by Alan Gratz
“Don’t joke! This is serious,” I said. “Is this serious, Rebecca?”
“Aw, come on,” Danny said. “Nobody’s gonna sue you. Suspend you, maybe, but not sue you.”
“Definitely suspended,” Rebecca agreed.
The quicksand turned into water, and I sank to the bottom, desk and all.
Juvenile Delinquents
All through math I sucked on my braids and imagined all the awful things that would happen if I was caught with all those books in my locker. Every parent at Shelbourne Elementary would line up to sue me. My dad would lose his bricklaying business. My mom would lose her job. We’d have to sell our house and move to a different city. My sisters would have to be sold to medical research companies.
Well, it wouldn’t all be so bad.
I was overreacting, and I knew it. What I was doing wasn’t exactly illegal. The school board had just said that Mrs. Jones couldn’t loan out these books. They didn’t say I couldn’t.
I still wanted to loan out the books, but I didn’t want to get caught.
So how was I going to let people know what books I had to check out? If I didn’t have a way of telling the other kids what I had, they wouldn’t know to ask for them, and nobody would read them. Then it would all be for nothing.
And then I had it. Why not tape a list of the books I had on my locker? I just didn’t have to call it that! During language arts, I used one of the computers to type up a list, and I taped it to my locker after school. At the top, in big capital letters, it said, BOOKS BANNED AT SHELBOURNE ELEMENTARY. Underneath that was every one of the books Mrs. Spencer and the other parents had taken off the shelves, with a little dot from a green Magic Marker next to all the books I had in the B.B.L.L. Once everybody knew how to read it, I could just add a new green dot to any book that got added. Presto!
Looking at the list again, I realized there were still a lot of books I needed to add, and Danny was running out of people to ask. What I needed was money to buy books with.
“Bake sale,” Rebecca said.
“Of course!” I said. A bake sale! Every time we wanted to raise money to help build a well in Africa or to support the Red Cross after a hurricane, we had a bake sale! All I had to do was tell my dad we were having another bake sale at school, and he picked up a brownie mix at the store without even asking what it was for. Same with Rebecca’s mom.
Rebecca and I set up our plastic-wrapped brownies and chocolate-chip cookies in a basket on a table in the cafeteria and started raking in the moolah. The first day we made $7.50. I was counting out the quarters again when Rebecca nudged me.
“What?” I said.
Rebecca nudged me again, harder.
“What?” I said. I looked up and saw Principal Banana coming right for us.
Her name isn’t Principal Banana, of course. It’s Banazewski. But none of the kindergarteners could ever pronounce her name right, so she let them call her Principal Banana. As fourth graders, we were supposed to call her Principal Banazewski though.
Principal Banazewski reminded me of a police detective from one of those TV mysteries. She wore gray suits and black leather shoes, and she always had a walkie-talkie on her belt and her school ID in a plastic holder pinned to her jacket like a badge. I expected her to yell “Freeze, punk! You’re under arrest!” every time I saw her.
Instead she looked over our selection of desserts and said, “Looks good, ladies. What’s the cause?”
“The what?” I said.
“What are you raising money for?” Principal Banazewski asked. Her walkie-talkie squawked, and she turned down the volume on it without looking at it.
I pulled a braid around and chewed on it.
“Uh…” I said. I looked at Rebecca. Her eyes went wide and she shook her head.
“We, uh…” I stammered. We couldn’t tell her what our bake sale was really for. I was going to have to make something up! What had our last bake sale been for? I couldn’t remember. With Detective Banazewski staring at me, I couldn’t think of anything!
“We’re raising money for … books,” I said.
“Books?” Principal Banazewski said.
Rebecca gawked at me.
“Books for … prisoners!” I said. “For them to read. In prison.”
Rebecca closed her eyes. I think she might have been praying.
“Books for prisoners?” Principal Banazewski said.
“Kid prisoners. Kids our age who are in jail.”
