“Where’s Darnell?” his mother asks as she comes through the door. Before Richard can answer, she goes back into the hall and calls up the stairs. “Darnell, come down here, please.”
She explains within Richard’s hearing that there’s not going to be a skateboard party that day. The rain is supposed to go on all afternoon. But the party is not completely canceled. A dry spell is due to arrive early in the week, so the party has been postponed until the next Saturday.
Hooray! Richard screams in his mind. As soon as he closes the door to the dishwasher, he runs out into the backyard and dances around in the rain.
“Yes! Yes!” he yells, spinning and twirling and getting wet. All he has to do is mind his p’s and q’s for the rest of the week—which he plans to do. And get that rainforest stuff done and study for his spelling test. He throws his head back and opens his mouth to catch some rainwater.
“Richard, what are you doing?”
Richard looks over his shoulder to see his mother standing on the back porch with her hands on her hips.
“I’m celebrating!” Richard says. “I’m celebrating that I’m not going to miss the skateboard party!”
“Well, you’re not out of the woods yet, buddy boy. You need to come in out of the rain and get started on that report!”
That’s fine with Richard. He realizes it’s cold out in his backyard. He’s done enough celebrating.
Richard’s dad is letting him use his computer. Richard has already put “howler monkey” in the search box. Now he has to figure out what information he needs to print out. His father is also taking him to the library in the afternoon so he can get two books to use as sources. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz doesn’t let kids just copy a bunch of stuff off the Internet. That’s the hard part, Richard thinks, reading stuff and putting what you read in your own words. This is what he learns about the howler monkey:
1. It can smell its food—leaves and fruits—more than one mile away.
2. Its tail can be really long—five times as long as its body in some cases—and the howler monkey can grab stuff with it.
3. It kind of sounds like a bear, and it opens its mouth wide to make it look like a big circle.
Wow! Howler monkeys are so interesting, Richard thinks. He even gets to see a real one and hear it in a video online. Why hadn’t he just done his report in the first place? Why did he have to be so dumb? All he’d had to do was tell where they live and why they live there. That would have been so easy. Now he still has the report to give on Friday—looming in front of him. Plus, now he has to give it alone, without his group. Richard shakes his head at himself.
As soon as Richard and his dad walk into the house from the library with the two books, Richard goes straight up the stairs to his room. He can’t wait to read up some more on howler monkeys. There’s so much to know.
Of course, as soon as he walks into his bedroom, there’s Darnell sitting on the floor playing video games. Richard sets his books on his desk and sits down. He opens his notebook and one of the howler monkey books. He goes to the table of contents to see where the stuff about habitat is located.
“Whoa,” Darnell calls out.
Richard looks over at him, then turns back to his book.
“Awesome!” Darnell calls out again.
“Darnell, I can’t concentrate with all that noise you’re making.”
“That’s not my fault,” Darnell says.
“You know I have to get this report done. I have to give the presentation on Friday.”
“Too bad, so sad,” Darnell says with a big grin on his face. His eyes are fixed on his video game. “You brought all this on—whoa!” He begins to raise his shoulders up and down one at a time—his way of showing he’s winning. Very annoying, Richard thinks.
“Can you take that somewhere else?”
“No, I can’t. This is my room. I have the right to be in my own room.” He squints at the small screen. “Anyway, if Mom sees me, she’ll just think of a chore for me to do.”
Richard looks out the window. Still raining. He gathers his belongings and goes out the door and down the stairs. The dining room is deserted at the moment. There’s usually something happening at the dining room table, but now it’s nice and quiet. Roland and Jamal are helping Mr. Robinson, who lives down the street, clean out his attic. His mother is off to the beauty salon and his father is napping on the family-room couch. Richard looks up at the ceiling toward the room above. The only one making noise in the whole house is Darnell with his video game. That’s okay, Richard thinks. All he has to do is finish the report, make sure his homework is turned in every day, ace the spelling test on Friday, and mind all his p’s and all his q’s . . . then he’ll be back to playing video games, watching TV, and playing basketball at recess. And going to Gregory Johnson’s skateboard party next Saturday.
Nine
P’s and Q’s
Richard doesn’t like seeing his name on the board under the word “Benched.” It’s just below Calvin Vickers’s name. He looks over at Calvin. It’s morning journal time, and Calvin looks as though he’s struggling with getting something down on paper. He has his tongue between his teeth and his face is scrunched up with effort. The topic for that day is My Weekend, which is always the topic on Monday. That’s easy, Richard thinks. He takes out his journal and begins to write:
I had a good weekend and I had a bad weekend. But the good thing is going to make next Saturday REALLY good. First I was going to be on punishment all weekend and I was going to miss this great party. I was sad about that. But then I woke up and it was raining. That made me so happy. Becuz that party had to be canceled. And now if I’m relly good I can go next Saturday becuz the sun is supposed to shine then and I’ll be off my punishment. Plus I’ll be able to play video games and watch tv and just do what I want. I’ll be happy.
