Thursday, February 19

DAVID

On Thursday, at lunchtime, Luke vanishes again. He was right next to me in science, then the dismissal bell rang and we were both packing up our stuff, but when I turn to say something to Luke, he’s not there.

I can’t spend another lunch period imagining Luke and Sammie sucking face, so I head upstairs, away from the cafeteria. I’m wandering the halls, half hoping I’ll spot Luke and Sammie and half hoping I won’t, when I walk by Mrs. Olivar’s art room. It’s full of kids, and there’s music playing. Curious, I stop and take a step through the open door.

Everyone is drawing or painting, except for two girls who are working at the pottery wheels in the back of the room. Mrs. Olivar looks up and sees me.

“David,” she says cheerfully, “I was hoping you’d make your way to us.”

I start to say something about meeting with a teacher when Arnold O’Neill, who’s in my English and science classes, and isn’t a complete nerd even though his name is Arnold, waves at me. “You can sit here,” he says, pointing to an empty stool between him and Sean Cibelli. Then I smell pizza. I look around, and everyone has a slice. I spot a giant box of doughnuts on Mrs. Olivar’s desk. Pizza and doughnuts and drawing cartoons for an hour. I’m still not sure I’m staying, until I remember that it’s taco day in the cafeteria, and everyone says the taco meat comes from pigs’ butts, which I don’t really believe, but still, they never taste right. So I walk over to the empty stool, set my backpack down, and grab a piece of white paper.

“Is this a club or something?” I ask Arnold.

“Duh,” Sean says. “The art club.”

I look over at what Arnold’s drawing. He’s working on a piece of paper with six large squares inked out on it. It’s a comic strip, and he’s filling in the squares with one of those Japanese manga stories—there’s a girl with huge eyes and a boy with spiky hair wearing a turtleneck.

“Nice,” I say. Then I look at Sean’s drawing. He’s got a sheet of plain paper, and is doing a pencil sketch of a bird. Even though it’s just pencil, the bird is so detailed and realistic that I half expect it to lift right off the paper and fly away.

“That’s amazing,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. “Do you draw? Or paint? Or make comics?”

“I draw, but not as good as you, and not comics. I read comic strips, but I’ve never tried to draw one myself. I don’t know how you can tell a whole story in those little blocks.”

“Comic strips are the best,” Arnold says, shading in the boy’s spiky hair in the second box.

“Birds are the best,” Sean says. “I’m going to be the next David Sibley. He’s my hero. What do you draw?”

I shrug and feel my face start to get hot, thinking about all the cute kittens and puppies I’ve drawn for Allie’s stories. Luckily, Arnold and Sean are both looking down at their papers and don’t see my tomato face. “All kinds of stuff.”

“Animals or people or fruit or exploding spaceships?” Arnold asks, beginning to sketch in the third block of his comic strip.

“Animals mostly, I guess,” I say, my face slowly cooling down and returning to its usual white-with-freckles state. “I make picture books sometimes, with a lot of goofy animals, but I also do realistic stuff. I’d like to learn how to draw a comic strip.”

“They’re easy,” Arnold says. He points to his drawing. “You use a template, like this. Mrs. Olivar has tons of them. You plan out what you’re going to draw on one template, and then you draw it on another.”

“How do you fit a whole picture in such a small space?”

Arnold laughs. “You just have to scale things down. Decide what’s really important. It’s like a puzzle. What kind of comics do you read?”

“Not manga. More like old school stuff.”

“Like the Peanuts and Family Circle?”

“Not that old school. Calvin and Hobbes. Garfield. Bloom County. And The Northern Province. That’s my favorite.”

“The Northern Province. Melvin Marbury, right?”

“How’d you know? Nobody our age has even heard of him.”

Arnold tips his head to one side and studies his half-done comic strip. Then he nods and looks up at me. “I didn’t know him either, until about two weeks ago. But he’s going to be at the New Roque public library in a couple of weeks—”

“No way!”

“Way,” Sean says, nodding. “He’s in town because of the Big Apple Comic Con.”

“I wanted to go to that,” I say. “But my parents say I’m too young to go by myself. And they won’t take me, even though my dad was a huge Melvin Marbury fan when he was a teenager and gave me all his Melvin Marbury comic books. Why’s Mr. Marbury coming to our library?”

“Mrs. Olivar said one of the librarians went to college with him or something, and she arranged it,” Arnold says. “There’s a comic strip contest too. He’s picking the best ones. And giving a talk.”

“Comic strips,” Sean says disgustedly.

“Wait a minute,” I say, because I completely can’t believe it. “How come I didn’t know about any of this? The library or the contest?”

“It’s only open to kids in the art club. Have you ever come to the art club before?”

“No, but I come to art class.”

“A class is not the same thing as a club,” Sean says, carefully shading in the beak on the bird he’s drawing. “And besides, Mrs. Olivar did put up the poster about the contest.”