Under the table, Rebecca started hitting me in the leg with her fist.
“You mean, juvenile delinquents?” Principal Banazewski said.
“Yes,” I said. “Juvenile delinquents. We’re raising money to buy books for juvenile delinquents.” That sounded good.
“Well, that’s very noble of you,” Principal Banazewski said. “I’ll take two cookies.” She handed over a dollar, and I had to kick Rebecca to get her to open her eyes and take the money.
Rebecca turned on me the second Principal Banazewski was gone.
“‘Books for kid prisoners to read in jail’?” she said.
“Well what was I supposed to say?” I said.
“We’re raising money for the homeless! Or the animal shelter! Or the food bank!”
“Where were all these great ideas when she was asking!?” I said.
“Well, I thought you would think of something else besides, you know, what we’re actually raising money for!” Rebecca said.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Well, you just wait till Helen comes, and then you’ll be sorry for picking on me!”
Rebecca and I busted out laughing.
“I’m sorry, all right?” I said. “Every time I see Principal Banana, I think of the police. It makes me nervous.”
“Well, at least you didn’t lie to her,” Rebecca said. “We are raising money to buy books for juvenile delinquents: us.”
Helen Comes
There was another school board meeting the next month. I didn’t go, but I knew what happened. Mrs. Jones argued again that none of the books should be removed from the library, but the school board still agreed with Mrs. Spencer. All the books from her second list were officially banned.
The very next day in social studies, Mr. Vaughn told us we were going to start studying the Bill of Rights.
The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to explain how the new American government would work, but then they realized they needed an extra part to talk about all the freedoms Americans automatically got that the government couldn’t take away from them. That’s what the Bill of Rights is. It’s ten amendments that protect the natural rights of all citizens.
“The Constitution was important because it told the world how we were going to run our government,” Mr. Vaughn said. “The Bill of Rights might be even more important though, because it said what our new country was going to be about. It said, ‘Here are the rights we think are so important that no one can take them away from us, not even the government.’ We added a lot more later on, but the first ten are very famous. It was the first document of its kind in the world.
“For this social studies unit I’m going to split you up into pairs,” Mr. Vaughn told us. “Each team will study a different amendment. Your assignment will be to give a presentation to the class that explains what your amendment means. How you do that—what kind of presentation you give—is up to you.”
Rebecca’s hand shot up. “Mr. Vaughn! Can I do the Sixth Amendment? Please?”
“Um, sure, Rebecca,” Mr. Vaughn said. He erased something in his notes and wrote in something new.
I looked at Rebecca like she was crazy.
“The Sixth Amendment is the right to a trial by jury,” she told me. “And the right to counsel.”
“Does … anyone else have a favorite amendment they want to do?” Mr. Vaughn asked.
Not surprisingly, no one else did.
“All right,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Janna, I want you and Traci to take the Fifth Amendment. Kevin, you and
Danny take the Second Amendment…”
I tuned out while Mr. Vaughn gave the other assignments. Rebecca and I had made another seven dollars in our most recent bake sale, and I was trying to decide whether to buy How to Eat Fried Worms or Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. They were really hard to compare.
“Amy Anne?” Mr. Vaughn said. “Are you with us?”
“Sorry,” I said. Beside me, I could sense Rebecca’s eyes boring into me, but I focused on Mr. Vaughn.
“I said I’m assigning you and Trey the First Amendment. That all right?”
Was that all right? Was I all right with working on my social studies project with the son of my archenemy? The boy who would rat me out the second I slipped up and mentioned the B.B.L.L.? No, I was definitely not all right with that.
But instead I said, “Okay.”
“All right. Everybody get together with your partner and start reading about your amendment,” Mr. Vaughn said. “I’ll be coming around to help.”
Everybody else got up and put their desks together. I sat where I was and made Trey drag his desk all the way across the room to me. He parked it right up against mine with a thud, making my pencil pop out of its little ditch.
