The Class

by Frances O’Roark Dowell

  Getting up from his desk, he held out his pencil like a white flag. An upraised pencil signaled Don’t be afraid! All I’m doing is walking to the back of the classroom to use the sharpener! No hijinks happening here!

  But be very afraid if you’re Ellie’s supersecret spy notebook, Henry thought as he began his journey down the aisle. He swung his left arm in a wide arc. Just old Henry being goofy. Just Henry expending a little excess energy. And what’s that on Ellie’s desk? Oh nothing, oh don’t even bother watching as Henry’s hand reaches down and plucks Ellie’s notebook and tucks it under his arm. What notebook? That notebook? That’s my notebook, why do you ask?

  He glanced around, but nobody was paying attention to him. Henry resisted the urge to start singing or fall to the floor and do somersaults all the way to the pencil sharpener. He reached the back of the room, sharpened his pencil, and went back to his desk, where he immediately deposited Ellie’s notebook into his backpack.

  A little light reading for this evening, he thought right as the bell rang. He wondered if Ellie had written about him, and if so, what? Did she think he was the thief? Well, someone like Ellie would demand proof, Henry thought as he dropped his freshly sharpened pencil into his backpack. She would demand he be tried by a jury of his peers and that evidence be presented against him before a ruling could be made.

  “Henry, I want that homework assignment turned in tomorrow,” Mrs. Hulka called out as he headed for the door. For a brief moment, Henry thought about plucking his homework—i.e., his newest paper airplane—out of his pack and sailing it in Mrs. Hulka’s direction. Here you are! Enjoy!

  But he didn’t. Because his mind was already out the door and headed for LA. And his feet were headed for the bathroom—he really had to pee, Sam or no Sam. His hands were slapping the lockers as he passed them, bang-bang-bang. His nose was sniffing the air, sniffing that smell of the cafeteria cranking up for lunch and the piney scent of the janitor’s bucket and the ever-present odor of wet paper towels (why did school smell so much like wet paper towels?). His mind? His mind was thinking about what he would find in Ellie’s notebook.

  He hoped he would find himself.

  He hoped Ellie knew he didn’t do it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lila

  Wednesday, October 11

  “How could you lose a photograph?” Rosie asked when Lila finally confessed her crime at lunch on Wednesday. “It was in a frame. It was virtually unlosable unless you’re a complete idiot.”

  “I don’t know,” Lila said. She crammed a handful of grapes in her mouth, feeling desperate. “It was in my backpack on Monday afternoon, and then when I got home, it wasn’t.”

  “So then you’re a complete idiot,” Rosie said, sticking her spoon into her yogurt. “No big surprise there. Listen, you need to find it. If you don’t, then I’m going to have to report I saw you taking something from Mrs. Herrera’s shelf.”

  Lila was stunned. “Why would you do that? It doesn’t even make any sense that you would do that.”

  “Well, you did steal it, didn’t you?” Now Rosie was examining the yogurt on her spoon as though it were something strange and foreign. She stuck the spoon back into the container without taking a bite. “Sooner or later, someone should tell Mrs. Herrera.”

  “But it was your idea!” Lila felt like crying. This was so unfair! “Why should I get in trouble for something that you told me to do?”

  “The way I remember it, it was your idea. I was the one who said you shouldn’t do it. Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and Mrs. Herrera will get fired soon.” Rosie pulled a banana from her lunch bag and then put it back. “Oh, look, here comes Carson. Do you think he’s brave enough to ask me to the dance? I wish Garrison would ask me. He’s so mysterious, don’t you think?”

  Lila didn’t think Carson was going to ask Rosie to the dance, though she would never say so. Carson might be cute, and he might be popular, but he was also strangely… decent. This morning he’d stood up in front of the class to announce that his mom had started making quilts for this cancer charity called Quilts for the Cure, and if anybody wanted to donate fabric or thread, that would be cool, but not to worry about it if they didn’t. Practically all the girls in the class raised their hands and promised to bring in fabric the very next day. Carson looked like he might cry. Rosie had made fun of him later, but Lila thought it was nice he was trying to do something good. She wondered if his grandma had cancer.

