When she got to school, she discovered Spirit Week had begun. The Spirit Committee had gotten together on Sunday night to decorate the school. Banners hung in every hallway that read things like, “Rah, Rah, Roosevelt!” and “Whip ’em, Wildcats!”
A table set up near the entrance of the school sold Spirit buttons for a dollar with the proceeds going to benefit the RMS Spirit Committee. Sally thought they looked kind of cool, but there was no way she was giving any of what little money she had to an organization Molly was a part of.
Decorations made of construction paper were stuck on lockers. They were in various shapes depicting school spirit such as footballs, football helmets, megaphones, pom-pons, and cheerleaders, as well as generic designs like rainbows, clouds, and suns. Roughly every fifth locker had something taped to it.
Despite the fact that she was predisposed to hate the Spirit Committee because Molly, Wendy, and Moira were on it, Sally was impressed with their work. It clearly had taken a lot of time to put something like this together. She marveled at how hard the Spirit Committee had obviously worked to transform the school into a joyful celebration of itself. With the big football game against cross-town rival, Jefferson Middle School, looming on Thursday, Sally could feel the spark of excitement being kindled towards an all-out frenzy of school spirit by the end of the week.
As she arrived at her own locker, she was secretly pleased to see that it was one of the ones that had received a decoration. She knew being selected was random, that she wasn’t really being singled out, but it made her happy anyway.
Then she saw what it was – a smiley face made from yellow construction paper, with the eyes and mouth cut out. It was exactly like the one in her dream.
Sally dropped her backpack. Her mouth fell open. Her heart stopped beating. Cold terror swept over her. Instinctively, she took a step back from her locker and ran into someone.
“Hey, watch it!” a boy’s voice said.
Sally barely heard him. She just stared straight ahead at her locker.
When this reappears, you’ll be able to get the key.
Suddenly, she could hear the chant: “Shakir! Shakir! Shakir!” It grew louder with each repetition until it roared in her ears.
“Hey!” Alison said. “Are you all right?”
Sally nearly leaped out of her skin, startling Alison. She laughed at first, but then her face became covered with concern.
“What’s the matter, Sally?” Alison said. “You’re as white as milk.”
Sally pointed at her locker. Alison followed with her eyes. She looked back, confused for a second. Then she met Sally’s petrified gaze, and her expression changed.
“From your dream,” Alison asked. Sally nodded.
“Exactly the same as in the dream,” Sally said.
“Holy crap,” Alison murmured. She stared, horrified, at the smiley face for a moment. “What was it supposed to mean when you saw it again?”
“That I’d be able to get the key,” Sally said quietly.
“How,” Alison asked after another pause.
“I don’t know,” Sally admitted. “And I’m afraid to find out.”
“C’mon, girl,” Alison said, picking up Sally’s backpack. “You are smart and strong. Standing here all terrified-y won’t help. No sense waiting for trouble to come to you.”
Sally stared incredulously at Alison. Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one Shakir was after.
“I suppose you’re right,” Sally said, swallowing hard.
She approached her locker cautiously and dialed the combination. She paused before opening it and shot Alison a worried glance. Then she flung the door open.
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting to see – A leering wolf’s face? A monstrous dog leaping at her from the impossibly small confines of the locker? A key on a pendant? Whatever it was, she didn’t get it. The only things on the other side of the locker door were her books and notebooks. They sat just as she had left them on Friday. For the moment, there was no monster hiding in her locker. She sighed, relieved.
Alison poked her head in to get a look. She turned to Sally quizzically.
“Well?” Alison asked.
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “Everything looks like it should for the moment.”
“Well, what did the dream say was gonna happen?”
“Just that I could get the key when I saw the smiley face again,” Sally answered.
“Hmm,” Alison said. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any clueage here.”
Sally wanted to scream. Why was this happening to her?
Angrily, she slammed her locker door shut. The smiley face was still there, grinning at her, mocking her. She yanked it off the metal door and tore it to pieces. Alison gave her a curious look.
“I hate this,” Sally said, throwing the shredded paper onto the tile floor. “I didn’t ask for this, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“I’m sorry, Sally,” Alison said. “I wish I could do more to help.”
“You could tell me what you saw in Madame Zelda’s tent Saturday night,” Sally said, suddenly savage.
Alison looked as though she might cry for a moment. She stared at Sally wretchedly with her big, blue eyes. Then she swallowed and smiled tightly.
“Please don’t ask me about that again,” Alison said. “I’m not allowed to tell you what I saw.
“Just trust me. I’m on your side, Sally. I’ll help you figure this out.”
Sally didn’t know what to say to her. Alison had never kept anything from her before. And this was about the most important thing ever. How could she be doing this? And how could Sally trust her?
She sighed. She would just have to manage without Alison somehow. She was alone at home. Now it seemed she was alone at school too. It made her terribly sad.
Before things could get more awkward, Brian came up to them. He leaned against the locker wall and smiled.
“What’s happenin’, ladies?” he said.
“Hi,” they answered in unison.
Brian looked down and spotted the torn paper on the floor around Sally’s feet. He looked back up at Sally’s locker, saw the tape still clinging to it, and frowned.
