“Monk, I really need to get class started.
You don’t need the extra credit, but come by after school and I’ll have an assignment for you.”
“Thanks, Mr. Olley,” I tell him.
I wink at Hervé
on the way
to my seat.
“Okay, class, you know what time it is,” Olley says.
“Get out your pencils for the quiz.”
“Mr. Olley, aren’t you forgetting something?” Hervé asks.
“Yeah, Olley, we didn’t do the Jeopardy! thang,” another student hollers.
“Very well, class, let’s give it a go.”
Olley picks his stopwatch off the desk.
“You have five minutes. Anything goes.
On your mark, get set, go!”
“Olley, what’s your sign? Are you a Sagittarius or a Capricorn?”
Everyone laughs except me.
“Four minutes and twenty seconds left,” Olley says, yawning.
“Mr. Olley, are cell membranes fluid?”
No, no, don’t ask that, I think. It’s not on the quiz.
“Yes, they are. Three minutes, fourteen seconds,” he says, grinning.
Time to put my magic to work.
“Mr. Olley?”
“Yes, Monk?”
“Can you remind us of the phases of Mitosis?”
Lucky guess.
“Mitosis is nuclear division plus cytokinesis, and it produces two identical daughter cells during prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase.”
I smile at Hervé, then turn back to Mr. Olley.
Only one minute left.
“Mr. Olley?” He looks at me, frowning a little.
“Yes, Monk?”
I go in for the kill….
THE KILL
“I know that DNA, otherwise known as deoxyribonucleic acid, is a group of molecules that carry the genetic information necessary for the organization and functioning of most living cells and control the inheritance of certain characteristics, but I am just not sure whether it is in every cell in our bodies.”
Olley’s mouth hits the top of his junky desk.
It’s like he’s just seen the ghost
of Tupac Shakur
walk by.
I watch him
while he watches me, wondering
what he’s gonna do.
He only has a few choices.
He could give the quiz, and 99% of us
will ace it (because
I just gave the class the answers
to both questions), thereby
ruining his reputation for having
the hardest tests in school.
Or he could
postpone the test, save himself
the embarrassment, and give us a makeup on two new topics later in the week.
Guess which one he chooses.
THE CLASS GOES WILD
You would think it’s the Fourth of July the way everyone’s celebrating.
NO QUIZ TODAY!
I can see the fireworks going off
in Olley’s baffled eyes, as he tries to figure out how I knew
both questions
on the pop quiz.
Thing is, using my “powers” like that doesn’t feel so great, so after Hervé
pays me my twenty dollars, I decide it’s a onetime thing.
Or not.
AFTER CLASS
My classmates bum-rush me, thank me
for whatever I said or did to make Olley cancel.
One girl, who’s from Louisiana, asks if I put a spell on him.
It’s pretty cool to get all the attention, especially from kids who don’t even know I’m alive.
Athletes.
Cool kids.
ANGEL CARTER!
ANGEL CARTER CAPTIVATES ME
I don’t know exactly why.
Maybe it’s because she reminds me of Lisa Castillo.
Maybe it’s because I once dreamt about her lips.
Maybe it’s because when I see her in the hallway
or the lunchroom it’s like watching water
in the desert.
Once, I even wrote a haiku
about her
(changing her name, of course) for the school poetry journal.
River is a sweet song, and one of these days, I will carry her tune.
I signed it
Anonymous.
THERE’S ONE (BIG) PROBLEM, THOUGH
As beautiful as Angel is, she’s even more stuck up.
So nobody really likes her.
(Except me.) We’ve been classmates since fourth grade and she’s never even smiled at me.
Some of the girls in our class say she thinks she’s better than us.
When I told her what they were saying about her
(to get on her good side), she whipped her long brown hair and replied, “I am.”
BEFORE I CONTINUE
with this memoir I’d like to remind you that this part of my life
happened at my previous school so don’t try to figure out who’s who, plus all of the names (except mine) have been changed to protect
the innocent
and the guilty.
Now, back to the story…
SWAG
I’m standing in the hallway getting daps and high-fives from my classmates
when who walks up to me but, yep, you guessed it: ANGEL CARTER.
OH SNAP! This is the BEST. DAY. EVER!
But, wait, she doesn’t look happy.
The most beautiful girl in school
walks up to me
fast and furious
like a wave rushing
to the shore.
I feel like
I’m about to drown,
but I don’t care,
because like my dad says about my mom,
“She’s a stone cold fox!”
(I don’t even know what that means,
but it sounds pretty cool.) Her hair is braided in hundreds of tiny cornrows, so thin you could lace