He points his pencil at the front wall of the art room, where Mrs. Olivar hangs all her inspirational posters and notices. There’s a Dr. Seuss poster that says, “You’ll never be bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do!” and that “Be the change” poster that all the teachers seem to love, plus one of North American birds, a creepy one of a human skeleton, and one that’s a Picasso painting. I scan the wall and finally pick out a small nine-by-twelve sheet of yellow paper with a bunch of writing and what looks like a comic strip. I can’t read any of it except for the word “contest,” which is larger and darker than the rest of the paper.

“I guess I never noticed it,” I say. “Am I still eligible? Can I still meet Melvin Marbury? And have him look at a comic strip I draw?”

“I don’t know about the meeting part,” Arnold says, “but you can listen to him. And it’s not a guarantee that he’ll choose your strip. There’ll be like a hundred kids submitting strips, and you’ve never even drawn one before—”

“Yeah but I can draw.”

“I can draw too,” Sean says, setting his pencil down and holding up his bird drawing. “But who would want to draw a comic strip when you could make a beautiful white-breasted nuthatch like this?”

“Nice,” Arnold says, nodding appreciatively at Sean’s drawing. “I could never do that kind of detail. That bird looks like it’s about to fly right out of the paper.”

“It’s all in the shading,” Sean says. “You need to think about where your light source is, and really think through the shadows.”

Arnold nods, then he turns back to me. “You have to submit the comic strip to Mrs. Olivar by the end of next week, and it has to illustrate that quote from Calvin and Hobbes,” Arnold says, pointing to the whiteboard, where Mrs. Olivar has written, Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend. —Bill Watterson

I grab a blank piece of paper and copy the quote down.

“And you have to come to a meeting after school on Tuesday,” Arnold adds.

“Anyone can submit?”

“Anyone who wants to draw a comic strip,” Sean says. “And is an official member of the art club.”

“How do I become an official member?”

Arnold laughs. “Tell Mrs. Olivar. She has a copy of the contest submission rules on her desk, and the permission slip for the field trip. It’s during school, so you’ll have to miss all your morning classes.”

Miss classes and meet Melvin Marbury? I don’t even wait for Arnold to finish talking before I head to Mrs. Olivar’s desk.

SAMMIE

In math, Haley passes me a note: Are you staying after school?

Yes, I write back.

Want to do something fun?

Sure. In the library?

In the gym. It’s a just-for-fun softball practice

I look at the piece of paper. I pick up my pencil to write no thanks, but then I think: Why not? Haley’s nice. And wants to be friends. And doesn’t care about Luke or David. And isn’t Luke or David. Shake it off, Dad said. Maybe hanging out with Haley will help me shake it off. The preliminary baseball meeting isn’t for two weeks, and real practices won’t start for another week after that, so fooling around with a couple of girls playing softball can’t hurt anything.

Okay, I write, and hand the note back to her. She reads it, grins, and holds up her hand for a high five.

When the last bell rings, she’s waiting outside my social studies class, and we walk to the gym together.

I push through the locker room doors and am hit by a wall of chatter. I stop, frozen. I thought there would be a couple of girls showing up, but instead, the locker room is packed with them, all talking and fixing their hair and laughing.

I almost turn around and leave because there are so many girls. I don’t need to spend my after-school time comparing hair products or being yelled at for poaching someone’s boyfriend. But Haley puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Take the locker next to mine.”

“Okay.”

“We gotta move,” she says, pulling her sweater over her head and kicking off her Converse. “Coach Wright doesn’t like stragglers.”

“Got it,” I say, opening my backpack to pull out my gym clothes. Haley sits down on the bench and takes off her no-show socks, revealing hot-pink-painted toenails.

“You paint your nails?” I ask.

“Just my toes. I don’t like how polish feels on my fingernails, but I love the colors.” She holds one foot out and admires the pink. “It’s fun, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” I say, pulling my gym T-shirt on. I look down and realize it’s my fall ball team shirt. I waver for a moment, thinking that maybe I should put my regular T-shirt back on. But that one’s from summer baseball camp. Not any better. I pull the fall ball tee off, turn it inside out, and pull it on.

Out in the gym, the girls are standing in a circle, with Coach Wright in the middle. I jog up and join them, making sure I’m next to Haley. Looking around, there are white girls and black girls and Hispanic girls, and one eighth grader—Jelly Lee—who’s Asian, I think. I realize that I know most of the seventh graders. Adriana and Izzy are in PE with me, although I never talk to them. I recognize Malia Martinez and DeeDee Kalama too. Olivia’s in Spanish and social studies with me. We were in the same class in first, second, and third grade, and she played Little League with me one season.

“Let’s start with a warm-up,” Coach Wright says. She turns to an eighth grader, a tall black girl I recognize but don’t know. “Savanna, you and Valerie take it from here.”

Savanna nods and steps into the middle of the circle along with a white girl, also an eighth grader, who I figure must be Valerie. She’s got long red hair braided in two French-braid pigtails and a ton of freckles.

