Remembering Raquel (9 page)

Raquel would
never
give up.

Mrs. Scarborough is carrying a huge purse. "Oh," I say to Hayley, "I hope she hasn't brought Miss Hap with her."

"
Who?
"

I find it hard to believe Mrs. Scarborough didn't have Miss Hap in first grade but has her now for high school. "Miss Hap," I repeat in case Hayley simply didn't hear me. "Her puppet?"

Hayley shakes her head.

"She has this puppet that talks to the students about things."

"
Things?
"

"Like about being sensitive toward people who have disabilities or those of different ethnic backgrounds. Like about not bullying or giving in to peer pressure."

Hayley says, "You are kidding, right?"

I hold my hand up to shoulder level and flap my fingers to simulate a mouth moving. Keeping my voice soft, so as not to be disrespectful of Raquel's relatives, I still pitch the tone high and say, "Always treat others the way you'd like to be treated."

Hayley tries, with only moderate success, to cover a snorting laugh,

"Oooh," I continue, "think how you're making Miss Hap feel by acting that way."

Hayley sinks lower into the cushions of her chair and covers her face with her hands.

"And remember," I have my hand lecture, "never, never let boys touch you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable."

Hayley's shoulders are shaking, and she's making shushing motions with her hands, though she's making more noise than I am.

An older couple who had drifted close by gives us looks like we're publicly picking our noses.

"What?" my hand asks.

Hayley grabs my wrist and shoves my hand under a couple pillows. "Die," she orders in a whisper. "Die, die, die."

I let my hand go limp.

She peels back one of the pillows, and I let my hand flutter. She covers it again.

"Miss Hap has had a mishap," I announce.

"Good," Hayley says. She wipes her eyes and puts her glasses back on and looks for Mrs. Scarborough. "She doesn't really?" she asks me.

"'Fraid so."

"I can't believe Raquel never told me."

"I think Raquel avoided the library," I say, "now that I think about it. Mrs. Shesman, the head librarian, is in charge of the newspaper, so I was always going in there because of the articles I was writing. I guess I had more contact with Mrs. Scarborough than most of the students would have. Mrs. Scarborough is only part-time, you know? Mornings, she's at Rockefeller Middle, and we'll give her the benefit of the doubt that Miss Hap is mostly for them."

"She's gone over to Rockefeller?" Hayley asks in horror. "I got out of there just in time."

"So what was she like as a first-grade teacher?"

Hayley tells how she needed glasses, and Mrs. Scarborough was oblivious, and Raquel helped her out. "I just don't understand it," she ends. "I would have thought you and Raquel would have been great friends."

"I don't understand it, either," I say, because I've been thinking the same thing. I don't know why we didn't click except that, as Hayley said, she was shy. And I'm not exactly outgoing, either.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no," Hayley suddenly gasps. "She's opening her bag."

But Mrs. Scarborough isn't bringing out the dreaded Miss Hap. She's bringing out what looks like a cookie tin.

"Snacks?" Hayley asks incredulously.

Mrs. Scarborough demands everyone's attention. She summons us to come closer and, in fascinated horror, Hayley and I comply.

Holding on to my self-destructing skirt so that it doesn't migrate to the South Pole, I whisper to Hayley, "You don't happen to have a safety pin, do you?"

Not only does she have one in that well-stocked purse of hers, but she knows exactly where it is and has it in my hand in under five seconds.

I have just finished securing myself when Mrs. Scarborough announces, "I have a little project here, to help commemorate and memorialize Raquel's life."

Hayley makes an exaggerated disappointed expression and mouths the words,
Not snacks.

As
she apparently was in first grade, Mrs. Scarborough is yet again oblivious to Hayley, and she says, "I have had my middle school students construct these paper butterflies for us tonight." She opens the tin and plucks out a parchment butterfly that is about the size of my hand. "What I'd like each of you to do is to take a butterfly..."—she starts handing them out, and I see that they are in a variety of colors, besides the off-white of regular parchment, also pink and pale blue and green and fuschia and turquoise—"and take a pen..."—she has brought a multitude of those, too—"and I want you to write a message to Raquel."

Hayley quirks an eyebrow, and several others in the crowd are just as confused and start asking questions.

Mrs. Scarborough explains, "You can tell her something you maybe didn't have a chance to say to her, or you can maybe tell her something you liked about her, or something you wish you could say to her, something to celebrate her life."

"Are you going to read these out loud?" Ned Freeman asks.

"No," Mrs. Scarborough answers in a tone Ned probably hasn't heard since
he
was in first grade, "these are messages for Raquel. We'll write to her, then we'll collect the butterflies in this fireproof tin, then we'll step outside, where I've made arrangements with the staff here, and we'll burn the papers, so that the smoke—and our good wishes for Raquel—goes up into the night sky."

Somehow or other I have ended up standing next to Mrs. Bellanca, who mutters, "Talk about your mixed metaphors," and I suddenly find myself liking her a whole lot better than I ever have before.

Despite Mrs. Bellanca's negativism, most of the people seem to think the butterflies are a fine idea.

Hayley snags two of them, and I think that it's because—as Raquel's best friend—she has a lot to say. But after writing a bit, she hands one to me, and I see that what she's written on that one is her phone number and a Web URL, which I take to be the Sword of Mawrth gaming site.

"Just in case you're interested," she says.

And—just in case I
am
—I put the butterfly in my purse.