A Whole Lot of Lucky

by Danette Haworth

  Mom’s newspaper route was fun. She drove through town with both windows open, pitching newspapers out both sides without even slowing down—her arm’s that good. Sometimes I thought about getting up early to help her on Sundays, but I never did more than think about it. I’m not what you’d call a morning person—at least, not a four o’clock-in-the-morning person.

  I glanced at the back door. Dad’s work sneakers were gone. “Did Dad have an early job today?” I asked between blueberry bites. Dad cleans carpets—that’s his business and he is the owner and also the only employee. The good thing about Dad’s business is we have the cleanest carpet in town. The bad thing about Dad’s business is that his customers all live around here, which means he’s like a servant in the houses of my classmates.

  Mom set her cup down. “Three, actually—in Hill Crest.” Hill Crest is the la-di-da gated community across town. Once when Libby was sick and Mom had to take her to the doctor, Dad brought me with him to a job there. Talk about security! Not only is there a gate, there’s a security guard, video cameras, and signs telling you about the guard and cameras. I never saw a neighborhood so stuck on itself. Past the gate, you can hardly believe your eyes. Those aren’t houses—they’re mansions, and that means a lot of carpet to clean and maybe even sofas and drapes.

  I swirled the back of my fork through the leftover syrup on my plate, licked it off, and then cleared the table. The phone rang. Mom and I groaned at the same time. Since I happened to be standing by the sink, I answered it after looking at the caller ID. “Hi, Mrs. Gardner, how’re you today?”

  “I’d be a lot better if I got my paper.”

  Cranky old lady. Her voice sounded like crushed aluminum foil. One of her grandsons was in my math class. “Hang on,” I said. “Here’s my mom.”

  Mom rolled her eyes and shook her head as she reached for the phone, but not before giving me a quick hug. Poor Mom. You’d think when you’re an adult you’d be done with getting in trouble.

  Speaking of trouble, as I rode up to the bike area outside the school, there they stood, Megan and Drew, leaning against the light post. They were on me like mosquitoes.

  “Really?” Megan said in that superior voice of hers. “Wearing a skirt on that bike?”

  “Oh, my God,” Drew said, and they laughed.

  Becca Singer shot me a look of sympathy before she scooted out of target range.

  Heat crawled up my neck, but I walked on by. They followed me into the pen and I pretended like they weren’t there, which was supposed to discourage them but never did. I took a deep breath and bent down to lock up my bike.

  Megan’s feet pranced closer to me. “You’re wearing Amanda’s skirt!”

  I whirled around. “No, I’m not!”

  “You’re right—she is!” Drew said to Megan.

  I stood and threw my fists down, arms rigid at my side. “I am not!”

  Megan started laughing and turned to Drew. “The A—”

  “A for Amanda! You did it when we dressed out at gym!” Drew cracked up too much to say anything else.

  I couldn’t help it; I glanced at the skirt but didn’t see anything. Then, feeling better, I smoothed the skirt down the seams and that’s when I spotted it: a spiky red A inked in near the hem. Pings of heat fired off all over my face, even in my eyeballs.

  Megan put one hand on her hip. “Told ya!”

  “The least she could do is wash things before she wears them,” Drew said.

  Megan threw her head back with a wide-open laugh.

  Somewhere between elementary school and middle school, Megan got popular. She’s pretty but not superpretty, though she does wear cool clothes and I guarantee they’re not from picked-over bins at the thrift store. She’s not the smartest or the fastest or the funniest, and she’s definitely not the nicest. How does a person like that get to be popular? Let me know if you figure it out, because I sure haven’t.

  Megan linked her arm through Drew’s and they strolled away, sniggering.

  A couple of other kids overheard everything. From the sides of their eyes, they searched for the red A. Instead of slinging my backpack onto my shoulder, I let it hang from my elbow. The heavy books inside banged against my thigh as I marched past the rubberneckers, but there was no way I was walking around with Megan’s A for all to see.

