Ola Shakes It Up

by Joanne Hyppolite

  I thought about giving Aeisha a big kick in the shins but stopped myself. She had been in an even worse mood since she and Otis had switched their tests on Thursday. She was just taking all her nervousness out on me 'cause I was the only one who knew about it.

  “Why don't you go over and help Otis? I heard Davis crying this morning,” I suggested. I had promised myself that I would be super nice to Aeisha until she found out about her grade on that test. And I figured the best way to do that was to get her out of the house so I wouldn't end up breaking that promise.

  Aeisha put her coffee cup down with a clatter. “What do you care about that?”

  “Nothing. I just thought you might want to spend some time with Otis.” I felt bad sending Aeisha off on another one of her missions to help poor Davis, 'cause I knew it wasn't gonna work. Aeisha doesn't know anything about babies. Not like me. I'd helped Mrs. Gransby baby-sit her grand-kids lots of times.

  I waited for Aeisha to say something smart back, but she didn't. I looked up and saw that she had her head down, practically in her plate. Aeisha actually looked embarrassed! And all because I had mentioned Otis's— “Oh, no, Aeisha. Not Otis!”

  Aeisha's eyes blinked quickly, and then I knew for sure that she was hiding more than just her science grade. Aeisha had a crush on Otis, of all people!

  “He's not so bad,” Aeisha said quickly.

  I nodded slowly. Reading all those romance novels must have made Aeisha's brains turn to mush. I should have known something was wrong with her when she started talking to Otis. It wasn't just that he was a dweeb; she actually liked him. Gross.

  I had to get out of there before I started laughing. I didn't think that would qualify as being super nice. I ran out of the kitchen, holding my mouth, and bumped straight into Dad. “Hi, Dad. What are you doing home? It's Saturday, you know.”

  Dad blinked sleepily. He looked tired. “Fresh.”

  I tugged on one of his hands. “Don't forget our appointment tonight. Eight o'clock. I have a lot to talk to you about.”

  Dad nodded. “For your information, I have you down in my book, Ayeola. And I'm home because I have an appointment with Lillian this morning.”

  “Lillian? Really?”

  “Yes, I have an appointment with her great coffee.” Dad yawned. “If I don't get some soon, I'm gonna pass out, hear?”

  I stepped out of the way quickly and moved to sit on the stairs. Dad had been really good about keeping all our appointments, even if it meant leaving work and then having to go back. Mama said that the plan hadn't worked the way she had hoped but that this was a nice compromise.

  “Out of my way, Ola.”

  I looked up and saw Khatib on the stairs, bundled up in his winter coat and wearing his sweatpants. He was carrying a small black bag, but it wasn't his gym bag.

  I moved over a little so Khatib could pass. “Going to basketball practice?”

  “Yeah,” Khatib mumbled, heading toward the front door.

  “Well, where's your basketball sneakers? Where's your gym bag?” I asked loudly. It was strange that Khatib would have forgotten those. He took them to every basketball practice.

  Khatib shrugged and pulled on his gloves. “Don't need them today. See ya later.”

  I ran to go look outside through the picture window. Khatib hadn't even blinked at my questions, but that didn't mean they weren't good questions. How could he be going to basketball practice without his sneakers? Unless maybe he wasn't playing. Maybe the coach had benched Khatib for some reason. But that wasn't the only strange thing. Not only was Khatib going to basketball practice without his sneakers, he was also going there at least an hour late. Practice started at seven-thirty every Saturday. I ran to the closet and pulled on my coat quickly. This was just what I needed to keep me busy. Maybe I could figure out what was going on with Khatib by watching his basketball practice. I ran outside just in time to see him turn the corner and disappear. Luckily, there were plenty of trees and bushes in this neighborhood that I could duck behind, so I could follow Khatib without him catching me. For once I was grateful that I didn't know everybody in the neighborhood, or else somebody would have called out my name and blown my cover.

  I followed Khatib for four blocks, slowly. He was walking in the direction of the main road, where the bus stop was. I made sure that I stayed way behind him so he couldn't see me. Finally I saw him stop at the bus stop, which was in front of a big stone church. I stopped and ducked behind a huge statue at the side of the church. Khatib was peering at the bus schedule.

