by Bonny Becker
There on his desk was a yellow sheet of paper. How had that gotten there? No one else had one. Eric picked up the flyer. It said something that made Eric grin. He looked at Ms. Plum. But Ms. Plum was writing out a new fact on the board.
“Did Ms. Plum put this on my desk?” Eric asked.
Tashala stared at him. “When could she have done that?”
Eric didn’t know, but he neatly folded the flyer and stuck it in his pocket.
And at recess, when Brad said, “What’s a polygon?” Eric knew the answer to that, but he let Brad say it.
Q: How many people in the world have the same birthday as you?
A: About twenty million.
Q: How can a jar of peanut butter make you rich?
A: Turn it into diamonds! All you need is to cook the peanut butter at a temperature of 3,000 degrees under pressure of over a million pounds per square inch.
Q: What did the flyer say?
A: “Good with words? Come join the Springtime Elementary Debate Team. First meeting today after school!”
Q: What’s a polygon?
A: A missing parrot!
Being the smartest kid in the class, Carlos had figured out that the animal you found in the closet could kind of turn out to be a problem if you had a problem—like being a cowboy snob like Tashala or an interrupter like Eric.
But Carlos couldn’t think of any problem with being smart. He couldn’t wait to get picked and to find out what his animal would be. He figured it would be something super clever.
Today Ms. Plum was showing them how to tie a turban.
“First you put the end of the cloth in your moush,” she said, biting onto the end of the long piece of orange cloth. “Then you wap it around—”
Then Ms. Plum sniffled and asked, “Who cansh get me some Kleenex?”
Carlos’s hand shot up. But Ms. Plum picked … Darma! Darma, who hadn’t even raised her hand. Who never raised her hand! She was almost as quiet as Jovi, who was from Africa and didn’t speak English very well.
Darma was so messy and clumsy. She was always getting glue in her hair or mud on her shoes and bug bites on her hands that she scratched until they were scabby.
But Ms. Plum looked right past Carlos’s waving, wriggling hand and nodded at her. “Darma, could you, pleash?”
Darma blushed so hard she had tears in her eyes. She stood up hesitantly and knocked over her chair. “Sorry,” she said, quickly setting the chair back up and patting it. Then she tripped on her shoe strap. “Sorry,” she mumbled. At last Darma made it to the closet.
She was gone a long time. Ms. Plum continued with her lesson on turban wrapping, and it was really hard to pay attention. Although everyone wanted to wear a turban, as Ms. Plum had promised they could, they kept wondering what was taking Darma so long.
Finally Darma poked her head out and said, “I can’t find the Kleenex.” Then she looked down and said, “Oh.”
A squad of bright-eyed squirrels strode from the closet, walking on their hind legs, carrying the Kleenex box above their heads like a bunch of servants carrying Cleopatra on her throne. They marched the Kleenex over to Ms. Plum’s desk.
Ms. Plum put the final tuck into her turban and looked down at the squirrels.
“Why, thank you, squirrels!” she said, giving Darma a kindly look. “Very nice, dear. Very nice, indeed.”
Darma didn’t quite know what Ms. Plum was talking about, but still it made her feel good.
The squirrels scurried to Darma’s desk, apparently to await further orders.
Darma stumbled back to her chair.
She placed her hands neatly in front of her to show that she was listening to Ms. Plum and to get the other kids to stop staring. The squirrels took one look at her ragged fingernails, disappeared into the closet with flicks of their tails, and reemerged with nail clippers, a nail file, and a bottle of soft pink nail polish.
While Ms. Plum strode about the room in her turban, telling them about India, Darma got a lovely manicure.
“Hey, can I get one of those?” Mindy whispered across the aisle.
Mindy had never said anything to Darma before.
Darma tried shooing the squirrels in Mindy’s direction, but they just perched on the edge of Darma’s desk, their bright eyes shining on her. Eager smiles on their faces. Their tails at attention.
Darma took the bottle of nail polish and set it next to Mindy. One of the squirrels leapt onto Mindy’s desk and whisked the bottle of polish away.
