Hide and Seek (10 page)

“No he’s not,” Grandma said. “He’s going to be Find-It Man.” Grandma set Keisha’s plate down and stood back to examine her. “And I’m going to be Fix-It Girl. Stand up.”

Keisha stood up. Grandma tugged on her sweater, refolded the collar of her blouse and pushed Keisha’s hair behind her ears. “Better,” Grandma declared. “Now you won’t ruin my reputation for high fashion at Langston Hughes Elementary.”

“Where are Mama and Daddy and baby Paulo?” Keisha asked.

“They’re at school.”

Keisha wondered if the world had turned upside down while she slept.

Grandma added more steaming French toast to the platter on the table. “In her letter, Ms. Tellerico invited your mama and your dad to a breakfast meeting. Speaking of breakfast, you need to finish yours ‘toot-sweet’ so you’re not late for school.”

Though it felt strange to walk to school without her brother, it was kind of nice, too, to be able to get started at the right time and think her own thoughts on the way. Keisha listened to the sound of her feet as they
shush-shush-shushed
through the leaves on the sidewalk. As she walked, Keisha thought back over all the things that had happened in the last two days. She wished she could think of a good way to catch the deer without hurting him.

Most of the animals they received were either injured and easily caught or small enough to be trapped in a cage. If she could come up with a brilliant idea and post it on the
Live at Five
Action Team Web site, then maybe Mindy Patel would think twice about saying kids shouldn’t help with animal rehabilitation. It was so not true. Even Razi helped feed the animal babies.

As Keisha stood on the edge of the playground,
watching all the kids lining up for class—Zack and Zeke, Wen, Aaliyah, Jorge—she thought:
Kids have always been part of Carters’ Urban Rescue. Even non-Carter kids
.

Wait a minute
.

Daddy often said that two heads were better than one.

What about thirty-two heads? Keisha ran across the blacktop to join her class. “Mr. Drockmore?” She tugged on her teacher’s sleeve as they filed in. “Do you think we could do something different during science today?”

“Have you read the blog?” Aaliyah called to Keisha from the line.

“Aaliyah,” Mr. Drockmore said. “Keisha and I were talking.”

But Aaliyah couldn’t stop herself. She was too excited. She rushed over to Keisha and Mr. Drockmore. “There have been fifty-four posts. Everyone is weighing in … on kids in family businesses, on nature taking its course. There have been responses from as far away as Taiwan! People want to know what’s going to happen if—”

“Ms. Johnson. Please get back in line. There is a time and a place for social conversation.”

“Mr. Drockmore,” Aaliyah said, putting her hands on her hips. Keisha could see her friend was about to get sassy. “This is
not
social con—”

“Aaliyah,” Keisha interrupted. “Please! I need to talk to Mr. Drockmore about this D.I.D.”

Aaliyah sighed and took her place in line.

After Keisha finished explaining her idea to Mr. Drockmore, he crossed his arms and drummed his fingers on his sleeve.

“I like it,” he said finally. “This is one of those teachable moments when our FFGs can actually see how science is applied to real-world problems.” Mr. Drockmore smiled to himself.

“Yes, sir.” Keisha patted Mr. Drockmore’s arm. “And we might save a baby deer, too.”

During science lab, Mr. Drockmore asked the children to close their observation notebooks. He drew an oval with four sticks coming out beneath it on the whiteboard. Then he drew a circle on top and two little ears. Keisha realized it was the baby deer.

“You may have seen the news story last night about the young deer with the pumpkin caught on his head. Like many problems we experience in our everyday lives, I believe this one, too, can be solved by scientific reasoning.”

Marcus raised his hand. “But don’t you have to catch it before you can reason with it?” he asked. “I thought they said they could get the pumpkin off if they could catch it.”

Mr. Drockmore stood back and considered his drawing. “I could use a hand with this drawing, Marcus.”

Marcus jumped up and grabbed a dry-erase marker.