“Okay,” Savanna says. “Right arm across your chest.” I pull my right arm across my chest, along with all the other girls in the circle, and Savanna and Valerie.

“One,” Savanna calls.

“Two,” all the other girls respond, holding the stretch.

“Three,” Valerie says.

“Four,” the rest of us call.

We count that way up to ten, then switch arms, repeating each ten-second hold three times. I’ve never warmed up like this before. Usually, in baseball, the coach just tells us what to do and we do it on our own. But before I can decide if I like it or not, Valerie says, “Thirty toe touches. One!”

We count the toe touches the same call-and-response way, then do thirty lunges, and I’m just getting used to this all-inclusive kind of warm-up when Savanna says, “Now, we’re gonna pair up—”

I turn to Haley, because if I have to pair up with someone, I want it to be her. But Savanna’s still talking.

“Each new girl with a veteran. New girls, raise your hands.”

Haley’s arm shoots up, like she’s proud to be new. Reluctantly, I hold mine up too.

“Newbies, hold those hands up high!” Valerie shouts.

It’s been a long time since I worried about being picked for the team. Even back in elementary school when we played jail tag or capture the flag at recess, I was always one of the first to be chosen. But today, holding my hand up as one of the seventh-grade new girls, wearing my inside-out baseball team T-shirt, I’m praying that I won’t get left out.

An eighth-grade girl with tan skin bounces over to me. Her hair is as wild and curly as mine, even though it’s pulled into a ponytail. “Hey,” she says. “My name’s Zari.”

“I’m Sammie.”

Zari smiles and holds out her fist for me to bump.

“Okay, with your partner, two laps around the gym,” Savanna tells us. “Then find a spot and alternate sit-ups and push-ups.”

“C’mon,” Zari says, touching my arm. Together, we jog around the gym, Zari talking the whole time about how Coach Wright is really great with skills drills, and how she has a ton of homework in English class, but thank God they just finished a unit in science, so she doesn’t have any homework in that.

After that, we take turns doing sit-ups and push-ups. Zari counts for me and I count for her.

“Awesome,” Zari says, high-fiving me when I get twenty-five push-ups in a minute.

After the general warm-up, we do some more running drills and then move on to softball drills. Savanna and Valerie demonstrate each one before we start. Coach Wright walks around while we do the drills, but she doesn’t yell at us like Coach D does during PE. It feels weird. Like everyone is too nice.

At the end of practice, we huddle together around Coach Wright. “Great job, girls,” she says. “Official practices don’t start for almost a month, but I want to get ahead of the curve. These ‘fun’ practices are a great way to get to know each other and build the team from the inside out.”

Back in the locker room, I change into my dry T-shirt, and listen to the girls all around me talking.

Olivia and DeeDee are discussing the science test we all have on Friday. Savanna’s telling Zari some story about her sister, who plays on the high school softball team. The chatter doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

“What’d you think?” Haley asks me, grabbing her backpack out of the locker.

“It was fun,” I say. “I know most of the seventh graders.”

“You sound surprised by that.”

“Not surprised,” I say, but I don’t know how to explain it to Haley. It’s like I forgot about girls besides Sarah and Carli and their crowd. The others were there, all along, but I stopped seeing them.

“Want to come again tomorrow?” Haley says as I grab my backpack.

I shrug. “If my sisters can pick me up after, I guess so.”

The Peas pick me up at five on the dot, and say they’re happy to get me at five all week.

At home, Dad is already in the kitchen, getting dinner ready, when I walk through the door.

“Hey, Buddy,” he says. “The letter came today!”

He nods toward the fridge: the baseball team first meeting letter. The letter Dad and I have been waiting for all year.

“Want to read it?”

Actually, right now, I don’t feel like reading it. I know everything the letter says. Coach D’s completely pointless mandatory first baseball team meeting is famous at E. C. Adams Middle School. “Sure,” I say.

“How about you set the table and I’ll read it to you?”

I shrug, grabbing the napkins and silverware and distributing them around the table.

Dad takes the paper off the refrigerator and shakes it with a flourish, then clears his throat. “‘Dear parents, You are receiving this letter because your child has expressed an interest in joining the E. C. Adams Middle School baseball team’—blah blah blah—‘A mandatory meeting will be held on Tuesday, March third, during the lunch and recess period. At that time, all completed paperwork must be handed in, including medical forms, transportation permission forms and proof of academic eligibility’—blah blah blah. We’ve got those forms all done, right, Buddy? The letter goes on to say that boys who show up without the proper paperwork will be immediately cut. ‘There are always more interested players than the team can accommodate, so participation is not guaranteed.’ Coach is trying to separate the boys from the men, I guess.” Dad laughs. “He doesn’t scare us, right, Buddy?”

Boys from the men, I think to myself.

“Why’d you stay late today?” Dad asks.

I planned to tell him. The truth is, I didn’t think about exactly how or when I would tell him, but I always thought I would. Until right now. When I say, “Group project for English.”