  “Okay, who’s gonna friend me with a little math homework help?” Carson asked when he reached their table. He put his hands on the table and leaned in. “Lila? Give me some help and a smile-ah?”

  “You’re so dumb!” Rosie laughed, rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t even hard homework!” She turned to Lila. “Maybe you ought to go look for that thing we were talking about? Like, now?”

  Lila nodded mutely and slowly rose from her seat. She’d probably get in trouble for leaving the cafeteria before recess without permission, but did it really matter? She was in so much trouble already, and she didn’t even know why. She never would have stolen anything from Mrs. Herrera if it weren’t for Rosie acting like it was the big bonding thing they were doing together. “I’ll be the lookout,” Rosie had said on Monday morning, pushing Lila into the empty classroom. “We’re partners in crime!”

  “I don’t know, Rosie,” Lila had said, holding on to the doorframe. “This could be a really bad idea.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s a great idea!” Rosie paused as she stepped back out into the hallway and looked left, then right. “We’ll give it back after lunch. Or by tomorrow at the latest. Really, I just want to see if Mrs. Herrera even notices that it’s gone.”

  “But what if something happens to it?” Lila said.

  “Just go!” Rosie pushed Lila again, this time with a lot more force. “It’s just a stupid photograph. What could happen to it? Now hurry up!”

  It had only taken a couple of seconds to grab the picture of Mrs. Herrera’s favorite teacher and shove it into her backpack, but that was enough time for Lila to wonder what she was doing and why she thought being friends with Rosie was a good idea. Oh, it had seemed like an awesome idea six weeks ago, when she’d been stuck with boring, geeky Ellie Barker. Rosie and Petra were much more her speed. They cared about clothes and being popular and having fun, everything that Lila cared about. They liked to talk about boys, Lila liked to talk about boys.

  But then Petra had cut off her hair and Rosie acted like it was Lila’s fault. She never did weird stuff like that before you started hanging out with us. It’s like you threw her off balance, Rosie had texted her right after it happened. But how could Lila have thrown someone like Petra off balance? Petra wasn’t a delicate flower that any wind could blow over. Petra was a humongous piece of granite that blocked your way. You couldn’t get past her or knock her down. She was big and you were little, case closed.

  Right before lunch Monday, Mrs. Herrera announced that several items had been taken from her special shelf, including her three ceramic kittens. Lila closed her eyes, trying to remember if the kittens had all been there when she’d stolen the photograph. But it had all happened so quickly—the mad dash into the classroom, the quick grab—that she hadn’t had time to notice anything.

  Had someone been in the room when she’d run in? Lila shivered. What if someone had been hiding in the book nook and had seen her?

  She felt like everyone must be looking at her, but no, they were all looking at Becca and Henry, the obvious suspects. Who else would people think of before they thought of Lila? Maybe Petra? That gave Lila an idea. She leaned across the aisle toward Rosie and hissed, “Petra,” in her loudest whisper. Other kids heard her, and all of a sudden the echoes—Petra, Petra, Petra—bounced around the room.

  So maybe nobody would ever point a finger at her. There was absolutely no reason to, not when there were so many other potential thieves in the classroom. And how likely was it that somebody had been hiding o
ut in the book nook and had seen her? Not likely at all.

  By the end of the day, Lila had almost forgotten that she was, in fact, a thief.

  It wasn’t until she got home Monday afternoon and opened up her backpack that she remembered. But when she reached in to pull the photograph out (where would she hide it? And what would she say if her mom found it?), it was no longer there. Someone had taken it. Lila’s entire body flooded with relief. How could she be caught if she didn’t have stolen goods in her possession?

  If only she didn’t have to tell Rosie that it was gone.

