Operation Yes (14 page)

Two weeks went by. Two weeks of Gari waking up to Reveille and listening to Taps play at night. Two weeks of walking to school, past a gate guard, instead of being driven by her mom. Two weeks of sharing a bathroom with Bo, who left toothpaste blobs on the faucets. Two weeks of being still in elementary at Young Oaks and not in middle school at SeaJA. Two weeks of watching Miss Loupe read out loud from the textbook and avoid the Taped Space. Two weeks of waiting and waiting and waiting for her mom to call, and when she finally did, getting cut off in midsentence by the operator. Two weeks in which Gari planned what to do next.

Finally, one day, when the last bell rang, releasing the Young Oaks students to walk home, Gari headed straight for the bathroom on the kindergarten hall. No one had discovered her work. No one had gone in because of the sign and the terrible smell. No one had seen her art at all.

Last night, she had found a large manila envelope on Uncle Phil's desk. She had written a note headlined BRING THEM HOME NOW, signed her full name to it, and slipped it in. She had carefully addressed the envelope to the local paper:
The
Reform Chronicle
, Reform, North Carolina, Attn: News Department. All she had to do now was take pictures of the damage she had done, get them developed, and mail them off.

When the story showed up on the front page of the paper, she would be in big trouble. The Air Force and the Army couldn't ignore such an action, not when she was the niece of the base commander, could they? They would make her clean up the mess, yes, but after seeing her pictures, they couldn't hide what had happened. Her mom would see that Gari didn't belong in this place, that she would have to come home and make a new plan. She would never lose an eye. Or a foot. They would both return to Seattle. And Gari would go to Seattle Junior Academy, where nobody —
nobody
— had a parent doing anything dumb.

She knelt down on the bathroom floor and took a picture of the line of little green figures she'd glued to the sink. She stood up and framed a shot of the writing on the mirror. She turned her lens to the overflowing pools of red on the floor.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with her plan.

What if Miss Loupe thought she was insulting Marc somehow … what if this wasn't the right moment to …

It is! It is!
she told herself as she snapped more pictures.
You're ready. Everything's ready. Nothing is wrong.

When she was finished, she hid the camera in her backpack and escaped from the stench of the enclosed room. The halls had emptied quickly and were now silent and dark, like a tunnel. She ran to the front door, but near the map on the wall, she stopped.

Her stars!

They were still in her desk. Hundreds of them.

They're paper. Paper. That's all. I can leave them and get them tomorrow.

But each star had been folded while thinking about her mom. They had already stolen them from her once. If she got them, maybe she would get rid of this snaking doubt that was creeping through her brilliant plan. She was already dreading waiting through even more days until her pictures were developed.

She raced toward Room 208.

When she reached it, she stopped dead. The lights were on.

She peered inside the small window on the door.

Bo, Melissa, and Trey were inside the Taped Space. Melissa had her notebook. Trey was sketching something on the back of what looked like the Student Handbook. Bo was pacing up one side of the taped rectangle and down the other, over and over. He looked up and saw her.

Bo opened the door and grabbed her arm. “Get in here! Somebody will see you!”

“What are you talking about? I just want my —”

He dragged her into the room and into the Taped Space. Gari looked at Melissa, Bo, and Trey.

“We need you,” Bo said. “What are we going to do about Miss Loupe?”

“We're not supposed to be in a classroom after the bell,” said Melissa. “Mrs. Heard is going to find us and kick us out.”

“No,” said Bo. “We're staying. We need the Taped Space. Something is broken, because Miss Loupe hasn't stepped in here since Marc was hurt.”

“Yeah,” said Trey. “Not once. She's so … so … blank.”

Melissa hurried to the light switch and turned it off. She peeked through the door window into the hallway, then turned around and said in a loud whisper to Trey, “Wouldn't you be blank if your brother was in a hospital?”

“But she said Marc was getting better. She said he knew he was in the States now and not still in Afghanistan. She said they were going to fix his foot. If he's getting better, then how come she's not?”

“We have to fix gravity,” said Bo.

“What?” said Gari.

“You can't see gravity, but it's important,” insisted Bo. “The same for whatever's in this Taped Space. It's important to Miss Loupe. Tell her, Melissa. Read her what's in your notebook.”

The four of them stood inside the boundaries of the tape. Melissa scanned her notebook for the right page. She read Miss Loupe's words:

“What happens when we place an object in the Taped Space? Do we see it differently than if it were in the teachers' lounge or in a living room?”