“Yipes!” cried Mindy.
“Sorry,” said Darma, nervously picking at her new manicure.
The squirrels marched back to the closet with the manicure stuff. After a moment they came out with assorted candies, including a giant bag of chocolate Kisses. They hauled it all over to Darma.
“You have to share those,” said Becky Oh.
“Sorry,” said Darma. She tried passing out Kisses to the class, but the squirrels grabbed them and scurried every one back to her. The Kisses sat in a big foil-wrapped pile in front of her.
The squirrels stared at her expectantly. One of them held up a Kiss for her in its little paw. When she didn’t take it, they all bent their heads, drooped their tails, and looked horribly sad.
For the first time ever, Darma raised her hand.
“Yes, Darma?” said Ms. Plum.
“Is it okay if I eat a candy?” she asked, nodding at the sorrowful squirrels.
“Certainly, dear,” said Ms. Plum. “I think it would be the kind thing to do.”
So Darma ate one Kiss. The squirrels still looked sad. She ate two. The squirrels still looked sad. Darma had to eat fifteen chocolate Kisses, five caramels, and a bag of M&M’s before they began beaming again.
“Sorry,” Darma kept saying with each bite. “Sorry.” She gave a little burp.
Then the squirrels really got serious. They organized Darma’s binder. They buffed her shoes with their tails. They combed her hair with their cunning little paws. They sharpened her pencils. They couldn’t do enough for her.
“How come she gets all this cool stuff done for her?” complained Becky Oh.
Ms. Plum looked thoughtful. “Maybe our Darma is cool,” she finally said.
The kids all stared at Darma. Miss Scabby Bug Bites was cool?
Darma shrugged sheepishly and kept saying “Sorry.” But she didn’t look that sorry. In fact, she looked quite pleased at the way the squirrels had arranged her hair.
When Darma had to leave after school, the squirrels clung to her ankles and made pitiful whining sounds. One tried desperately to polish her shoes even as she stepped out the door.
“Thank you so much,” she said, turning back. The squirrels stood in a line at the door. “But I really have to get home.”
The squirrels all gave a tremendous mutual sigh.
The next morning, the squirrels were gone, but they had tidied up Darma’s desk, spell-checked her essay on the Taj Mahal, and left a pile of pink bubble gum.
“You’re so lucky,” gushed Emiko.
“I wish I had a bunch of squirrel helpers,” said Becky Oh.
“Want some gum?” said Darma shyly.
The girls nodded.
“Me too?” asked Mindy.
Darma handed them each a piece of gum.
“I like your new shirt,” said Mindy.
“I made it myself,” said Darma.
“I wish I could sew,” said Mindy.
“Well, one sleeve is kind of on backward….”
“Oh, I thought that was a cool new style. Pink’s my favorite color,” Mindy added, snapping her gum. “What’s yours?”
“Blue,” said Darma, blushing and pointing the toes of her almost shiny shoes.
Then she looked up at Ms. Plum and smiled like the sun.
Carlos thought that if he could just figure out the rules, he could get chosen for the supply closet. So the night after Darma got her squirrels, Carlos wrote down what he knew so far.
Animals came on
ly from the closet.
No one was able to talk about the animals outside Ms. Plum’s room.
The animals couldn’t leave the classroom. (He was pretty sure.)
The animals disappeared by the next day. (Sir Prance-alot had been gone the next morning, and so had the squirrels.)
It helped if you were pathetic or a loudmouth or had some kind of problem.
This was the most important rule. And that obviously was the trouble. Carlos needed to be much less amazing and wonderful than he was!
So the next day, Carlos started throwing eraser bits at the back of Brad’s neck. It took Brad a while to figure out what was happening. But when he did, he glared at Carlos so hard that Carlos began to worry about what might happen at recess.
Besides, he started to wonder what kind of animal a class pest would find. Probably a giant cockroach.
He figured, if you wanted a good animal, it was better to be someone people felt sorry for, like Darma. Well, like Darma used to be.
