust her enough to tell her how his hands had been damaged and how he had come to live in this house only a few blocks from her apartment.