“Why, indeed? Why are some systems closed and some are open?”

“I guess I'll have to put on my shark-proof diving suit….”

“Earlier than that!” said Bo.

Melissa flipped back several pages.

“Art needs a —”

Trey jumped in: “Frame. Art needs a frame! We need the Taped Space because it's a
frame.
”

Gari threw her backpack off her shoulders and banged it into the Taped Space. “Woo-hoo! I put my backpack in the frame and now it's art. NO. Art takes work. It takes planning. It takes —” She broke off. “Forget it.”

“Let me see your army man,” said Bo. He grabbed on to her backpack.

“Hey!” Gari tried to drag her backpack away from him. What if he found her envelope? Or her camera?

“You said it wasn't a toy; it was art!”

Gari said nothing but held on to the strap of her bag tightly.

“I gave it back to you once, didn't I?” said Bo.

“Yes, but —” Maybe if she let him see it, he would leave her backpack alone. She cautiously took the little green figure out of
her pocket. Bo put the army man into the Taped Space and stared at it.

“We have one object,” he said. “Now we need something else.”

“You're making this all up as you go along!” said Gari.

“What's wrong with making things up?”

“Everything,” said Gari. “If you want to help Miss Loupe and her brother, you have to have a plan.”

Melissa was folding a corner of her notebook cover back and forth and watching the door. “I think we should get some teachers or Miss Candy to help us.”

Bo jumped up and began to pace inside the Taped Space.

“New Recruit, what about you?” he said to the army man. “Quit staring at your toes and pay attention! Do you know where you are? Or have you never even looked?”

Trey laughed. Melissa opened her mouth, then closed it and quickly wrote something down in her notebook. She held her pencil at the ready.

Gari stared at Bo. Had he lost his mind?

Bo warmed up to his role. “Come on, New Recruit! Move your feet! Move it! Move it! Move it!” he barked.

Melissa's pencil flew over the page. “Oh, that's perfect!”

“Perfect for what?” said Trey. He tried to twist her notebook away so he could see what she was writing.

Melissa pulled the notebook back and aimed her pencil at him, point-first. “A play! I'm already writing one, and Miss Loupe can direct it, and Bo could be in it, and —”

“What good would that do?” Gari broke in. “Besides, I think Miss Loupe's going to get fired.”

“What?” Melissa almost dropped her pencil. “She can't get fired. How do you know?”

“Well, maybe she'll quit before they can fire her,” said Gari. “Because right now, she can't even handle a fire drill. I don't think they'll let her keep being a teacher.”

They all turned on her. She put her fists on her hips. “Well, it's true!”

Why couldn't they see that everything was falling apart?

“There they all were,” said Trey. He walked over to the chalkboard and drew a picture of the school, with an amoebalike presence around it. “Deep in the Quagmire of Ignorance. They were up to their necks. They had quicksand tickling their throats….” He began to add little green figures around the perimeter of the school, reaching in to save the sinking students.

Melissa looked at the arms reaching in to rescue the disappearing bodies. She flipped to another page in her notebook. “‘Be kind.' That's what she said to do: Be kind.”

I'm walking out. I still have my pictures. I still have my plan. This is —

Gari stopped when she saw what Trey was now drawing: a battlefield, except this one was set in the interior of the school. It was a map of the hallways, the cafeteria, the principal's office, the library, and the classrooms. He filled them all with soldiers, holding their positions, ready to fight.

It was like her Plan B, except bigger and better.

Bo was showing Trey's drawing to the little green figure.

“You see, soldier,” he barked in his drill sergeant's voice, “art is arranging objects — even you! — to create BEAUTY.”

Gari felt like stars were exploding inside her.

That's what was wrong with her plan. Yeah, it might bring her mom home. It might get her out of here. But what picture would it leave in her mom's head of
her
?

Her plan didn't create anything beautiful. And her mom would know it. All the time.

There was a noise in the hall. Footsteps. Melissa gasped.

Gari grabbed her backpack and the little green man and ran to the window. She lifted the frame and crawled out. Bo was right behind her. Melissa. Trey. One by one, they flipped themselves over the sill and thumped onto the grass. Trey reached up and slid the windowpane back down. They crouched in the patchy grass underneath and pressed their backs against the rough brick wall.

Any minute now, someone was going to see them. Any. Minute. Now.

They saw a light come on in the classroom. They heard the muffled sound of the trash can being emptied. The bang of a mop against a pail.

