Story Time (17 page)

Rosetta Turner wrinkled her nose at the scent of protein supplements and squinted her eyes against the glare of the fluorescent lights. She stopped and peered into a classroom. "Do these kids get outside to exercise?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," Susan lied. "We encourage a healthy diet and lots of exercise. We even have treadmills in some classrooms."

"In the classrooms?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Rosetta conceded, "That's good. The First Lady is opposed to flabby children."

Rosetta pointed a glossy fingertip at the cigarette pack sticking out of Susan's purse. "The First Lady would not want to see that, though. The First Lady would recoil at the very prospect of tobacco in a school."

Susan smiled contritely. "Yes, ma'am."

Rosetta glanced down at her Cartier Panthère watch. "All right. It's been five minutes. Let's go meet the doctor."

Bud showed Kate how to place sheets of heavy plastic over the display tables in the lobby. He told her, "Work your way upstairs. Just cover the inside cases, near the railings. When you get all the floors covered, give me a wave, like this." He demonstrated a standard hello-type wave. "I'll be up on the eighth floor. When I see the wave, I'll start power-blasting the ceiling."

Bud had no sooner started rolling the machine toward the elevator, though, when Rosetta and Susan emerged from the stairwell. He detoured to cut them off.

Susan cried gaily, "There's Bud!"

Rosetta warned him. "You again? This had better not be about fish."

"No, ma'am. It's about housing. People need housing. Am I right? Do you see all these homeless people walking around? Do you want to do something about them?"

"You want to build affordable housing for the homeless?"

"No! No! Not for them! I want to build houses for decent hardworking Americans. Not for shiftless bums."

Rosetta reached Elevator #1 and pushed the button. "So why don't you?"

Bud threw up his hands. "Federal regulations again! All the remaining woodlands in King's County are protected by the Department of the Interior. Why is that?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, I do. They claim they got some endangered species livin' in there. Some little squirrelly thing, the woodlands chipmunk. What kind of deal is that? People can't buy affordable homes, in a good school district, because of some chipmunk? I don't think that's right."

Rosetta pounded on the elevator button. "The First Lady likes chipmunks."

"I'm sure she does! Everybody does. That's part of the problem, see? It's a public relations problem. Chip and Dale? Alvin and the Chipmunks? Everybody loves them. If it were some endangered cockroach or rat or snake, it wouldn't be protected because they've got a bad rep, like orcas."

"I warned you about the fish."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry. But back to those roaches and rats and snakes. What would we do to them? We'd spray 'em dead from the air, and the bulldozers would roll. But, no! You can't mess with chipmunks."

The elevator doors opened, revealing Agents McCoy and Pflaum standing inside.

Rosetta said, "Excuse me."

She and Susan joined the two agents. Rosetta remained facing the back wall until the doors had closed completely. Then she leaned toward Agent McCoy's ear and whispered so that only he could hear, "If that man gets -within twenty feet of the First Lady, you're to shoot him."

He answered dryly, "Yes, Miss Turner."

Agent Pflaum stared at Susan Singer-Wright's name tag with great intensity. She smiled nervously, looked away, and looked back. He was still staring. She finally asked him, "Is something wrong, Agent?"

Agent Pflaum's face reddened. "No, ma'am. I'm sorry to stare at you, but I have been thinking about your name, and I have a question."

"What is that?"

"Are you by any chance related to the inventor of the BioSensor?"

Susan favored him with her widest smile. "I surely am! That would be little Ashley-Nicole, my daughter. Yes, that would have been when she was twelve, or was it thirteen? It was right around when she got her braces."

Behind her, Agent McCoy snorted. "The BioSensor. Ha! Let me tell you something, Pflaum. If you want to know if a warm-blooded creature is hiding in a closet, you open the door and look."

Agent Pflaum answered excitedly. "Okay, but! In the very act of opening the door, whoever is inside could shoot you! Or could shoot past you at the First Lady. The BioSensor tells you whether anyone's in the closet before you open the door."

"Part of your job, Agent Pflaum, is to take a bullet for the First Lady," Agent McCoy reminded him.

