by Alan Gratz
Dad knew I was scared to go back. He didn’t even tell me not to suck on my braids. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or not, but he dropped me off with a kiss right as the first bell rang, so everyone was already in class when I walked down the hall. I was going to get a tardy slip, but I wasn’t too worried about it. Not like I would have been before. I wasn’t the good girl anymore. I had just been suspended for three days. Being on time for class didn’t really seem all that important anymore.
I was glad nobody was there when I got to my locker. Every day I went straight to my locker and put in the combination on my lock to open it. But the lock was gone, of course. Mr. Crutchfield had cut it off. Suddenly it was three days ago, and I was standing exactly where I was now and I was watching Principal Banazewski open my locker and pull out all the banned books, and I was crying in front of everyone.
I started to cry again now, but not as bad. Just a tear or two. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I was going to have to open my locker again, put my books in, and get to class. At least now it would be empty, and I could put all my schoolbooks in there without having to lug them around.
But it wasn’t empty. When I opened my locker, folded notes spilled out of it onto the floor. Dozens of them. My locker mailbox had been stuffed full, and when more notes wouldn’t fit they’d piled up inside my locker. I opened one with pink loopy handwriting.
AA—
I’m sorry you got suspended!!!!!!! Hang in there.
—Janna
Another one said,
Dear Amy Anne,
My parents got a letter telling them I checked out a book from the B.B.L.L., but they didn’t care. It stinks that you got suspended. Principal Banana is a doofus.
—Kevin
They were all like that. Fourth graders writing to tell me they were sorry I got suspended. That Principal Banazewski and the school board were wrong. That their parents had gotten the letter Mrs. Banazewski said she would write, but either their parents didn’t care or they didn’t care that their parents were upset.
I sat on the floor and opened every one. I cried again as I read them, but this time I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because everybody was being so nice.
I stuffed all the letters into my locker with my books, dried my eyes, and opened the door to Mr. Vaughn’s classroom. Mr. Vaughn was in the middle of reading out a new list of vocabulary words when every head in the room turned and saw me. Rebecca squealed, jumped up, and ran across the room to hug me. Danny came over too, but just stood nearby smiling at me. Everybody else broke out cheering and clapping. Everybody but Trey.
I was stunned by my class’s response. I was sure everyone was going to hate me.
“I tried to call, but your mom said you were grounded!” Rebecca said.
“Did you see all the notes?” Danny said. “I told everyone the truth about why you got suspended.”
I didn’t have a chance to answer them. Mr. Vaughn quieted everyone down and sent us to our seats. “All right, all right,” he said. “Welcome back, Amy Anne. As you can see, you were missed by everyone, including me. Now, if we can try to focus on our new vocabulary list? The next word is ‘valiant.’”
As soon as we got to a time when we could all get up and move around, Rebecca and Danny and a few of the other students hurried over to me. I worried that Mr. Vaughn was going to make us be quiet and separate us, but he pretended to be focused on something at his desk and not notice.
“I saw your picture on the news!” Danny said, flicking his hair out of his face.
“Did you hear? Mrs. Jones was fired!” Rebecca said.
“I know,” I said. It still hurt to think about it. “Did you guys get in trouble?”
“Nah,” Danny said. “I mean, we got the letter home, like everybody else. But that’s it.”
“There’s going to be a special school board meeting,” someone else said. “My mom said I can go!”
“Me too!” some of the others added.
“What are we going to do now?” Danny asked me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What’s next?” Rebecca said. “How do we get Mrs. Jones and all the books back?”
Get Mrs. Jones and the books back? How was that even possible? And how on earth did they think I would know the answer? It was over. The B.B.L.L. was finished, and so was I.
But I didn’t say that. All I said was, “I—I don’t know.”
“Well, just wait till Helen comes,” Danny said. “Then they’ll be sorry.”
“We don’t have to wait till Helen comes,” Rebecca said. “We’ve got Amy Anne.”
