Another D for DeeDee Read online

  Everything seems different here. Not like Lincoln Elementary.

  1) Colder drinking fountains.

  2) No translator for Mami.

  3) Fancy jeans and UGG boots on every other girl.

  Mami hands me a slip of paper with a room number, #131, and a name, MRS. KREWELL. “Te portas bien, Dinora,” says Mami and starts to kiss me. I do not like kissing. By The Way. And I do not answer to Dinora. Just a reminder. I’m in the hallway in two seconds before anybody sees me with that lady who just happens to be my mother.

  And something else is different here. At Lincoln Elementary the office people take new kids on a tour. And they make an announcement after the morning pledge. “Today we’d like to welcome Blah Blah to fourth grade. Please show Blah Blah that Together We Make a Difference. Remember Lincoln students. Be safe. Be kind. Be smart.”

  Well, maybe Robert Frost was going to give me a tour, but I ran out of the office too fast. And now I’m totally lost. I turn corners and corners and the numbers above the doors make no sense. If somebody asks me to build a school, I’m going to make one long giant hallway with numbers 1 to 131 all in a row. I feel like Anna running lost, looking for Elsa’s frozen castle in an unfriendly winter. No one helps me. No one talks to me. No one looks like me.

  Well, finally. Here’s #13_. I guess the one fell off and no one told me. The tardy bell rings just as I open the door. I keep my backpack on, stand at the door, and wait. I wish I had a desk to hide in. I watch as the teacher, a tall woman with puffy hair and large hoop earrings highlights the parts of a poem on the interactive white board. I don’t know how to pronounce her name from the slip of paper. I do know that at Lincoln Elementary, Miss Hamilton would still be taking attendance.

  “Line. Stanza. Meter. Beat. Rhyme scheme.” The students use iPads to follow along. Everyone has an iPad? We only had six at Lincoln and we shared them with another class.

  Finally, the teacher notices me. She walks to the door with a sour-apple face.

  “The office didn’t tell me I was getting a new student.” She touches a button on the wall.

  My hands start to sweat.

  “Front office,” says a voice from the speaker above the button.

  I rub my palms on my too-tight jeans.

  “I didn’t get any notification that I was getting a new student,” says Sour-Apple Face.

  “I’m sorry. Her mother brought the files instead of sending them ahead,” says the voice.

  I pull my shirt down and my backpack rises up behind my head.

  “I think I have more students than the other fourth grades,” says Sourpuss.

  “Just a minute, let me check,” says the voice.

  My neck itches and I sneak a peek at the class. A girl with black, arrow-straight hair whispers to a girl in a pink fuzzy vest and they giggle. Other girls lean in, as though the dark-haired girl is a vacuum. Jazzy, one of my almost-friends from Lincoln, was like that, too. But in a good way. Like a magnet. Or like the sun. I sure don’t feel like a magnet or the sun standing in the door. And I wish a real vacuum would come along and get me out of here.

  “Mrs. Krewell,” says the voice. Did she say Cruella? Well, that seems about right.

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Cruella. The kind of yes where your voice goes up at the end, to show the other person how limited your patience is.

  “You’re correct, you do have higher numbers.” Well, Good Gatos. I’m glad I don’t have to be in this sourpuss’s room. I turn to leave. “But your new student belongs in the cluster for interventions, so she’s been placed in your room.”

  Mrs. Cruella raises her eyebrows. “Well, then I will need a desk,” she says to the voice coming from the wall.

  She points to the table at the back of the room. “You can sit there—what did you say your name was?—until they bring you a desk.”

  “DeeDee,” I say. “DeeDee Diaz.” At least I didn’t have to explain about my name being DeeDee and not Dinora.

  I head to the table and take off my backpack. I’m used to waiting for a desk. Kids stare. Well, I’m used to that, too. Mrs. Cruella gets back to teaching.

  The door opens. It’s a girl with thick hair like mine and tan skin. A Latina girl. The first one I’ve seen.

  “Tell Mr. Somerset we’re using our iPads this morning,” says Mrs. Cruella.

  My desk arrives. Along with my records folder. And Mrs. Cruella motions me to move. I scramble to dump a few things into my desk.

  Heads bend down to finish work, but I know eyes are still stealing peeks at me. Mrs. Cruella walks around the room, checking iPads and correcting some students’ work. Then she rips off large sheets of paper from a hanging pad.