When the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, Cornelia was standing there blocking the exit. She held the door open with one outstretched hand and intoned, "Welcome to the top floor of the Whittaker Building. This floor contains the offices of my grandfather Cornell Whittaker Number One; my father, Cornell Whittaker Number Two; my husband, Dr. J. Kendall Austin; and—"

Agent McCoy cut her off again. "Dr. J. Kendall Austin, ma'am. He's the one we're here to see. The rest will have to wait."

Cornelia informed him, through clenched teeth, "The rest, sir, are deceased."

"I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am."

"Maybe some other time," Rosetta added diplomatically.

Cornelia stepped back to let the four occupants out of the elevator. She pointed to her left, where Dr. Austin stood holding a copy of
TBC: Test-Based Curriculum.

Dr. Austin bowed.

Cornelia announced, "This is Dr. J. Kendall Austin, the director of Library Services for King's County, the founder and headmaster of the Whittaker Magnet School, and the author of the most influential book in American education,
TBC: Test-Based Curriculum.
This is Rosetta Turner, the First Lady's chief of staff. And these are two agents."

Dr. Austin smiled slowly. "It is a pleasure to meet such distinguished representatives from our nation's capital."

No one said anything else for a long moment, until Cornelia pointed down the hallway. This reminded Dr. Austin to say, "Ah, yes. We have some people for you to meet in the County Commission Room. Some very little people, with some very big brains. We call them die Juku Warriors. Shall we?"

George and June had been hard at work all this time. George, as part of his rebellion, was trying to teach the Juku Warriors another song.

June had guarded the door as George had performed one of his favorite numbers from
Peter Pan.
He sang it for them with surprising force and dramatic flair.

When Dr. Austin's smiling face appeared on the other side of the Plexiglas, June emitted a high-pitched squeak and ran toward the back. George, June, and the Juku Warriors instantly reverted to their dreary tasks, busying themselves with answer sheets and No. 2 pencils.

Rosetta Turner walked directly to the back to observe the children's activities. Agent McCoy walked to the dais and bent to examine it. He pointed Agent Pflaum toward the closet. "Check it out."

After a quiet minute, Dr. Austin clapped his hands. The Juku Warriors stood at attention and bowed. Then he held up an index finger to the visitors in a "Watch this" gesture. He called out, "GRE vocabulary words," and the children started to rattle them off: "Perspicacious, sesquipedalian, antidisestabhshmentarianism..."

Rosetta held up both of her hands to stop them. "Now, what do those big words mean?" she asked a little girl in front.

The girl giggled. "I don't know."

Dr. Austin laughed heartily. Then he proceeded to do the prefectures of Japan routine for Rosetta, which she endured with barely concealed impatience.

When it was over, Dr. Austin turned to George. "This is George Melvil, one of our student assistants."

Rosetta eyed him suspiciously.

"He is one of our brightest young scholars. Come, George, walk with us. Perhaps Miss Turner will have questions for you on what it is like to be a Whittaker student."

Kate had by now worked her way up to the seventh floor putting sheets of plastic over bookcases. From that spot, she could hear Cornelia on the hallway above telling the guests, "Pardon our construction mess. We are in the process of restoring this historic ceiling mural to its original condition. No expense is being spared.

"My grandfather Cornell Whittaker Number One was a perfectionist. He insisted that this mural depict the exact horse that our first president rode during their historic meeting."

She told Rosetta, "My grandfather chose this pose himself. Don't you think it's the perfect choice?"

Rosetta surprised everyone by asking, "I don't know. What do you think, George Melvil?"

George answered, "Washington should never be pictured on a horse with one leg in the air. It goes against the unofficial rules of military statuary."

Cornelia stopped ignoring George. She growled, "Don't you have an after-school job to go to? To earn your tuition?"

But George expanded his answer. "By tradition, two forelegs in the air means that the military man died in battle; one leg up means he died of wounds resulting from a battle; no legs up means he died of natural causes. Washington should always be shown on a horse with both forelegs on the ground."

Cornelia moved closer to George, looming over him, like she was contemplating tossing him over the railing.

George stared up at her defiantly.