  Next time I would remember to bring Aeisha's binoculars, I told myself. This was just like being a spy, and I thought I was pretty good at it 'cause Khatib hadn't caught me yet. I wondered if this would be a good career for me: Ola Benson, private eye. Spies got to do all sorts of unusual things. I poked my head out from behind the statue and froze suddenly. Khatib was walking right toward me!

  I huddled behind the statue and tried to make myself as small as possible. I hoped he just wanted to look at the statue and wasn't coming over to yell at me. I waited quietly for a few seconds. Then I waited for a few more. I didn't hear the sound of Khatib s shoes or the rustle of his jacket or anything at all. I peered out from the side of the statue at the bus stop, but Khatib wasn't there! Where was he? I hadn't heard a single bus pass by yet. I scurried to the other side of the statue and peeked around the other side. Khatib was nowhere to be seen.

  “What are you doing?”

  I jumped back and hit my head on the statue, hard. “Oww!”

  “You okay?”

  I nodded slowly. My eyes were still blurry with tears of pain, but my ears were working fine. It wasn't Khatib who'd found me behind the statue. I blinked the tears away quickly and looked with surprise at the person in front of me. It was Maria Poncinelli — bandanna, torn jeans and all.

  “You sure?” she asked, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket. She was wearing a big black leather jacket, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that was tucked inside her coat.

  I nodded again and touched the new lump on the back of my head. I was gonna have to rethink my career as a spy. First I lost the person I was following, then I let someone sneak up on me.

  I looked at Maria Poncinelli carefully. It was the first time she'd ever talked to me. Her voice was surprisingly nice. I'd thought it would be gruff and deep — to match her attitude. Instead, it was kinda high and musical.

  Maria came forward and leaned one shoulder against the statue. There it was. The attitude. I was impressed.

  “So what happened to you?” she asked casually. “You haven't been leaning against any walls lately.”

  “I've had stuff on my mind.” I shrugged. I was surprised Maria had even noticed. “I figured you could hold up the wall all by yourself.”

  Maria shook her head seriously.

  “Just don't give my place to anyone else,” I joked, leaning against the statue too. Maria didn't smile, and I wondered if it was because a smile would ruin the effect of her attitude or because she didn't have a sense of humor. I considered passing on Mrs. Gransby's advice about your smile being your passport but decided against it. She'd probably think I was stupid.

  “You go to church here?” I asked, waving my hand in the direction of the church. My shoulder was starting to feel cold from where it was resting against the statue.

  Maria nodded and looked bored. “My sisters are in there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Antoinette and Careen.”

  “Your sisters?” I nodded, shifting my weight to my other leg. “How come?”

  “I'm supposed to be in there, too.” Maria frowned. She looked like joining her sisters was the last thing she wanted to do. “Stupid dance class.”

  “Huh?” I stood straight, forgetting all about my attitude. I remembered Khatib.

  “Mrs. Felix's dance class. They have it in the basement every Saturday and Thursday,” Maria informed me.

  “For school?”

&
nbsp; Maria looked at me like I was a dodo head. “You have to sign up for this class. Pay money. Mrs. Felix used to dance on the stage, and she's the best dance teacher in Walcott.”

  I leaned my whole body against the statue now. Khatib hadn't been walking toward me earlier; he had been walking into the church. He wasn't going to basketball practice; he was going to dance class! Voluntarily!

  “Mrs. Felix is nuts,” I heard Maria say.

  “She is?”

  “She must be crazy to come live back here after living in New York.” Maria shook her head.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, barely listening to her. Khatib was always complaining about having to take those dance classes at school. But here he was taking dance classes outside of school when he was supposed to be at basketball practice. Why was he keeping this such a big secret? “Hey, is there any way you can see in there without going inside?”

  Maria nodded. “There's a window in the back of the church.”