  I searched the sidewalk and then the courtyard for Amanda. The first bell rang, which had the same effect as a traffic light turning yellow. Some people sped up, but others screeched to a stop. These would be your popular people. They thought they owned the halls, standing in circles, forcing the rest of us to flow around them. I squeezed past the first blockage, got pushed against a locker, then picked up by the current, which floated me down the hall and deposited me at my first-period classroom: social studies.

  Amanda sat at a desk with her legs crossed, pretending to look for something in her folder. This is a tactic we both used when we didn’t have anyone to talk with and didn’t want to look like losers.

  “Amanda,” I said as I took the seat next to her, “look.” I tapped the side of the skirt and told her the whole story.

  As I spoke, her shoulders sagged and her mouth pinched together like a clam’s. She started shaking her foot. The more I talked, the harder that foot bounced. Finally, she said, “I told you I didn’t want you borrowing my clothes anymore.”

  “You never said that!”

  “Well, it should’ve been obvious,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “This is so embarrassing.” She put her head on her desk. Her long blond hair slipped over the side in ropes.

  Before I could say anything back, the tardy bell rang and Mrs. Weller called out roll.

  Apparently, Megan and Drew texted everyone in their contact lists about their little trick, because all day long I thought I heard people whispering, “Hey,” but what they were really saying was this: “Where’s the A?” “I see the A!” Amanda gave me the silent treatment at lunch. Becca told me to hide it with duct tape. Tanner Law walked up to me and said, “Rabbit!”

  By the time school was over, I was ready to disappear. Amanda came up behind me in the pen. I thought she was going to apologize, but instead she said, “Just keep the skirt, okay? I don’t want it back.” Her voice was flat.

  “It’s not my fault,” I snapped.

  “Whatever.”

  I watched as she unlocked her new twelve-speed bike with the Sure-Grip hand brakes and the butt-soft seat, and I watched as she daintily got on—daintily, because hers is a girl’s bike—and I was still watching as she rode away and the back wheel slipped into the long crack between the concrete sections.

  Megan, Drew, and their sidekicks pointed and snickered at her straining on the pedals. One of the lesser sidekicks slapped his knee as if Amanda stuck in a crack was the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his whole entire life. One of them took out her phone and I heard the words “video” and “YouTube” and “loser,” and that’s when I did it—that’s when I sprinted toward Amanda and pushed her bike seat as hard as I could.

  The back tire hopped out of the crack just as Amanda stood on the pedals. Her bike did a fierce wheelie, and she sailed over the curb into the pickup line. For a moment, it looked like she might right herself, like a jumper on a horse, but then her tires hit the pavement and she fell off in one direction and the bike fell in another. Mrs. McCrory jammed on her brakes hard enough to cause her van to buck.

  A gasp from the entire car-pool lane sucked the air off the playground, through the dollar weeds, and over the vans trembling in line, causing a silence so sudden that the sandhill cranes who’d been foraging nearby straightened their long gray necks and turned disinterestedly in our direction.

  Mrs. McCrory hopped out of her van, her face pale white. “Thank God I just had the brakes fixed!” she said, fanning herself with her hands.

  I started toward my best friend when suddenly one of the tea
chers yanked my arm and dragged me to the middle of the crowd, where Amanda sat on the road being petted and murmured over. The teacher sliced through the air for quiet. She asked, “Is this the girl who pushed you?”

  Amanda’s face was red. Her knee was scraped. She was breathing so hard her nostrils flared like a bull’s before it charges. She locked her eyes on to mine and I saw in them a stony glint I’d never seen before.

  “Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. She shifted into a more solid position. “That’s her.”

  Chapter 2

  Teachers say they try to be fair. But if you are in at least fourth grade, you already know that’s not true. None of the teachers even tried to listen to my side of the story. And Amanda didn’t help one bit, not one single bit. She glared at me as they practically slapped cuffs on my wrists and dragged me to the office of the warden, Principal Dr. Taylor, which is how I ended up sitting here in the lobby, waiting, staring at gobs of gum stuck under the receptionist’s desk and counting floor tiles (sixty-eight).

  I’ve almost given up hope of ever seeing the outside again when the principal herself comes out to get me.

