Told by Pearl Summers
“Oh my God! No!”
There were mere minutes to go before the Sock Ball started, and I was FREAKING OUT. The gym walls were covered in sparkling snowflakes—each one painstakingly hand-cut from glittery paper. Twinkle lights cast an inviting glow from the stage, where DJ Doozy was ready to spin a carefully selected playlist of tunes, and blue and white streamers draped the entrance to create a magical wintry welcome. Then Tamille and Arjana unfurled the banner that had been their one and only responsibility as members of the Sock Ball committee.
“We are not hanging that up,” I said.
There was a hush in the gym. Tamille seemed like she might cry.
“It says ‘Suck Ball’!” I looked to my friends Rebecca and Monica for support. They were both wincing.
“Yes,” Tamille said, but her accent made it sound like yass. “We make it just like you said. Welcome to the suck ball.”
“Sock. Saaaaahck.” I stretched out the sound so she’d get it. She didn’t.
“Suuuuuuuhck,” she repeated.
And that’s what you get when you put ESL students in charge of the banner. Mrs. Carlisle, the teacher supervisor, should have known better.
“We can fix it,” Marco Saunders, one of the only guy members of the committee said. “Just round out the U into an O.”
I sighed. Leave it to a boy to think a quick fix like that would work. We’d never find a marker that perfectly matched that shade of aqua. It would look terrible.
“Just hang it at the very back of the gym,” I ordered. Maybe no one would notice.
Anyway, it wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was that Connor was almost definitely going to ask me to dance. Well, that and the fact that we were going to collect a ton of socks for poor people. Obviously.
“Where’s the ballot box?” I shouted in a panic.
“Rebecca just went to get it,” Monica answered over her shoulder. She was already walking to the back of the gym to hang the banner.
“And the confetti cannons?”
“Ready to go.”
Thank God for Rebecca and Monica. Being student council president is a huge responsibility. There’s no way I could do it without smart, dependable friends by my side.
“How do you want for us to help?” Tamille had sidled up to me—like I didn’t already have my hands full enough without having to find jobs for the least helpful helpers!
“Why don’t you and Arjana walk down the hall and welcome people, okay?” I suggested. It was the simplest thing I could think of. “Say ‘Welcome to the Sock Ball.’ Actually…” I thought better of it. “Just say ‘Welcome to the winter dance.’”
Already, I could see my class coming toward the gym—walking slower than I would have liked. They were all crowded around Shady, Pou, and the stupid duck, which was waddling along at a snail’s pace. On the bright side, at least it gave me a minute to get ready.
I freshened my lip balm. “Places, everyone!” I hollered, as Rebecca ran to the table with the ballot box. “Dim the lights! Start the music!” I yelled to DJ Doozy—a potbellied guy in a glittery vest who my dad had hired as a donation to the school. The opening drumbeat of “Shake It, Shake It” started up. The biggest event of the school year was about to begin.
“Welcome to the Sock Ball!” I said with a big smile, once my class had finally gotten close enough to hear me over the music. “Please get your socks ready for counting. For each pair you donate, you’ll get a ballot for the drawing to win the X500 tablet computer.”
Not to brag, but the tablet was a big deal, and it was all thanks to me. My dad’s friend Gary works in the head office at Best Buy. I’d personally asked him for the donation, and the tablet he gave us was top-of-the-line, with 64 gigabytes of RAM and wireless headphones. Kids had been going nuts talking about how much they wanted it—and based on the overstuffed plastic bags of socks they were carrying, most of them were in it to win it. Of course, there were a few exceptions.
Jasmin brought fifteen pairs. Mark had twenty-eight. Then Aisha stepped up to the table.
“Two pairs of socks,” I said, giving her a small smile as I counted out two ballots for her. “Great effort.”
I meant it sincerely. She never brought in cupcakes for class celebrations or even dressed up for Halloween. For Aisha, it was a great effort…but she totally twisted my words.
“It’s not my fault,” she said. “That’s all my mom bought.”
“No big deal.” It was Connor Johnson, standing behind her. Even from the other side of the table, he smelled amazing—like the ocean on a rainy day. I think he might have borrowed a few sprays of his dad’s cologne. “More chances for me to win.”
Connor held up his bag, then raised a second one—both stuffed full. Had he really made all that effort just to win the tablet, or was it partly to impress me?
I smiled. “That’s so awesome, Connor,” I said. “You’ll definitely have a great chance.”
“Hold up. Wait a second.” Pou stepped out from behind Connor. His voice made me cringe. “So the more socks your family can afford to buy, the better chance you have of winning? Mrs. Okah, that’s completely unfair,” he complained to our teacher. She was busy telling Mike and Hassan to stop playing with the water fountain, though, so she didn’t pay him much attention—not that she would have anyway. Pouya is always complaining about something or lying about something or making trouble or annoying people.
