1. Are You Ready?

Buzz.

I looked around the quiet room. All heads were down, faces buried in their DEAR books. Our assignment every Tuesday morning in my 7th grade language arts class was to “Drop Everything and Read” for 30 minutes. Ms. Penney didn’t care what we were reading, as long as it was a book we had checked out from our school library or had brought from home that she approved first (you know, to keep it appropriate for our reading level and, as she says, “appropriate for the classroom”).

I looked down at my copy of Little Women that I had brought from home. It was actually my mom’s copy from when she was in high school. I flipped to the inside front cover. Margaret Danfield was neatly written in blue ink. My mom’s handwriting. This was before she became Margie Martin, wife of Freddy Martin, mom of Lucy and Molly Martin. I was almost finished reading it, even though I just started it two weeks—

Buzz. The sound insistently radiated again from my red, black, and white plaid backpack summoning, no, demanding that someone—anyone—look at it. I glanced sideways at Ms. Penney. Nothing. She was busy typing grades from her paper gradebook into the computer. Blue columns of numbers glowed on the screen in front of her. The heater above us was blowing full steam as usual, like a train getting ready to take us somewhere far away. When it kicked on, everyone knew it. The room shook a little, and sometimes papers went flying if you happened to be right under the vent, which, this 6-weeks, is exactly where I have been assigned to sit.

Maybe Ms. Penney hadn’t heard my phone over all this racket. She would definitely give me a sign if she had heard it, right? Right?? I glanced at the clock above the white board at the front of the room. 8:47. We still had 13 minutes left for DEAR reading, and then we would move on to the next activity. Ms. Penney did not believe in much “downtime” in class and playing on our phones never happened in language arts. It was now or never, and I really really wanted to read my message.

I leaned over and looked up the next row at Vance, wondering if I should risk it. As if he felt my eyes on the back of his head, Vance quietly turned and looked back, trying to read the thought bubble over my head. He was taller than most of the people in our class, which helped his direct line of vision back at me. His eyes and forehead furrowed with confusion. “What?” he mouthed to me, then adjusted his glasses.

Ms. Penney gave us a clear “ahem” from her desk to our left. Why, why, why had she arranged the room like this? Our rows faced the front, but her desk conveniently faced us mid-way along the side of the room, by the classroom door. No place to hide. Everyone on display, like bright shiny rings in a fancy jewelry store case yelling “Pick me!” as the looky-loos (what my dad called people who had no intention of buying something) walked by at the mall on a Sunday afternoon. Too smart for her own good, that Ms. Penney. I’ll give her that. I slumped further down in my desk, rearranging and shifting my body, and forced myself to look at my book. Vance looked away and pretended he hadn’t noticed anything.

The buzzing stopped, but my ears burned with anticipation and curiosity.