Paper Things

Briggs is assistant manager at the One Stop Party Shop, and his apartment is decorated with alligator party lights, smiley-face rugs, and dinosaur piñatas. It’s a one-of-a-kind, coolio place. So staying at Briggs’s apartment isn’t that bad. That is, if you ignore the facts that it’s on the opposite side of town from Eastland Elementary, has the grimiest, hairiest bathtub on the planet, and is a studio apartment — which means everything is crammed together into one tiny room — so I have to sleep on the floor.

Briggs has a matching love seat and chair. Both fold out into beds, which is très cool, but Briggs and Gage, who are longer than me, get them. I get the seat cushions they toss off when unfolding their beds. Here is an ode to the seat cushions that I wrote in Language Arts last week:

ODE TO SEAT CUSHIONS

Oh, seat cushions

So quiet, so still, so nearly invisible.

Mindless occupants

Hurl themselves down on you

Unnoticing

The support you try to offer

The comfort you give

Your reliability.

But in my hands,

You are no longer reduced

To ignored decor.

You move from furniture to floor

And aligned triplets

Elongate

Turning lack into luxury.

You become my bed

Shielding me from

The foot-worn rug

Encrusted with Cheerios

Toenail clippings, and

Unvacuumed dead skin.

On you, I sink, I surrender, I sleep.

I am pretty proud of my ode. I had revised it (You are no longer reduced / To ignored decor had been You are no longer a mere / Part of furniture), I used some pretty decent vocab words (aligned, elongate, encrusted), and I knew that the boys especially would love the part about the rug being so gross. But when Mr. O. asked for volunteers to share, I didn’t read mine. I thought of Gage and knew he’d feel bad if I told everyone that I had to sleep on a floor. And besides, I didn’t feel like answering questions.

I stay awake a long time worrying about Chloe. I don’t want her to hurt Gage the way Dominica did — Dominica, who said that Gage was too clingy. With all his heartbreaks (one father, one mother, and three girlfriends), it’s amazing he still tries to love.

After a considerable amount of time worrying about Chloe, I switch to worrying about Sasha. I’d forgotten to call her when we got to Briggs’s. I knew she wouldn’t try calling me at Janna’s, ’cause she hates it when Janna answers the phone. (Sasha thinks that Janna doesn’t like her, but it isn’t Sasha that Janna doesn’t like — it’s Sasha’s mother. But I’m not as good at telling my friend the truth, so I’d never cleared this up.)

And as if all that worrying hasn’t kept me awake long enough, I worry about my books, and even worse, my bibliography. What am I going to say to Mr. O. tomorrow? Will he give me a big fat F? How am I ever going to get into Carter with bad grades? And how can I tell Sasha, with all our big plans of going to Carter together, that I got an F? Holy moly.

I guess I eventually worry myself to sleep ’cause an early-morning knock on the door wakes us up. It’s Chloe standing in the hall outside Briggs’s studio with my stack of library books. She’s holding them like they’re really heavy, and she brushes her red hair off her face like she’s put out by the journey, but she’s wearing mascara and lip gloss, and I can tell (and I’m pretty sure that Gage can, too) that she doesn’t want to leave things the way they were last night.

I would gush a thousand words of appreciation, but instead I thank her once and get out of the way quick so Gage and Chloe can make up. They go into the hall — supposedly so they won’t wake Briggs, but I know it’s mostly so they can have privacy. OK by me. I help myself to Cheerios.

“Who said you could eat those, runt?” Briggs says, crawling off his love-seat bed. I know he’s only kidding. Of all of Gage’s friends, Briggs is the nicest. Next year, when Briggs’s lease is up on the studio, we might try to find an apartment that all three of us can share. Then Briggs would get to live in a bigger place, and the rent would be cheaper for me and Gage.

“Yeah,” I say, glancing at the clock on his stove. It’s a relief to have the books back, but I know that if I’m going to get to school on time, I still won’t have an outline for Mr. O. And I can’t risk being late again; one more tardy and I’ll be assigned detention.

“She wasn’t just an author, you know,” I say. “She was an abolitionist and fought for women’s rights.”

“I know. I was gifted, too, remember?” Briggs likes to remind me of this. According to Gage, Briggs got into a bunch of good colleges but went to a nearby business school to save money. He’s the first one in his family to go to college.

Which reminds me to get the coins I’ve collected and drop them into the piggy bank Briggs gave me. It’s from One Stop Party Shop and is pink with daisies all over it. After I tap the coins in, I shake it like I always do. It’s getting heavy. When it fills up, Briggs and I will take it to the bank, where they have a coin machine that will count your coins and pay you back in dollar bills.

