Ola Shakes It Up (16 page)

Curtis turned and walked back to the counter slowly.

“Who's that?” I asked Maria, digging into my own ice cream.

“That's Curtis. His family's owned this place since 1945.” Maria leaned forward. “He hates working here. He'd rather work at the supermarket with his girlfriend.”

“Oh.” I nodded.

“You should do something,” Maria announced suddenly. She put her ice cream spoon down.

“About what?” I asked, surprised.

“About Walcott Corners — about all those rules.” Maria slapped her hand on the table. I looked at her, a little afraid now. She looked sort of mad. “If it's like you say it is, and all the neighbors are as unhappy as you are, then all of you should do something.”

“Some of them are.” I told Maria about Mr. Elijah and the graybeard committee, but I didn't tell her about what Mr. Elijah had asked me to do. I was trying to forget all about that.

“But you have to do more than that. It has to be bigger than just your neighborhood, 'cause they're building another one right now.” Maria was nodding slowly. “You have
to do it right. There's a whole process to these things, you know. You start with a petition. In government, they always want to see a petition before they change anything.”

“How do you know so much about this stuff?” I asked, curiously.

Maria shrugged. “I used to hang around my grandmothers office when she was mayor. She let me sit in on all her business meetings, and then afterward she would explain to me what was going on. That was before she died. My mom never lets me do any of that stuff. She thinks I'll embarrass her 'cause I wear ripped jeans and tie-dyed shirts.”

I swallowed my last bite of ice cream. Maria was right about the ice cream. It was really good.

“Think about it.” Maria pushed the dish away from her and stood up. “I can even be your political advisor. Since I know about this stuff, I might as well help you. You ready?”

I started to slide out of the booth. “Where are we going next?”

“The train station.”

“How come?”

“ 'cause that's one of the few ways to get out of Walcott.”

For the rest of the morning, Maria took me to the train station, the bus station and the taxicab office. I wasn't even surprised to see that the train station had an old steam engine that was one of the first trains ever built in the United States and that the taxicab office had a bunch of great photos of when they used to drive horses and buggies in Walcott. Maria showed me all the best routes for getting out of Walcott and told me how much each escape route would
cost. I found out it would only cost me twelve dollars to catch a bus to downtown Boston and that they even showed a movie on the bus. The train was faster but way more expensive. Maria had getting out of Walcott all figured out. As she showed me around she kept dropping hints to me about how to get things changed at Walcott Corners. She said there would be a town hall meeting the next week and that it would be a perfect time to present the petition, and she talked about drawing up plans to bring new revenue into the town in other ways, like having a museum. She was sure the town committee would really go for that. Most of what Maria was saying went way over my head. I didn't know anything about politics and petitions, but I could tell that she was really excited about it.

“I don't know, Maria. Why don't you do all that stuff, since you know so much about it?” I said finally.

Maria stopped. We were on our way back to the church so Maria could meet her sisters. She hesitated. “It'd be better if it came from someone living in Walcott Corners. Besides, I wouldn't want anyone to get the idea that I
like
this town.”

“Well, me either,” I pointed out.

Maria shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She looked uncomfortable. “My grandmother wouldn't like it if she knew the stuff that was going on at Walcott Corners. She used to have all sorts of plans for improving the town, too — in a good way.”

We stood on the sidewalk outside of the church silently for a few seconds. I don't think either of us was sure what to say. We'd spent most of the morning together, but now that it was over, it was kind of awkward.

“Thanks for the tour,” I said finally. I knew I was going to have to get going soon. Khatib would kill me if he found out that I knew his secret.

“See ya later, Ola.” Maria nodded and started walking toward the front door of the church. She turned around when she was halfway up the sidewalk. “Remember what I said about the petitions. I wouldn't mind helping you.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding too. “I'll think about it.”

As I walked home I realized that my thoughts were all jumbled up. I had made my first friend in Walcott, and I felt good about that. But I didn't know how to feel about anything else. I had learned a lot about this town during Maria's tour, and I realized that it wasn't such a bad place. I knew more about the neighbors now, too, thanks to Mr. Elijah, and they didn't seem so strange anymore. In fact, if you looked at it a certain way, I guess you could call them unusual. Just like me. But didn't joining in and helping out the neighborhood mean saying goodbye to Karen, Margarita and Mrs. Gransby forever? We had moved here only two months before and already I felt like all my memories of the old neighborhood were slipping away. I hadn't even talked to Karen and Margarita in weeks. Maybe they were forgetting about me, too. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that things had changed whether I liked it or not. We really weren't going back to the old neighborhood. And if we weren't going back, was this the kind of place that I wanted to live in?

told Maria on Monday that I was going to go ahead with her idea of getting things changed at Walcott Corners and in the town.

“On one condition,” I added, leaning against the wall outside of homeroom. I had found Maria there as usual, attitude in place.

“What's that?” Maria asked, narrowing her eyes. She was trying to look mean, but I could tell she was interested.

“I'll do the petition stuff and work to get things changed with the neighborhood association, but you have to do the proposal for the museum and all that extra-revenue stuff. I don't know anything about that.” I held my breath. I had the feeling Maria was going to be as reluctant to work for the town as I had been to work for my neighborhood. But I had another feeling that told me Maria cared more about this town than she wanted anybody to know. She cared about this town the same way she told me her grandmother had.

