by Phil Bildner
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For Evan and Holly
Cafeteria Basketball
“It all comes down to this,” I said, announcing the play-by-play. “Ten seconds on the clock, Clifton United trails by two. Irving has the ball at the top of the key.”
Actually, I was standing on a table in the middle of the empty school cafeteria, and the ball was really the crumpled tinfoil wrappers that had contained the last of my Halloween candy. I sized up the garbage can in front of the LINE STARTS HERE sign on the wall by the food-serving area.
“Hurry up, Mason Irving,” Red said.
I’m Mason Irving. That’s what Red calls me. Everyone else calls me Rip.
Red was by the entrance on lookout. He gripped the headphones hooked around his neck with one hand and tapped his leg with the other.
“Irving jab-steps left.” I pretended to dribble. “He slides right, looking to create some space.”
Red and I were allowed to be in the cafeteria in the morning. We had a pass from our teacher, Mr. Acevedo. But I probably wasn’t allowed to be standing on a table playing tinfoil basketball.
Make that definitely wasn’t allowed.
“Hurry up,” Red said again.
Just so you know, I wasn’t going to miss this shot. The new basketball season started right after school, and this was my good-luck, half-court-heave, buzzer-beating basket before the first practice.
No way was I going to miss this shot.
“Five seconds … four,” I counted down. I brushed the dreadlocks off my forehead. “Three … two … from three-point land!”
I baseball-threw the tinfoil, and with my basketball eyes I tracked its flight over the tables.
It landed in the center of the can.
“Boo-yah!” I hammer-fisted the air.
“Bam!” Red cheered.
The Early Pass
You might be wondering why two fifth graders are allowed to be all by themselves in the cafeteria, so let me explain.
Each morning, I meet Red at the end of his driveway, and we walk to Reese Jones Elementary. We cut through the school yard, zigzag through the portables (the second- and third-grade classrooms), and obstacle-course the new playground. We reach the main entrance to RJE just as the building officially opens.
The same thing, every day.
But for the last couple weeks, I’ve been meeting Red ten minutes earlier because he’s now permitted in the building before the other kids. He’s allowed to go up to our classroom, get unpacked, and settle in before everyone else. Since I walk to school with Red, I’m allowed in early, too.
Here’s why:
The first two months of fifth grade were tough for Red. Then again, thanks to all the crazy budget cuts and changes, they were tough for all the kids. There were like ten new teachers, including Mr. Acevedo. There was no longer an assistant principal, and the principal, Ms. Darling, was out of the building more than she was here. For the first time, the fifth graders had to switch classes. We also had to eat lunch with the first and second graders, instead of the fourth graders. Luckily, we still got to sit in the fifth-grade-only booths.
As for Red, he doesn’t do well with changes. They seriously mess with him. That’s why Ms. Yvonne—the special ed teacher—suggested the building pass. Red does a lot better when he gets to places early or on time.
The thing is, the early pass only gets us into RJE. It doesn’t allow us to roam the halls. That’s where Mr. Acevedo comes in. He doesn’t mind us leaving Room 208 so long as we’re back when the other kids arrive.
It’s pretty cool being the only kids in the school and walking past the front doors while everyone else is outside, especially since it’s the beginning of November and getting a little cooler. And it’s beyond pretty cool playing tinfoil hoops in an empty cafeteria.
The Lunch Bunch
After I sank my long-distance tinfoil shot, we started back to Room 208.
“The new lunch ladies completely ignore us, Mason Irving,” Red said.
“They don’t even know we’re in there,” I said.
“Ms. Eunice, Ms. Carmen, Ms. Joan, Ms. Audrey, and Ms. Liz would never completely ignore us like the new lunch ladies. I miss the Lunch Bunch.”
I raised my fist. “Bring back the Lunch Bunch!”
The Lunch Bunch. That’s what we used to call the lunch ladies. They’d been at RJE since before we started kindergarten. But because of the cuts, they were replaced.
None of the kids like the new cafeteria people. They don’t play music during grab-and-go breakfast. They don’t sing and dance when they serve lunch. They don’t talk to us or know any of our names (except for the kids who act up).
“The Lunch Bunch would never let you stand on the table, Mason Irving.”
“Not in a gazillion years.”
“Especially Ms. Eunice!”
I laughed. “If Ms. Eunice caught me standing on one of her tables, she’d throw my butt in the trash can!”
Up ahead, Mr. Goldberg, the head custodian, was walking toward the front doors with his keys out. Ms. Waldon, the parent coordinator, was arranging the papers on her desk under the announcement monitor in the main hall.
Mr. Goldberg and Ms. Waldon know everything about RJE. Everything.
“Happy Monday, boys,” Ms. Waldon said.
“Hi, Ms. Waldon.” Red waved.
“You boys have a nice weekend?”
“Oh, yeah,” Red said. “Did you?”
“I did. Thanks for asking.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Waldon.”
Red and Ms. Waldon have a conversation like this every morning.
We turned down the K–1 hallway and headed for the staircase. The K–1 stairs are the only stairs Red will use at RJE.