Gari gripped the lone battered army figure in her fist.

Pick your battles, baby. Pick your battles, or you'll lose them all.

“Come on,” said Gari.

In single file, they hugged the side of the building and followed her around to the other side of the school.

“Where are we going? We should just go home!” said Melissa.

“I'm not sure which one it is,” said Gari. She surveyed the windows. She thought she was in the right place, but she might be lost. One window was smaller than the rest, dark and cramped.

She peered inside. Yes.

Her mom helped save wounded soldiers. She knew how to help save Miss Loupe.

“Look.”

Bo stuck his face near the glass.

“I can't see anything. It's too dark.”

“Wait.”

I'm sorry, Mom. If I do this, you'll have to stay over there a while. And I'll have to stay here.

Bo's eyes adjusted. It was a bathroom. In the dank and shadowed space, he saw piles of little green figures lying all over the sinks and the floors.

“Wow! Did you do that?”

Melissa looked. Then Trey.

Gari took a deep breath.

“We have to change what Miss Loupe is
seeing
,” she said. “We have to make it beautiful.”

“How do you know what Miss Loupe is seeing?” said Melissa. “How can you be sure?”

Gari said slowly, “Because that …” She gestured at the window. “That's what's in my head too.”

The flight suit in the glass case flashed into Bo's mind. He knew exactly what Gari meant.

“I think we should post soldiers like those all over the school,” said Gari. “But not lying down. Upright. Thousands of them.”

“Why?” said Trey.

“Because,” said Bo. He looked directly at Gari. “Everyone you know is fighting a great battle.”

Gari nodded.

Bo continued, “And we're in this one with Miss Loupe.”

Maybe it was the Taped Space still holding them together. Maybe it was like a camera lens had framed the four of them, and someone snapped a picture they could all be part of. Or maybe it was that they each thought, for a split second, where they would be standing in the school if someone came to them and said what Mrs. Heard had said to Miss Loupe. They didn't see how the whole thing would play out, not yet, but …

“Yes,” said Trey.

“Yes,” said Melissa.

“Yes,” said Bo.

“The first thing to do,” said Gari, “is get those men out of that bathroom. I don't want
that
to be what anyone sees first.”

“We'll go in and get them,” said Bo.

“I Super Glued them to the floor,” said Gari.

“No problem,” said Bo.

Gari's bruise above her eye started to ache. “YES, it's a problem! I can't —”

“I mean, no problem getting off Super Glue. I accidentally glued some pennies to the inside of the dryer once.”

“Accidentally?” said Melissa.

Bo shrugged. “Mom used nail polish remover and they came right off.”

“Mrs. Purdy has nail polish,” said Melissa. “I bet she has remover too.”

“I'll go,” said Trey. He punched Bo's arm and grinned. “You can't afford to get caught, weenie. Your dad would KILL you.”

Bo punched back. “Yours wouldn't?”

But he thought,
Dad? This is the right thing, isn't it?

 

They met again the next day. And the next. Each day that week, they left the school by the front door, and each day, they came back in by the window. They sat in the Taped Space with the army figures they had rescued and made their plans.

Gari proposed that they break down, step by step, how they would accomplish their goal. “It's going to take longer than you think to fill a whole school,” she warned.

“Yes, and we should get other people to help too,” said Melissa. “We should start with Miss Candy. Everybody goes into the library.”

“Yes, and we need a BIG reason for them to help us,” said Bo. “Not just for art. For a good cause. My mom does scholarships and stuff. She gets people to say
yes
all the time.”

Trey said, “Yes, and we should draw or take pictures of everything. Pictures make people pay attention. And … uh … Mrs. Heard likes them.”

Bo took all the little green figures out of Gari's bag and arranged and rearranged them while he listened. Finally, he jumped up and started pacing, addressing the room:

“Got it, New Recruits? We started at the beginning, and we're fighting our way to the end. In case you forget, I'm right here to kick your butt!”

“Knock it off, Bo,” said Gari. “First things first.”

Bo picked up one of the little green figures and tucked it into position on Miss Loupe's desk.

“This one
is
first,” he said. “Go ahead. Take the picture.”

Gari zeroed in on the soldier and snapped the first picture on her new roll of film. The four of them left Room 208 and quietly closed the window.

The next day, Miss Loupe found a single green figure next to Marc's framed quote. And a note:

 

I don't know, but I'm told it's true,
You're not lost till they stop looking for you.

 

It was the start of Operation Yes.