by Alan Gratz
Trey pulled out the sketchbook he carried everywhere. “Yeah. What happened? Did you get in trouble with Principal Banana?”
“No,” I told him. I looked him in the eyes. Had he expected me to get in trouble? Was he just messing with me? If he was, he was hiding it pretty well.
“That’s good,” he said, but I didn’t believe him.
“Here are my notes on the First Amendment,” I said.
“Cool,” he said. “I drew some pictures.”
“Of what?” I asked. More pictures of me as a mouse?
Trey looked confused. “Um, the Bill of Rights. For our project.”
I was stunned. Trey had actually done work on our project? He turned his sketchbook around so I could see. It was a drawing of a man with huge, furry arms with claws at the end. I frowned.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“The right to bear arms,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s bear like carry, not bear like bear,” I said. “And besides, that’s the Second Amendment. We’re doing the First Amendment.”
“I know,” he said with a little smile. “I couldn’t help it. It was too funny.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Trey smile, and it surprised me. He had a really friendly face under his uncombed blond hair when he smiled. For a second I kind of liked him and his funny drawing, which really was pretty good. But then I remembered who he was and what he’d done to me in third grade.
“What does MMIII mean?” I asked. It was written in the bottom corner of the picture. “Is that Roman numerals or something?”
“That’s my signature,” Trey said. “Marvin McBride III.”
“Marvin McBride? I thought your name was Trey Spencer,” I said.
“Trey is just my nickname. And my mom and dad divorced when I was in kindergarten, and they both remarried,” he said. “McBride is my dad’s last name. He’s a commercial illustrator. He lives in Atlanta with his new family. My mom married a guy whose last name is Wheeler, but she’d already gone back to using Spencer. That’s her maiden name.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say to that. “Did you … do anything on the First Amendment?”
“Yeah,” Trey said. He flipped to another page, where he’d drawn a picture of people bowing down before a weird-looking alien coming out of a UFO.
“Um, what is this?” I asked.
“They’re worshiping an alien, see? The First Amendment says Congress can’t make laws about establishing religions, so they’re free to worship aliens if they want.”
“I … don’t think that’s exactly what it’s saying. That part is about how the government can’t establish one religion and make everybody follow it.”
“Oh,” Trey said. He turned his picture around and looked at it. “Too bad. I really liked that alien.”
“It works for the other part about religion,” I told him. “The free exercise clause. That’s the one that says the government can’t stop you from believing in whatever religion you want. What did you draw for that one?”
Trey flipped to the next page. In that picture, a bunch of people in pope hats and robes were lifting weights.
“Um…” I said. I had no idea what I was looking at.
“The free exercise of religion,” Trey said. He smiled slyly again. He knew that the free exercise of religion really meant you could worship whoever you wanted to, however you wanted to, not people in church doing weight-lifting. But it was funny. I smiled despite myself.
“I think we better use the UFO picture instead of that one,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh! I’ve got another one for freedom of the press.”
The picture showed a woman pressing the middle of three big buttons.
“See?” Trey said. “She’s got the freedom to press whichever button she wants!”
I snorted, then caught myself. I did not want to like Trey or his pictures.
“You do know that freedom of the press means you can print anything you want, and the government can’t tell you not to, right?”
Trey shrugged. “Mine’s funnier.”
“Did you do anything for the freedom to assemble?”
Trey turned the page to a picture of a boy sitting on the floor building with Legos. I closed my eyes and shook my head.
“I thought about having him assemble a model car, but more people would get the Lego thing,” he said.
“The right to assembly says—”
“That we can get together in public and protest stuff if we want,” Trey said. “I know, I know. I drew a real one for the right to petition. I couldn’t think of anything funny for that.”
His picture of the right to petition showed a clipboard with lots of signatures on it. So there were at least two usable pictures. I ran down my list of the rights protected in the First Amendment. There was only one we hadn’t done. The right to free speech. Trey said he had a picture for that one too, and he flipped through his sketchbook looking for it.
I expected Trey to have drawn a picture of somebody giving a speech without charging for it, or maybe a speech bubble or the word SPEECH breaking out of jail and going free. Instead what he showed me was a drawing of a locker with a sign on it that said, BOOKS BANNED AT SHELBOURNE ELEMENTARY.
My locker.
I looked up at Trey in surprise. He wasn’t smiling this time, or even looking at me. He was staring at his hands. He was right though. Making me take down my sign was against the freedom of speech. I hadn’t even thought of it that way.
But had he drawn it because he agreed with me, or disagreed with me? I frowned at the thought.
“Are you ever going to tell me why you don’t like me?” Trey asked.
“You shouldn’t have to ask!” I wanted to yell. “You should know that your mom is an awful person for banning books and you’re an awful person for spying on me and drawing that stupid picture of me last year!”
Instead I just grabbed the edges of my chair and stared angrily at my desk.
Mr. Vaughn announced that it was time to put away our social studies and get out our vocab books.
“Okay. Well, I’ll work on the others and show them to you when I’m done,” Trey said, and he dragged his desk back across to the other side of the room.