He finishes at the same time he hears Ms. Shelby-Ortiz say, “Okay, everyone, put your journals away. Let’s get ready for reading.” Sometimes she collects the journals. Sometimes she doesn’t. You never know when she’s going to have someone go around the room and collect them, like Deja, who snatches the journal right from under your hand. Richard prefers it when Nikki collects them. She’s really polite and says things like “You’re not finished? Okay, I’ll come back to you.” Ms. Shelby-Ortiz sometimes likes to look over the journals for spelling errors and run-on sentences and just plain messiness. Then she makes you go to the next clean page and rewrite that day’s entry for homework.
Richard looks up at the spelling word list on the big poster paper on the classroom easel. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz always puts the new list up on Mondays so the students can see the words every day until the day of the test. Richard starts to read them and his heart sinks. There are only eight words out of eighteen that he’s pretty sure he can spell. There is a whole mess of tricky words with silent letters and two letters making one sound, and then there’s quotient. The answer to a division problem. Why would anyone have to know how to spell that? Quotient.
Richard looks up at the ceiling and tests himself: q-o-t-s-h . . . He knows that’s not right. He takes a peek and sighs. He’s way off. How is he going to learn how to spell ten really hard words by Friday? He starts to write down all the w words with silent letters, but Ms. Shelby-Ortiz interrupts with instructions for the class to take out their readers and go to their groups. It’s a good thing he got a good night’s sleep, because otherwise Yolanda Meeker would surely have him keeling over from boredom.
After reading and going back to his desk to complete workbook pages, Richard realizes something. He’s getting all his work done in a timely fashion. And it hasn’t been that hard. All he has to do is remember to focus and not get off track trying to see what others are doing. Ralph really has that bad, Richard thinks. Every time Ms. Shelby-Ortiz gives an assignment, he does all this stalling stuff: getting up to sharpen his pencil after breaking the point on purpose, asking questions that Ms. Shelby-Ortiz had gone over two seconds before, claimin
g he can’t find his workbook in his desk. Richard shakes his head slowly just at the thought of it.
When the class is dismissed for recess, Richard walks straight to the row of benches and sits down—away from Calvin Vickers. As Ms. Shelby-Ortiz says, the bench is not a place to talk. The only things you can do on the bench are homework, read a book, and watch the other kids play.
Richard didn’t bring out homework or a book, so he busies himself watching the basketball game going on in front of him. Beyond that he sees something he really doesn’t want to see: Harper coming his way with a big smile on his face. He plops himself right next to Richard once more. “How’s it going? You not playin’ again?”
“I’m benched,” Richard tries to say while keeping his mouth as closed as possible.
“Say what?”
Harper should know that there’s no talking on the bench. Nobody should even be sitting too close to another benched kid. The bench rules are very strict. An infraction could add another day, in fact.
“I’m benched,” Richard whispers.
“Oh, man . . . What you do?”
Out of the side of his mouth and looking straight ahead, Richard says, “I didn’t do my project.”
“Why not?” Harper asks in a loud voice.
Miss Campbell, the yard lady, keeps looking their way. Harper is going to get him in trouble. “Cuz,” he says, hoping this will satisfy Harper’s nosiness. “We’re not supposed to be talking,” he adds, and moves down the bench. Harper scoots down the bench too, until he’s right next to Richard again.
“We’re not supposed to sit next to each other,” Richard says. “We’re going to get in trouble.”
“So?” Harper says. “I don’t care.”
Richard looks away and keeps his mouth closed. Harper might be big but he can’t make Richard talk.
Apparently tired of Richard being no fun, Harper gets up and heads for the bathroom, seemingly without a thought to Miss Campbell.
Finally the freeze bell rings. After a few moments the second bell sounds and Richard can get up and join his class.
“Harper was trying to get me in trouble,” Richard says to Gavin as they walk home. “He was sitting all next to me, which he knows is against the rules, and then he kept talking and trying to get me to talk. He didn’t even care that he could get in trouble. He said so.”
“Wow,” Gavin says. “Wonder why he’s like that?”
“That’s a good question,” Richard says.
By Thursday, Richard is worried. He’s been really minding his p’s and q’s, but he knows that’s not going to save him on the spelling test. On Thursdays Ms. Shelby-Ortiz gives the students time to quiz one another in place of journal writing. The good thing is you can work with a buddy. So, after some negotiating with Chi Chi, she moves to Gavin’s seat at Table Four and Gavin takes her seat at Table Three.
“Turn your word list over,” Gavin says, “and put your workbook over it.” Richard does what he says. He’s desperate.
“I can spell ten of the words already,” Richard says. “Just give me the ones I put a little check by.”
“Quotient,” Gavin says.
“Don’t give me that one first. Start with the ones with silent letters.”
“Wrist,” Gavin says.
“W-r-i-s-t.”
“Rough,” Gavin says.
“Oh, shoot,” Richard mutters. He closes his eyes to visualize the word. “Okay, I got it. R-o-u-g-h.”
