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  “If nothing else, she’s looking at your designs,” Caren said.

  “If Caren knew about it, why didn’t you take her along?” I asked.

  “Because I needed a big, strong mansy-wansy to hold on to,” LaShonda cooed at me.

  “Yo, I feel used,” I said.

  “Zander, take a chill pill!” LaShonda said. “You supported me when I needed support, the way you always do, the way the Cruisers always do. I believe in this project, but I know it didn’t have to go right and I wasn’t all that confident. Thanks for being there for me.”

  “Hey, man, Caren’s got another project going,” Kambui said, grinning.

  I looked over at LaShonda and she was grinning, too.

  “What project?” I asked.

  “Caren’s going to be the new press agent for the Cruisers,” LaShonda answered.

  THE CRUISER

  The Cruiser thanks all of the students who submitted poetry for the Post–Valentine Day poetry slam. We’re sorry no one tried a villanelle, but the poems were fun to read.

  FROM SHANTESE HOPKINS TO YOU KNOW WHO

  There is a young man in History

  He makes me all Facebook and Twittery

  I’d love him sooo much

  (You know — kissing and stuff!)

  If he paid more attention to me

  FROM DEMETRIUS BROWN TO RAMONA MALDONALDO

  A certain Latina from 135th

  Is absolutely my favorite Mith!

  She has beauty and tact

  And I know for a fact

  She’s the chica I’d most like to kith!

  FROM MICHAEL WILLIAMS TO KAREN

  My mouth goes dry, my eyes go squinchy

  When I see you in Da Vinci

  I’m not that handsome,

  Don’t have a king’s ransom.

  FROM CONNIE TO JOHN BRENDEL

  How do you conjugate a verb

  To a guy who’s so superb?

  I was amo-ing, amas-sing, and amat-in’

  When I rapped to him in Latin

  But he clicked his heels and started squirming

  As he rapped to me in German

  I said “whoa” and

  “Let’s just keep this set in Czech”

  Okay, so some days are okay and some days are going to be disasters, and if you pay attention, you can figure them out early in the morning.

  “So there I am with Cheerios, English muffins, eggs, and broccoli, and Mom crying,” I said to Bobbi McCall as we sat in the library. “This was breakfast.”

  “You ask her why she was crying?” Bobbi was working on her computer as we talked.

  “Of course I did,” I answered. “And she just kept boo-hooing away and said that life wasn’t fair.”

  “Zander, what’s the bottom line to this story?” Bobbi looked up.

  “My dad got a part in a movie,” I said. “He left a message on the phone. The dude didn’t even have the decency to talk to her in person.”

  “Okay, so she’s so happy for him that she’s crying tears of joy?”

  “No, she’s so pissed that he got a part in a movie and she’s never had a part in a movie even though she’s a model and an actress,” I said.

  “So how did the Cheerios and English muffins and broccoli come in?”

  “The news of my father getting into a movie got her confused,” I said. “Whenever something good happens to him she gets upset like this.”

  “I gotta get to Math,” Bobbi said. “I’m presenting a problem for the class to solve.”

  “Which is?”

  “If in a straight line, ACB, AC over AB is equal to CB over AC, then we get the divine proportion, right?”

  “We do?” I asked.

  “And since we find this throughout nature and in the Fibonacci series, there must be something spooky about it, right?” Bobbi leaned forward and squinched up at me.

  “Go on.”

  “Then the problem is whether or not there is a philosophical equivalent that explains human life,” she said, shutting down her computer.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Part of your problem is math and you’re looking for an answer in philosophy. That doesn’t fit my universe.”

  “Yeah, ain’t that cool?” Bobbi stuffed her gear into her backpack and headed off.

  Some things you need to leave alone. Bobbi’s math problem was one of them.

  What I had hoped was that she would have told me something cool to say to Mom. I had thought about calling my father, who’s a weatherman in Portland, and telling him that it wasn’t right of him to diss Mom like that.

  “Yo, Dad, it’s not right for you to get the break that Mom wanted, and if you did luck up and get it you should at least call and apologize.”

  I guess the thing was that if you were married you should stay married because if you didn’t stay married then you had to worry all the time about how your ex-husband or ex-wife was doing. At least that was the way it was with my folks. Dad was a weatherman with a new wife out in Seattle, and Mom was a model in New York. She wanted a career in show business and what he wanted most was a tsunami to report. Tsunamis always ran at the top of the news. He also had a different wife (Caroline) and a daughter; and we had a little truce going. They didn’t push the sister bit and I didn’t send any drones their way. Seattle had enough bad weather to satisfy the dude, and at least his new family didn’t bother me. But him getting a role in a movie was foul, and Mom was hurt. I could see that.

  So I’m trying to figure out how to get Mom out of her blue funk and halfway trying to figure out what Bobbi was talking about with her math problem, so I don’t even notice that all of the kids on the third floor are standing against the wall.

  “Mr. Scott! Stand against the wall!” I hear Mr. Siegfried’s voice and I look around and I see everybody with their backs to the wall and their books at their feet.

  “It’s a police raid!” This from Cody Weinstein.