Trey stared at his closed notebook. I crossed my arms and stared at my textbook.
“You don’t like me much, do you?” Trey asked.
I wanted to laugh. “Don’t like you much?” I wanted to say. “Oh, why would that be, Trey? Maybe because besides your mom banning my favorite book, you drew that awful picture of me last year!”
Trey likes to draw. That’s his thing. And I hated to admit it, but he was really good. He was so good that last year, when Trey and I were both in Mrs. Maples’s room, he decided he would draw each of us as animals. Mrs. Maples was a wise old maple tree. Kenny Haskins, who was good at soccer, he drew as a cheetah. Lavina Maddox, who wanted to be a singer when she grew up, he drew as a songbird. Daniel Farid, who loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he drew as a ninja turtle. Everybody loved the pictures he drew of them.
Except me.
The picture Trey drew of Amy Anne Ollinger was a mouse sitting on a book, chewing its tail. He didn’t draw me as a cheetah or a ninja turtle or a songbird. He drew me as a wimpy little mouse!
Trey bent his head down to look up at me, and I realized I hadn’t said anything for a long time.
“Listen, Amy Anne—” he said at last.
The room intercom crackled to life, making both of us jump.
“Mr. Vaughn?” the secretary said. “I’m sorry for the interruption. But can we please see Jeffrey Gonzalez and Amy Anne Ollinger in the office?”
“Oooooooooh,” the rest of the class said. Everybody always did that anytime anybody got called to the office, like you were in big trouble, even if it was just because you had a dentist appointment. But this time, they knew they might be right. Half the eyes in the room were on me, and I knew why. They all knew I ran the B.B.L.L., and they were all thinking the exact same thing I was:
Amy Anne is busted.
“I’ll send them right along, Mrs. Perry,” Mr. Vaughn said, motioning at the same time for us to get a move on.
My legs felt like Jell-O as I stood. Across the room, Rebecca’s and Danny’s faces looked like they had just seen Helen’s ghost by the pond. I didn’t know how I was even going to walk to the door without collapsing.
I put my hand on Trey’s desk to steady myself, and he looked up at me.
“Hope you’re not in trouble,” he said.
The Banana Room
Hope you’re not in trouble.
That rat fink Trey! He knew I was in trouble because he was the one who ratted me out! Hope you’re not in trouble. Ha. Very funny, Trey.
I was right where he wanted me to be, walking the Long March of Death with Jeffrey Gonzalez to the principal’s office. I sucked on my braids. The more I thought about it, the madder I got at Trey.
“So what if I have a bunch of banned books in my locker? I’m not breaking any rules, Trey!” That’s what I should have said to him. “Just because your mom took them out of the library doesn’t mean I have to take them out of my locker!”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jeffrey said. I jumped a little, surprised to hear him say what I was thinking. He clearly thought he was in big trouble too. What he’d been called to the office for, I had no idea. Jeffrey was a small, round, Mexican kid with short, spiky hair and Harry Potter glasses. He was quiet, like me, but he was quiet because his brain was always somewhere else. The only time you could ever really get him talking was when you asked him about the science-fiction movies he liked. In second grade, Lena Harvey had called him Space Cadet, and the nickname stuck.
“I can’t have done anything wrong,” Jeffrey said. “At least, I don’t think so. Did you do anything?”
I guess not everybody had heard about the Banned Books Locker Library. If he had, he would have known exactly why I was being called to the office. We turned the corner of the fourth grade hall. The office was just a few steps away. As soon as I saw it, all my anger was gone. Rebecca’s words came back to me then: “Definitely suspended.”
I didn’t want to get suspended! I couldn’t get suspended. No kid had gotten suspended in the whole time I’d been at Shelbourne Elementary. Getting suspended was something that happened to only really bad kids. The serious troublemakers. Kids who were going to grow up to become people who chained dogs up in their front yard and threw trash out their car window.