  “Hailee Richardson,” Dr. Taylor says as she ushers me into her office. She sits on her throne behind the desk; I sit on a hard plastic chair. She tilts her head and says, “We’ve never had behavior problems with you before. What brings you here today?”

  Never before have I sat in this office. It’s nothing like I imagined. Instead of paddles hanging from hooks ready to discipline troublesome students, fancy diplomas decorate the walls. The plant on her desk is not a Venus flytrap like I’ve heard, but an African violet. Classical music plays softly through her computer speakers.

  Still, when I look at her, I see the piercing eyes of an eagle. I fold my hands together and squeeze them. “Is my mom coming?”

  Dr. Taylor leans against her high-back velvety chair. A container of half-eaten Chinese food with a plastic fork sticking out of it lies in her trash can. Everyone knows you’re supposed to use chopsticks when eating Chinese (though I do use a fork myself, but you’d expect an adult to do things the right way). “I called your mother. She and I had a nice chat over the phone.”

  Oh, no.

  “So,” she says, shifting forward in her seat, “what happened in the car lane?”

  The principal called my mom. I’m going to be in so much trouble. My eyes fill with tears.

  “Hailee?”

  A soft knock interrupts her, and we both turn and see in the doorway the clinic nurse and Amanda, whose knee has a big square bandage on it. “Just a scrape,” the nurse says and pats Amanda’s back. “She’ll live.”

  A smile almost sneaks across my lips, but the daggers shooting from Amanda’s eyes pin my mouth in place. She crosses her arms and stands in the doorway even after the nurse leaves.

  “Come in and sit down,” Dr. Taylor says.

  Amanda scoots the other plastic chair far away from mine, then settles into it with a huff.

  Dr. Taylor nods to Amanda. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “She pushed me! Right into the cars!”

  “That’s not what happened!”

  “Yes, it is!”

  Panic leaps in my heart. Why is Amanda saying that? I could get suspended or expelled or even sent to juvie, where girls file toothbrushes into knives and stab each other. I glance from Amanda to the principal. “I didn’t push her into the road; I pushed her out of a crack.” My lips quiver as words find their way to my mouth. “Amanda’s tire was stuck. I was trying to get her out of the crack because Megan and Drew were laughing at her.”

  “Megan and Drew,” Dr. Taylor says. She taps her lips with her fingers.

  Amanda twists in her seat and asks in a small voice, “They were laughing at me?”

  “They were recording you.”

  Dr. Taylor tsks disapprovingly.

  I say, “They’re always making fun of people. They call Sara Lardiss, ‘Sara Lard A—’” I stop right there before a swear word comes tumbling out. “Just because she’s”—I stumble for how to say this—“a little overweight, they call her names. And they’re the ones who threw meatballs at the lunch lady last week, and look what they did to my skirt.” I pull the hem out to show her.

  “They ruined that skirt,” Amanda says.

  Dr. Taylor cranes her neck to see the damage. Then, nodding to herself, she says, “Those are all important things, Hailee, but we need to get to the bottom of what happened today with you. The teachers saw you push Amanda into the road—”

  “She was trying to help me.” Amanda sits up straight. “It’s my fault I lost my balance. Please don’t get her in trouble.” She lifts her knee. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

  Drumming her pencil on her desk, Dr. Taylor’s piercing eagle eyes dissolve into regular human eyes. “Girls, I think what we have here is a misunderstanding.” She points her pencil at Amanda. “Your bike was stuck.” Amanda’s whole body nods in response. The pencil points at me. “And you were pushing the bike out.”

  “Yes.”

  She exhales loudly. “Go home, girls. Watch out for cracks and look both ways.” She closes a manila folder. Amanda and I stand up and begin to leave. I rise like a helium balloon, free and light, ready to float out of there until Dr. Taylor stops my escape.

  “Hailee?”

  I freeze.

  “Maybe you’re stronger than you realize.”

  She makes me sound like a bodybuilder. Her piercing eagle eyes return. “Keep it in check, okay?” Then she promises to call my mom and explain what happened.