  And sure enough, that’s exactly what it was about. A small army of cops was in the school looking for somebody. And they found him, handcuffed him, and took him out of the school.

  Anthony Williams, aka Phat Tony, was one of the Genius Gangstas. They went around acting tough, wearing their pants low and their sneakers untied (unless Mr. Culpepper was around). But they all got good grades so nobody could really mess with them. When the police took Tony out, all of Da Vinci Academy was buzzing.

  The rumors were flying off the walls. Somebody said that Phat Tony had brought an UZI to school, and two fifth-graders said he was part of a terrorist group. I knew Phat Tony lived downtown on 84th Street and was a make-believe hoodlum so I didn’t go for any of the stories. Anyway, I had my own problems to deal with.

  Sometimes, one problem in your life can give you a clue for how to handle other problems. At breakfast, when Mom was crying over Dad’s getting a movie role, I thought it was pretty stupid. I mean, what was I going to say? Maybe he’ll get hit by a car on the way to the film studio? Mom would really be upset by that, especially if it happened when she was putting her pouty mojo on him, which was what she was doing.

  Mom’s pouty mojo was how she looked when she was really mad at you and hoped something bad would happen to you but she didn’t want to say that something bad should happen to you because she wasn’t that kind of person BUT if something bad did happen to you she wouldn’t mind.

  So I didn’t know what to say to Mom to make things better and I had just put her and Ashley in the same pot because I knew Ashley was having problems with The Cruiser because it had come in third citywide and she thought The Palette was a better paper. So what I did, in my head, was to think it was a girl thing they had going on. Until I got to Math.

  “So the homework is simple,” Mr. Manley said. “There’s a line, ACB. AC over AB is equal to CB over AC. Find out why that’s significant and find as many instances as you can when the ratio of these proportions is found in nature. I want your answer and also what you think of th
e implications.”

  THE CRUISER

  AN ODE TO FIBONACCI

  By Bobbi McCall

  I

  Sometimes

  Need to be

  Away from Gifted

  Secure in my own closed closet

  Where nothing is expected except I take my turn

  At being what has been ordained

  Perhaps girl, or not

  Or Stranger

  Never

  Me

  So let me get this straight,” Bobbi said. “You were just taking random shots and you saw Phat Tony and snapped a picture without saying anything to him?”

  “Because every time he sees a camera he starts mugging and putting on his gangster poses,” Kambui said. “I was just looking for casual shots.”

  “Right, and now you have a casual shot of Phat Tony with those three dudes they arrested for sticking up the jewelry store in the mall,” LaShonda said. “The papers said that they had leads but nothing definite. Isn’t that what we read, Zander?”

  “I think that’s what I got,” Kambui said. “I’m not sure.”

  “Yes, and we don’t know that Phat Tony was even involved,” I said. “And he’s pleading innocent, anyway. He said he wasn’t even at the mall that night.”

  “So what do we do?” Bobbi asked. “We keep the photograph to ourselves and let them get away with a crime?”

  “Or do we turn the photograph over to the police and get them and Phat Tony convicted?” I asked.

  “We don’t know that Phat Tony was the guy with them,” Kambui insisted.

  “What we know, Kambui, is that something bad happened at the mall, and that we might have the key to it,” I said. “Now we have to figure out what our responsibility is and to whom. Do you feel right just doing nothing?”

  “We need to be thinking about Phat Tony,” LaShonda said. “They’re accusing him of armed robbery!”

  “Armed robbery?”

  “Zander, while we were at the mall trying to sell my designs some guys in hoodies were robbing the theater on the third floor,” LaShonda said. “They surprised the manager and another employee, taped them up in their office, and took the money. Somebody tipped the police that it was kids from Da Vinci.”

  “Phat Tony had a gun?” Kambui asked.

  “I don’t know how they got to Phat Tony, but I know they were talking to Mr. Culpepper,” LaShonda said. “Maybe they described the guys and Mr. Culpepper recognized Phat Tony from the description.”

  “You said guys with hoodies,” I reminded her. “That could be anybody. And how can you describe somebody and then just arrest them? You need a warrant and stuff like that. And you can’t just arrest a kid, anyway. You need to have his parents around or something.”

  “Did he confess?” Kambui asked.

  “Miss LoBretto said that Mrs. Maxwell said that Caren Culpepper told her that Mr. Culpepper said that Phat Tony said he wasn’t even in the mall that night and that he was home playing video games.”

  “Then he’s innocent,” I said.

  “That’s not what the police are saying,” LaShonda said. “They say he fits the description: a black guy wearing a hoodie and looking mean.”

  “It never happened,” I said. “I just don’t see Phat Tony being that stupid. He can act pretty stupid at times, but he’s not really that dumb.”

  I could tell that LaShonda was worried. She wasn’t into Phat Tony that much but she worried about people a lot. Just from what I heard it didn’t sound like much to worry about.

  I didn’t think about Phat Tony or much of anything else for the rest of the day. Sometimes I like to give my brain a day off, just to show it how much I appreciate all its hard work. And because I wasn’t going to push it anymore I called Bobbi McCall and asked her to give me the dope on the math problem.