The next morning, Carlos wore his old pants from second grade. They were too short and had holes at the knees.
“Hey, your baby brother called. He wants his pants back!” said Brad.
“Where’s the flood, Hi-Pants?” said Becky Oh.
She and Brad high-fived each other.
Just as he had hoped—kids were being mean to him!
When Carlos sat down, he could barely breathe, his pants were so tight. By lunchtime his legs were numb. It was really uncomfortable pretending to be poor and sad. And Ms. Plum never even noticed how pitiful he was, anyway.
Then he remembered Mindy. She had done a good deed and gotten that neat horse.
Carlos did good deeds all the following day. He picked up dropped pencils, opened doors, and let Eric cut in front of him in line at lunch. He even tried to get Jeremy to laugh by telling him a joke, but Jeremy just stared at him.
Still, it was the thought that counted, right? Carlos looked hopefully at Ms. Plum.
She smiled warmly at him, but that was all. No one was asked to go to the closet that day or for the next two weeks, long after Carlos had become tired of doing good deeds.
So now he knew Rule 6. You couldn’t predict when or why or what would happen with the closet. All he could do now was wait and wait and wait….
Then Carlos had an awful thought. What if Ms. Plum never picked him? No, that wasn’t possible … was it?
Jovi didn’t speak English very well. Ms. Plum explained to them how Jovi had escaped with his family from a place in Africa where bad things had happened. Jovi had gentle brown eyes and a soft smile, like he wished he could say yes to everything.
Jovi never raised his hand for the supply closet, but even so, one bright fall day Ms. Plum called on him.
Ms. Plum was showing them the basics of classical fencing.
“Jovi,” she suddenly said.
And when he looked up from his homemade sword—a cardboard tube taped to a wooden handle—she held up an empty roll of tape, smiled, and nodded toward the supply closet.
Jovi smiled back and quickly went to the closet.
Back in the third row, Carlos slumped over his “sword.” He had never lived where really bad things had happened.
“Now watch carefully,” Ms. Plum said. “This is the en garde position. The position you take just before the fencing match begins.”
Jovi quickly came back with the tape. A bird streaked out of the closet behind him. It perched on a narrow pipe that ran just below the ceiling. It was a golden falcon with a beak that curved into a sharp point.
The falcon glared down at the classroom with glittering eyes.
“Awesome!” said Brad. “He’s not like a horse or a parrot or those squirrels. He’s a real wild animal.”
Brad was right. You could tell by the falcon’s fierce yellow eyes. And the way it jolted its head around, fast and sure and wary.
Nadia sucked her lip. The falcon looked like it would bite.
“Now, the key is to hold your sword lightly but with confidence,” Ms. Plum said, continuing with her lesson.
But Tashala couldn’t help herself. She dropped her cardboard tube and took a piece of beef jerky out of her desk and held it up toward the falcon.
The falcon blinked. With a sudden high screech, the bird of prey launched itself from the pipe, swooped down on Tashala, and snatched the jerky in its claws. Tashala could feel the breeze from its wings. It flew back to the pipe and tore into the meat.
“Wow!” said Tashala.
Ms. Plum didn’t scold. In fact, she cocked her head, her brown eyes bright, as if Tashala and the bird were an interesting experiment.
With that, most everyone rushed to get food from their lunches and hold it up for the falcon—potato chips, a Twinkie, a pickle.
“Falcons don’t eat pickles,” said Becky Oh.
But Mindy ignored her and waggled the green slice toward the bird.
Jovi stood near the back of the room and smiled timidly.
At first when the falcon grabbed some food, it was cool. But then the bird kept swooping down on people, even when no one wanted it to anymore. Sometimes it would dive-bomb a kid’s head for no reason. Lucy was sure the bird would bury its pointed beak in the back of her neck.
Pretty soon the students of Ms. Plum’s class had their necks hunched into their shoulders or were cringing under their desks.
“We gotta get it back into the closet!” cried Eric as the bird jetted over his desk, screeching and scattering his papers.
No one asked Jovi what to do with his bird.