Jeffrey and I went into the office. The secretary, Mrs. Perry, told Jeffrey that Principal Banazewski would see him first, and told me to sit and wait. Jeffrey swallowed, gave me a “wish me luck” glance, and went into the principal’s office. The door closed behind him.
I sat in one of the chairs outside Detective Banazewski’s office like a criminal waiting to go into the interrogation room. But I wasn’t a criminal! I never did anything to get in trouble. I never did anything, period.
But that wasn’t true, was it? I was here because I had done something. For some reason I had decided to get as many of the books Mrs. Spencer had banned from the library and loan them out to as many people in my class as I could. Why had I done that? Why did I care? What did it matter if Mrs. Spencer banned those books? My parents would buy me whatever books I really wanted to read. I sucked on my braids and wondered what had gotten into me. This is why I kept quiet and never did anything. People who said and did whatever they were thinking got into trouble.
Principal Banazewski’s door opened, and she led Jeffrey out. He looked stunned, like someone had told him there wasn’t really such a thing as aliens.
“I’m sure your grandmother was a terrific person, Jeffrey,” Mrs. Banazewski said, “and I know you’ll miss her very much. Go ahead and collect your things, and you can wait here until your parents come.”
Jeffrey nodded, just barely, and left the office without even looking at me.
“Miss Ollinger?” Principal Banazewski said, gesturing for me to join her in her office.
Any doubt I might have had about why I was called to the office was officially gone. No adult ever called you by your last name unless you were in deep, deep trouble.
I stepped through into Principal Banazewski’s office. I’d never been in here before. It was a square little room with white cinder block walls and no windows. I thought there might be one of those big mirrors they have in interrogation rooms, where people on the other side can see through, but the only things on the walls were lots of framed certificates and plaques with her name on them, pictures of her family, and bananas.
Lots and lots of bananas.
There were bananas everywhere. Banana paintings, bananas with arms and legs and faces, monkeys with bananas, banana hats, banana slippers, Banana Republic ads, a collection of those blue stickers that come on bananas—basically anything and everything that said or showed a banana on it. I guess kindergarteners had been giving her banana stuff forever.
Pri
ncipal Banazewski told me to sit, and sat down behind her banana-decorated desk. “Miss Ollinger, we need to talk about your locker,” she said.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do anything bad. I just hated it so much that Mrs. Spencer took away my favorite book. At first, all I was going to do was just read all the books she banned, but then I started collecting them, and other people wanted to read them. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but mine! I swear, I’ll take them home and never ever bring another one to school again. Just don’t suspend me!”
That’s what I wanted to say. But I was so scared all I said was, “My locker?”
Principal Banazewski leaned forward. “Yes. Specifically, the piece of paper you have taped to the outside of your locker.”
I blinked. “The piece of paper?”
“The one that says BOOKS BANNED AT SHELBOURNE ELEMENTARY.”
The list of banned books I put on my locker? Why was she talking about that? The books inside were the big deal. I felt a little hiccup of hope. Was the list all this was about? Or did Mrs. Banazewski know why I put that list on my locker? I stared at a grinning banana with sunglasses on her desk and hoped she didn’t know about the stack of banned books inside my locker.
“First,” Principal Banazewski said, “I don’t like the word ‘banned.’ Those books weren’t banned from the library. They were removed from the library.”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
I threw a hand over my mouth. Had I said that out loud? What was I thinking?
Principal Banazewski’s voice got that you-don’t-know-anything tone adults get when they don’t like being questioned. “The difference,” Mrs. Banazewski said, “is that in one case, books are banned arbitrarily. Do you know what arbitrarily means?”
“For no good reason?”
“In a way, yes. It can also mean based on just one person’s opinion, not the opinion of others. In this case, the books weren’t removed arbitrarily. They were inappropriate, and more than one person agreed that was true. A whole school board, in fact. So they were removed.”