  “Zander, you’re supposed to figure it out,” Bobbi said. “You’re not supposed to call me and ask for the answer.”

  “I thought we were tight?”

  “We are,” Bobbi said. “But I still need you to figure out the problem.”

  “Bobbi, I think you are a little weird.”

  “Oh, thanks, Zander, I hoped you noticed.”

  Mom got home late and she was still in a funk about Dad.

  “I bought him a card,” she said, pointing to it lying on the kitchen table.

  Congratulations, it said. Nothing else. I really felt sorry for Mom.

  THE CRUISER

  WHAT WE ARE NOT — A LIST POEM

  By LaShonda Powell

  We are not threats because we wear hoodies!

  We are teenagers

  We are not looking to rob you because we wear sneakers!

  We are teenagers

  We are not empty-headed because we text

  We are teenagers

  We are not a gang because we walk together

  We are teenagers

  We are not dangerous because we are young

  We are teenagers

  Morning, and I was back to thinking about Ashley. Bobbi and LaShonda didn’t want to get into a fight with her, and I didn’t want to, either. But I liked the idea of The Cruiser being the best paper. Maybe it was a guy thing. Nothing wrong with that.

  Mom looked normal at breakfast. She had cucumber slices under her eyes, which made her look like an alien.

  “Cute cukes,” I said.

  “I’m thinking of painting the kitchen,” she answered.

  “Why are you painting the kitchen when you don’t care what it looks like?” I asked.

  “Maybe I should pay more attention to what it looks like,” she answered. “It’s all I’ll ever be good for.”

  “What happened now?”

  “Nothing, and that’s the point!” She was whining as she talked. “I’m in my thirties and nothing really big has ever happened to me.”

  “You had that moisturizer commercial,” I said. “You said that was a breakthrough.”

  “It was a tiny breakthrough,” she said, pulling her legs up under her in the lotus position. “But I’m still just getting spots on ads, and no one wants me for even a small role with any real meat in it. I can do drama, I can do comedy, and I can sing. So what do they offer me?”

  She hopped down from the stool she was sitting on and got a bottle of dishwashing liquid from the counter. Then she held it across her body at just the right angle so you could see the whole label and started a made-up spiel.

  “Try Free and Clean! Its sudsy bubbles will have you out of the kitchen before you know it! Now, isn’t that exciting?”

  “If they run it a bunch of times and you make a lot of money from it, then it’s exciting,” I said.

  “Zander, you don’t even care if I get a break,” she said, shoulders sagging. “You don’t even care! How good is a dishwashing ad?”

  “How about that actress who got the job selling insurance?” I asked. “She was almost forty when she got that gig.”

  Mom threw the bottle of dishwashing liquid into the sink and then stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door. Crap.

  Half the time Mom was complaining about not making enough money. Then she complained about not getting a big role, or a magazine cover, and anytime that Dad did anything good she really suffered.

  She was kind of right. She was thirty-four and nothing great was happening to her and probably nothing great was going to happen to her. Sometimes she would come home from an audition or a screen test and complain that the new girls were getting younger and younger. But that was the business she was in. She had explained to me before that being beautiful was mostly about having good bones in your face and being young. Everything else they could do with makeup.

  When Mom got down about her job I knew that being calm and cool about it never helped, but I didn’t think anything would help. If she had money we could go out for dinner and she could pretend that nothing bothered her. At times I thought she could have gotten married again but there was no way I was going to bring that u
p.

  After a while she came out of the bathroom and sat back down at the table. The cukes were gone and she had put on her foundation. Living with a model you learn about things like foundation, and bases, and all the different shades.

  “You think I’m getting old and cranky?” she asked.

  “Shall I say yes or no?”

  “Say no.”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “How is your life going?” she asked.

  “Pretty much okay,” I said. “Kambui thinks he’s got a picture that might get one of the kids in the school in trouble with the law but he doesn’t want to give it to the police.”

  “Just let the kid know there’s a picture around and maybe he’ll go to the police himself,” Mom said.

  “The police already have him,” I said. “They picked him up in school but he’s saying that he wasn’t anywhere near the place.”

  “Drop him an anonymous note that you know he was there,” Mom said. “Then maybe he’ll work out something with the police on his own.”

  That was some good thinking. Sneaky, but good.

  So I can’t wait to get to school to tell Kambui about Mom’s plan. But first I have to make sure that he had the goods on Phat Tony.

  “Yo, Kambui, are you sure you saw —?”

  Kambui stopped me by putting a hand up and then swung his netbook out and hit a few keys. In a moment a picture of Phat Tony and three other guys that could have been his Da Vinci crew appeared. They weren’t looking directly at the camera and I knew that Kambui had snapped the picture on the go.

  “So what you think?” Kambui asked.

  “That’s definitely the Genius G man,” I said.

  “You think I should drop a dime on him?”

  “Let me ask you. Do you think that the gun they had was real?”

  “The store manager they robbed thought it was real,” Kambui said. “But they wouldn’t shoot me if I ratted them out, right?”

  “Not more than two or three times,” I said. “But maybe they’ll confess and you won’t have to rat them out.”

  “Or maybe they’ll rob somebody else and shoot them,” Kambui said.