Eric tried flapping his jacket at it and shooing it toward the closet, but the falcon just yawned, showing a tiny black tongue.
Carlos stood right in front of the open closet door, waving some bologna.
“Look, food!” he cried.
For a minute it looked like Carlos’s idea would work. The falcon swooped toward him, but at the last second, the bird banked, grabbed the bologna in its claws, and zoomed back to its perch on the pipe.
Becky grabbed her cardboard tube and heaved it at the bird. “Go back where you belong, Feather-butt!”
“That won’t work,” said Brad. He picked up an eraser and threw it hard. He almost hit the falcon, who didn’t seem to understand that some people were throwing things at it.
And that’s when a voice from the back of the room said, “No.”
It took a moment for everyone to realize that it was Jovi.
Jovi’s shoulders were tight points under his shirt. It seemed like it made him nervous to have everyone look at him and to not say yes, but even so, he said, a second time, “No. No hurting.”
Some of the kids remembered that in a way, the falcon belonged to Jovi. Others remembered, too, about the bad things Jovi’s gentle eyes had seen.
“It’s not his fault he doesn’t want to go back into the closet,” Tashala admitted.
“Well, then what are we gonna do?” asked Brad.
Jovi jerked his chin toward the window. For a second he looked almost like a falcon himself, with his fine, sharp nose and the determined look in his dark eyes.
“Free,” he said.
They all looked at Ms. Plum.
She nodded.
“But I thought the animals couldn’t leave the room,” said Carlos.
“Each animal can choose for itself,” said Ms. Plum; she didn’t explain any further.
Tashala pulled down the top of one of the windows.
Amazingly, the falcon flew down from the pipe and perched on Jovi’s forearm. Jovi’s arm shook, but he carried the bird over to the window.
“Fly away now,” said Jovi. “Freedom for you.”
“Say, you’re really learning your English,” said Carlos.
Jovi straightened his shoulders. His dark eyes shone.
“I am being good with English,” he said proudly.
“You really are,” said Carlos.
“Screeeeeeee,” cried the falcon. Then it flapped its wings
and flew out into the high blue sky.
The gloomiest kid in Ms. Plum’s room was Jeremy. Jeremy’s favorite word was doom. His favorite weather was wet. His favorite color was black.
Jeremy always wore black shoes, black socks, black pants, and a black T-shirt. When he grew up, he wanted a tattoo of a cobweb on his arm.
Jeremy never smiled because, he said, “It’s a weary, weary way.”
No one knew quite what that meant, but it was the sort of thing Jeremy liked to say.
“Who can get me a glue stick?” asked Ms. Plum one rainy October afternoon.
Jeremy slowly raised his hand, propping it with his other hand and letting his fingers hang pale and limp.
When Ms. Plum picked him, he walked in a weary, weary way to the closet.
Carlos let out a big, weary sigh, glanced at Ms. Plum, but knew it was pointless. He could come into class in a coffin and it wouldn’t make Ms. Plum pick him.
A moment later Jeremy stepped out of the closet with a small raven hunched on his shoulder. It was dark black, with black eyes and a black beak that looked too heavy for its head.
“Nevermore,” Jeremy said in a grimly satisfied way. “Nevermore.”
“Huh?” said Lucy.
Ms. Plum explained that Jeremy was referring to a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe about a raven who only said “nevermore” to everything.
“‘Quoth the raven,’” said Jeremy with a faint nod of his head. “‘Nevermore.’”
“Quoth?” asked Eric.
“Means ‘said,’” explained Carlos.
Jeremy slumped back to his seat, noticing with satisfaction in the mirror how the bird crouched on his shoulder, looking as gloomy as midnight.
“Maybe your raven will say something,” said Eric.
“Beware,” said Jeremy, “for they are messengers of death.”
Nadia bit her lip.
Eric grinned and said, “Awesome!”
“Speak, dark one,” said Jeremy. “Tell them of their doom.”
“Pig snout,” said the raven.
“Pig snout? What’s that mean?” said Darma.