  She holds up a hand. “Give me five, everyone.”

  I look around. Five what? The girl behind me points to a poster on the wall. GIVE ME FIVE. Eyes watch. Ears listen. Lips closed. Hands empty. Body still.

  Once everyone settles down, Mrs. Cruella says, “Okay class. Get started on your group projects. DeeDee, work with Nancy’s group.”

  I look around. Guess who Nancy is—straight-arrow hair girl. Vacuum girl. Of course. Three more girls come toward my desk. I’m not sure what to do.

  “Put your backpack in the hallway,” Nancy says to me, putting the chart paper on my desk. “It’s in the way.”

  Before I can stop the words, they’ve escaped from my mouth. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” It’s as if I sprayed Raid on a bunch of cockroaches. Complete silence. Everyone in the group gawks at me. Nancy doesn’t move. Then, she picks up my backpack and hands it to me. Without a word, I walk to the hall and hang it on a hook with no name above it. I dig down to the bottom of the outside pouch and find a little bag of M&M’s. I open it and pour all of them into my mouth. I chew while I scan some of the names above the hooks.

  Chloe Anderson, Arianna Brown, Andrew Johnson, Nicole Swanson, Nancy Wang …

  Where are the Martinez, Garcia, and Hernandez names? Not in my class, apparently. Not like at Lincoln Elementary, where more than half my class spoke Spanish.

  When I get back to the group, they’re discussing what our poem should be about. Nancy makes a sniffing noise when I sit down. “Chocolate,” she whispers and glares at me.

  Each time someone makes a suggestion, Nancy makes a comment. “I think that’s too complicated, Samantha.” and then Samantha says, “Oh it is, isn’t it?” Or Nancy says, “Hmmm. I don’t know Nicole,” and then Nicole says, “Yah. I don’t know either.”

  I wish I could go back in time. Back to before Christmas. Before my trailer burned down. Back to Lincoln and the Secret Swap, when Jazzy gave me a skateboard—an awesome decked out skateboard. Maybe, if we didn’t move, we’d be best friends. Then I get an idea.

  “What if we write a poem about going back in time?” I ask.

  “That’s a good idea,” says Nicole. “I wish I could go back in time …”

  “Before I had to make this rhyme,” I say.

  “Do the next one, Samantha,” says Nicole.

  A blonde girl with the bluest eyes says, “Before stanza, meter, beat, and line.”

  The girl who giggled with Nancy when I first came into the room says, “Back in time would be so fine.”

  We all clap and Samantha says, “That’s perfect, Sherie.”

  All except Nancy. She purses her lips. “No. It will be too hard to illustrate. What would we draw? I think we should do cats.”

  And that’s that. Cats. But I don’t have to help, do I? So I sit there. Until Mrs. Cruella asks Nancy if everyone is participating in the group.

  “Oh yes,” she says. “DeeDee is doing the illustrations.”

  And I do. I make the ugliest cat you’ve ever seen. To go with the ugliest poem you’ve ever heard.

  “You’ve ruined it,” hisses Nancy.

  I shrug. Oh well.

  Then it’s time for math.

  •

  “DeeDee. DeeDee.”

  “Yes. Yes. Can’t you see me? I’m h
ere, under the sea on the trampoline filled with jellyfish.”

  “DeeDee.”

  The jellyfish are tapping me, pushing me, shaking me. It’s so wet here under the water.

  “DeeDee.”

  My eyes snap open. I freeze. Solid freeze. An icecube-in-January freeze. Oh My Gatos. I’m not under the sea. There’s no more jellyfish. Just me at my desk with a very sick feeling in my stomach and a wet seat. And bunches of kids I don’t even know staring at me.

  “You fell asleep, DeeDee. Do you feel all right?” Mrs. Cruella stands next to my desk. I grab my jacket from the back of my chair and put it over my lap, letting the sleeves hang down to cover the puddle that’s dripping to the floor.

  I feel like saying, No, duh. I don’t feel all right. I feel tired. And wet. And over this school.

  But instead I say, “I guess I stayed up too late watching Scream if You’re Scared.” And I laugh in an evil voice, pulling my jacket around my legs. It’s not true. Mami would never let me watch that. But nobody needs to feel sorry for me, especially not Mrs. Cruella, or Nancy. Noodlenose Nancy, I decide to call her.