Mr. Vaughn coughed, which told us it was time to get back to doing some real work. Rebecca and Danny smiled at me as they left, which made me feel even worse. What was everybody going to think of me when they realized there was nothing I could do—that there was nothing any of us could do—to fix everything?
I looked up and saw Trey watching me from across the room. My fists clenched and my face got hot. In the three days since I’d been suspended, I’d felt sad, then sorry, then hopeless, then depressed. But now I was just mad, and I was starting to think that giving Trey a big old knuckle sandwich might just be worth another three days of suspension.
The Mirror Universe
I was marching across the cafeteria to give Trey a piece of my mind—and maybe a piece of my fist—when Jeffrey Gonzalez appeared in front of me like somebody transporting in one of those science-fiction shows he watched. I almost knocked him over.
“Hey Amy Anne,” he said.
“Hey Jeffrey,” I said. “Excuse me. I need to go and punch somebody in the face.”
Jeffrey looked nervously behind him, wondering who I was talking about. “Oh. Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to say I was sorry. You know. For getting you suspended.”
I stopped. “What?”
“I’m sorry I got you suspended,” Jeffrey said. He looked a little worried I was going to punch him instead.
“How did you get me suspended?” I asked.
“It was that book you gave me. Bridge to Terabithia. I read it, and it … it made me think about my Grammy. My grandmother who … who died. When I finished it, I just—I got really upset.”
My heart sank. I felt awful. I hadn’t meant for Bridge to Terabithia to make Jeffrey feel bad. I had thought that maybe reading about somebody else who lost someone suddenly would make him understand he wasn’t alone. Maybe show him there was a way out of the sadness.
“No, no—not like that,” he said, seeing the worry on my face. “I mean, it made me cry.” Jeffrey looked around, embarrassed. “And I couldn’t stop crying. That’s when Mom and Dad came in my room, and I kind of let it all out. I hadn’t really cried since Grammy died. I guess I needed to. Anyway, Mom and Dad saw it was the book that did it, so they called the principal. But not because they were mad. They called to say how great it was that Mrs. Jones gave me the book.”
I saw it all in my head. Jeffrey’s parents call to tell Principal Banazewski how Mrs. Jones helped Jeffrey by giving him the right book. Oh, how wonderful! Mrs. Banazewski says. What book? Bridge to Terabithia, they say. Alarm bells go off for Principal Banazewski. She’s heard of that book. It was on the banned books list. She goes to Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones says she never gave anybody that book. It’s right back here on the shelf. Only it isn’t. But then where did Jeffrey get it?
“They made me tell!” Jeffrey said. “I’m so sorry! I never meant to get you in trouble, and neither did my parents. They’re real sorry too. They said they would call your parents and let them know.”
I looked at Trey across the room, drawing in his sketchbook. A minute ago, I was ready to kill him for ratting me out. But it turned out he didn’t have anything to do with it after all.
“It’s okay,” I told Jeffrey. “I’m just glad you feel better. You got really mean there for a little while.”
“I know,” Jeffrey said. “That was the Mirror Univers
e me.”
“The Mirror Universe you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “In Star Trek, there’s this Mirror Universe, and everybody there is the opposite of what they are in this universe. So if you’re good here, you’re bad there. The Mirror Universe Jeffrey took over for a little while, but Jeffrey Prime is back now.”
He was losing me. “Well, whoever you are now, I’m glad you’re back.”
Jeffrey smiled and saluted me with his fingers in a V shape. “Live long and prosper,” he told me.
“You too,” I said.
Instead of marching across to Trey, I went and stood in the cafeteria line, thinking about the Mirror Universe Amy Anne. Which one was the good one, and which one was the bad one? The Amy Anne who never spoke up and never got into trouble, or the Amy Anne who refused to accept a bad decision by the school board and did something good about it?
The Biggest Idea
The library was a very different place without Mrs. Jones in it.