  But she knew there would be a price to pay if she didn’t tell and Rosie found out later. There was always a price to pay with Rosie. If you said one wrong word—“guys” instead of “boys” (for some reason this was important to Rosie) or “stink” instead of “smells”—you paid for it for the rest of the day. Rosie’s weapon was her phone; her ammunition was the group text.

  When she finally confessed today that the picture was missing, Lila thought she’d feel better. Just get out it out of your system, she’d told herself on the way into the cafeteria. Maybe Rosie would just shrug and say, Oh well, nothing we can do about it now.

  So why hadn’t she said that? Lila wondered as she slunk along the hallway now in search of a photograph she was pretty sure she’d never find. Wasn’t the problem out of their hands? They couldn’t get caught because they didn’t have the stolen object in their possession. Case closed.

  She was nearing the library (maybe whoever had stolen the photograph out of Lila’s backpack had stuck it behind some books?) when it dawned on her why Rosie wanted Lila to find it. If someone knew that Lila had it, they’d probably seen Lila steal it—and at the same time seen Rosie acting as lookout. But if Lila found the photograph and snuck it back onto Mrs. Herrera’s special shelf, then she and Rosie could deny everything.

  I am not going to cry, Lila insisted to herself, passing the library and heading to the computer lab instead. But she could feel the tears mounting an attack. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be a blubbering mess in the middle of the hallway. She’d worked so hard this year not to cry! All summer she’d watched sad YouTube videos about lost kittens and small children in the hospital who need kidney transplants, pinching herself every time she felt the tears coming. Middle school was going to be different for Lila, she’d decided on the day they moved into the new house. No one was going to call her “crybaby” anymore or leave packs of tissue in her backpack with Post-it notes that read Boo-hoo! stuck to them. She was never going to be that girl again. Her parents’ divorce was over and done with, she lived in a new town, was going to a new school. No one would ever know what a baby she’d been ever since third grade, when her mom and dad started fighting so much and everything had gotten terrible.

  And she’d done it! She’d taught herself not to cry. And without even trying, she’d become one of the most popular girls in her class—the good kind of popular, as far as Lila was concerned, the kind where people didn’t necessarily like you, but they wanted to be you. They were scared of you.

  Lila liked people being scared of her. But they wouldn’t be scared of her if they saw her running down the hallway with tears streaming down her face because she didn’t know what to do and she really only had one friend and she pretty much hated that friend and she was pretty sure that friend hated her.…

  A hard, firm voice inside her head ordered, INTO THE BATHROOM, NOW!

  Lila sniffed hard and pushed her way into the girls’ room. She would hide out until the tears passed out of her system. No one could see her cry. No one.

  Not even that little mouse Aadita, who was standing at the sink washing her hands. Had Aadita been crying too? It sure looked like it, but Lila didn’t care. “Get out of here!” she hissed. Aadita took a step back from the sink, but she didn’t leave. She looked sad, but she didn’t look scared.

  Lila leaned in, trying to look menacing. “I said, get out of here, you jerk!”

  Aadita flinched, but the only move she made was to pull a paper towel from the paper towel dispenser and dry her hands.

  Lila couldn’t stop herself. She grabbed Aadita by the arm and pulled her to the doorway. “Go cry somewhere else, crybaby! Why won’t you leave?”

  Aadita shook her head. Clearly she wasn’t going to talk or leave. She was just going to stand there. Lila thought about pushing her out of the bathroom, but she’d never pushed anyone in her life, and besides, it was impossible to imagine pushing Aadita anywhere. It would be like trying to push a feather.

  Lila knew what it was like to be a feather. She was the feather who got blown this way and that during the custody hearing, where a judge decided which parent she would live with and which one she’d see on weekends and holidays. She was the feather that twirled through the sky, round and round, not knowing where she would land.

  She knew all about being a feather.

  She opened her mouth to yell one more time, but her throat was filled with tears so all she could get out was, “Just go, okay? Please?”

  Aadita nodded. She walked toward the door. But before she opened it, she turned to Lila and said, “I think you are nicer than you behave. I think you should find nicer friends.”

