Rocky Road (12 page)

“Got an order for ya, Cal!” Chief called to him.

“Leave it next door with Jessie. I’m running late,” he said. I recognized the Oakley sunglasses on top of his head. As in hip-hop-happening and pricey.

“Will do. Everything okay?” Chief asked.

“Never been better. I’m meeting the 1956 Miss New York for coffee at Starbucks. Match.com says we could be soul mates!”

Making deliveries wasn’t the end of Operation Homebound. That’s what Chief called it too, like it was a military mission. After we stowed the cart in the basement, we returned to the building lobby to stuff “chits” (order forms) in the mailboxes for next week’s run. Had I been the boss, I would’ve tucked the flyers in the delivery bags, but Chief didn’t take too kindly to having his authority questioned. Last but not least, he posted the supermarket sale sheet and the Seniors’ Special flyer from the Chinese takeout on the bulletin board: “General Tsao’s chicken, rice, egg roll, miso soup, and a fortune cookie: $8.99 plus tax.”

I thought the staff here must love having a stubborn take-charge guy like Chief around. Sure saves them some work.

Afterward, Chief insisted on walking me back to Building One since it was dark out, even though I said it wasn’t necessary. My stomach was growling like a grizzly bear. And I still had to get Jordan from Winnie’s apartment.

When we got to the lobby, he reached into a bag, pulled out a bakery box, and handed it to me. “Payment for services rendered,” he said.

An angel food cake.

“Thanks but you keep it,” I said, knowing it was his.

“I insist. Nobody accuses Chief Morrow of not paying his crew.”

There was no sense arguing with the commander in chief of Operation Homebound. I thanked him and took the cake.

As I turned toward Winnie’s apartment, Chief called my name. “We get under way every Wednesday at 1630 sharp.”

I could see myself enjoying doing this every week. Winnie was right about all the colorful characters in this place. One guy had shown me his collection of Civil War relics, including a letter written by General Ulysses S. Grant before the siege of Vicksburg. A lady with a British accent told me she spoke seven different languages, including Dutch, which she picked up when she aided the underground resistance in Holland during World War II. I had to admit there was far more to these White Hairs than met the eye. And I liked how excited they got when I handed them their favorite snacks.

Still, something stood in the way of my accepting this job, no different than it was with peer mediation: Jordan. I had to take care of him.

“I can’t make it,” I said.

Chief’s weathered face looked confused. “If it helps, I can talk to your mother, explain about Operation Homebound.”

I didn’t want to get into it with him about Ma and her new business and my watching Jordan. “Sorry, I just can’t,” I said, and I walked away.

Jordan was feeding the fish when I got to Winnie’s apartment. It smelled spicy and meaty-delicious inside, and I was dying to peek in the oven.

“Sure hope you did something pleasant for yourself with your free time, Tess,” Winnie said as we both watched Jordan sprinkle fish food in the water.

I told her I did some embroidery, which always makes me happy. I sure wasn’t going to tell her the cushion I was working on was for her.

“Nice to know someone with design flair. If you ask me, folks around here get stuck in their old ways, including fashion and home decorating,” Winnie said. “Well, Jordan and I had ourselves one blow-the-roof-down jam session. If you and your ma don’t mind, I think he and I should spend every Wednesday together. It’s good for me to have an audience while I’m rehearsing for my band gigs. And he does a nice job feeding my fish. They smile back at him.”

My eyes got big.
Every Wednesday?
That would mean I could go to peer mediation! And if I took the late bus, I’d still be back in time to help Chief with Operation Homebound afterward. Of course Ma would approve. Winnie was a nurse, an entertainer, and a soulful fairy godmother wrapped in one. I looked over at Jordan. He was staring into the fish tank again, with his cheeks puffed and his arms moving like flippers. He loved it here.

“Winnie, that’s the best plan I’ve heard in a while. Thanks!”

As we headed out the door, Winnie gave me a grocery bag to take with me. “Hold it from the bottom and don’t peek until you get in,” she said.

As soon as we got back to our apartment, I put down the cake from Chief and pulled the foil-covered tray out of the bag from Winnie.

A note was taped on top:

“W
atch out, world. The great state of Texas just brought us their best mediator!” Gabby shouted as I walked into the peer-mediation conference room the next Wednesday.

All the kids standing near Gabby flashed welcoming smiles my way, and I felt my neck get blotchy like a giraffe’s. Living with Ma for twelve years, I’ve got tons of experience facing problems—but judging from my parents’ past shouting matches and our ongoing money troubles, I can’t say I own
bragging rights to solving any of them. I wondered, too, if kids had heard about that pear I’d tossed at Pete. Thinking about that made me feel out of place here in peer mediation, like a drunk sitting front and center at Alcoholics Anonymous guzzling a beer.

“Hey, Tess!” Ritchie called.