  Mrs. Cruella frowns at me, but I see Samantha and Nicole smile, impressed, and I manage to stay awake the rest of the morning. At lunch, I wait until everyone leaves the classroom. Mrs. Cruella pokes her head back in the door to check on me while I’m busily finishing math problems.

  “Hurry up, DeeDee. We’ll wait for you in the hall.”

  My heart is hammering. Oh Land O’Lakes. No one saw. Did they? This has never happened at school before. And I do not cry about things. I do not.

  When she closes the door I put my assignment on her desk, run to get paper towels, sop up my chair and my pants, and tie my jacket around my waist. I notice someone left their hoodie lying on their desk. I’m not sure when we’ll do laundry at home and I don’t have any other jackets, so to be on the safe side, I grab it, run to the hall, stuff it in my backpack, and get in line.

  All during recess, while I’m sitting on the cold floor watching a movie, I think about Lincoln and my friends. Well, my almost-friends. Things were so much better there. Nobody had all these fancy clothes or whole class iPads. I was popular there. Well, kind of popular. At least a few people liked me. I think. I guess I did get into some trouble. And Jazzy accused me of stealing her favorite crayon, but I was going to put it back. And I was on check-in, check-out for my homework and behavior. But I was starting to change. I really was.

  No one talks to me at recess or lunch. Nancy seems to be in charge of the table and she and Sherie are too busy talking to notice me help myself to a bag of chips left in the middle of the table. But when I ask to use the bathroom, I hear a giggle. I gulp. Does someone know I wet my pants? I swipe a second cookie from the lunch cart on my way to the bathroom.

  I lean on the wall across from the bathroom and read the posters. BOOK FAIR. BOGO. BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE. I make a new discovery. The letters of BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE make the word BOGO. I guess I never took the time to figure that out before. Maybe I’ll make up my own language. LMA—Leave me alone. WNFA—Who needs friends anyway?

  Another poster announces ANNUAL ROBERT FROST SPRING FLING. THE THING TO SHOW YOUR BLING ON THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING. JUDGED BY SLT. I try to puzzle that one out. Salt? Silt? Slit? And one more I can’t say out loud.

  “Are you going to try out?”

  I turn to see Samantha.

  “Are you kidding? Show your bling?” I say and roll my eyes.

  “It’s actually pretty fun,” she says. “Nancy always dances. But you can do anything, even create your own category. As long as the Student Leadership Team votes for you.”

  Ah. SLT—Student Leadership Team.

  “Anything?” I ask. “Even drawing ugly cats?”

  Samantha laughs, and the bathroom door opens. I scoot in quickly, my jacket hanging way down around my waist.

  I consider going to the nurse after lunch, because I’m uncomfortable in my wet pants, and I still feel tired, so maybe I am getting sick, but then what? Nobody will rescue me. Mami and Danny both work in the afternoon. Mami either at Giapino’s or her cleaning job, and Danny at Walt’s Finer Foods. I can stick it out and take a nap when I get home. I raise my hand to get a drink. Maybe that will wake me up. Mrs. Cruella nods. When I get back she motions me to the table in the back of the room.

  “I’m sorry we got started on the wrong foot, DeeDee. I’ve been going over your records from Lincoln Elementary during lunch. It looks like you have a hard time in reading. Do you know what your reading grade has been for the past two years?” She taps a shiny silver mechanical pencil on my record sheet.

  I wait, but she doesn’t go on so I guess she wants me to answer.

  “I’ve moved around a lot and maybe I got behind.” From the corner of my eye I see Nancy eavesdropping.

  “So you know what your reading grade is?”

  “D?” I whisper.

  “That’s right. And D means needs improvement.”

  Duh, I almost say out loud. And D means Dumb.

  “Do you speak Spanish? Sometimes reading can be more difficult while you’re learning English.”

  “No.” I say in a louder voice. “No, I do not.” A lot of nerve she has. Just because my name is Dinora Diaz doesn’t mean I speak Spanish. Of course, I do speak Spanish. And Papi wants me to speak better Spanish. Well, a lot of nerve he has too.

  “My job is to make you successful, but I’ll need your help. For starters, will you try to get to bed on time?” she asks and in a whisper adds, “So you don’t have any more accidents?”

  I keep my eyes down and my mouth closed. How did she know?