  It was the most words Lila had ever heard Aadita speak in a row. She didn’t know what to say, and then there was nothing to say because Aadita was gone.

  Lila sniffed. She sort of wished that Aadita would come back, so they could talk some more. Did she really think Lila was nice? Lila didn’t know if she was nicer than she acted or not. She just knew that being mean was safer. So after Aadita left, she blew her nose as hard as she could and splashed her face with water. She went into a stall and closed the door behind her so she could have a meditation moment before going back out into the hallway.

  And if Aadita told anyone she’d found Lila crying in the bathroom, Lila would make her regret it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aadita

  Wednesday, October 11

  Aadita sat on her bed Wednesday night and studied the three tiny kittens in her hand. They were tiny, no bigger than grapes, and the one with the missing ear had the cutest expression, like it wanted nothing more than to rub against your arm and purr its heart out.

  The kittens had been living with her since Monday, and Aadita had thought about naming them, but she knew they already had names given to them by Mrs. Herrera. Besides, they weren’t hers and she had every intention of giving them back. But when? When it was safe, she supposed. When Lila had returned the photograph of Mrs. Herrera’s favorite teacher and when the Hatchet thief placed the book back on the shelf that held Mrs. Herrera’s special collection of special things. When everyone stopped being so strange.

  “Aadita, how is your history project coming along? It is due next week, correct?”

  Her father stood in the doorway. Aadita closed her hand over the kittens, although she knew her father wouldn’t notice the tiny creatures, or have a second thought about them if he did.

  “You look tired, Papa,” she said. “You shouldn’t travel so much.”

  Her father smiled. “It is part of my job, and besides, I get to travel to many wonderful places.”

  “Which you say you never really get to see.”

  “I see them on my way to and from the airport,” her father said. “It’s meeting the people I find interesting.”

  “You mean meeting transportation management geeks.”

  Her father smiled. “That is precisely what I mean. We get to talk about all the things that would bore our families to tears if we discussed them over the dinner table.”

  Aadita wished she could tell him about the kittens in her hand and ask for his advice, but she was afraid her father might not understand. He would be upset with her for stealing. But what she did on Monday morning really wasn’t stealing, it was saving. Not that she expected anyone to know the difference.

  It had been such a strange Monday from the very start. Normally Aadita’s
mother dropped her off at school at the usual time, but on this particular morning she had a dentist appointment, so she e-mailed Mrs. Herrera to see if Aadita could come to homeroom class twenty-five minutes early. Mrs. Herrera, it turned out, had a faculty meeting, but said she would leave the classroom unlocked for Aadita. Which was how Aadita came to be snuggled up in the book nook reading The War That Saved My Life when Lila and Rosie came to the door and started arguing about whether or not Lila should come in. “We’re partners in crime,” Rosie had said, and Aadita had shivered. What sort of awful thing were they about to do?

  A few seconds later Lila (who clearly did not want to do this) raced into the room, grabbed the photograph from Mrs. Herrera’s special shelf, and raced back out again.

  “Here, you take it,” Aadita could hear her saying to Rosie in the hallway, to which Rosie had responded, “No way! I’m not going to get caught with stolen goods.”

  Poor Lila, Aadita thought. She should have stayed friends with Ellie. Aadita would like to be friends with Ellie, but Ellie didn’t seem to need any friends. She was so independent!

  Aadita was about to sink back into the reading pillows when a sudden fear entered her. What if someone tried to steal Mrs. Herrera’s kittens? She had to admit that if she was tempted by anything on Mrs. Herrera’s special shelf for her special things, it was that tiny family of kittens, especially the one with only one ear. She would never steal them, of course, but what if someone else did? Her heart would break.

  The idea to take the one-eared kitten into her protection was sudden and impossible to resist. Aadita had always had a fondness for broken things. Once, last year when she was shopping with her mother at Target, she asked her mother to buy a doll with a cracked face. Aadita didn’t actually play with dolls anymore, and her mother rarely made impulse purchases, but she’d felt so sorry for that doll that surely no one would ever want or buy.