Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink (8 page)

Lucy recognized Oscar. He was short and square and had a round, buzz-cut head, and he was currently carrying a box almost as big as he was. He looked like a cartoon robot at the moment.

But she didn’t know the kid walking with him, holding a box on his shoulder like he was showing off his muscles.

“That’s no teacher,” J.J. said. “That’s one of the high school kids.”

Carla blinked, Emanuel went back to holding up the portable classroom, and Januarie whined that now that Oscar was here she was never going to get to play. But Lucy watched as Oscar and the other kid approached. The guy had a shaved face and chest hair sticking out of his shirt and a walk like he’d walked a lot of places before.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “I’m Mr. Augustalientes.”

“I told you it was like Alligator,” Carla Rosa said.

Januarie giggled. “It is!”

It was Lucy’s turn to blink as the guy put his box down and stuck out his hand.

“I’m your new teacher,” he said.

5

The bell rang. J.J. and Emanuel dove into the portable as if they actually liked school. Januarie whined that it wasn’t fair that she couldn’t be in their class and wandered off to the lower elementary building. Carla Rosa slipped her hand into Mr. Augu-what’s-his-nose’s outstretched one and then ran shyly off. And Oscar shifted the box and looked like he was going to fold up under the weight. When the new teacher took it from him, Oscar escaped too.

That left only Lucy, caught in the act of sizing up this kid-who-turned-out-to-be-a-grown-up. He was shorter than Dad and had shiny, milk chocolate brown hair cut short except for a silky part that curved over his forehead. He wore sunglasses and had a very small smile, and he just stood there looking right back at Lucy.

“And you are?” he said.

She tilted her chin. “Lucy Rooney.”

“Really? You’re Miss Lucy?” He cocked his head. “I saw your name on my roll, but — ”

He probably expected a girly-girl.

“How lucky am I, then?” he said. “And listen, Augustalientes is way too long — just call me Mr. Auggy.”

Lucy groaned inside. He already thought she was too dumb to remember his actual name. Man, she hated getting a new teacher.

“Shall we?” he said, as he balanced both boxes on his shoulders.

Show-off. Lucy would rather have donned her Peppermint Delight coat than follow him into the portable. The room fell silent when they entered, which wasn’t all that amazing since there were only five people in their class. Other kids came in and out for help during the day sometimes, but these five were the permanent residents of the support class portable.

Only it didn’t look like their room right now. A gallery of posters lined the walls, which two weeks before had held a handwriting chart, a list of rules, and a calendar with puppies on it, none of which anybody ever looked at.

Lucy didn’t have time to survey the new display because she had to find her seat. The former row of desks had been replaced by two round tables and a mismatched collection of chairs. Emanuel, J.J., and Oscar were already gathered at one table. Carla Rosa patted the empty chair next to her at the other one and dimpled at Lucy.

“Guess what, Mr. Argentina?” Carla Rosa said.

Lucy heard J.J. grunt. Carla got on his nerves, Lucy knew. She reminded him of Januarie sometimes, even though she was twelve. She was kind of eight in her mind, maybe even six.

“What, Miss Carla?” the teacher said.

“I gotta question,” Oscar said. He stuck his hand up
after
he asked it.

“I hope I have an answer.” Mr. — what did he say to call him — Mr. Auggy? — set the boxes on a long table Lucy had never seen before. He leaned against his desk and tilted his head at Carla.

“You first,” he said, “and then Mr. — ” He raised his eyebrows at Oscar.

“Oscar. See, that’s what I don’t get.” Oscar twisted his face. “How come you call us Miss and Mr.?”

“Out of respect,” Mr. Auggy said. “I expect you to respect each other, so I ought to respect you. Now — Miss Carla, you wanted to say something?”

Carla giggled. “I forgot.”

Emanuel let out a hiss — and Mr. Auggy was on him as if he’d just spit on the floor.

“Just so you know,” he said, “there will be none of that here. There are no stupid questions, and there are no dumb answers.”

