School & Learning
I Just Come Here
Every Friday at assembly, Mr. Deakin read out what the clubs had done. Club kids stood up. Everyone clapped. They sat down. Up, clap, down. Up, clap, down. Hattie liked Fridays. She liked the gym’s yellow wooden floor, which smelled of polish. She’d been sitting on it since kindergarten.
Sonny stood up twice: reading challenge, then gardening club. Up, down, UP again. Bridie, right next to Hattie, stood up for choir. Hattie clapped for both of them, extra hard. Then the next club. And the next. Hattie stayed sitting. Hattie always stayed sitting.
Gardening club had grown forty-one radishes. FORTY-ONE! Everybody clapped for the radishes too. At recess Sonny would tell her all about them. Bridie would tell her all about choir. Hattie looked at her hands, still stuck together from clapping. And what would she tell them about?
Well. There was one thing. By the piano, four floor blocks went the wrong way. Across, when every other block in the gym went along. Hattie had spotted them in kindergarten. She wanted to know: how many blocks from that patch to the third window? Nobody else in the entire school wanted to know that. Only her.
Then Mr. Deakin held up a big sheet: SUMMER FAIR — JOBS. “Helpers wanted. Signs, tables, raffle, sweeping. Put your name under a job. It comes down at the end of lunch.” Rrrip went the tape, and up it went on the gym door. Next to it, a pen swung on a string.
Bridie undid her shoelace and did it up again. Mr. Deakin had a LOT of announcements left. Hattie looked at the wrong-way blocks by the piano. Then at the sheet, pen swinging. Then at Bridie, who knew everything about choir. Lunch in eleven minutes. Tick, tick.
Wrong-way blocks: by the piano. Jobs sheet: on the door behind her. Bridie: right next to her. Mr. Deakin turned another page of announcements.
What does Hattie do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Keep quiet and count the floor blocks
Hattie didn’t ask Bridie anything. She started counting from the piano leg toward the windows. One, two, three, four… and then somebody’s back was in the way. Argh! She put her sneaker next to a block to measure it. She’d have to come back when the gym was empty.
Twelve-thirty. Hattie slipped back into the gym. A lunch lady was stacking chairs at the far end. Clack, clack. “Watch the wet spot!” Hattie went around it. Then she followed the blocks from the piano to the third window, counting with her feet. Then other rows too, checking where the seams met.
Eleven. Eleven blocks! Hattie crouched under the third window, finger on the last seam. Now she knew. And right away, a new question: how many blocks along the front of the stage? Nine minutes of lunch left. She went to find out.
At one-thirty, the jobs sheet was gone. Just one corner of tape left on the door. She picked at it with her thumbnail. Eleven blocks. She knew a thing nobody else knew. Hands in pockets, she walked back to class, counting her steps.
Ask Bridie what choir is like
Hattie leaned over. “Where does choir sing at the fair? Do you wear the shirts?” “On the grass, by the raffle table,” Bridie whispered. “And yes. Mine’s HUGE.” She tugged her collar. “It smells like the closet. And we sing the same song over and over and over.”
“Mom signed me up in first grade,” said Bridie. “What do you do?” Hattie looked down. “No clubs. I just come here.” She’d never said that to Bridie before. Not once. “Yeah,” said Bridie, and started on her other shoelace. Mr. Deakin was still reading announcements.
Hattie looked along the row at Sonny. What did gardening club actually DO? Dig? Pull weeds? Water stuff with the big green cans? No idea. She had known Sonny since kindergarten. Somehow it had just never come up.
Twelve-thirty. Off went Bridie to choir, shirt over her arm. “See you after!” Hattie went to lunch on her own. She sat down next to Sonny, unwrapped her sandwich and said, “Sonny. What do you actually DO with forty-one radishes?”
Sign up to make fair signs
On the way out, Hattie stopped at the sheet. Nine names already. She grabbed the pen on its string and wrote her name under Signs. The pen ran out halfway through the H! So she went over it again. Hard. There. Now somebody would be expecting her.
Monday lunch and Tuesday lunch, Hattie stuck laminated arrows to table legs with two third-grade boys. She’d wanted to go outside. Instead she held arrows while they pulled the tape. Rrrip. It split down the middle. Again. “Another piece?” She tore off some more.
Fair day. A fifth-grade boy read from the folded jobs sheet: “Hattie: signs. By the fence.” Off she went, tape around her wrist. For two whole hours she checked the arrows and fixed the floppy ones. Children she didn’t know asked her which way to go. And she knew!
Next assembly, Sonny stood up for gardening. Bridie stood up for choir. Hattie stayed sitting, same as always. But afterwards one of the third-grade sign boys caught her in the hallway. “You doing signs at the Christmas fair too?” Hattie opened her mouth. Christmas? She hadn’t even thought about Christmas yet.