A large oval table filled most of the room, and there was a desk in the back. Ritchie and Gabby and six others were standing near the desk, hovering over a tray of chocolate chip cookies. Right away Gabby introduced me to everybody. They were discussing what kind of team shirt would best represent peer mediation.

“I say one with a collar so we look slick,” Ritchie said.

“I vote for a casual T-shirt in a cheery color, to put everyone at ease,” Gabby said.

“I don’t care as long as it’s baggy,” Kim said. “I love baggy shirts!”

Watching them, I was struck by how different they all looked. Kim was tiny and freckled. Gavin was Asian and “into skateboarding,” as he explained. Devin, a skinny black kid who rode the same bus as me, always carried a violin case. Malika, who sat in front of me in social studies, always wore a scarf over her head. Yesterday the social studies teacher asked the class what infamous general contributed to the colonists’ victories at the battles of Ticonderoga and Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, and hers was the first hand up. (“Benedict Arnold, the traitor!” she answered quickly like she was on a game show.)

A teacher walked into the room and greeted me. “Hello,
Tess. I’m Mr. Winecki, but this group has given me the notable nickname Mr. Win.”

Ritchie shoved a cookie in his mouth, chewed, and then began speaking. “Yup, our motto is, ‘Win-win solutions please Mr. Win.’”

I half expected a peer-mediation advisor to look stern like a judge, but Mr. Win didn’t come across that way. He reminded me of that sweet, innocent guy in the movie
Forrest Gump
, fully expecting life to be like a box of chocolates. He wore suspenders, and he kept a pencil tucked behind his ear.

“Gabby has probably told you that we like to think of ourselves as advocates for peace in progress,” he said, reaching for a cookie from the tray.

“Peace sounds good to me,” I said, smiling.

“Spoken like a true mediator. I like that southwestern accent of yours. Disputants will pay attention when you speak.”

Don’t count on it
, I thought.

Mr. Win gave me a thick folder labeled “Peer Mediation Training” to take home and read. “For today, observe what goes on in the session and how the mediators respond. Mediators don’t judge who’s right and who’s wrong. Two mediators guide the process along to a win-win outcome; the rest of us will be nonparticipating observers, sworn to confidentiality. The ultimate objective of the peer mediator is to empower the disputants to resolve their conflict themselves—”

“Nothing personal, Mr. Win,” Gabby interrupted. “But you’re making us sound like a bunch of boring guidance counselors.”
Pointing to Ritchie and the others, she added, “Mind if we give Tess the skinny on what this is really about?”

“By all means,” he said with an amused grin as he tightened his suspenders. “We have about ten minutes.”

Mr. Win closed the door, and we gathered around the table. Gabby sipped from a water bottle, then began speaking in a no-nonsense tone. “Ottawa Creek Middle School might look like a picture postcard for tranquil, cooperative learning, but don’t be duped, Tess. This place is a war zone. Enemy combatants launch strikes in the lunchroom, in the hallways, and even in the restrooms, inflicting pain and causing destruction. Our job as peer mediators is to: one, help heal the emotional wounds; and two, get to the root of each conflict to resolve it and prevent further explosions.”

With that, Ritchie and the others described the problems that bring kids to peer mediation: rumors beings spread; taunting and teasing about everything from who couldn’t do a single pull-up in gym class to whose iPod has better tunes; nasty boyfriend-girlfriend breakups; and the occasional shove in the hallway or on the school bus. It sounded like the same type of troubles back in my old school. The difference here was that kids involved had some say-so in how things got resolved. As long as the conflict wasn’t violent and didn’t involve drugs or weapons, teachers could recommend that students attend peer mediation rather than have their fate decided by adults. (Or students could request peer mediation on their own.) And if they didn’t want to, that was fine too.

“Peer-mediation training helps you understand how all
conflict goes back to the same tainted well,” Kim said, giving me a handout titled “Basic Human Needs.” “We all want similar things out of life, such as to be treated with respect, to do something well, to belong to a group, et cetera. When someone else gets in the way of those needs being fulfilled, fireworks erupt.”

I nodded. Made sense to me, but what I didn’t get was how I could possibly help
fix
problems. In my family, trouble had a way of tangling up so badly that even when I wanted to help, I couldn’t. I got caught too, like a bug trapped in a spider’s web.

“Peer mediation sorta follows a script,” Devin explained in a husky voice. “One at a time each disputant explains what he or she thinks is going on. Then one of us mediators repeats what was said, using facts and restating the feelings.”

“Disputants have to be willing to agree to ground rules—no put-downs or interruptions, and they must be open and honest,” Kim added.

After storytelling, Malika said, came brainstorming solutions. “Mediators restate the problem and then encourage the disputants to come up with a solution together. It works better if
they
figure it out. But be prepared. This part gets messy.”