Operation Yes (16 page)

By the end of January, Room 208 had collected only 4,092 LGM. A long way from 100,000.

Before school, Bo, Trey, Gari, and Melissa met beside the rusty jungle gym on the little kids' playground. Around them, the trees were stripped of leaves, and the sky was as gray as the faded, smooth wood of the three old seesaws. A swing moved slightly in the cold wind, creaking on its chains.

“Why did you tell that reporter we could get one hundred thousand dollars?” said Bo. “Don't you know how many zeros that is?”

Melissa pursed her lips. “I didn't pick that number. We ALL did.”

“One hundred thousand is not that much,” said Gari. “If we were in Seattle, we would be there already.”

“Earth to Gari,” said Bo. “You don't live in Seattle anymore.”

“Maybe we should change our goal,” said Trey.

“To what?” said Gari.

“Maybe we should change who's running this operation,” said Bo. “You and Melissa keep walking around and around after lunch, and you never say what you're talking about!”

Melissa's neck flushed a deep red. She zipped her jacket up to her chin.

Gari bumped Bo's arm. “We can talk about whatever we want. You aren't the boss of us.”

Trey held up his drawing of the school, which was filled with tiny X's where LGM had been placed. There were large white spaces with number goals written next to them. “The problem is that it isn't big enough,” he said.

“Everyone's working hard,” insisted Melissa.

Trey shook his head. “I mean the circumference. We haven't drawn a big enough circle of people. We have to think about who's outside who could be on the
inside.
”

“Yes,” said Gari. “To increase our probability of being heard.”

“Right,” said Melissa, thinking of Miss Loupe's ball as it had bounced around Room 208. “We should think of people we have things in common with, people who aren't in the circle now, but who could be.”

“Other schools?”

“People who used to be in the military?”

“The Flying Farmer!”

“What?”

“He used to be in the military. Think of all the people who see his show,” said Bo.

“It's a start,” said Gari. “We'll make a list of everybody and everything and plan how to reach them. Make the circle bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Gari was right, but Bo was starting to think that even a circle a million miles wide wouldn't get Miss Loupe back into the Taped Space.

“I don't think we should wait,” he said. “We should start rehearsing the show now.”

“I haven't finished writing it!” said Melissa.

“We'll make it up as we go along,” said Bo. “We have to.”

“But we planned for the LGM to be part of the show,” said Gari. “Isn't that in your script, Melissa? What if we don't have enough? What if it looks silly? What if people won't come? What if …”

A pair of jets flew overhead, drowning out her words. The four of them looked up, watching the streaks of white trail across the gray sky.

They flew so straight, thought Bo. They had a mission, a plan, and a flight path. He didn't know how to move ahead that way. He was always up and down and around and around, like a pogo stick.

“What if Miss Loupe doesn't come back next year?” he said.

“
You
won't be back,” Trey pointed out. Bo still hadn't told him he might be staying. There was no official word on his dad's assignment.

“The reason she came here was because she loved theater. I don't think she does anymore. She thinks it doesn't matter. She thinks we can't see that she's all cracked. But we can.” He hoped they could follow his jumps. “We have to get Miss Loupe to take off again, even if it's bumpy.”

“You want to goof off instead of working on my plan,” said Gari.

“You're afraid that if you get on stage, you'll stink!”

“I'm not doing acting!”

“Yes, you are. We're going to do the play, and you're going to be the New Recruit. I'm going to teach you, and you are going to be as BAD as possible.”

 

Gari
was
bad. Worse even than Bo thought she could be.

“You're supposed to
look
clueless and bumbly, not actually
be
clueless and bumbly,” he said. “Like the Flying Farmer, you know?”

“I didn't see the Flaming Farmer,” said Gari. “Remember?”

“I'll show you.”

Bo asked his mom to back the cars out of the garage. He taped a rectangle to the floor.

“Pretend this is the airspace above show center,” he said. “Everything has to stay within the box or the audience can't see it.”

