If Duncan were awake and it were the beginning of the day, when she and Osei were still happy together, the four of them—even prissy Patty—could have made fun of Mrs. Randolph—their imitations of her voice and recitations of her words lasting for days and becoming inside jokes. Instead they said nothing, but worked doggedly on their cards while all around them Dee heard her classmates having lighthearted fun.
Patty asked for a bathroom pass, and didn’t come back to her own desk on her return, but lingered with friends across the classroom, comparing flowers and avoiding her grim cluster. Dee wanted to beg her to rejoin them, or kick Duncan awake, just to have a buffer of other students between her and Osei. Instead they had to sit stiffly, pretending each other wasn’t there.
From the corner of her eye she watched his card take shape—a cluster of three strawberries glued to the front, the white card colored the same pink as the pencil case. Inside he wrote very formally, in handwriting that looked European, with long full loops on the Hs and Ps and Ys: “Dear Mother, I am wishing you a very happy Mother’s Day, from your son, Osei.”
Was that what his anger was about—the pencil case? Dee wondered where it was. She’d surreptitiously checked inside her desk on returning from the nurse, hoping that somehow it had reappeared, but it wasn’t there. Though Osei hadn’t turned his head, she felt sure he’d know what she was searching for. Had she dropped it somewhere? She would have to check Lost and Found.
Ten minutes before the end of school, Mrs. Randolph clapped her hands and asked the students to leave the cards they had made on their desks and walk around looking at everyone else’s before starting to clean up. Dee jumped up, relieved. The last half hour had felt like punishment for a crime she did not know she had committed. And she had ended up making a stupid card with blueberries on the front, when her mother didn’t even eat blueberries. It looked like she was copying Osei’s card.
He too seemed eager to get away from their cluster of desks. As she walked around admiring the tissue-paper flowers and drawings of flowers and a few pieces of fruit (but no vegetables), Dee found herself hyperaware of where he was in relation to her. Soon he seemed to disappear altogether, until eventually she found him in the reading corner, sitting on a beanbag and flipping through a Mad magazine someone had left there.
“Osei, we have to clean up now, before the bell rings.”
He merely nodded, then got up and slouched toward their desks. Dee recalled how confidently he had walked across the playground that morning. Where had that confidence gone?
As they worked together, dumping paper and crayons and bottles of Elmer’s glue and pipe cleaners into a cardboard box, Osei said in a low voice, “Meet me on the playground after school.”
Dee nodded miserably. Her mother was expecting her home, but she would tell her she’d stayed after to jump rope.
When the bell rang, she murmured, “I’ll be there in a minute.” Then she hurried out of the classroom and down the hall to Lost and Found, which was in a box outside the principal’s office.
As she knelt to rummage through what seemed to be a tangle of the same blue cardigans, interspersed with single sneakers, Dee could hear Mrs. Duke on the phone: “No, he hasn’t actually done anything wrong. Not anything punishable. But he was involved in an incident with a girl—no, not that kind of thing, she fell and bumped her head.” Pause. “I simply wanted to make you aware of it.” Pause. “I understand that. Of course it can take time to settle in to a new school, especially for someone of your son’s…circumstances. He may not be used to behaving in the ways we expect of our children.” Pause. “No, I’m not implying—” Pause. “Of course. I am not suggesting you have not done your job. Let’s just give him time to settle in, shall we? We will keep an eye on him.” Pause. “That won’t be necessary. Give it a couple weeks, Mrs. Kokote, and we’ll speak again, all right? Now, I’m afraid the bell has rung and I have a staff meeting. Goodbye.” When she’d hung up she muttered, “Lord, give me strength!”
The school secretary who worked in the adjacent office chuckled. “Giving you a hard time, was she?”
“Uppity, is what I’d call it. Thank God we only have him for a month. Let the next school deal with him.”
“You think he pushed Dee Benedetti?”
Dee froze. If she moved, the secretary would see her.
“I know he did. Several of the children told me they saw him do it. But Dee won’t say he did, and that makes any accusations awkward.”
“What, he’s turned her head, has he? Given her a taste for chocolate milk?”
Mrs. Duke grunted. “So to speak.”
“It won’t last. These kids get together at recess and break up at lunchtime. It’s the age.”
“I don’t know. Diane told me Dee had taken her braids out and let him touch her hair. Her mother won’t be pleased. I’m dreading making that phone call. You know what Mrs. Benedetti’s like.”
“Oh yes.” The secretary laughed again. “Dee hasn’t actually broken a rule, though, has she? So you don’t have to call her mother.”
“I do, to tell her about the bump to her head. But all I have to say is that she tripped. I don’t have to bring up the boy, thank God. Never mind. I expect I’ll catch him out eventually, Dee or no Dee.”
Then the secretary looked up and saw her hanging over the Lost and Found box. “Dee, what are you doing there?”
“Nothing! Just looking for something. It’s not here.” As Dee got to her feet she heard a chair scrape, and footsteps, then Mrs. Duke appeared in the doorway, her perfume preceding her. She seemed startled.
“Dee, have you been eavesdropping?”
“No, Mrs. Duke. I was looking for something in Lost and Found.”
“What were you looking for?”
“A—a pencil case.” Dee found it impossible to look her in the eye, so kept focused on her pearl necklace. Mrs. Duke alternated it with a spider brooch or, during the winter, a snowflake brooch studded with rhinestones. Dee and her friends called her “Spidey,” “Flakey,” or “Pearly,” depending on which she was wearing.
“What does it look like?”
“It’s pink, with strawberries on it. But it’s not here. It’s…lost.”
“Right. Off you go, then.”
Dee hurried away, but stopped when Mrs. Duke called after her, “Wait a minute.”
She turned. “Yes, Mrs. Duke?”
The principal folded her arms over her chest as adults often did when they talked to children. “How’s your head?”
“It’s OK.”
“I am concerned about you, Dee. Concerned that you may not be telling the whole truth about what happened this afternoon.”
Dee scowled. “I am telling the truth. I tripped and fell.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Duke held her gaze for a long moment, during which Dee pressed her mouth tight and stuck out her chin. At last the principal turned away. “All right. That’s what I will tell your mother,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m going to call her now. You go home.”
As she walked down the hallway, Dee shuddered at what her mother would say if she knew what had really happened today. At the exit she paused. Osei was waiting by the jungle gym. She took a deep breath and stepped outside.