“Yes, catching the deer is one problem. That is what everyone else is focusing on. But my question is how this pumpkin can get unstuck
without
catching the deer, since that result seems so unlikely.

“We’ve been talking all year about creating if-then hypotheses. What are some questions we might ask about how this little deer can separate itself from the pumpkin, questions that could lead us to create a working hypothesis?”

Mr. Drockmore waited for volunteers. Isolde raised her hand. “We could ask what the deer can use … like maybe a sharp rock or stick?”

Isolde stopped. She was thinking.

“Keep going, Isolde.”

“I was just wondering, how smart is a deer? Can he think about what to use? It wouldn’t matter what he had if he didn’t know how to—”

“He’s smart enough to get Carters’ Urban Rescue coverage in Taiwan!” Aaliyah jumped in. “This story is viral! People are sending the deer’s picture all over the place. I Googled it this morning and got 427 hits!”

“Aaliyah, do I need to remind you how the scientific process works? Interrupting is not part of the process.”

“I’m just trying to explain the process of a media frenzy,” Aaliyah said. “For those who might be interested.”

“Sometimes, friend Aaliyah, I believe you have what is called a one-track mind.” Mr. Drockmore went to the Welcome Wall, where cutout handprints of the whole class were displayed. He placed his hand on his own handprint. On the first day of school, he told his Fantastic Fifth Graders that this was an excellent way to calm down and refocus.

Mr. Drockmore turned to face the class again. “Jorge, do you have any thoughts?”

“Well …” Jorge paused. “About what Isolde said … Big Bob told me that when deer are really hungry, they do all kinds of stuff for food. That means they can be creative. I bet the little deer is doing everything she can to get that pumpkin off by herself.”

“Excellent point.” While Jorge was speaking,
Mr. Drockmore had turned his attention back to the board. Marcus had made the pumpkin into a basketball and was drawing a Detroit Pistons jersey on the little deer.

“Thank you, Marcus. That is enough.”

Marcus signed his name in flowy handwriting underneath his creation.

“I think we are at the point where we can make some predictions. Open your notebooks, please, and strategize in writing for me. Under what conditions could a deer with no hands and no sharp instruments, such as a knife or scissors, remove a pumpkin from its head?”

“Even if we figure it out,” Marcus said as he took his seat, “how do we tell the deer?”

Keisha twisted the eraser on her pencil. Marcus was so funny. She opened her notebook and started to think about an if-then hypothesis.
If
a deer had a pumpkin stuck on its head,
then
it would be very unhappy!

Duh
.

She needed to look at this problem from a different angle. It was like Mr. Drockmore said—everyone kept focusing on catching the deer. Was there a way to help it
without
catching it?

Keisha decided to apply “transfer of knowledge” to the project. Mr. Drockmore had taught them that learning something in one area of your life could help you solve a problem in another area, even if all the conditions weren’t the same.

Her most recent experience of things being stuck was, of course, Big Bob’s ring on Grandma’s toe. To get the ring off, they’d tried elevating Grandma’s foot, putting ice on it, getting it wet, using soap, using oil, twisting. But none of these things made sense for a baby deer to do without help.

Keisha chewed on her pencil eraser and let her mind wander, imagining the little deer and all the ways it had probably tried to get the pumpkin off already. Once, when Aaliyah tied a ribbon around the neck of Moms’s cat Bella, she scooched backward and rolled and bit at the ribbon until she got it off.

“Okay, guys …” Mr. Drockmore clapped his hands. “Time to share your observations with a partner.”

Keisha looked around for Wen. But Aaliyah was faster. She pushed her chair over to Keisha.

“There’s only one way this can work.
You
have to find that baby deer.”

“Why me?”

“Because Mindy Patel blamed you and Razi for not doing a good-enough job. You have to prove her wrong.”

“Aaliyah, proving Mindy Patel wrong wasn’t our assignment. Besides, if Daddy and Mr. Vescolani don’t find the deer today, how am I supposed to?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m the public-relations girl. Tracking animals is your business.”