Maria didn't answer me for a long time. I waited even after
the bell rang. Finally she looked at me and nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay” I replied, inching toward the classroom door.

“Where you going? We got work to do, plans to make,” Maria told me, moving away from the wall. There was a new light in her eyes that made me really glad I was on her side of this fight.

“I've gotta get inside, Maria. I'll meet you after school. We can go to my house.” I hurried inside the classroom, hoping Mrs. Woodstein hadn't taken attendance yet. Maria might not mind staying after school for detention, but I did.

I stayed in the lunchroom instead of going outside so I could think about my part of the plan. I still had to go over to Mr. Elijah's and tell him that I was taking over the kids' part of what I was now calling Operation Shake It Up. I would have been thinking with Maria, but we didn't have the same lunch period.

“Ola.” I looked up and found Aeisha and Otis standing in front of me. They were smiling and holding hands. Yuck.

“What?” I asked, trying not to look at their hands.

Aeisha sat down beside me and pushed her glasses up on her nose. I noticed that she was wearing blue eye shadow. “We got our tests back.”

I looked back and forth from Aeisha to Otis. “And?”

“Otis got an A and I got a C. Isn't that great?” Aeisha smiled.

“That's great, Aeisha.” I was really happy for her. Now maybe she would stop being in a bad mood and start acting like her regular nerdy self. “But what are you gonna do now?”

Aeisha frowned. “Otis and I have to tell Mama and Dad. They'll probably want to talk to the principal.”

“That'll get Mr. Stillwell,” Otis muttered. He was looking at his test paper and scowling. He'd probably never gotten a C before, either.

Aeisha stood up. “We gotta go tutor. Will you tell Mama I'm gonna help Otis baby-sit his little brother after school?”

I nodded and tried not to watch as they grabbed hands again and walked away. I guess I was gonna have to get used to that too. I was proud of Aeisha, though. She had a lot of guts to try and handle her problem with Mr. Stillwell all on her own. Mama and Dad would probably be mad that she hadn't come to talk to them first. But maybe that would take the heat off of me. I was about to break my promise to behave — in a big way.

I started to think about my plan again. The first thing I had to do was to get recruits. I could work a lot faster getting those petitions if I had more people to help me go around the neighborhood. Besides Maria, I knew I could count on Aeisha, Otis and —

“Hi.”

I looked up and there was that frizzy-hairdo girl again. River. The one who'd talked to me the first day of school. She put her lunch tray on the table and sat down across from me. I wondered why she was still inside eating lunch. The only people left in the lunchroom were a few kids doing their homework or getting tutored. And I wondered why she had decided to sit with me. I hoped she wasn't going to ask me any more stupid questions.

“Hi,” I mumbled, waiting to see what she wanted.

“You're looking pretty normal these days.”

“Huh?” I asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you're not wearing your I'm-an-ax-murderer smile and you don't sit in the front of the class in math and history anymore.” River sipped her milk through her straw and stared at me with her watery blue eyes.

She was right. River had noticed that I had given up on my plan to make everyone like me at this school. I had stopped giving everyone my friendly smile on the bus and in class. I had stopped behaving extra good, too.

“Listen, I'm not up for any more of your dumb questions,” I said, deciding to ignore what she'd said about my friendly smile. Did it really look like an ax murderer's smile? That was kinda funny.

“Okay.” River shrugged and started to unwrap her sandwich.

“Okay?” I repeated, surprised.

“Okay.” She nodded. “You were right, they were dumb. My dad says you should never make assumptions about people.”

Neither of us said anything after that. River concentrated on eating her food, and I stared at the green walls and thought about what she'd said. She sounded like she had meant it. I glanced at her and then back at the wall. Just maybe she was an okay person. She looked okay. She was dressed in purple overalls and a black turtleneck.

“So how come your name is River?” I asked casually, taking my eyes off the walls.

“Look, I wouldn't talk if I were you, Ay—Ayeola.”

I tried not to smile. “My names African. My mother gave us all African names. Mine means ‘born to kill.’ “

River laughed, and the milk she was drinking started running from her nose.

“Gross,” I said, handing her some napkins. This time I did smile.

River mopped her nose and smiled back. “Is that what your name really means?”

“No. I made that up.”

“Well, mines a granola name. You know—hippies. My dad was really into meditation and yoga and peace stuff and eating raw vegetables before I was born.” River shook her head.

“Does he still do that stuff?”

“Well, my baby brothers name is Broccoli.”

I laughed, 'cause I could tell she wasn't serious. I was starting to like this girl. “What's his real name?”

“Philip. And my dad eats steak now. It was just a phase.” River picked up her sandwich and took a huge bite out of it.

“I thought only kids went through phases,” I said, grabbing the rest of my sandwich and starting to eat it, too. Lillian had made my favorite — peanut butter and honey.

“Why were you staring a hole in the wall when I came over?” River mumbled between chews.

“It's very restful,” I informed her. I thought about telling her about Maria and my plan. River would be a good recruit, since she lived in Walcott Corners. “I have this problem.”