“You don’t like school spirit?” he asked.
Sally blushed. Her cheeks got hot, and she was suddenly embarrassed.
“Um,” Sally said, unable to come up with anything better.
“It was like that when we got here,” Alison said. “Someone must have ripped it down last night.”
“That sucks,” Brian said. “Who would do such a thing?”
Alison snorted. Sally blushed again.
“Probably Molly,” Brian said. “What a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Alison said. “She’s on the Spirit Committee, so she would have been here last night decorating. She knows whose locker this is. I bet her or one of her little, woo-woo-Molly girls did it to send Sally a message.”
“Damn, that girl needs an attitude adjustment,” Brian said.
Sally could have collapsed from relief. Alison’s lie put Brian onto Molly. He naturally assumed The Set had decided to mess with her. Sally didn’t need to offer any further explanation. Maybe Sally wasn’t quite on her own after all. Alison seemed to still have her back on some things.
“So, Brian,” Alison said. “What brings you by? Come to show off your lederhosen?”
Brian laughed. His eyes twinkled.
“No,” he said. “Just thought I’d say hi to two of my favorite girls on my way to homeroom.”
“Player,” Sally said.
Brian blushed when she said that. Had Sally struck some sort of nerve?
“Well, I should get going,” he said, trying to recover his usual confidence. “Probably better go over my social studies. It’d be just like Mr. Frank to throw a pop quiz today with all this going on.”
“He wouldn’t!” Sally said.
“You want to find out the hard way?” Brian said. Sally shook her head. “It
’s Monday. He’s likely to be extra mean.
“See ya later, Sal.”
Brian shuffled off. Sally watched him go with her heart sinking. Why did Mondays have to be so bad?
“Come on,” Alison said. “He’s probably right. We better get going so we can study.”
The two girls trudged off to homeroom. In a way, Sally was relieved. By having to focus on Mr. Frank and his insidious pop quizzes, the thought of the strange omen on her locker was dashed from her head.
***
Much to Sally’s relief, Mr. Frank did not spring a quiz on them. She wasn’t sure, though, that what he did instead wasn’t worse.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said as the bell rang. “As you are no doubt aware, this is Spirit Week. We will therefore be dedicating our time this week to school spirit.”
Sally blinked at him. They’d be working on school spirit instead of social studies? Was he serious? She didn’t mind the break from the grind of regular activities, especially in a subject she didn’t like, but this was just strange.
She looked around the classroom. Everyone else appeared as perplexed as she was.
“I can see by the looks on your faces you’re surprised,” Mr. Frank said, putting his hands behind his back and waving his giant belly at them. “But school spirit is important. It is closely related to community spirit. Schools are communities. The more a community takes pride in itself, the more its citizens are willing to do to make it a better place to live and work.
“Therefore, as citizens of Roosevelt Middle School, you need to learn pride. If you take pride in your school, you’ll want to make it the best place you can. That’ll be the focus of our work this week.”
Sally had never thought about it that way before. She thought it doubtful school spirit really made anyone work harder to improve the school. Molly was on the Spirit Committee, and she only was interested in putting people under her heel. Still, Sally found the concept intriguing.
“Each class – sixth, seventh, and eighth grades – will be competing for the Wildcat Spirit Stick,” Mr. Frank went on. “The eighth-graders usually win it, but it is not unheard of for a sixth grade class to earn the Spirit Stick, and I am confident that this year’s group could be that rare exception.”
Great, Sally thought. More unasked-for pressure.
“There will be Spirit Stick activities and contests throughout the week in which you will have the opportunity to earn points for your class. For example, everyone who buys a Spirit Button and wears it can earn his or her class one point a day. There are a limited number of these, so make sure you get down to the booths today, so you won’t miss out and so you can maximize your ability to help the team.”
Sally noticed Mr. Frank was wearing a Spirit button, and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She became convinced he’d never had a date in middle school or high school.
“There will also be bake sales throughout the week,” Mr. Frank continued. “This one should be easy for you. You all like sweets. The class that raises the most money through the bake sale, wins fifty points.
“There are a number of other activities throughout the week, and we’ll go over them each day, so you can stay on top of your opportunities to help your class.
“But there is one in particular we will focus on today. There is an essay-writing contest to celebrate School Spirit. Each student will write a paper of two hundred words or less describing the virtues of Roosevelt Middle School. A panel of teachers will be the judges. The top ten essays in the entire school will be awarded points. Tenth place earns ten points, ninth place receives twenty points, and so on up to first place, which gets one hundred points.
“This is a real opportunity to open a big lead in the Spirit Stick competition, because it is school-wide instead of by class. If ten sixth-graders were to win all the places, that would be five hundred fifty points for you and none for the other two classes!
“So I want all of you to put your best essay-writing skills to work here. Think about why Roosevelt is such a great place to go to school, and let’s sweep this competition!”
Sally couldn’t believe what she was hearing. They were supposed to write a paper on how awesome school was? Could this be lamer?