“Do you think this basketball season will be the same as last basketball season?” Red asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Do you think Coach Acevedo will run practices the same way he ran practices last season?”
Our teacher, Mr. Acevedo, is also Coach Acevedo, our basketball coach.
“I guess so,” I said again.
We two-at-a-timed the steps, leaped around the cans of paint and rolls of brown paper on the middle landing, and charged onto the second floor.
“Rip and Red!” Xander shouted, racing up.
“Hey, Xander McDonald,” Red said.
Xander is in our class. Everyone calls him X, except for Red. Red calls everyone by his or her first and last name.
“I heard you two are the only ones from RJE on Clifton United again,” Xander said.
“You heard right,” I said.
“Just like last season,” Red said.
Clifton United is the name of our basketball team. Until this year, the fifth-grade basketball program was only open to RJE kids, but now it’s a district-wide fifth-grade team open to all kids in Clifton.
>
“Noah wanted to play,” I said, “but his family is going on vacation in December. He’d have to miss the last two weeks.”
“You think you’ll win more than one game this time?” Xander asked.
I shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
We walked past the library and headed for Room 208 at the end of the hall. When we reached the door, we stopped dead in our tracks.
A girl was talking with Mr. Acevedo, a girl we’d never seen before.
Takara Eid
“This is Takara,” Mr. Acevedo said after everyone had arrived. He stood next to her at the front of the class. “She’s joining us in here. Room 208 has a new addition.”
A new addition?
The fifth grade never got new students. In the lower grades, kids came and went all the time, and each grade also had three or four classes. But the fifth grade had only one class. The last time we got new kids was when the twins, Lana and Ana, moved here in second grade.
“Would you like to introduce yourself?” Mr. Acevedo asked.
“Yeppers,” she said.
A couple kids snickered. Mr. Acevedo silenced them with a stare.
“I’m Takara,” she said. She held up her arms and pushed her hip out to the side like a dancer at the end of a number. “Takara Eid. But everyone calls me Tiki. I’m Egyptian. Well, my pop’s from Egypt.” She patted her cheeks and tilted her head. “That’s why I’m brown.”
A lot more than a couple kids wanted to snicker—including me. But the don’t-you-dare lasers shooting from Mr. Acevedo’s eyes stopped us.
Tiki wore a bright yellow hoodie shirt with the Eiffel Tower on the front, purple pants like Trinity’s and Attie’s, and light-blue canvas low-tops with one white shoelace and one black shoelace.
“So we now have thirteen girls and thirteen boys,” Melissa said.
“We do,” Mr. Acevedo said.
“We’ve never had as many girls.” She stood up, looked down at Noah sitting next to her, and smiled. “We’re bigger than you, too.”
The girls were bigger than the boys this year. Whenever I stood next to Melissa, Grace, or Isa, I felt like I was their little brother.
The biggest boy, Bryan, was no longer in the class. He was the biggest kid at RJE. But his family had to move. Mr. Acevedo told us about it last week during CC, Community Circle. That’s our class meeting time.
“Let’s see where I’m going to put you, Tiki.” Mr. Acevedo brushed some hair off his face and looked around the room. “Rip and Red, there are two open seats at your table. I’m going to have her join you.”
“Which one of you is Rip?” Tiki blurted loudly.
I started to reply but she cut me off.
“Gollygadzookers.” She snort-laughed. She patted her cheeks again. “I can’t believe I said that out loud. Of course I know which one of you is Red.”
“People call me Red because of my hair,” Red said. “My real name is Blake Daniels. Rip’s real name is Mason Irving.”
She looked right at me. “There was a kid at my old school named Rip.” She pumped her eyebrows. “Everyone called him Rip because he ripped farts all the time.”
Everyone laughed.
Everyone but me.
“That’s not why people call me Rip,” I said.
She held up her hands with her fingers spread apart. “Could you imagine if that was the reason? That would be so freakaliciously funny.”
My cheeks blazed. Some people don’t think black people blush or turn red, but trust me, we do.
I let out a loud puff. This was how nicknames got started. Bad nicknames. Bad nicknames that stuck. Like a fart nickname. A fart nickname the year before middle school.
“So what does … what does your name mean?” I asked.
“Eid means ‘festival’!” She raised her arms again. “So if your last name was Eid, and you farted a lot, it would be a farting festival!”
Everyone laughed again.
I didn’t.
“Rip,” Mr. Acevedo said, “take Tiki around today. Show her Room 208. Show her what RJE is all about.”
Tiki Time
I stared at Tiki. She sat straight across from me. She and Red were chatting like besties.
“Mr. Acevedo’s a big fan of breaks,” Red said. “That’s why we’re taking one now.”
“I’m a big fan of breaks, too,” Tiki said, smiling.
“Breaks last about five to ten minutes,” Red said.
“It would be horrible if cars and trucks didn’t stop!” Tiki leaned forward. “I’m a big fan of brakes, too.”