  Outside at the bike rack, Amanda says, “Thanks for sticking up for me.”

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” I say back. It takes a second, just long enough to swing my leg over the boy bar of my bike, for me to realize there’s a little hurt worming its way through my heart. “Why would you think I pushed you into the road?”

  She fumbles with her handlebars. “I don’t know. I just … um …”

  “What?”

  She lifts her eyes to me and shrugs one shoulder. “I thought you were jealous of my bike.”

  Well! A strange mix of feelings hits my stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “and I really do want you to keep the skirt because I know how much you like it.” She smiles. My stomach churns and my head fills with heat. She cocks a pedal. “Want to come over to my house?”

  I wouldn’t be jealous in a hundred million years.

  “Hailee, what’s the matter? Are you mad?”

  I am not mad. I am not jealous. I am just leaving. My body moves on its own, toes pushing against the sidewalk for a kick-start, feet hitting the pedals. I ride past her and keep going.

  “Hailee! I said I was sorry!”

  Past the playground, past the field, up to the crossroad where I go left and she has to go right. I don’t even stop at the sign.

  “Hailee!” Her voice is at the crossroad. “I was wrong, okay? I said I was sorry! I was wrong!”

  My pedals churn like my stomach. The chain rattles, whining higher and higher the faster I go. The whole bike frame squeaks and grates; the loose chain guard rasps against the links.

  I hate shopping at thrift stores, I hate not having my own phone, and I hate that my mom delivers newspapers to people I go to school with.

  My rear tire pelts me with gravel.

  I hate this bike.

  Chapter 3

  The afternoon is sour as grapefruit, which no one really likes but everyone eats when they’re on a diet. Mom bangs cupboard doors shut and raises the cleaver high as she chops the heads off broccoli. “A phone call from the principal!” Whack! “The principal, Hailee!” Whack, whack! “Wait till your dad hears about this!” One final whack, then she pushes the severed broccoli heads into a pot of boiling water.

  I plan to serve as my own lawyer. Though my mom has the position of mother behind her, I have the testimony of the principal. That, and the fact that Amanda admitted her
knee didn’t even hurt. Just look at all the trouble I’ve gotten into over nothing.

  Mom stops clanging around for a second. “Are you even listening to me? This is important.”

  For Mom, school is almost as important as church. She barely graduated. Whenever she tried to read her textbooks, the letters would trick her and change places. So if she was trying to get through a sentence that read, Put nuts in the pan for a nice tang, my mom would see, Put stun in the nap for a nice gnat. That kind of reading put her in the lower classes, and even there she got bad grades. In math, too, because numbers know how to jump around just as well as letters do.

  It wasn’t till after high school that she heard of dyslexia, which is the medical word for the way her brain mixes up the letters and numbers. By then, she was on her own and paying her rent by working as a waitress. That’s how she met my dad.

  I flick a Cheerio across Libby’s tray and she chases it with her hand.

  “Yes, I’m listening to you,” I say, making a Cheerio tower. Libby knocks it down and eats the pieces.

  “You’ve got to take these things seriously.”

  My honor roll ribbons flutter as Mom opens the refrigerator for ingredients. A handprint I painted in third grade is held to the freezer part with magnets. I used fluorescent paint and silver glitter and filled every square inch with color. Even though the corners are curling, Mom keeps it up there. She thinks it’s pretty.

  “Mom?”

  She lays down the cleaver. “Yes?”

  “I need a new bike.” I push Libby’s Cheerios around so I don’t have to see Mom’s reaction.

  At first, she doesn’t say a thing, just picks up the cleaver and starts chopping again. Then, in an even voice, she says, “We need a lot of things around here. Go upstairs and do your homework.”

  I didn’t have my snack yet, but I know better than to argue with her after hearing that tone of voice.

  My pale pink walls don’t cheer me up as much as they usually do. I toss my backpack to the floor and lie on my bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling and the one cobweb in the corner I keep forgetting to knock down. The more I don’t clean it up, the worse it gets. It’s grown an extra tentacle since the weekend.