“It’s completely fair!” I pointed out. “And anyway, it’s not like socks are hard to get. You can buy them at the dollar store.”
Marco and I each took one of Connor’s bags and started counting. “I got thirty-three,” I said.
“Twenty-five,” he reported.
A grand total of fifty-eight! The highest number yet.
Pouya kept muttering about unfairness, but I ignored it. When he stepped up to the table, it was so obvious that he was only making a thing about it because he’d brought three pairs.
“Keep that thing on its leash!” I said to Shady as he and Pou walked past with the ridiculous duck.
The other fifth graders came next, and then two classes of fourth graders. By the time we’d counted the last of the socks and entered everyone’s ballots into the ballot box, the party was in full swing. Only, it was not going the way I’d planned. People completely understood the sock ball idea. In fact, there were so many pairs of balled-up socks being thrown around that, in some corners, you couldn’t see the gym floor.
But it was also supposed to be a dance.
And nobody was dancing.
Mike and Hassan were trying to throw socks into the basketball nets, and a bunch of them were already stuck. Connor, Mark, Rob, and two other fifth graders I didn’t know were running around trying to nail each other in the head with sock balls. A whole bunch of kids were crowding around the dumb duck, asking questions while Pou held its leash and Shady sat in a corner, obsessively scribbling on little scraps of paper like he always does. Crystal and Mary, some fifth graders from Room 12, had tied a whole bunch of socks into a long rope and were trying to skip with it.
Luckily, I had an idea for how to dial down the chaos and start the dancing.
I walked over and yelled into DJ Doozy’s ear. He nodded. The hip-hop song he’d been playing faded. The strobe lights stopped revolving and were replaced by a warm, red glow, and the opening bars of “My Hero”—the most romantic song of all time—began. Connor didn’t know it yet, but this was our song. The one I played over and over in my bedroom when I was thinking of him. It was his big chance to ask me to slow dance.
I caught his eye from across the gym and smiled. He gave a little wave back. Dylan nudged his shoulder. I couldn’t hear from all the way across the gym, but obviously I knew the basics of what he was saying. “Ask her to dance, idiot!” or “Pearl’s looking at you!” Something like that.
“Oh my God. I think he’s definitely getting ready to ask you.” Rebecca squeezed my arm. As one of my best friends, she knew how much I’d been dreaming of this moment.
“Do you think so?” I asked modestly, even though I knew it was true. He’d just taken a step forward. In less than a minute, we’d be dancing. Then—
“Oh my goodness, look!” Shushanna yelled.
“She’s dancing.” Tanya was pointing across the gym to where Shady was standing, holding his duck’s leash.
“That’s the cutest thing,” Tamille screeched.
Illuminated by the soft red lighting, the stupid duck was swaying from side to side in perfect time to the music.
“Guys! Do the ducky!” Mark yelled. He started to sway. Then Connor and some of the other guys started doing it too. Before long, most of the kids on both sides of the gym were slow dancing alone, swaying back and forth like dumb-looking ducks…and before I could do a single thing about it, “My Hero” was fading out, and a song with a heavy bass line was taking its place.
Worst of all, the duck seemed to like that one even better.
She bopped her head from left to right and shuffled her webbed feet forward across the floor while Shady—wearing his tacky sunglasses—followed, holding the leash. Pouya was right behind him, like always.
I can’t remember who joined them next to start the conga line, but I’ll never forget the way it bounced and snaked around the gym for almost the entire rest of the dance—or how, after the confetti cannons were fired, the lights came up, and it was time to make the announcement of the grand-prize winner, this happened:
“And the winner is…” I said into the microphone. I reached into the ballot box to retrieve the name of the lucky student. “Svenrietta!”
People started laughing.
I didn’t get why.
“Svenrietta,” I repeated. “Come get your prize.” I’d never heard the name before, but I figured it was a new ESL student from a different class. Sometimes they come and go so fast it’s hard to keep track of them.
“The duck won the tablet!” someone announced.
“Woo-hoo! Svenrietta!” Pouya pushed Shady forward to claim the prize. When he stepped up and took it from me with his head hung low, all the kids went wild.
At the time, I just stood there, confused.
It wasn’t until later—when we were picking up the last of the socks, and I dumped the ballots into the recycling bin—that I got angry. One ballot caught my eye. Svenrietta. Then another. Svenrietta. I started unfolding them.
Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta. Svenrietta.
There were no fewer than fifty ballots with her name.
Ducks don’t buy socks.
There was something foul going on, and it might have had the duck’s name written all over it, but I was almost certain it was Pouya Fard’s doing.