I stood at the entrance between the two pedestals with the book detectors in them, but even from there I could feel the difference. It was quieter in the library. And sadder. It made my chest ache, like when I’d fallen off my bike and gotten the wind knocked out of me. The library had been the only place in the world I loved. The only place that felt like it was all mine, even if other people were there at the same time. The school library had been my home. But this wasn’t my home—or my library—anymore.
I didn’t want to go one step farther into that place, but I needed to return Indian Captive. I crept up to the front desk. There was another lady sitting there. A substitute for Mrs. Jones. She was a big white woman, like Mrs. Jones, and had glasses on a chain, just like Mrs. Jones, only hers were square. She wore a colorful dress like Mrs. Jones too, only it was red-and-white stripes, not polka dots.
She looked up from a copy of one of those celebrity gossip magazines and said, “Yes?”
It was creepy. Mrs. Jones should be sitting there, not this person. Then I realized who she was: She was the Mirror Mrs. Jones!
“I’m just returning a book!” I said. I dropped it on the counter and ran.
Right into Trey McBride.
Neither of us fell down, but a stack of papers he’d been carrying went flying all over the floor.
“Sorry! Sorry,” I said.
“Shh!” Mirror Mrs. Jones said. The real Mrs. Jones never shushed people in the library.
I immediately bent to help Trey pick up his papers, until I finally saw what it was I was picking up.
“Wait. What is this?” I asked him.
“It’s—”
“They’re Request for Reconsideration forms.” The forms Mrs. Jones was always telling Trey’s mom she had to fill out if she wanted to challenge a book. I flipped through them. Each and every one was a Request for Reconsideration form for a different book that hadn’t been banned. Not yet. These forms were asking that they all be removed from the library. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that they hadn’t been filled out by Mrs. Spencer.
“These are all in your handwriting!” I said.
“No talking!” Mirror Mrs. Jones barked, making me jump.
I pushed the papers back into Trey’s hands and kept on pushing him back out into the hall.
“You’re as bad as your mom!” I yelled at him when we were out of the library.
“I—” he started to say.
“It’s bad enough that she already banned half the books in the library. Now you have to go and ban the other half?” I said. I didn’t know if this was the real Amy Anne or the Mirror Amy Anne, but she was back, and she wasn’t going to be quiet anymore.
“You—” Trey tried to say, but I cut him off.
“At first I hated you,” I told him. “You drew that awful picture of me as a mouse last year and hurt my feelings. Then we had to work together on our Bill of Rights project and I thought you were different and I started to like you. Then I thought you ratted me out and got the Locker Library busted, and I hated you all over again.”
Trey frowned. “But—”
“Then I found out it wasn’t you who turned me in, and I started to like you again. And now this!” I snatched some of the papers back from him and read out titles he wanted to ban. “Sounder? The Indian in the Cupboard? The Chronicles of Prydain? My Teacher Is an Alien? The Kid Who Only Hit Homers? Are you kidding with this?”
“If you’d just let me—”
“What’s going to happen when you challenge every single book in this library?” I asked him. “What then, Trey? I’ll tell you what will happen. You challenge every book in the library for every stupid little reason you can think of, and there won’t be a single book left on the shelves for anyone to check out!”
“Exactly,” Trey said.
“You—what?” I said. I didn’t understand. That was seriously what he was trying to do?
“Are you finished?” Trey said. “Can I talk now?”
I nodded, still confused.
“Okay, first, you hated me because of the picture I drew of you last year?”
My face burned hot. I couldn’t believe I’d actually told him that. But this was the new Amy Anne. The one who wasn’t going to keep quiet anymore. I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said. “You drew me as a mouse!”
“Reading a book,” Trey said.
“But I’m a mouse! Everybody else was lions and eagles and cheetahs and things! Mice are—”
“Quiet?” Trey said. “Timid?”
I huffed. “Yes.”