And, in this corner …
I kept trying to focus on Liar & Spy in my spot in the corner of the library, but all I could think about was Trey. He’d seen my list of banned books on my locker, and studied it enough to draw it—and get all the books right on the list. That meant he had to know it had been taken down too. I thought he would have wanted that. But the way he acted when he showed me the picture … it was like he was embarrassed. Or sorry.
“Hey,” Trey said.
I jumped, spitting out the braid I was sucking on. I was just thinking about him, and there he was, standing next to me!
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just—I drew a new picture of the right to assemble, and I wanted to show it to you before I went home.”
Trey showed me. He’d drawn it right this time. The picture was of a bunch of people standing on a sidewalk with signs in their hands that all said VOTE NO! All but one. It said MAGNETS: HOW DO THEY WORK!?
“‘Magnets: How do they work’?” I asked him.
“How do they work? It’s like magic!” he said. His smile told me he was joking. “Anyway, that guy has as much right to be there as the rest of them, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Only that’s not the freedom of assembly. That’s the freedom of speech.”
“Yeah,” Trey said. He looked at the floor again.
“The rest of it works though,” I said. “And you draw really great. All the faces are different. And you even drew the hands.” Any time I had to draw a person, I drew her with her hands behind her back, or stuck in her pockets. Because I couldn’t draw hands and fingers.
Trey shrugged. “If you want to draw comic books, you have to be able to draw h
ands.”
I was about to ask Trey if that’s what he wanted to do, draw comic books, when we both heard his mother’s voice there in the library.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Jones,” Mrs. Spencer said.
“Mrs. Spencer,” Mrs. Jones said.
Mrs. Jones was wearing a wide green dress with white polka dots. Mrs. Spencer was wearing a tiny powder-blue track suit. They looked like the illustrations for big and little in a picture book, and they stood staring at each other like those two Dr. Seuss characters who won’t get out of each other’s way while people build interstates around them.
“Is Trey in the library?” Mrs. Spencer asked finally.
“I think he’s in the back,” Mrs. Jones said. She nodded down the aisle to us, and my heart beat faster. It was dumb. Mrs. Spencer didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing with her list of banned books. But I was still so nervous I stuck one of my braids in my mouth and sucked on it.
“Trey, it’s time to go,” Mrs. Spencer called.
“I guess my ride’s here,” Trey said. “See you.”
Mrs. Spencer put her hand on Trey’s head and was leading him out of the library when Mrs. Jones stopped them.
“Oh, Mrs. Spencer, I meant to thank you,” she said.
Mrs. Spencer turned. “Thank me?”
“For the money you and the PTA raised to bring an author to the school. I just booked someone to visit—Dav Pilkey.”
Mrs. Spencer frowned, trying to place the name. “Didn’t he write…”
“The Captain Underpants books. Yes,” Mrs. Jones said. That you banned, she could have said. But she didn’t have to, because we all knew it.
Mrs. Spencer darkened. “Do you really think that’s such a good idea right now?” she asked.
“I think it’s a great idea right now,” Mrs. Jones said.
Mrs. Spencer looked so small and so mad that I half expected her to say, “Oh yeah? Well you just wait till Helen comes! Then you’ll be sorry!” Instead she turned and led Trey out of the library, her chest heaving in her track suit almost as much as if she’d actually exercised in it.
Round three in the boxing match had gone to Mrs. Jones. Maybe this fight wasn’t over yet.
Helen Comes Again
Wait Till Helen Comes sat in the middle of the cafeteria floor, where everyone could see it.
Coletrane Farmer had been carrying it in secret, under his tray, when he ran into Orlando Choi, who was horsing around with Steve Rosales. Coletrane was a white second grader with sandy brown hair that laid flat on his head like a Roman general from my history book. He was currently obsessed with rock collecting, and when his tray went flying it sent mac and cheese, chocolate milk, and a dozen minerals of various shapes, sizes, and colors clattering and splattering all over the floor.
Along with Wait Till Helen Comes.
The kids in the cafeteria were still clapping and cheering for him, but I could barely hear them, or notice the splattered food and scattered rocks. Even the gross wet rag smell of the tables went away. It was like the only thing in the room for me at that moment was that book, laying right there out in the open like a spotlight was on it.
“All right, all right, that’s enough,” Principal Banazewski told everybody.
Principal Banazewski.
“Let me help you,” Principal Banazewski told Coletrane, and she bent over to pick up the book.
In five seconds, Detective Banazewski was going to pick up Prosecution Exhibit A in the case of The Wake County School Board v. Amy Anne Ollinger, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but sit and watch.
“That’s my seat!” someone across the room yelled. “I was sitting there!”
“Sit on this!” someone else yelled.
Two boys tumbled to the floor, kicking and pulling and punching. Just as quickly as they had cheered for Coletrane, the students in the cafeteria started chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I couldn’t see who it was. They were just a tangle of arms and legs before kids fell into a circle around them to watch.
Principal Banazewski stood up, handed the book to Coletrane without even looking at it, and ran for the fight. “Break it up! Break it up!” she cried.
