The Rule of Threes - Marcy Campbell (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📗

differently. I knew how hard it was to carry something like this around.

My phone dinged, and I had this crazy hope that it would be Rachel, but it was Olive.

Hey, you okay?

“Who is it?” Tony asked.

“Olive,” I said. “I’ll . . . text her back later.” I remembered her face as I’d waded through the crepe paper. Remembered how I’d let her down.

Tony stopped walking and took his backpack off, set it on the sidewalk.

“What are you doing?” I put my phone back into my pocket.

“This thing is so freakin’ heavy. Why do they give us so much homework?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you want to switch bags? Mine’s pretty light.” Sixth graders didn’t get nearly as much homework as the seventh graders. The teachers probably didn’t want to scare us right out of middle school.

“And why don’t they give us enough time at the end of the day to put stuff in our lockers?” Tony continued. “Half the time I have to bring every freakin’ book home with me because I don’t have time to put things in my locker and still catch the bus.”

Tony plopped down on the sidewalk like the wind had been knocked out of him.

I just stood there for a minute, not sure what to do. His moods were changing faster than I could keep up with lately.

“Is this really about your homework?” I asked. “Or is something else bugging you?”

He hugged his knees to his chest and looked up at me. “My mom hasn’t been calling,” he said. “She’s supposed to call, and she doesn’t, and I just . . . I feel like something’s wrong, and like, I don’t know what to do about it.”

He gave his backpack a shove. My mom had bought him a new one. It was plain blue, but at least it was in good shape, unlike his ratty old red thing, though it wouldn’t stay in good shape if he kept shoving it around. She got him some new clothes, too, so he wasn’t being called down to the office for dress code violations anymore. Ha! Turns out I was the one getting called to the office these days.

“I guess I’m just pretty distracted,” he said. “You know, I really don’t care too much about measuring temperatures in Kelvins. I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

“Who’s Calvin?”

Tony laughed a little. “Never mind, you’ll find out next year.” He stood back up. “Hey, I’m really sorry about the contest,” he said. “These kids don’t know anything.” He held up his finger. “Oh yeah—hold on a minute.”

He turned and bent back over his bag, opening a small pocket and pulling out a little plastic container full of tiny colored shells, which he held out to me. There were pinks and blues and yellows and greens, each one no bigger than a thumbnail, and all different. There was even one that looked like a tiny unicorn.

“Dad took me to the aquarium gift shop,” Tony said. “There’s a lot in here.” He gently shook the box. “So, if one gets broken, accidentally, by some totally awesome guy, it won’t matter so much, and you’ll forgive him right away.”

“Oh, Tony.” I felt the crush of guilt and appreciation all at once. “I . . . I meant to tell you, it wasn’t you, I’m almost sure of it. I found some things from my room in Grandma’s room, so she must have been in there when we were at school.” I watched as Tony’s face went from confused to totally relieved. “I’m sorry I blamed you.”

He smiled. “Oh, good, I mean, not that your grandma broke it, but I’m glad it wasn’t me.”

He handed me the box. “Thank you,” I said. “I mean it, Tony. This is really nice of you.”

I gave him an awkward little hug, then put the box into my backpack, careful to nestle it between a pair of gloves so I wouldn’t have any more smashed shells. “I can look through all these tomorrow,” I said, “while I’m at home serving my suspension.”

“No way! He suspended you? Just for tearing down some junky decorations that were half falling down anyway?”

“You heard?” I said. “Word travels fast around here.”

“Yeah, yeah, Rakell told me,” he said. He zipped up his pack and put it on. “Katelyn was being really crazy about it, but Rakell stood up for you. She told Katelyn it would have fallen down by tomorrow anyway, and she won the contest, so why was she even complaining?”

“Rakell said that?” It was the first time I’d said her new name out loud in a normal, not sarcastic, way. It didn’t sound so weird. Hearing Tony and Olive say it so much, well, I’d kind of been getting used to it. Plus, I’d been thinking about what she’d said, about calling people what they want to be called. It didn’t really matter if it made me uncomfortable or not. It was her name.

“Yeah, I told you she was cool.”

I punched his shoulder. “Um, yeah, I know that. You just got here, remember?”

He laughed. “True, true,” he said. We started walking, and he got quiet again.

“Is there anything we can do, about your mom?” I asked.

I wanted to help him. I’d had my head so deep into the contest, I hadn’t realized how lucky I was. My parents were still together. They were healthy. They were there for me, even though they totally messed up sometimes. But other people, like Tony, like Rakell, weren’t so lucky.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do.”

He didn’t say anything until we got to the corner nearest our house, and then he got this mischievous look on his face and yelled, “Race you home!” and took off running, and it felt so normal, running after him, like Tony had been here forever, and this was just an old game of ours.

Try Your Best

I didn’t know why we were in a hurry to get home. I went slowly up the walk, knowing that Mom would have talked to Mr. Villanueva.