J.J. folded his arms and slid down in his seat.

“Problem, Mr. — well, it’s either Mr. Emanuel or Mr. Jedediah?”

Oscar spewed a juicy laugh, and J.J. punched him. Lucy cringed. J.J. hated to be called by his actual name, which was Jedediah Joseph. Lucy couldn’t really blame him.

“Problem?” Mr. Auggy said.

“He likes to be called J.J.,” Carla Rosa informed him. “And I like to be called Carla Rosa.”

“I apologize, Mr. J.J.,” Mr. Auggy said. “I’ll probably make a lot of mistakes this first day.”

By lunchtime, Lucy decided he had that right, at least. First, he made them each tell him something about themselves, which was a huge mistake since all Carla could do was giggle, and J.J. wouldn’t say anything, so Emanuel wouldn’t either, and Oscar talked until everybody was yawning and rubbing their eyes. When it was Lucy’s turn, she sat up straight and said, “The only thing you need to know about me is that I love soccer and I hate school. No offense.”

“None taken,” Mr. Auggy said.

His next mistake was making them give him all the reasons they hated school while he wrote them on the chalkboard. It took up the whole board and what was supposed to be their time for math — the one subject that didn’t make Lucy wish she was at the dentist instead. Why talk about hating school anyway? School was what it was, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

“What would you like to change about school?” Mr. Auggy said next.

“Lunch,” Oscar said.

“What do you want for lunch?”

“No chili and cheese on top of Fritos,” he said. “It’s gross.”

“What
do
you want?”

The other kids said things like chicken nuggets and pizza and burritos, except J.J., who still wasn’t participating. Lucy said she wanted sushi and calamari. Then she thought her dad wouldn’t be smiling at her right now, and she wished she hadn’t said it. It did make J.J. smile, though.

“What else would you change?” Mr. Auggy said, even though there was no room left on the chalkboard. He picked up a clipboard.

“I don’t like doing work,” Oscar said. He looked around as if he expected the rest of the class to congratulate him on a brilliant answer. Mr. Auggy actually wrote it down. Okay, as long as they were being ridiculous —

“I want a sports program,” Lucy said.

“Ah, Miss Lucy, our soccer player.”

“Except there’s no soccer team. There’s not even any soccer balls — ”

“And all the basketballs are old. They don’t even bounce.”

The class stared at Emanuel. He almost never talked, especially in class.

“What sports do you have?” Mr. Auggy said.

“None at our school,” Oscar said. “Huh, Lucy?”

Lucy lifted her chin. “None. They have some boys’ teams at the middle school and the high school — baseball and basketball and football, but the girls can’t even try out for those.”

“Girls have that thing where you punch the ball over the net.” Carla Rosa frowned and looked at Lucy.

“Volleyball,” Lucy said. “My mom was going to start a soccer league in Los Suenos.”

“Why doesn’t she?” Mr. Auggy said.

“She’s dead,” Carla Rosa said.

“Shut up!” J.J. said.

Mr. Auggy cocked his head at J.J., but Lucy shook her ponytail.

“It’s okay. She can’t help it.”

Mr. Auggy didn’t say anything for a minute, and J.J. slid back down in his chair.

“My dad asked about the school having a soccer team,” Lucy said. “But they said there wasn’t enough money.”

“I see,” Mr. Auggy said. He had stopped writing things down. It figured. Whenever somebody said there wasn’t any money, that was usually the end of whatever needed to be paid for.

Mr. Auggy committed a few more flubs before lunch — like giving them each a clump of clay and telling them to make something, which ended in a major clay-ball battle — but as far as Lucy was concerned, his worst mistake came during recess.

They gobbled their lunches as usual — in four bites Lucy downed the peanut butter and pickle sandwich Dad made her — and raced out to the playground, stopping only at her cubby in the main hall of the sixth-grade wing to get the soccer ball she kept there. Cubbies lined the walls on both sides and served as lockers, but no one ever took anything from anybody’s because, Lucy always figured, nobody had anything worth taking. In her case, no one else in sixth grade except her little team had any interest in soccer equipment.

