Akeelah and the Bee (10 page)

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Dr. Larabee said, “Bacteria don’t exist on the moon.”

“They don’t?”

“No. The terrain is totally barren. Let me ask you something. “Where do you think ‘big words’ come from?”

“People with big brains?” she said.

He glowered at her for a moment, wondering if she was slyly poking fun at him, which she sometimes did. He then went to a huge tablet on an easel. He lifted up
the cover, revealing a long handwritten list of difficult words.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“A bunch of big words that I don’t know.” She couldn’t help adding, “And I
should
know.”

“Look closer,” he insisted. “What do you
see?”

He covered part of the first word, “soliterraneous,” so that only the first syllable, “sol,” was showing.

“What kind of power do we get from the sun?” he continued.

“Solar power.”

“So what’s ‘sol’?”

“Sun?”

He nodded. He then covered up “soli,” leaving “terraneous.”

“And what does ‘terraneous’ sound like?”

“…Terrain?” she said.

He nodded. “Exactly—meaning ‘the earth.’ Soli…terraneous….It means the sun and earth working together. So where do big words come from?”

Akeelah hesitated. “Little words? Combinations of them?”

Again he nodded. “And how many little words do you know?”

“Tons of them,” she said. “More than I can count.”

“And there are tons more to learn.” He excitedly started pulling dictionaries off his shelf. “Greek ones and Latin ones and French ones. If you learn them all, you can spell
any
word, no matter how seemingly big.”

She looked at the daunting stack of books and shook her head.

“Uh, maybe we should go back to the essay reading.”

“What’s the matter?” Dr. Larabee said. “I thought you wanted to win the National Bee. Isn’t that what you’re doing here, putting up with what I’m sure you consider my bullying and cranky disposition?”

“Well, maybe just gettin’ there this time is good enough.”

He shook his head back and forth with angry emphasis. “Oh, come on, Akeelah, don’t give me that baloney. You want to win so badly it keeps you up at night. You dream about it, obsess about it. Ever since you found out there was a National Bee, you’ve seen yourself holding up that trophy. Am I right?”

“I guess so.”

“You
know
I’m right. But you can’t
win
it if you can’t
say
it.
So say it
. Don’t hold back. Sing it out loud and clear.”

“I wanna win.”

“No, I can’t hear you. I don’t hear the conviction. Say it louder!”

“I wanna win.” When she saw no reaction from Dr. Larabee, she flung up an arm, her hand in a fist, and yelled out,
“I wanna win the National Spelling Bee!”

“Much better,” Dr. Larabee said. “But you’ll win using
my
methods. By first understanding the power of language—and then by deconstructing it. Breaking it down to its roots, its origin. You will consume it and you will own it. And then you know what you’ll be?”

“Tired,” she said with a sigh. “Very, very tired.”

“No.” He smiled. “You, Akeelah Anderson, will be a champion. So are you ready?”

She paused and then nodded.

“Then let’s go,” he said. “Our work has just begun.”

During the next few weeks Akeelah worked harder than she had ever imagined possible. She furiously wrote down words, dictated by Dr. Larabee. He guided her through columns of prefixes and suffixes. He taught her to draw interconnecting lines between foreign roots and their English counterparts. She walked around his office reading aloud from Shakespeare while he listened and then discussed Shakespearean language with her, and then he walked around Akeelah, pumping her with words from flashcards. While she sat in his office memorizing words, Dr. Larabee dictated a list of words into a recorder. At night, in her bedroom, Akeelah wore headphones at her computer and typed the words from Dr. Larabee’s dictation.

One morning she complained to him that she didn’t feel she was getting anywhere. It was hot and they were sitting on the front porch as Dr. Larabee listened to Akeelah read from a book of Greek mythology. They had become quite comfortable with each other over time, and the old tensions and doubts between them had gradually resolved. Akeelah looked up from her reading and said, “There’s this ocean of words and all it’s gonna take is one li’l old word to trip me up. I’m discouraged, Dr.
Larabee. I’m also bone-tired and I’ve got a splitting headache.”

He stared at her. “Do you want to quit?”

She sighed heavily. “Sometimes I think I should.”

“I think you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Make up your mind what you’re going to do, because I’m not going to waste my time.”

“I don’t want to quit, Dr. Larabee. I’m just feelin’ low.”

“That can happen. But when you feel you’ve reached the limit of your endurance, you know what you have to do?”

“What?”

“You have to push a little harder. This is brutal work. You didn’t dream it would be this demanding, did you?”

“No.”

He regarded her for a moment and then said, “I never compliment you, do I?”

She smiled. “If you did, I’d drop dead with shock.”

“Would you like me to compliment you?”

“Honestly?”

He nodded.

“Well, I guess I would. But believe me, I’m not expectin’ it.”

“Maybe one day I will. But don’t hold your breath. We have a long way to go before we can pat ourselves on the back.”

She looked down at her book. “A long way to go,” she said and nodded. “You know what I like the most about you?”

Akeelah (Keke Palmer) and Georgia (Sahara Garey) encounter Steve on their way home from school in South Los Angeles.

Devon (Lee Thompson Young) is home from the service for an Anderson family dinner prepared by his mother (Angela Bassett).

Principal Welch (Curtis Armstrong) and Akeelah’s sister, Kiana (Erica Hubbard), cheer Akeelah on at the District Bee.

Keke Palmer as Akeelah Anderson.

Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Joshua Larabee.

An intense game of Scrabble commences between Akeelah (Keke Palmer) and Dylan (Sean Michael Afable). Real-life spelling bee champion George Hornedo plays Roman (seated, center).