HalfpipeEmms: Okay. But what do I do RIGHT NOW?

AK_SalmonGranny: For me, it’s doing whatever the heck I feel like, whenever the heck I feel like doing it. But I’m an old, crotchety lady who can do what I please. I don’t know what your answer is—but you’re probably going to have to speak up for yourself. And make things right with your friend somehow.

I stare at the screen for a long time.

Seriously.

For all my fussing about wanting people to back off and let me do my thing … right now I’d give anything for someone to hand me an answer or two.

29

How Not to Help

The next day, I stay back when the bell rings and everyone rushes out of Mr. Milling’s class. Dawn, who has to get her mom to another doctor’s appointment, doesn’t argue when Mr. Milling tells her she can go ahead. She grabs her jacket, tells us bye, and disappears. I wait at my desk until the rest of the class files out and try to pretend it’s my imagination that Devontae took the long way around the classroom to avoid having to walk past me on his way to the door.

When the room is empty, Mr. Milling comes and perches on the desk next to mine.

“What can I do for you, Emmie?”

“I … wanted you to know it’s not Devontae’s fault we’re behind on our project,” I tell him. “He’s been trying to get us going. We even got together a few times to work on it.” I probably deserve a bad grade, honestly, but I don’t want Devontae getting sidelined from rodeo because I haven’t been able to keep focused on everything.

“And?”

“It’s just … lots of things haven’t gone so good here lately.”

Mr. Milling nods, blowing out a breath and looking thoughtful. I wonder what all he’s heard in the teacher breakroom. Now that I know for sure that some teachers have no problem gossiping about who might or might not like who, who knows what else he could know?

“You thinking about Sunday?” he finally says.

“Yeah.”

Mr. Milling’s quiet for a few seconds. “Anything I can do?”

I think about it. “I don’t think so. But thanks.” Then I suddenly have to ask. “You ever heard of the 504 Sit-In?”

His forehead scrunches up, and I’m half disappointed he doesn’t know, but half pleased to have stumped a teacher as smart as him. I tell him what I read about yesterday, and he starts nodding like he’s just remembered something. “Right, right,” he says. “I did learn about that back in college. Did you know, the Black Panthers provided food for those protesters during the sit-in? Lot of brave, determined people working on that. They did it, too—got those laws changed.”

“That was only, like, fifty years ago!” The words burst out of me, and it feels good to say it—how wrong that is—to someone else.

“Lot of things weren’t all that long ago,” he says, and now his face is stony. “Plenty still going on today.” After a moment, he adds, “You know, Emmie, injustice can look like a lot of different things we don’t always know how to recognize.”