Just as Lucy was tucking the ball under her arm, a female voice behind her said, “What happened, Lucy?”

She turned to Veronica, who stood, hang-lipped, on the other side of the hall next to Dusty.

“What?” Lucy said.

“Why aren’t you wearing that cute pink coat you had on yesterday?”

Dusty nodded. “That one looks like you ran over it or something.”

“I’m saving the pink one,” Lucy said.

“That lady you were with was nice.”

Lucy wasn’t sure which one of them said that, and she didn’t care. What was up with them noticing her all of a sudden? “You guys ready?” she said to her group.

Veronica and Dusty turned to their side-by-side cubbies, filled with color-coded pastel binders that said SOCIAL STUDIES and ENGLISH in perfect fat letters. They never had to come to the support class. Lucy reminded herself to make a list of all the reasons she was glad. Them paying attention to her couldn’t be a good thing.

Once she was out on the playground with Emanuel and Oscar and Carla Rosa, however, she forgot all about them. She could even ignore Januarie, who sat on the ground with her lower lip poking straight out, bleating like a small goat because they wouldn’t let her play.

“We could use her for the ball,” J.J. muttered to Lucy.

“You want to hold my jacket for me, Jan?” Lucy said.

Januarie settled for that, though she kept her lip standing out.

Lucy pointed to a space near the fence. “Be goalie, J.J. Oscar, you be the defender — ”

She doled out the positions — midfielder to Carla Rosa, and forward to herself and Emanuel. That made it basically J.J. against everybody else, but there weren’t enough of them to make one team, much less two. Besides, J.J. was the best player, except for Lucy.

“Ready?” she said.

Heads bobbed, and Lucy set the ball down, took a step forward, and smacked it squarely in the middle with the inside of her foot so her leg looked like a hockey stick. That was the way her mom had taught her, the way she’d watched players on TV do it, and the way she’d practiced in her backyard until her feet were black and blue.

“To you, Emanuel!” she shouted.

He stuck out a long, spindly leg and caught the ball with his toe. It popped up and spun back toward him. He flailed at it again with his foot, missed, and said, “To you, Lucy.”

“No!” Lucy waved her arms at him. “I can’t touch it again until somebody else does.”

Emanuel looked at Carla Rosa, who blinked at him.

“That’s why you need me!” Januarie said.

“So why aren’t you playing, Miss Thing?”

Lucy stopped in mid-lunge toward the ball and stared at Mr. Auggy, who was crouching beside Januarie.

“They won’t ever let me,” she said, pitifully.

Carla Rosa chose that moment to whack at the ball with her foot. Lucy trapped it with hers and dragged it back behind her with her sole.

“Okay, let’s start again,” she said.

“Pass it here,” Mr. Auggy said. “I’ll throw it in.”

Lucy didn’t move.

“I love a pickup game. It looks like you could use another player.” He looked down at Januarie. “Two, even. You want to be on my team?”

J.J. grunted. Carla Rosa giggled. Oscar and Emanuel shrugged at each other. Lucy kicked the ball hard toward Mr. Auggy. It was trapped and in his hands so swiftly, Lucy barely saw how he did it.

“Go on in, Miss Thing,” he said to Januarie, who was jumping up and down and squealing.

She bounded onto their playing space, nearly knocking Emanuel over, and turned to face Mr. Auggy. Leaning forward with one leg, he raised the ball over his head and threw it gently to her feet.

“What do I do?” she cried.

“Kick it to me,” Mr. Auggy said as he jogged onto the “field.”

“No, kick it here!” J.J. said.

When she turned her head to him, Emanuel got his foot between hers and snagged the ball.

“Here!” Lucy said, running toward the goal.

But from somewhere, a high-pitched sound came. All heads turned to Mr. Auggy, who let a silver whistle drop to his chest on a cord. He waved his hand for them to gather around him. Carla Rosa bounced over like she was going to hug him. J.J. gave Lucy a dark look.