Tianna the Terrible (Anika Scott Series) (10 page)

"Do you have any chow?" Amy asked.

"Whoever wants chow has to help me unpack," I said, grinning.

Chow is any food from home, and I had a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies.

"Hey! cool," Lisa said. She was holding up the big T-shirt I'd bought with Tianna.

It turned out that there weren't any drawers left for me. Sabrina Oats and Esther Miller had snitched the ones I was supposed to have.

"Come on, you guys. Get your junk out," I said.

"First come, first served," sneered Sabrina. She always was trouble for me.

"Don't be such jerks," Lisa said.

"Look who's talking," Esther said. "Little Miss Cool from California. You've got an extra drawer. Give her yours."

"Mrs. Jackson gave me that drawer," Lisa said. "Anika is supposed to have these drawers, and you know it."

I got mad and my cheeks got hot. It was like all my nervousness about being back at school and about Tianna rolled up and aimed itself at this hassle. Suddenly arguing seemed really stupid. I stamped over, jerked the first drawer out, and turned it over with a crash. My hands were shaking. I was just yanking the other drawer out when I realized the room had gone dead silent.

"Anika," a voice said from the door, "that wasn't necessary." It was Mrs. Jackson.

"But they wouldn't move their stuff," I blurted.

"I've had to speak to you about your temper before," she said, shaking her finger at me. "Apologize!"

"Sorry," I muttered.

"Now, who had things in the drawers I assigned to Anika?" she asked.

Nobody said a word.

She reached down, picked up a notebook, and read the name on the cover.

"Sabrina Oats, get your things back into your own space," she said. Then she turned to look at me. "Anika, I came in to welcome you back only to find you in a temper tantrum. You certainly don't make things easy on yourself."

"Look what time it is!" Muthoni said all of a sudden.

We'd all missed the first supper bell.

"Run, girls, or you'll miss your supper," Mrs. Jackson said, making shooing motions with her hands. She's really not bad, just kind of bossy. I bolted out of there, still shaking from getting so mad.

We tore up the hill behind the dorm, through the black wattle trees, and across the gravel to the dining room. I tried to get away from the others. I was fighting not to cry.

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I hissed through my teeth as I ran. It seems like I should have learned that getting mad always makes things worse.

"Wow, you don't take long to make people mad at you," Lisa said as she skidded into the food line after me.

"Sabrina Oats always hated me anyway," I said, my voice low and sullen. "And Esther Miller always does anything Sabrina does." I looked down and twisted away from Lisa. I felt bad enough about dumping the stuff out. How come Lisa had to make it worse by talking to me about it? Why couldn't people just leave me alone?

"Hey, don't worry," she said. "I'm glad you're here."

I gave her a quick look and said, "Thanks." Then I realized she might be having her own problems, so I asked, "Is VCA as bad as you thought?"

She didn't answer because we had to go through the line. One of the servers slapped a huge glob of shepherd's pie on her plate.

"Not really," she said, then glanced at her plate. Well, except for the food," she added, and we both laughed. "I still miss my friends from home, though." She wasn't laughing anymore.

The dining room seemed huge and noisy, like it ways does the first day back at school. Lisa and I sat down, and Muthoni and Amy sat with us. I sighed with relief. At least they weren't mad at me.

Chapter Eight

After supper, I ran ahead and stopped where I could see down into the Rift Valley. Wind blew through my hair, lifting it right to the roots. I shook my head and laughed. VCA is high up—seven thousand feet above sea level—on the side of the longest valley in the world. Craggy volcanoes, Longonot and Suswa, rose out of the wide valley floor four thousand feet below where I stood. Everything was dusty gold from the evening sun. Nowhere in the world was more beautiful then here. I spread my arms and started leaping from rock to rock, daring myself to go faster and faster. I was a wild horse, I was a unicorn, I was free as the wind.

"Anika, wait up," Lisa called from the top of the hill. I stood still, completely still like a wild animal, and stared down into the valley.
How can anyone not believe in God when he makes things like this?
I wondered.

Lisa came running up, with Muthoni and Amy after her.

"You're weird, Anika," Lisa said, laughing.

I wanted to take off again. Being with people made me feel cramped and stuffy. But these were my friends, so I just stayed where I was.

"We'd better go back before Sabrina Oats messes up your stuff," Amy said. "Besides, you said we could have chow."

I nodded and took off running again. We all tore into the dorm panting and laughing. While we were unpacking my junk, I told them about Tianna. Afterward we all sat on the top bunk, eating chocolate chip cookies.

"You mean your cousin might be coming here?" Lisa demanded, reaching for a cookie.

"Yeah, Mom and Daddy might bring her after she's been in Kenya for a bit," I said. The idea of Tianna at VCA didn't seem real at all.

Muthoni had been biting her fingernails and looking worried. Now she said, "But she's not even a Christian. Why does she want to come here?"

"Tianna thinks her parents hate her," I answered. "She said boarding school sounded neat because you don't have to hassle with parents."

"So what if she's not a Christian?" Amy said, bouncing up and down a little. "Maybe she'll get to be one."

"I was waiting and waiting for you to come," Lisa interrupted, "and now you'll just hang around with your mixed-up cousin the whole time." She frowned and put down the cookie she'd been eating.

"I don't even know if she's coming for sure," I said desperately. Tianna wasn't even here and already she was wrecking things for me.

"Hey, I know," said Amy. "Let's pray. We can pray that if Tianna comes she'll get to be a Christian, and that we can still be friends."

"I don't know," I said slowly. "I thought that their whole family would get to be Christians when we went to stay with them, but it didn't work. Now her parents might even get divorced."

"I don't care," Amy said. "I'm going to pray about it."

She bowed her head and had just gotten started when Sabrina Oats barged in with Esther Miller following her.