He threw out his arms and buzzed into the space. He staggered from side to side, turning and dipping and barely catching himself inches above the floor. He ended by demonstrating a one-wheeled landing, sliding on his pant leg to a precise stop at the edge.

“But I'm not going to be an airplane. I'm supposed to be a person,” objected Gari. “Didn't you read the script?”

“Yes, and the script says that I talk and you don't! You're the New Recruit! You're scared and you're not sure where you are and you don't speak a single word! So you have to show all that in how you
move.
”

“I thought that it would be easier.”

“It would be … if you'd loosen up!” He dragged her into the Taped Space. “Now, fly!”

Gari weakly held out her arms and flapped them like a duck.

Bo wanted to take his dad's golf club and pretend to shoot her down.

“How about if we pogo stick instead?”

Gari shook her head.

“Jump rope?”

“No.”

Bo's eyes lit on Indy's travel crate. Minutes later, he and Gari and Indy were in the backyard. The grass was winter brown and touched by only a hint of the sun as it lowered. They hadn't grabbed jackets, and the air chilled their arms.

“Take off your shoe,” he said.

“It's cold!”

“Take it off!” said Bo. “You want me to help you or not?”

“Not,” said Gari. “Let's
not
do the show. Or get someone else to play the New Recruit!”

Indy snuggled up next to her leg and laid her head against it. She looked up at Gari with adoring eyes. She gave a questioning whine.

“Fine. Take my shoe.”

“And your sock.”

Gari handed them over. Her foot was freezing in the stiff short grass.

“Indy, sit,” Bo said. She sat.

“Indy, catch,” he said. He threw Gari's sock into the air. Indy caught it. And ran.

“You … you …” Gari was torn between kicking him with the shoe she still had on and taking it off so she could throw both of them at his head. He sped up the stairs to the deck and stood watching her. She gave up and ran after Indy.

Indy dodged and jinked and leaped. She twisted and barrel-rolled and slid. Slobber coated Gari's sock and hunks of dead grass and reddish dirt too. Gari charged in Indy's wake, calling her name and flailing her arms to catch her. It was impossible. No matter how fast she was, Indy was several hairs faster.

Gari finally collapsed in defeat, sweat staining the front and the back of her shirt. She lay there, looking up at the sky, her side aching and her breath puffing into the cold air in jags so hard they hurt. Indy trotted over and dropped the filthy wad of wet sock on her chest.

“Bravo!” said Bo, calling down.

He was clapping and whistling. Indy licked Gari's face. Gari clutched the sock and closed her eyes.

“NOW you're ready to fall,” said Bo.

Gari shook her head. He was insane.

“But you're loose,” said Bo. He came off the deck and stood beside her. “Come on, get up! I'll show you.” He pulled her to her feet and made a fist in front of the lower part of his stomach. “It all comes from your core. If you're strong there, it's easy.”

He had Gari make a fist in front of her stomach.

“Everything else is relaxed,” he said. “Don't worry; the grass is a guaranteed soft landing.”

“It hurt before,” said Gari.

“I'll fall with you. It'll be a
controlled
landing.” He took her arm and the two of them crashed to the grass. Bo fell lightly, Gari with a louder thud on top of him.

“That didn't hurt,” she said.

Bo twisted his body out from under her. His ear stung where she had jabbed an elbow into it. “Next time you're solo.”

He backed away and motioned for her to get up. “Close your eyes and I'll make the sound for you to follow.”

Gari shut her eyes. “SWOOOOOOOSH!” said Bo. Gari crumpled and hit before he had finished.

“Again!”

“SWOOOOOOSH!” Thud.

“No,” said Bo. “Think of a note hanging in the air. A plane about to land. A pogo …”

But Gari suddenly thought of the sound a straw made sucking a drink to the bottom. She waved away Bo's words.

“SWOOOOOOOSH!” This time Gari imagined she was a tall glass being drained of soda, and she almost matched the length of his sound with the arc of her fall. It was strange to fall on purpose. To plan to let go. She didn't dissolve like a paper star drifting down to the liquid at the bottom of a cup. Instead, she felt powerful and weightless, both at once.