I hurried over to Coletrane. He had picked up his empty chocolate milk carton and was pretending to drink from it. “Ah,” he said. “Refreshing.”
“Go hide that in your locker,” I whispered to him.
He looked at the chocolate milk carton. “What, this?”
“No! The book!”
He looked at the book in his hands and his eyes went wide as he understood.
“Oh, gosh! Sorry!” he said.
“Just hurry!” I told him. “And don’t bring it to read in the cafeteria again!”
Coletrane hurried off. I went back to my seat and put my head on the table. That had been so close! Coletrane would have gotten in trouble, and then he would have to tell them where he got the book. The Locker Library was going great, but that meant that there were a lot of banned books out there in the hands of Shelbourne Elementary students. It was only a matter of time until another one of them slipped up and got caught with a book.
Danny and Rebecca sat down next to me as the teachers sent everyone back to their seats.
“Was that Wait Till Helen Comes?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes,” I told her. “And Principal Banazewski had it in her hands.”
“Lucky thing there was a fight,” Danny said. He combed his hair away from his eyes. “Anybody see who it was?”
We all got an answer at the same time. The crowd cleared, and Principal Banazewski and Ms. Green each emerged with a different boy in hand. One of them I’d seen in the fourth grade hall, but didn’t know. The other one was Jeffrey Gonzalez.
“That was my seat!” Jeffrey yelled. He lunged for the other boy again, but Principal Banazewski held him back.
“That’s enough!” Principal Banazewski said. “We’re all going to my office.”
This time there was no fake oohing from the students. This was real, big-time trouble, and they knew it. As soon as they were gone, the cafeteria exploded with the excited chatter of everyone reliving every detail of the fight.
As bad as it was for Jeffrey, it had been a lucky thing the fight started when it did. Or maybe it wasn’t lucky. Maybe Jeffrey had seen the book on the floor and started the fight as a distraction. But did Jeffrey even know about the B.B.L.L.? He hadn’t that day we’d walked to the office together. If he’d done it on purpose, it was quick thinking. If he hadn’t, it was just perfect timing for me. Either way, Jeffrey was going to be in big trouble, and either way, I owed him a big thank-you.
What’s in a Name?
I couldn’t thank Jeffrey Gonzalez the next day, because he got suspended for fighting.
Jeffrey was the first kid anyone could ever remember getting suspended for anything at Shelbourne Elementary. I hated the way people were whispering about him in the halls and in the cafeteria, like they enjoyed that somebody had gotten into big trouble. Like Jeffrey was some kind of awful criminal. Space Cadet was a geek, but he was a really nice guy. At least, he always had been.
“So, I’ve been thinking about our visibility problem,” Danny said. I hadn’t even seen him come sit at the desk next to me and Rebecca.
“Our visibility problem?” Rebecca said.
“As in, our books being visible when somebody drops one in the cafeteria?” I interpreted.
“Exactamundo.” Danny flicked his hair back. “And I’ve got an idea. But it may require adding a new board member.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Let’s get passes to the computer lab and I’ll introduce you,” Danny said.
The computer lab had enough computers and printers for an entire class to use, but it was usually open for kids with passes unless a teacher had reserved it. Mr. Deacon checked our passes, and Danny led us to the back corner, where another kid was sitting. I’d never seen him before, which made me think he wasn’t a fourth grade
r. But he looked like a fourth grader. Maybe even a third grader. He was short and stick thin, with skin as dark black as mine and thick curly hair cut short on the sides but very tall in the middle, like a mushroom. He peered up at us through round, gold-rimmed glasses.
Danny did some secret handshake with him. “Ladies, may I introduce M.J.—AKA Michael Jordan.”
“Michael Jordan?” I asked. “You mean, like the basketball player?”
M.J. slumped. “Yes.”
“He hates his name because he can’t play basketball,” Danny said.
“At all,” M.J. said.
Danny took a seat beside him. “And he’s the shortest kid in fifth grade.”
Fifth grade! And I’d thought he might be a third grader!
“Second-shortest,” M.J. said.
“People in wheelchairs don’t count in height competitions,” Danny told him.
M.J. looked lasers at him. “Man, do you want my help or not?”
“Yes! Yes,” Danny said. He flicked his hair back and motioned for us to sit. “What I didn’t tell you about M.J. is that he’s like the best computer artist in the whole school.”
M.J. looked more pleased to hear that.
“Show ’em what you got, M.J.,” Danny said.
M.J. called up a file on the computer. It was a cover of The Lightning Thief I’d never seen before, with Percy facing off against the massive minotaur he fights the first time he goes to Camp Half-Blood. It was a great cover.
“What is this?” I asked. “A foreign edition?”
“No, man. This is the M.J. edition.”
“You drew this?” Rebecca said.
“On the computer. But yeah,” M.J. said.
“Didn’t I tell you he was the best?” Danny said.
“How does this help?” Rebecca asked.
“We get M.J. to make up fake covers, and we put them on the books!” I said.
Danny flicked his hair out of his eyes. “Got it in one. See, now anybody drops a book in the cafeteria, Principal Banazewski picks it up, she sees some other book!”