"Anika Scott, you broke my china unicorn when you dumped my stuff," she yelled. "You'd better pay for it or else!"

"Shhhhh! We're praying!" Muthoni said.

Sabrina stopped for a second, then blurted, "So what? You're supposed to pay your debts first."

Esther Miller grabbed at her arm like she wanted Sabrina to back off. Sabrina shook Esther's hand off and said, "That unicorn cost thirty American dollars."

"That's ridiculous!" Lisa blurted. "Thirty bucks? That little thing? No way. Besides, how do we know it's really broken, anyway?"

Sabrina whirled and grabbed what looked like a wad of Kleenex off her dresser. She spun back around and opened her hand in my face. The pieces of a delicate china unicorn lay there. Its head was beautiful. I reached out with one finger to touch it, feeling sad that it was broken.

Sabrina jerked her hand back. "You better pay up, Anika Scott, or else!"

She turned her back on us.

"Where am I supposed to get thirty bucks?" I whispered.

"She probably broke it herself," said Muthoni. "She's just trying to blame it on you."

"It never cost thirty bucks anyway," Lisa said.

I squirmed. I wasn't so sure. It was so pretty, and I
had
dumped her stuff. Just then Mrs. Jackson called us for devotions. I shoved thoughts about the unicorn out of my head.

During the next few days I got back into the routine of boarding school. Lisa, Muthoni, Sabrina Oats, Esther Miller, and I all were in one room. Amy was in the other room with different kids, but she spent most of the time in our room. I didn't even think about Tianna. Sabrina Oats kept hassling me about the unicorn. I ignored her.

"Let's make a fort," Amy said on the way down from breakfast that Saturday.

"Yeah!" Muthoni said. "Like that one we had last year, only better."

"There's a really good clump of trees behind that big rock," I said, pointing.

"No, I mean down below the dorm," Amy said. "Come on!" She took off running, with Muthoni after her. I started, then looked back. Lisa was still walking. Muthoni and Amy had been best friends for ages. They'd let me hang around with them, but I'd never really had a best friend 'til Lisa came.

"Hurry up!" I called. Lisa didn't move any faster, so finally I stopped to wait. "What's wrong?"

"Forts are little kid stuff," she said.

"Oh, come on," I blurted. "I love forts."

She did come with me, but she still wouldn't run. When we were almost there, I ran ahead.

Muthoni and Amy were in a really thick clump of small black wattle trees. Even though the smooth, gray bark and feathery leaves of the wattle trees didn't scratch, I could hardly push through because the trees were so thick. They were way too close together to grow properly.

Amy had found a spot in the clump where you could stand up.

"OK," she said, "This will be the middle. We can bend those ones down and tie them."

"Shh!" said Muthoni, making frantic 'come-here' motions with her hands. "I've got a great idea," she whispered. "If we're really quiet, the other kids won't even know we have a fort."

Amy giggled. "Sabrina Oats won't be able to bug us here. I'll go out and make sure nobody can see us. You guys start working, but be quiet."

A second later I was going in circles twisting off a tree with a trunk about as thick as my big toe. The little tree was growing in the middle of what would be the fort floor. Muthoni was hacking at another one with a stone.

"Nobody can even tell we're here," Amy whispered, grinning, as she came back to join us. She picked up the tree I'd finally twisted off and started stripping the bark. It came off in long tough strings from bottom to top.

"Lisa, you're taller," she said. "Help me hold this, OK?"

We bent down the taller trees and tied their tops together with bark strips. Pretty soon we were in a sort of upside-down basket made of little live trees that were tied together at the top. Our fort was big enough to stand up in and even walk around a little.

Lisa, who had mostly been watching, suddenly said, "Hey, this is cool! We never had forts anything like this in California."

"Shhhh!" hissed Muthoni.

"Sorry," Lisa whispered. "But look, if we make the door a sort of tunnel, then it will look like a big igloo."

She crawled out the little space we'd left as a door and started tying the teeny-weeny trees that were clumped there at the top to make a tunnel.

"Neat," I whispered, crawling after her. "We can make it a secret entrance so even if the other kids find the fort they can't get in.

By midafternoon we had the fort almost done.

"Up there," Amy said, lying on her back on the floor of the fort. "I can see sky."

"Here?" asked Muthoni from the outside. We were weaving little branches though the holes. If we did it right, the rain wouldn't even get in.

"No, further down."

I put my hand in one spot and said, "Is this it?"

"Yeah," Amy said.

I poked my leafy little branch through. The end was in my face, all cool and tickly, and I was trying to get hold of the stick and fish it back through.

"Anika! Anika Scott!" That was Mrs. Jackson. We all stopped and listened.

"I saw them coming down this way, Mrs. Jackson." That was Esther Miller's voice. They were coming toward us.

"Drop!" hissed Amy.

We all fell on our stomachs and held absolutely still. If I answered Mrs. Jackson now, I'd give away where the fort was. I could hear their feet coming closer.

"Anika! Anika Scott!" yelled Mrs. Jackson, so close that I jumped. Fortunately, they didn't hear me, and soon their footsteps got fainter.

Amy made shooing motions at me. I nodded and crawled out toward the opposite side of the clump of bushes from where Mrs. Jackson had gone. As soon as I was out I ran in a loop, up the hill and back around.

"Did you call me, Mrs. Jackson?" I said, panting as I ran up to her from the opposite direction of the fort.

"There you are, Anika," she said. "Your folks are here looking for you."

Without waiting to hear the rest I took off for the dorm with a huge grin on my face. At the top of the hill I almost knocked Mom down. She caught me and hugged me. I squeezed her tight. It was so great to be up tight against the smell and feel of my own mother. It wasn't like I'd been homesick or anything, but it was good to see her.