  I started walking around the church quickly. To my surprise, Maria followed me, walking at her own pace. The back of the church had a small parking lot that was full of cars. Mrs. Felix's dance class must be really popular. I found the window Maria had told me about and bent down to peer into the basement of the church.

  At first I couldn't make out anything. The basement was full of people, mainly girls dressed in tights and leotards and moving all around the room. From the quick way they were moving I could tell this wasn't a ballet class, like the one I used to take at the community center. It looked like a modern-dance class.

  “That's Mrs. Felix,” Maria told me. She had bent down beside me and was looking inside, too. She was pointing to a short, round lady with curly red hair.

  “She used to dance on the stage?” I asked. Mrs. Felix sure didn't look like a dancer. She was about fifty years old and chubby all over.

  “That's what happens when you come back to Walcott,” Maria said with a twist of her lips. She looked really disgusted. “That who you're looking for?”

  I looked in the direction where Maria was pointing and saw my brother, Mr. God's Gift to the World, in a corner with three other boys. Khatib was the tallest of the three and stuck out 'cause he was the only one not wearing tights. He had on a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt. He and the three other boys were rehearsing some move where they ran three steps, jumped, then twisted in the air, landing with one foot on the ground and one way up in the air behind them. I watched them do it over and over again, expecting Khatib to fall and break his leg at any minute, but he didn't. Khatib did the move right every time. He was really dancing.

  “That your brother or something?” Maria asked me.

  “Or something,” I said. This person looked like Khatib, but he sure wasn't acting like Khatib. My brother would never give up basketball for dance lessons. Khatib had never even shown any interest in dancing. I thought about that and realized that it wasn't exactly true. It was Khatib who used to walk me to the community center to take my ballet class every week, and most of the time he stayed until it was over so he could walk me home again. But he used to complain backward and forward about it. Had Khatib been interested in dancing back then, too?

  I watched Khatib for a few more minutes until the shock wore off, then I straightened up. I wasn't going to get any answers from staring at Khatib. I glanced at Maria, who was standing beside me and looking across the parking lot. I'd been so busy thinking about Khatib that I hadn't realized I was having an actual conversation with Maria.

  “So,” I said finally. I leaned back against the church.

  “So.” Maria leaned back, too.

  “Your dad's the mayor, huh?”

  “Yeah, right.” Maria's lips started quirking at the corners. “My dad couldn't run this town. He sells insurance.”

  I frowned, wondering if that girl River had given me the wrong information on the first day of school. “Your dad's not the mayor?”

  “Heck, no.” Maria had stopped laughing and was looking sort of depressed now. “My mom is. I don't like to talk about it.”

  “How come?” I asked. I thought it was kind of cool that Maria's mom was the mayor.

  “You ask a lot of questions.” Maria frowned. She turned her head away again to look across the parking lot. I tried doing the same thing, but there wasn't anything to look at except a bunch of parked cars and the fence that went around the back of the church. I was bored within seconds.

  I turned back to Maria. “Listen, I need kind of a tour guide.”

  “Tour guide?” Maria repeated, lifting one of her eyebrows.

  “You don't want to go to dance class and I don't have to be anywhere,” I explained, burying my hands in my pockets. “I need somebody to show me around Walcott so I can figure some things out about it. You could give me your own personal tour of this town.”

  “My own personal tour?” Maria's lips were quirking up at the corners again. I wondered if she was laughing at me.

  “Yeah.”

  Maria's eyebrow came down, and she straightened up and nodded. “Okay, Benson. Just let me go in and tell my sisters. My mom will have a cow if she thinks I've disappeared.”

  aria's idea of a first stop on her tour was the cemetery in downtown Walcott.

  I stood at the edge of the grass, looking at all the graves nervously. All of a sudden this tour didn't seem like such a great idea. I'd meant for Maria to show me the town of Walcott, not the dead of Walcott. I'd never even been in a graveyard before. Lots of scary stuff was supposed to happen to you in cemeteries. I didn't like how quiet and dark it was. The further we got from the road, the darker it had become. The only noise around was the sound of Maria's shoes crunching on leaves and sticks.

  “These are the people who've gotten out of Walcott,” Maria announced, walking around the different-sized headstones.