Worse, she couldn’t have begun to tell anyone anything about why Roosevelt Middle School was so great. She’d only been here for two months, after all. And, really, it was just school. In its way, it was better than elementary school, and she enjoyed Mr. Pipich’s English class and doing the play. But none of these things seemed to her to be worth mentioning in an essay on school spirit. Frowning, she raised her hand.
“Yes, Miss Prescott?” Mr. Frank said.
“What if you don’t know anything about why Roosevelt Middle School is so fantastic?” she said. A few people giggled.
“What do you mean?” Mr. Frank said.
“Well, we’ve all only been here since the end of August,” Sally explained. “So how can we really know how great a school it is? This contest seems to be stacked in favor of the eighth-graders. They’ve been here the longest. They know more about the school.”
Mr. Frank put his hands on his hips and gave Sally a stern look. Crimson anger washed up from his fat neck to the top of his severely receding hairline. He aimed his stomach at Sally. The effect was much more comical than threatening. Sally suppressed a grin.
“Are you trying to be funny, Miss Prescott?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I’m actually confused. I don’t know how to answer the question.”
Mr. Frank scanned the room. Several people nodded in agreement with Sally.
“Surely you have some opinion of Roosevelt?” Mr. Frank prodded.
“I guess,” Sally said.
“Then I suggest you put that in your essay,” he said. “Unless you’d prefer to work on it in detention this afternoon?”
Sally looked stunned. He’d give her detention if she didn’t have something wonderful to say about the school? Quickly, she shook her head.
“Good,” Mr. Frank said. “Then start writing. I’d hate to tell Mr. Pipich he won’t have his Juliet today.”
Sally deflated. She had no idea what to say, and when she asked for help, she had been threatened with detention. This was such a stupid assignment. She hadn’t liked Mr. Frank from the first day of school.
She sighed and took up her pencil. No ideas came to her. She looked up at Mr. Frank. He had returned to his desk, but he was still glaring at her. She bent back over her sheet of paper.
“Roosevelt Middle School is wonderful,” she wrote. “There are lots of fun things to do here.” Like write stupid essays.
She told herself to think. What sorts of fun things are there to do? There’s the play. Yeah, that’s good. What else? She thought for a whole minute. Eating lunch with Alison probably didn’t count. It wasn’t part of the curriculum, after all. She could do that anywhere. Same with hanging out with Brian during rehearsal.
Nothing else came to her. That was it. She was going to get detention.
She spent the rest of the hour struggling to write something relevant. She erased what she had written so many times, her paper threatened to tear. When the bell finally rang, she had managed to jot down four lame sentences about how Roosevelt Middle School provided her with lots of opportunities to learn.
Mr. Frank instructed them to leave the papers on their desks; he would collect them and turn them in.
“Please make certain your names are on them so proper credit can be given.” he said.
As he went through the classroom to pick them up he glanced down at Sally’s before she could escape. He glared at her.
“That’s it?” he said. Sally didn’t answer. “I’m very disappointed, Miss Prescott. I’d have thought someone of your talent could have done much better than this.”
***
“He said what?” Alison exclaimed at lunch. Sally repeated Mr. Frank’s words. “Quel trou du cul!”
“Do I wan
t to know what you said,” Sally asked.
“Yes,” Alison said, grinning wickedly. “But I better wait to tell you later. I spent enough time in Principal Carter’s office last week.”
Sally laughed. Maybe she should have taken French after all.
“That was the stupidest assignment I’ve ever gotten,” Alison complained. “You were totally right when you asked how to answer it. No one in our class had the guts to say anything like that.”
“I couldn’t believe he threatened me with detention,” Sally said.
“He has a very small penis,” Alison said.
Sally nearly choked on her sandwich. She couldn’t believe Alison had said that.
“What?” Alison said as though she’d only described the weather. “You know it’s true.”
Sally snorted. Alison grinned and had a sip of her Gatorade.
“You know what’s weird, though?” Sally said, changing the subject slightly.
“What?”
“Him saying I have all this talent,” Sally replied. “I mean, I’m lucky when I get B’s in his class. I hate it, and he doesn’t like me. So why would he give me a compliment?”
“It wasn’t a compliment, Sally,” Alison said.
“He didn’t mean it as a compliment,” Sally corrected. “But it definitely is one. You don’t say something like that unless it’s what you believe. I think he really was disappointed that I didn’t do better.”
Alison chewed her sandwich thoughtfully. After a moment, she swallowed and looked over at Sally.
“Maybe Mr. Pipich told him how good you are in the play, and Mr. Frank figured that means you should be able to help us win. Or he just thinks you should have something awesomazing to say about the stupid school.”
“It’s as close as he’s ever come to being nice to me,” Sally said. “It was just weird.”
Brian and Brad arrived. Brian sat down across from Sally and smiled and Brad set up next to her.
“Hey, Sal,” Brian said. “I heard you took on Frank this morning.”
“What?” Sally exclaimed. Alison rolled her eyes.
“I heard you and Mr. Frank got into it over that essay we have to write,” Brian said.
“Yeah,” Brad said. “It’s all over school.”
Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale Page 11