“That was
too
good,” said Bo. “You've got to look at least a little clumsy. You're the New Recruit, remember?”

And so it went. The more clumsy and bumbly she was in the yard, and later in the Taped Space, the better Bo told her that she had done. They planned how to make her even more terrible the next time they rehearsed.

Meanwhile, they all worked on making the circle bigger.

 

Bo sent a copy of the newspaper article and a note to the Flying Farmer:

 

I've never gotten to meet you, but I think you are the greatest pilot ever. Do you think you could tell everyone at your air shows about our flight plan?

Signed,

Your biggest fan

 

Gari sent pictures of the LGM to Tandi at Seattle Junior Academy.

“We could be sister schools,” she told Tandi on the phone. “You help us with this, and we'll help you with …” She wasn't sure. What would be big at SeaJA this year?

The secretary at SeaJA listened when Tandi told the principal about the project. She sent a donation along with a note saying she would put the photos in Gari's application file for next year.

“Why do you want to go to SeaJA anyway?” Bo asked Gari when the donation arrived. “Is it better than here?”

Instead of answering, she asked him a question:

“Did you ever get elected to anything? Did anybody ever vote for you?”

“Yup,” said Bo. “One time I won an election on my third day at a brand-new school.”

“Oh, like for class clown?”

“Second-grade class representative. Cool, huh?”

“But how? How did you get anyone to vote for you when they didn't even know your name?”

“Easy. I told them that I was the new kid. That I didn't have any friends
or
enemies. I told them that I would be the fairest, most representative-est class representative they'd ever had.”

“That's all it took?”

“Uh, that, and I showed them my cool scar. You know, the one you gave me?”

Gari e-mailed herself some new goals for next year at SeaJA. “Plan C,” she titled it. Or was it Plan D? She was losing track of all the ways she'd arranged and rearranged her big ideas this year.

“Come on,” said Bo. “Time to rehearse. Let's practice your entrance.”

Gari fell down at least fifteen times before Bo said she had it almost right.

 

Allison asked her grandfather, who really had been a POW, to send a message to all the veterans' organizations in the country. They put the word out in their newsletters and meetings. The actor who had played her grandfather in the TV movie sent a generous donation and a signed picture for Allison. She posted it outside Room 208's door so everyone could see it.

 

Kylie and Shaunelle went to local restaurants and businesses, asking for their support. Then the two of them thought of something even better. They asked Miss Candy for help in building a Web site for Operation Yes.

“We want it to be bigger than the local phone book,” said Shaunelle.

“Way bigger than an open house,” said Kylie.

Miss Candy helped them scan in Trey's map and upload several pictures of the LGM.

“We can't fit all of the pictures,” said Shaunelle. “Not if we get one hundred thousand.”

“I like these two,” said Miss Candy. “The minesweeper and the binoculars guy — they look like they're searching for something, like we do in the library.”

“How about if we feature one new LGM each day?” said Kylie. “And then have a page that we put all the donors' names on?”

“We should get Marc to write the story of his rescue….”

“… Yes, and use that picture of Miss Loupe and him together….”

“… And make sure we have the address of the school on there….”

“Information about Walter Reed,” said Shaunelle.

“A way to donate online,” said Kylie. “Can we do that?”

 

In February, Trey's dad left with his unit for their scheduled four-month rotation to Afghanistan. Trey gave him lots and lots of drawings of LGM to pass around to everyone at his deployed base. One made its way to the
Stars and Stripes
newspaper,
which wrote a story about Operation Yes. The paper went out to over 350,000 readers in military families stationed overseas.

$100,000 I
S
N
O
M
ILK
R
UN FOR
T
HESE
Y
OUNG
S
TUDENTS!
the headline read. It told the story of Marc, and Room 208, and their quest for 100,000 LGM, with one of Trey's drawings as an illustration. At the end was the address of the Web site at Young Oaks where readers could make donations.