One floor below, Kate secured the last plastic sheet over the last bookcase. She gave Bud Wright the wave signal, and the standoff between George and Cornelia was interrupted by the throaty sound of the power washer's motor roaring to life.

Bud was set up directly across from the group of visitors, just outside Dr. Austin's office. He waved back at Kate, raised the long rubber nozzle, and let rip with a stream of superconcentrated water. He honed in on the very area under discussion and, in the time it took for anyone to realize what was happening, power-blasted off the first president's head.

George was the only member of his group who laughed, although Kate was laughing heartily down below. Dr. Austin waved his arms frantically until Bud managed to kill the motor and reduce the destructive spray to a slow drip.

Bud's voice echoed across the expanse of the great rectangular prism. "Dang."

Dr. Austin stared fitfully at the now-headless depiction of George Washington. He assured his visitors, "We will, of course, be repainting that"

The group dispersed. The agents went off to finish their building check. Dr. Austin and Cornelia hurried back into his office to discuss the ceiling repair. Rosetta Turner, however, surprised George by placing a manicured hand on his arm and holding him still.

Once they were alone, she asked him, "George Melvil, do you like going to this school?"

George squirmed. "I don't know. It's okay, I guess."

Rosetta arched one thin eyebrow. "I hear you have to take an entrance exam to get in. Is that right?"

"We do. Yes."

"I know you do. I received a complete report on it. Guess who got the highest score in the county."

George admitted, "Me."

"That is correct. So I'm thinking you tried pretty hard to get in."

"Yes, ma'am. I suppose I did."

Rosetta leaned closer. She lowered her anchorwoman voice. "Let me play the devil's advocate for a minute, George Melvil. If you tried so hard to get in here, why can't you say something more enthusiastic than 'It's okay' now?"

George looked around, as if for help. He finally blurted out, "It's okay if you want to be here. If this is what you want to do, then it's okay. You'll probably get into whatever college you want."

Rosetta scrutinized his face closely. "But?"

"But some kids want to do other stuff, too. Like my niece." He stopped to explain. "She's older than me. She's in eighth grade."

"That happens."

"We live in the same duplex, so she got roped into the Whittaker Magnet School District. You can see it on the website. It's like a big, black, mutant octopus blob. It reaches out and—" George stopped abruptly; his eyes snapped open in fear.

Rosetta turned and saw the source of his sudden terror. Dr. Austin and Cornelia were back out in the hallway, and they were staring fiercely at George.

Dr. Austin informed Rosetta. "I am sorry, Miss Turner, but young George has an after-school job, which he is currently neglecting. Aren't you, George?"

"Yes, I am," George admitted. "That's exactly what I'm doing." He backed down the hallway and hurried into the County Commission Room.

On Thursday afternoon, Cornelia entered Kate's reading class halfway through their review of
The Louisiana Test of Literacy Skills.
She was holding a poster and a pink slip of paper.

The new Reading 8 stopped reviewing and froze in fear. She stammered, "I've-I've done my best. Every day. Truly I have."

Cornelia ignored her. "Many parents, for many years, have suggested that we adopt a required school uniform here at Whittaker."

She consulted the paper. "Dr. Austin has now agreed with them. Quote: 'Uniforms will remove sartorial distractions from test takers.' End of quote."

Cornelia unrolled the poster. "I have a sketch of the uniforms right here. As you can see, the boys' uniform will be based on Whit's classic blue blazer, tan slacks, white shirt, and purple-and-yellow-striped tie. The girls' uniform will be based on Heidi's white frocks. I am here today to measure the girls who do not have the money to buy their own uniforms."

She rolled the poster back up, placed it on a desk, and took out a notepad. "Now, where is Kate Peters?"

Kate ducked down in her seat, but Reading 8 was quick to point her out. "Come up here quickly," Cornelia commanded.

Kate got up and walked forward, but she didn't do it quickly. Cornelia dragged the teacher's stool to the center of the chalkboard. "Climb up on this and look straight ahead." Kate started to protest, but Cornelia and Reading 8 each took her by an elbow and lifted. Kate scrambled to keep her feet beneath her. She found herself standing three feet in the air, looking out over her classmates, most of whom averted their eyes.