Ola Shakes It Up

by Joanne Hyppolite

  I took a deep breath. River was right. I looked at Mama and Dad again and gulped.

  Maria reached me first. She screeched to a stop right beside River and me and jumped off her bike. “We won!”

  “All right!” I forgot all about Mama and Dad for a second as I jumped up and down with Maria and River. Maria was so excited, she couldn't even act cool anymore. Then I heard Dad's voice.

  “Ayeola!”

  I turned around. He and Mama were standing right behind me with mad looks on their faces. I heard River and Maria scoot away quickly.

  I tried to smile. “Hi, Mama. Hi, Dad.”

  Mama waved her arms in the direction of the clotheslines, the games and the food. “What in the world … ?”

  “We don't even have to ask if this was your idea.” Dad sighed. He looked really disappointed.

  I hung my head. “Most of it.”

  “Where is Lillian?” Mama asked, looking around.

  I looked up. “She's setting up for the dog show with Grady. But she didn't have anything to do with this. It was all me.”

  Dad nodded. “Well, it looks great.”

  He and Mama were smiling at me now.

  “Heyyy …,” I began.

  All of a sudden Mama and Dad broke out into big smiles, like they couldn't pretend to be mad anymore. “I can't tell you how glad I am to see you acting like your old self again.” Mama grabbed me into a big hug. “I was worried our girl had gone away forever.”

  “You don't mind that I did all this?” I asked, hugging Mama back.

  “Ola, child, I'll tell you a secret.” Mama smiled. “I never did like all those rules about living here.”

  “A person should be able to mow his lawn when he wants to,” Dad grumbled, putting his hand on my head and stroking it. “And park his car in front of his own house, and have visitors as late as he wants and— Is that Mrs. Gransby jumping in those leaves over there?”

  I nodded. “It's a long story, Dad.”

  “Khatib.” I knocked on his door softly. It was late and I was supposed to have been asleep hours earlier. But all my thoughts about what had happened that day and the family and moving here had kept me awake. Everything had gone perfect. Maria had won her fight at the town meeting. The town had agreed to reconsider the designs of the new houses for the other development, and she had gotten them to vote yes on disbanding the neighborhood association. She even told me that her mom said she did a good job. I knew her grandmother would have been proud of her, too.

  “Who is it?” Khatib's voice sounded out of breath, like I had caught him in the middle of something.

  “It's me, Ola. Let me in,” I ordered in a whisper.

  I heard a noise that sounded like Khatib moving around. Whatever he was doing, he didn't want me to see. A few seconds later he called out, “Come in,” in his regular voice.

  I opened the door and slid into the room, looking around slowly. It looked normal. Khatib was lying on his bed reading a sports magazine, and his room was in its usual state of disaster, with clothes, music tapes and shoes all over the floor. His schoolbooks were piled up on top of each other on the desk, and his bed wasn't made. Mama makes him clean his room every Friday, but by the next morning it's back in the same condition it was in before.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around more carefully. I was looking for clues as to what Khatib had been doing. Whenever Aeisha tried to hide something from me in a hurry, she stuck it under her pillow or under her bed. That's how I'd discovered that she'd bought some red lipstick the week before. But Khatib didn't look like he had anything under his pillows. In fact, his pillow was on the floor. I looked around at the edge of the bed.

  “What are you looking for, Ola?” Khatib asked. His eyes were zeroed in on me.

  “Nothing.” I picked at a small hole in my jeans.

  “What do you want?” Khatib leaned forward a little, and I saw that he was wearing a black-and-gold Walcott College sweatshirt. Mama had given all three of us sweatshirts during her first week of work. I also noticed that he was holding his magazine upside down. Ah-ha! Oldest mistake in the book. Now I knew he had been hiding something. “You need to talk about something?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, looking at his face.

  “What's your problem?” Khatib asked, leaning back against the wood headboard of his bed. He was starting to look worried about my being so quiet. “Mama and Dad aren't mad at you, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Aeisha?” Khatib asked.

  “Mama and Dad are mad at her.” I smiled. Aeisha had told Mama and Dad about her science grade earlier that night and they had gotten all upset. They said that they didn't need her to try and get proof that Mr. Stillwell was grading her unfairly. They would have believed her and done something about it if she had just told them. It was nice having Mama and Dad mad at someone else in this family besides me.

  “Things okay with Karen and Margarita?”

  I nodded. Karen, Margarita and Mrs. Gransby had stayed for dinner and then gone home on the late bus. I had been sorry to see them leave, but I knew that I would see them again soon. I planned to follow everything on Karen and Margarita's list, and I'd made them promise to come back during Christmas vacation for a real visit. I had given Mrs. Gransby an extra-long hug. Even though we lived so far apart, her bringing Karen and Margarita to see me showed that she was still looking after me.

  “Then what?”

  “It's you,” I spoke up finally. “Did you quit the basketball team?”