“Hey,” he says after the shake. “I brought you something.” Gage and Chloe come back into the apartment just as Briggs reaches into his closet and pulls out a hat that’s shaped like an upside-down ice-cream cone. When you put it on, it looks like someone just turned a cone over on your head and the pink ice cream is running down your face. It’s very funny, and we all laugh when he plunks it on my head, but it takes me a minute to realize why Briggs brought this hat home for me.

“But it’s an April Fools’ tradition!” says Briggs. The first of April is coming right up.

“Yeah, Brigster,” Gage says. “Remember when you wore that octopus hat and Mr. O. called you Calamari all day?”

Briggs laughs. “That name stuck for months! And remember how in third grade you came to school with all your baseball caps piled up on your head? Every year after, some kid tried to beat the record by wearing more. Heck, they’re probably up to a hundred hats by now — that is, they would be if they could still do it.”

“Mr. Chandler, our new principal, says that traditions like Snowflakes and Crazy Hat Day get in the way of learning,” I say.

The three of us explain that Eastland used to have all these cool traditions. At the sign of the first snowfall, the whole school would stop what they were doing and make paper snowflakes to hang throughout the hallways. In November, we’d hang homemade cards for the teachers, thanking them for all they do for us. Then at lunch, we’d have a big potluck feast that the parents made. And on April Fools’ Day, kids wore crazy hats.

But the best of all the traditions, the one that we won’t be doing for the very first time in the history of Eastland Elementary, is the fifth-grade campout in the library. Sasha and I had looked forward to this event for years. What could be cooler than sleeping over in the school with all of our friends and getting to see what the school is like at night, when it’s dark and quiet and almost no one else is around?

But one of the first things Mr. Chandler did when taking over earlier this year was cancel all school traditions. We have to stay on task, our principal says. Which basically means if it isn’t on a test, we can’t do it any longer.

“Well,” Briggs said, putting the hat back in the closet, “it’s a shame. This would have been one cool crazy hat.”

It’s second period. I wrote up a rough sketch of an outline during homeroom and now I’m in computer lab, wondering if I can create my bibliography on the laptop in front of me without Ms. Finch noticing. Not an easy feat. Ms. Finch is the type of teacher who notices everything.

We’re supposed to be exploring different sites that make word clouds. “Visual representations can be powerful,” Ms. Finch says. I make eye contact so she thinks I’m following along. “What words come to mind when I say community?”

Paper Things, I think, but of course I don’t say it. Instead, I open a blank document, pull one of the library books onto my lap, and begin typing the title and author, hoping the desk is doing a good job of blocking me.

Daniel, whom I’ve been determined to ignore since he dove onto the seat beside me — thereby forcing Sasha to sit on the other side of the lab — reaches over and grabs the book from my lap. I want to yell at him, but I can’t risk alerting Ms. Finch, so I settle for a glare. I think he’s just trying to get me to focus on my computer work, but instead he stretches over and starts typing on my laptop!

I try to brush his hands away, but I see that he’s at the Port City library site and is searching for Louisa May Alcott. He clicks on the title of my book, copies the bibliographical information, and pastes it into my document. And just like that, I have all the information I need for my bibliography — with hardly any typing!

I let out a breath. Across the room, I catch Sasha’s gaze. She rolls her eyes, as though Daniel was being a show-off. I smile at her, but secretly I’m grateful to Daniel. Doing my bibliography this way will save me a ton of time — and is less likely to get me in trouble with Ms. Finch, since I don’t even have to take the rest of the books out of my bag. I know their titles and authors, and that’s all I need for looking them up on the library’s website.

As the rest of the kids are typing in words (“How do you spell organization?” I hear Linnie ask Ms. Finch), I look up the information for the next book. I’m careful to type only when everyone else is typing.

I’m getting close to the end — all the information is in place, but I’ll need to fix the spacing before I turn it in — when Daniel reaches over and brushes his hand across my keypad, minimizing my bibliography.

“Ari,” says Ms. Finch from behind me. Her wool pants brush against my arm. “Have you pulled up the class results?”

“We pulled up the results together. See?” He points to the word cloud on his screen. The word community is large and in the center. Around it are words in different sizes and colors, hanging together like a floating mobile. Togetherness stands out in large bold letters, almost as big as the word community.

I glance at Daniel. “Thanks,” I mutter, wondering why he’s gone out of his way to help me — but too afraid of the answer to ask.