“So were you. I mean, you’re not now,” he said, straightening his shirt from where I’d pushed him. “But you always had your nose in a book and never said anything. And whenever anybody did say something to you, it was like you were having this conversation with them in your head but you never said any of it out loud.”
“That’s crazy,” I wanted to tell him. “I don’t have conversations with other people in my head!” Then I blushed. He was right. I did it all the time. I was doing it again right now!
“You’re right,” I said. I hated to admit it, but it was true.
“I’m sorry it hurt your feelings,” Trey said. “I didn’t mean it to. It’s just how I saw you. I wouldn’t draw you the same way now.”
“Okay, so what’s the deal with these Request for Reconsideration forms?” I asked him.
Trey smiled. “What better way to show everybody how stupid it is to ban books than to take it as far as it can go? Once you ban one book, you can ban them all.” He tried to straighten the mess of papers in his arms. “This is just a start. When I’m finished, there won’t be one book left on the Shelbourne library shelves. Just wait until the TV cameras get a load of that!”
“So … you don’t really want these books banned?” I asked.
“I never wanted any books banned,” Trey said. “That was all my mom’s idea. I like Captain Underpants. I’m trying to draw a book just like it.”
Of course. Trey’s mom hadn’t known about Captain Underpants until he’d checked it out from the library in the first place. And every time I saw him, Trey was drawing. That must have been why Mrs. Jones introduced him to Dav Pilkey! She knew he was trying to draw a book like Captain Underpants.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I always thought you agreed with your mom.”
“So did everybody else,” Trey said.
I nodded to the forms in his hands. “If you do this, if you get all these books banned, everybody’s going to think you really do agree with her.”
Trey shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. Everybody already hates me because of her.”
I felt awful. I’d done the same thing—blamed him for what his mom was doing.
“I’m the one to do it,” Trey said. “Maybe in the end everybody’ll see why I did it. If they don’t kill me first.”
“There’s thousands of books,” I said. “It’ll take you all year. And they’ll probably figure out what you’re trying to do befo
re you can finish.”
Trey shrugged again. “I have to do something.”
I knew exactly what he meant. It was the same way I felt when I started the B.B.L.L. And it was exactly the same way I felt now.
“Don’t turn those in,” I told him. “Not yet. Turn them all in at once.”
“When?” he said. “Like you said, that’ll take forever. It needs to happen now. While people still care.”
“I know,” I said. “Which is why we’re going to need some help.”
“We?” said Trey.
“We,” I said.
Twenty-four Farts
Mr. Vaughn’s class was in the library. We were supposed to be looking for new books to read, but the B.B.L.L. board had other plans. Rebecca, Danny, and I met back in the stacks, as far away from the Mirror Mrs. Jones as we could get. The first order of business was to add Trey McBride as our newest member.
“Trey?” Danny asked.
Trey was there, and he looked embarrassed.
“He wasn’t the one banning books. It was his mom,” I said. “And you know how you were asking me what we do next? He’s got a plan. I move that we add him to the B.B.L.L. board as … our challenge response coordinator.”
That got Rebecca and Danny interested. He was voted in unanimously.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” I told them. “We’re going to ban every book in this library.”
Rebecca and Danny looked as stunned as I had been.
“Ban every book?” Rebecca said.
“Shh!” called Mirror Mrs. Jones. “No talking!”
I dragged the B.B.L.L. board into one of the library meeting rooms where we could talk, and explained the plan. When Rebecca and Danny got it, they liked it. I knew they would.
Danny flicked his hair out of his eyes. “But how are we going to find something wrong with every book?”
“Trust me,” Trey said, “books have been challenged for all kinds of crazy reasons. I looked up some challenges on the Internet. The easy ones are anything that’s got witchcraft or supernatural stuff in it, anything with bad words, anything with gay characters, anything with violence, and anything that mentions sex in it.” He blushed when he said the last one, and we all found somewhere else to be looking.