“Right,” Gavin says.
“That’s not on the list.”
“No, I mean you got that one right.”
“Okay, give me quotient.”
“Quotient,” Gavin says.
Richard takes a deep breath. “Q-o—”
“No,” Gavin interrupts.
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me.”
“Come on,” Gavin says. “Q-u-o . . .”
“Q-u-o,” Richard begins, and then pauses. “T-i-e-n-t?”
“Yes, yes. You got it!” Gavin says. “Now just do that tomorrow.”
Richard already knows that. It doesn’t matter that he could spell the word for Gavin. He needs to spell the word correctly on the test tomorrow. That word could mean the difference between going to the skateboard party and not going to the skateboard party. Everything is riding on that one word.
Richard decides to take his spelling list to the bench at recess. He needs to go over the words he’s still a little shaky on. But just as he unfolds the paper with his spelling words, here comes Harper flopping down beside him. “Whatcha got?” Harper asks.
Richard looks over at Mr. Beaumont, the other third grade teacher. He must be filling in for Miss Campbell or something. He’s blowing his whistle at two boys at the water fountain who are spitting water at each other. “My spelling words for a test tomorrow.”
“Want me to quiz you?”
“No, thanks. I like to quiz myself.”
“Let me see them,” Harper says, snatching the list out of Richard’s hand. He peers down at the words. “Whoa! These are some hard words.”
“I know most of them,” Richard says.
“Let me see. Spell school.”
“S-c-h-o-o-l.”
“Yeah, okay. Now spell quo—uh—quo—t— uh . . .”
Richard looks over at Mr. Beaumont, who now has both of the spitters by the shoulders and is marching them over to the benches. Richard takes back his paper and spells quotient in his head. He checks the word. Again, he got it right!
Ten
Last Day
The sun is shining brightly when Richard opens his eyes. A good sign, he thinks. Darnell is already in the shower, which is unusual, and which means the bathroom is going to be all steamed up when it’s Richard’s turn. While he’s waiting, Richard pulls the spelling list out from under his pillow. For some reason, he thought sleeping on it might help.
There’s something about that word—quotient—that still has him worried. He doesn’t know why. He has no problem with words like demonstrate and electric and wrinkle. He’s been spelling quotient correctly since yesterday, but somehow he fears that when Ms. Shelby-Ortiz says the word during the spelling test, he’ll choke and his mind will go blank.
He looks at his poster for his presentation, which he has been working on all week. It’s the first time he’s done a project completely alone, without his mother’s help.
“How are you feeling?” Richard’s mom asks as she passes him the new box of Cinnamon Crunch.
Richard shakes some cereal into his bowl under the watchful eyes of Darnell and Jamal. “I feel okay,” he says, then pours some milk into his bowl.
“Think you’re going to get a hundred on that spelling test?” she asks.
Richard hesitates, remembering how grim his row of low grades looked in Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s grade book when she angled it on her desk so that his parents could get a good look.
“Ready to give your presentation about the howler monkey’s habitat?” she continues
Richard swallows. “Uh-huh.” He takes a bite of cereal.
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” his mother says.
“If I get a hundred on my spelling test, can I skateboard after school?”
“Not at the park. In front of the house and in the driveway.” She’s looking for something in her purse. “Where are my keys?”
When Richard enters his classroom, he has butterflies in his stomach. He checks the schedule on the whiteboard. The spelling test is right after morning recess. His presentation is right after lunch. The whole day feels full of stress.
On top of that, at recess Harper won’t let him study his words. Richard had taken his time leaving the classroom just so Harper would be settled before Richard got to the benches. But as soon as Richard takes a seat far down one of the benches, Harper scoots over until he’s right next to him.
“You still studying them words?” he asks.
Richard looks around for Miss Campbell. He doesn’t see her.
/> “Yeah,” Richard says. He wishes Harper would go away.
“What’ll happen if you mess up on it?”
“A lot of stuff,” Richard says. “So I better study.”
Just then, Harper’s attention is drawn away. Miss Campbell is marching Ralph Buyer to the benches. He flops down a little ways from Richard, crosses his arms, and pokes out his mouth.
Harper moves down to him. “Hey, whaja do?”
“Nothin’,” Ralph says.
Richard looks down at his word list and his eyes land on quotient.
“Okay, class, clear your desks and take out a pencil. Head your paper in the upper right corner and number your paper on every other line, one to eighteen.” Ms. Shelby-Ortiz has to give these instructions every time the class has a spelling test. Richard’s eyes follow Casey as she passes out the special spelling-test paper. Finally, she gets to Richard’s table. He does just what Ms. Shelby-Ortiz has requested—puts his name and the date in the upper right corner and numbers the paper, one to eighteen, on every other line. He doesn’t want to be in the group who will still number every line and put just their names in the left corner. Richard is careful to follow every direction as his heart pounds in his ears.
Skateboard Party Page 5