“Mr. Acevedo is not a big fan of homework.” Red kept going. “Mr. Acevedo’s not a big fan of tests.”
“Something tells me Mr. Acevedo’s not a big fan of worksheets either.”
“Mr. Acevedo’s not, Takara Eid!” Red pointed to the large NWZ—NO WORKSHEET ZONE—sign next to the whiteboard.
I let out a puff.
After Bryan left last week, Mr. Acevedo said everyone could change seats, but Red and I didn’t because we liked our seats by the windows, and Red only sits facing doors. Miles moved to a table in the back so he could sit with Noah, and Trinity moved to the middle table with the OMG girls—Olivia, Mariam, and Grace. That meant the two seats across from Red and me were open. We had the table to ourselves.
Until …
“Do you know what T3 is, Takara Eid?” Red asked.
“I have a hunchabalooga you’re going to tell me, Blake Daniels.”
“Hunchabalooga isn’t even a word,” I said.
“It is to me.” Tiki pointed to herself with both index fingers. “I love making up words.”
“T3 is Teacher’s Theater Time,” Red said. “That’s when Mr. Acevedo reads to the class. Mr. Acevedo reads to the class every day. Mr. Acevedo’s the best reader.”
“You can’t just make up words,” I said.
“Why not?” Tiki placed her elbows on the table and cupped her hands around her chin. “I love having my own words. It’s so much fun. Fa-real-zees. That means for real.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Who says?”
I twisted a lock near my forehead at its root and looked over at Mr. Acevedo. He was sitting on the lip of the bathtub in the meeting area, talking with Diego and Xander.
Why do I have to show her around? Why can’t somebody else?
“At this one school I went to,” Tiki said, “there were fifteen fifth-grade classes. Fifteen! And at this other school, there were only forty-four kids in the whole school.”
“How many schools have you been to, Takara Eid?” Red asked.
“This year?” She counted fingers. “Four.”
“Why do you move around so much?” I asked.
“We just do,” she said.
“We call independent reading Choice,” Red said. “We call it Choice because we’re allowed to read whatever we want.”
“I like reading nonfiction,” Tiki said.
“Most of the nonfiction is over there.” Red pointed to the corner by the Swag Wall. “Some of the nonfiction is on top of the cubbies in the silver toolboxes. Some of the nonfiction is in the orange, green, and yellow milk crates.”
Ms. Yvonne walked in.
“Hi, Ms. Yvonne.” Red waved.
“Hi, Red,” Ms. Yvonne said, heading for our table. “And you must be Takara.”
“Yeppers,” she said. “Everyone calls me Tiki, except for Red.”
Ms. Yvonne sat down. “Honey, why don’t you put those away?” She nodded to the headphones still around Red’s neck. “You don’t need them now.”
Red slipped them off his neck, spun them around his wrist, and rolled them into his desk. Red can do tons of cool tricks with his headphones.
“As soon as break ends,” Ms. Yvonne said to Red, “we’re going over your writer’s notebook.”
“Thanks, Ms. Yvonne.”
“I want to see yours, too,” she said to me.
Whenever Ms. Yvonne was in ELA�
��which was most of the time—she helped all the kids, not just the ones with services.
I tilted back my chair, grabbed a composition notebook from the windowsill, and slid it across to Tiki.
“Here,” I said.
“All your writing work goes in there.” Ms. Yvonne tapped the cover. “So you’re from Egypt, Tiki?”
“My family is.”
“Have you ever been?”
“Not yet.” Her thick eyebrows curved up. “Most of my family has. Pop was raised there.”
“Pop?” I said. “You call your dad Pop?”
“Yeppers.”
I let out a puff and checked the clock. Less than three hours until lunch.
Name That Food
“Ambush!” I reached across the table and jabbed Diego’s arm with my spork.
“Spork war!” He swiped at my hand with his.
We were in the cafeteria, sitting at a fifth-grade booth along the side wall.
I half stood, leaned in, and poked at Diego’s shoulder. When he jumped back, I tried flicking the strings on his hat. He ducked away, lunged forward, and stabbed the corner of my tray. I went for his fingers, scratching his knuckles.
“Yo!” Diego stood.
“Everyone, stop!” Avery held out her hands and looked at Diego. “Dude, sit down. You friggin’ splashed me.”
“It was either water … It was either water, skim milk, or tropical cranberry juice,” Red stammered.
Avery and Red were at the booth, too. Avery was parked at the end. Red was next to me.
I swiped at Diego again. “Ambush!”
“Stop!” Avery spun her wheelchair to me and smacked my hand. “I mean it, dude. Stop.”
I stopped. But not because of Avery.
Because of Red.
His fists were next to his eyes. They were trembling. His shoulders were hunched, and his face was squinched.
Red doesn’t like play fighting, especially rough play fighting. He doesn’t like being touched or hit. He doesn’t like getting in trouble either. Not that Red was doing anything wrong or that he ever really got in trouble. But he was next to kids who could get him in trouble. The whole time Diego and I were battling, Red was tracking Mr. Noble, the second-grade teacher on lunch duty.