  That was fairly obvious.

  “Come on.” Maria stopped and turned back to look at me. She was taking her tour guide duties very seriously.

  I walked forward slowly. This graveyard was chock-full of dead people. There were headstones of all kinds squeezed in close together. Some were made of shiny, polished marble; others were just pieces of rotting wood. As I walked I noticed dates like 1811, 1868, 1922 and 1967. People had been dead in here for forever.

  “This is the only graveyard in Walcott. Everybody in this town has family here,” Maria informed me. She stopped in front of a plot that had only a white wooden cross for a marker. “This is one of the oldest cemeteries in the state.”

  Oh, brother. It looked like Maria was turning into another person who was gonna give me a history lesson about Walcott. I already had heard enough about this town to write a book about it. “Is that what you wanted to show me? One of the oldest cemeteries in Massachusetts?”

  “Who cares about that?” Maria moved on and stopped in front of a huge gray-and-white marble headstone. “These are people who've gotten out of Walcott. That's what's important.”

  I swallowed. “But they had to die to do it.”

  Maria shrugged. “You gotta get your inspiration where you can, right?”

  I wasn't so sure about that.

  “When I get out of here, I'm not coming back like Mrs. Felix—I'm getting out for good,” Maria announced. She said it right to the gray-and-white headstone. “Right, Granny?”

  I jumped and looked around, expecting to see some little white-haired old lady standing nearby. But there was no one around except us. I moved a little so I could see the words written on the headstone. It had MARIA ALICIA PONCINELLI carved on it in large, fancy letters. Below it, in smaller letters, was BELOVED MAYOR, MOTHER AND WIFE. “That's your grandmother?”

  Maria nodded.

  “She was mayor, too?”

  Maria nodded again. The depressed look was back on her face again. “I'm supposed to be the next one.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You are?”

  Maria sighed. “It's a tradition. The youngest daughter in eac
h generation.”

  I closed my mouth. I had a whole new understanding of Maria Poncinelli. “Well, maybe your mama will have another baby.”

  Maria shook her head. “She wants to. But my dad's not cooperating. He says I'll have to do.”

  I didn't know what to say to that. It must be terrible to have your whole life planned out for you. No wonder Maria wanted to get out of here. She felt as trapped in this town as I did.

  “Come on.” Maria turned around and led the way out of the cemetery. Soon we were standing in the town center, if you could call it that. Walcott's idea of a downtown was two cobblestone streets with all these little boutiques and small shops on it. There wasn't a big department store like Fi-lene's or J. C. Penney. There wasn't a swan pond. And there weren't any vendors selling popcorn, pretzels or pizza. Downtown was like stepping back in time fifty years.

  I had to admit that the buildings were interesting, though. They all looked real old. Some of them were made of clapboards. Some of them were made of brick, and others were made of stone. They were old, but they all looked like they were well taken care of. The other thing that I noticed were the houses around the town. They were old, too, but they were all different from each other. Each of them had a different design and different colors. They were much closer together, and the streets were so narrow, you could barely fit two cars in the road at the same time. It was totally different from where we lived.

  “This is it,” Maria said, stopping in front of one of the small shops on the street. The shop had long white curtains in the windows, so you couldn't see inside. There was a small white sign that had WALCOTT THRIFT SHOP painted on it in fancy black letters. “This is where you can find all the stuff that belonged to people who got out of Walcott.”

  As we stepped through the doorway a bell jingled above us, but it didn't look like there was anybody minding the store. I looked around at the racks of clothes and shelves of books, kitchenware, and other stuff. “Wowww”

  The thrift shop had some really old stuff in it. There was one whole rack full of military uniforms. Each one was labeled with what war it was used in. They had uniforms from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II, and even one uniform as late as the Vietnam War. Another long rack was full of fancy party dresses made of silk, taffeta, and even polyester. There were clothes that farmers, millworkers, firefighters and judges would wear in different time periods. Way in the back I even noticed a couple of old Pilgrim-looking clothes. In Boston, this place wouldn't have been called a thrift shop. It would have been called an antique shop.