  Khatib dropped his eyes for a second. “I knew you would figure it out. I should have carried my gym bag out with me.”

  “Yeah. You gave yourself away big-time.” I moved up the bed to sit next to him, stretching my legs out beside his. There was no way I was going to let him know that I had followed him to his dance class. “So how come you quit the team?”

  Khatib shrugged. “It just wasn't the same here.”

  “Nothing's the same here,” I agreed. “But I thought you loved basketball.”

  “I used to love it—before I had to play it so much.” Khatib nudged me with his shoulder. “Back in the old neighborhood, everybody thought I should play, just 'cause I was tall and I was good at it. And I didn't mind playing when it was just around the neighborhood and it was just for fun. Then when high school started, everybody was saying, ‘Hey, Khatib — you trying out for the team?“ It was like I had to do it.”

  “You didn't like playing on the team?” I was surprised.

  “It was okay sometimes. The best part was winning all those games and having everybody look up to me,” Khatib admitted. “It kinda went to my head a little.”

  I bit my lip to keep myself from saying something flip. Khatib and I were having a serious talk for once, and I didn't want to destroy the mood and get kicked out of his room.

  “But those drills, the practice every day and Saturday … I could skip all that,” Khatib continued.

  “That's why you quit the team here?” I turned my head to look at him. “Why didn't you quit at our old school?”

  Khatib hesitated.

  “It wasn't 'cause of what those guys on the team said about you that first day?” I asked.

  Khatib pursed his lips. “That was part of it. My heart wasn't in being on the team anyway. I tried out 'cause Dad made all those special arrangements to get me a tryout. But when I heard the kind of stuff this one guy was saying, I was, like, forget this. I'm not putting up with this for something I'm not even that crazy about. I got better things to do.”

  Like dance class? I wanted to ask him, but I already knew the answer. Khatib had found something he was more interested in than basketball. “You don't miss playing basketball? For real, Khatib?”

  “I miss shooting hoops with Dad. I haven't used the one in the back 'cause I knew he'd be able to tell I wasn't practicing,” Khatib admitted softly. His breath tickled my ear as he turned to talk to me.

  “And you don't care what t
hose guys on the basketball team said about you?” I asked anxiously.

  “It was only one guy. And he was stupid, Ola. He thought I was gonna take his place on the team. Besides, I heard that kind of stuff all the time when we played against white teams at the old school. That's not what was important.

  What was important was how I felt about basketball,” Khatib said firmly.

  I nodded. I felt a lot better now. Khatib had been the only thing that I was still worried about. I couldn't get over the change in him. He had been acting a lot less conceited lately.

  And Aeisha was falling in love. I still thought that was gross, but I could handle it. Dad was getting used to the pressures of his new job and was making an effort to be home more. Then there was Lillian. At dinner that night, she had talked and laughed as much as the rest of us. She had two families now— one in Haiti and one here with us.

  I pulled my knees up. “Why haven't you told Mama and Dad?”

  “I will.” Khatib fixed his eyes on me. “When I'm ready. You can't tell them, Ola. Promise.”

  “What?” I asked innocently.

  “Promise, Ola,” Khatib repeated. His eyes bounced back and forth from my hands to my face. He wanted to make sure I wasn't going to cross my fingers behind my back or cheat in some other way.

  “Promise what?”

  “Ola.”

  “I promise,” I said, standing up. “Thanks, Khatib. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  I opened the door and started backing out of the room carefully. “I won't tell them about your dance lessons, either.”

  I was back in my room before Khatib had a chance to close his mouth. I climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I listened carefully. I could just make out the sound of the jazz station coming from Mama and Dad's radio, but there was something else, too. It was the sound of someone humming. I realized I could hear Lillian in her room next door. Aeisha was in her room reading, and Khatib was practicing his dancing. I closed my eyes. This house was finally starting to feel right.

  About the Author

  Joanne Hyppolite is the author of Seth and Samona, winner of the second annual Marguerite de Angeli Prize, given by Delacorte Press for a first novel for middle-grade readers. She was born in Haiti and came to live in the United States when she was four years old. She grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Joanne Hyppolite graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in creative writing and received her master's degree from the department of Afro-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives in Florida.

  DON'T MISS Seth and Samona

  ALSO BY Joanne Hyppolite

  An American Bookseller Pick of the Lists

  Winner of the Second Annual Marguerite de Angeli Prize

  “The story dramatizes that ‘normal’ is neither static nor uniform … it's the variety of religions, family values, languages, ethnic customs, and individual personalities that vitalizes the neighborhood. Readers will enjoy the irreverent fun “

  —Booklist

  “The dialogue and characterization combine flawlessly to give Seth a loud, clear voice; through him, readers come to know Samona, who is a special person indeed.”

  —School Library Journal

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  Text copyright © 1998 by Joanne Hyppolite

  Illustrations copyright © 1998 by Warren Chang

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-53905-2

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