Mr. Drockmore clapped his hands once more. Time to change partners. Keisha brought her chair to the corner of the room where Wen was frowning at her notebook.

“We need to get the weather forecast,” Wen said. “Nei-Nei said we can eat the Brussels sprouts soon, and Brussels sprouts taste best after the first hard frost.”

“Okay, now you’ve lost me.” Wen was good at explaining, so Keisha waited.

“We saw it yesterday. The temperature outside things affects their properties. Water in cold temperatures is different than water in hot temperatures. So is plastic. Deer live outside. When the temperature drops, the deer’s body will keep him from freezing, but the plastic could freeze if we get a hard frost.”

Keisha thought about that. Grandma’s ring was
made of metal, so it was already hard. How would it be different if the plastic pumpkin was hard instead of bendy? Wait a minute. With a hard frost and a little help …

“Wen,” she said. “We
do
need to check the weather. I think I have a hypothesis that might work.”

After school, Keisha sat at the kitchen table and pretended to do math problems. What she was really working on was her if-then hypothesis, but she didn’t think Mama would like it much, since it involved Carter children (specifically Keisha) doing dangerous things. Mama sat next to Keisha, figuring out the bills for the month. For every expense, there was an envelope—groceries, water, electricity. Any leftover money went in the envelope marked “extra.” The first time she went shopping each month, Mama paid all her bills in cash at the Family Fare service counter. Keisha had tried to explain to Mama about online banking, but Mama said she liked to do things the old-fashioned way and pay her bills with dollars and cents.

Sometimes, working on the envelopes got Mama talking about charging the people who dropped off squirrels with broken legs and songbirds who’d run into picture windows.

Keisha could tell that Mama was thinking that very thing because she looked up from her work and said, “Right now, your father is chasing all over the park after
a deer that won’t bring in a penny, and I’m to figure out how much extra it will cost if Razi goes to a new school.”

“A new school?”

“Ms. Tellerico thinks Razi’s active body might like the Celia Cruz Performing Arts School better than Langston Hughes. It’s a public school, too, but it’s on the other side of town, so we have to pay extra for the school bus. Razi is going to try it out tomorrow.”

“But he’ll be back for the Halloween Parade on Friday, won’t he?” Keisha said. Razi had been looking forward to the parade and the line dance in costumes since he’d learned about them in kindergarten.

“Of course. Oh dear.” Mama pulled the bills out of the “extra” envelope and counted them again. “It was fine last summer to be an alligator, but now his heart is set on a police officer. Grandma found the badge and the hat at the dollar store, but we need a navy blue shirt.” She paused and looked up at Keisha. “Do police officers wear ties?”

“Oh, Mama, that reminds me … Mr. Drockmore told us yesterday—”

“Your costume is all finished, Ada. I ironed it this morning. I took up Grandma’s long skirt, and I made you a snowy white apron and bonnet … ”

Mama paused. Keisha imagined she was seeing her daughter in the full skirt, the snowy white apron and
the stupid bonnet. Yuck. If only she could be a Romany girl with Racket by her side. That would be
beyond
Tallahassee.

“Try it on while I walk down to the thrift store and look for a navy blue shirt. Grandma’s at the park exercising her toe with Razi and the baby. She wants to be able to fit into the ruby slippers.” For months, Grandma had planned to be the Wicked Witch of the East for Halloween. She was the one who wore the ruby slippers
and
the black-and-white-striped tights. The supersecret part was that she planned to wear the emerald ring on her pinky finger for the first time.

“But, Mama—”

“I only have a few minutes. Go try it on. I can make the alterations and hear your poem again when I get back.”

Keisha sat down and crossed her arms.
Vera Wang dang-doodle
. How could she tell Mama she wanted a whole different costume on the day before Halloween?

But when she thought about wearing the stupid bonnet, the stupid apron and the stupid skirt during the line dance, how could she not?