  “And I’m going to sign you up for a peer tutor. I think that will really help get you back on track.” Mrs. Cruella gets up from the little table and digs around in her desk drawer. While she’s gone, I calmly put her shiny mechanical pencil in the waistband of my shorts.

  When she comes back, she slides a paper in front of me. “This explains peer tutoring. One of my former students, Yari, might be available. You two will really get along.”

  I slink back to my seat, pulling my jacket lower. Nobody wants a stupid friend. Even Papi didn’t want his stupid pudgy daughter. Just like he didn’t want his stupid dropout son.

  A student puts our morning math work face down on our desks. This teacher must grade papers during her lunch. That stinks. I flip it over. Well, la-di-da, guess what? Yep, another D. Well this day gets a D for Duh, doesn’t it?

  “Look, Sherie. She got a lower grade than you.” Nancy grabs my paper and holds it up. “Didn’t you learn anything at your old school?” she whispers to me.

  “Yah,” I whisper back, “I learned to do this.” And I flick my pencil so it hits nosy Noodlenose right in her ear.

  “DeeDee,” says Mrs. Cruella. She motions me to the back table.

  Great. I’m in trouble. But instead, she hands me a form with some boxes checked.

  “These are the skills Yari will work on with you. I heard back from her teacher and you can start tomorrow. Her room is down the hall on the way to the lunchroom. We’ll have someone walk you there.”

  “No, I can find it.” I take the paper and stuff it in my desk. Does she think I’m stupid?

  Well, duh. Yes she does.

  CHAPTER THREE

  D IS FOR DRAWING

  I practically break down the door when I get home, rushing to get to the bathroom. And then I’m so thirsty I almost drink the whole gallon of juice. Danita fixes a snack and turns on the TV. I hide my new hoodie under my blanket.

  Danita’s phone rings. “It’s Andrea,” Danita says to me. “Sure, come over,” she says to Andrea. “Nobody. Just DeeDee.”

  Nobody. Just DeeDee. That’s my life.

  Andrea and Danita eat and laugh about people I don’t know. They gush over movie stars in a magazine that I can’t see. They talk about Danita’s quinceañera that I will not be going to.

  “So, how many people will you invite?” I
hear, and then I fall asleep. By the time I wake up, Mami is home and I smell dinner.

  “Te sientas bien?” she asks me.

  “Yah, I feel better. Just tired, “ I say.

  “Maybe you need to sleep in Danita room,” she says.

  “Maybe Danita needs to sleep on the couch,” I argue. Who wants to sleep on a mattress on the floor? Not me.

  “No, mija. She need her own room. She coming to be a woman. Fifteen.”

  Well, that’s just fine, isn’t it? For the millionth time I wish our trailer didn’t burn down. Because even though I had a tiny room, it was my room, and my bed, and I didn’t have to share it or sleep on somebody’s floor.

  “Go do homework. I cook favorite for you. Gorditas para mi Gordita!”

  I want to tell Mami that until Papi comes home I’m not Mexican. No Mexican food. No Mexican nicknames. In fact, I wish I wasn’t Mexican at all. One more reason I won’t be going to Danita’s annoying quinceañera, which is all she ever talks about.

  But I’m starving and I love Mami’s cooking. Just like Papi does. He always says that’s why he married her. Because beauty doesn’t last, but cooking does.

  What do we love? Gorditas, for one. Mami’s gorditas are sort of the same as the Hot Pockets they advertise on TV, but not sealed shut. They’re a thousand times better. And we love agua de horchata, that rice drink with cinnamon sprinkled on the top. And crunchy, fried buñuelos. Who doesn’t love those?

  I use my new mechanical pencil to redo the incorrect math problems on my test, but I get the same answer as before. I guess I missed too many days of school. Papi used to help me with math even though he said he wasn’t good in school. He hated the new way we learn to do it. “Numbers are numbers,” he used to say. “Simple.” And then he’d show me his way. Miss Hamilton said it was okay. Learn two ways and we shall be double smart, she used to say.

  But Mrs. Cruella expects me to show my work. No shortcuts. Know what I say to that? LOL. Land O’Lakes. No more Papi. No more Papi’s way. I do the problems two more times and get the same wrong answers. Whatever. I draw cats all around the edges of the math paper. Ugly cats. Cute cats. Big cats. Little cats. Maybe the answer is cats.