Akeelah and the Bee (16 page)

“No.”

Terrence grabbed the box.

“Hey, give it back,” she said, reaching for it.

Terrence began rifling through the cards. “So how you spell all these words, anyway?”

“I study ’em,” she said.

A Ford Explorer rounded the corner, blasting its horn.

“Whatevah. There’s my ride.”

The Explorer pulled up and Derrick-T, sporting thick sunglasses and a New York Knicks cap, looked out the passenger window from the driver’s seat. “What up, Terrence? Who dat?”

“Nobody,” Terrence said. “My little sister.”

Derrick-T pulled down his glasses and peered at her. “What up, li’l thing? Seen you on TV. You was very pro.”

Akeelah said nothing.

“You winning contests?” Derrick-T continued. “Goin’ to some big one pretty soon, huh?”

Akeelah still said nothing.

“Yo, answer the man, Kee,” Terrence said. “He ain’t talkin’ to the wind.”

“You know, I won somethin’ once. Fifth grade, wrote a poem. Got me a blue ribbon, can you believe it?”

Terrence snorted laughter. “You wrote a poem? Oh, that’s good, man.”

“Shut up, dawg. Whatcha think rap is? Poetry, man. Poetry of the streets, and I was into that at an early age.” He put his head close to the window. “What’s that in your hands?”

“Nothin’,” Terrence said. “Just stupid words.”

“Stupid words? Words ain’t never stupid.” He gestured toward Akeelah. “You helpin’ her?”

“Naw, man. I’m goin’ with you.”

Derrick-T stared at Terrence and slowly shook his head. “Nah, man. Not this trip. You stay with your sis. Help her with the words.”

“Why?” Terrence said, looking puzzled.

“’Cause I said so. Ain’t that enough reason?”

He started to drive off when Akeelah raised her hand and shouted, “Derrick-T!”

He braked the car and looked out at Akeelah.

“I wanna read your poem.”

He broke into a wide grin. “You do?” He nodded and said, “Okay. After you win the contest. That a deal?”

“Sounds good to me. But what if I don’t win?”

“Maybe I’ll let you read it anyway.”

He drove off. Terrence and Akeelah stood watching after the Explorer for a moment, embarrassed to be together. Their lives ran on very separate tracks.

“You don’t gotta help me if you don’t want to. I know it’s a pain for you.”

He stared at her with a half grin. “I didn’t say it was a pain.”

“It sounded like it when you were talkin’ to Derrick-T.”

“He don’t have to know all my business.” Terrence pulled out a card and after a struggle pronounced, “‘En…fran…chise…ment.’”

“You mean ‘enfranchisement.’”

“Whatevah. Can you spell it?”

“Sure.” She quickly spelled it and Terrence stared at her, impressed. He pulled out another word and with a smile Akeelah said, “Yup, Mama, you’re right. Fifty thousand coaches.”

“Say what?” said Terrence, his forehead wrinkled.

“Nothin’, Terrence. Give me another word.”

They walked down the street together as Terrence continued to feed her words and she continued to spell them flawlessly.

“Fifty thousand coaches” was not far off the mark. Over the next three days it seemed that everyone she knew grabbed her flashcards and threw words at her. Ms. Cross was waiting to grill her with words. Half the kids in her class insisted on having the honor of getting their hands on the flashcards. Even Myrna warmed to her a little.

“You are a nerd, Akeelah,” she said, “but you ain’t so bad a nerd.”

“You want to give me a couple of words to spell?” Akeelah said.

The girl’s expression brightened. “Ya don’t mind?”

“Not at all. Pick out a couple of hard ones.”

Myrna burst into laughter. “You think I know hard ones from easy ones? This is Myrna, girl. I ain’t suddenly growed a brain.”

On the way home, skipping rope as she went, the postman stopped her and asked if he could see her flashcards, which were rapidly growing in fame. He gave her two words. “I don’t know how to pronounce them. I don’t know what they mean. But you sure did get ’em right, Akeelah. We’re all proud of you ’round here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Keating.”

“I’ve been knowin’ you since you was a little-bitty thing. You was the smartest little thing I ever did see.” He hesitated. “Just like your daddy.”

When she reached the Korean grocery store, a block from home, she sat on a high bench, drinking a Coke and rhythmically tapping her hand on the counter while the Korean grocer read words to Akeelah. He was proud of his American accent and took any excuse to use it.

Even Steve was eager to get into the act. Relatively sober for so late in the afternoon, he sipped on a container of coffee Akeelah had bought him and screwed up his face as he tried to decipher a word.

“‘Ap-teery-goattie,’” he stumbled, looking up at her.

“What?”

Steve showed her the card. “That right there. Maybe I ain’t sayin’ it right.”

“‘Apterygote,’” she said. “You really shouldn’t show me the cards.”

“Oh yeah, sorry,” he said, taking a shaky sip of his coffee. “Head hurts.”

Akeelah smiled. “Stick to the coffee, Steve,” she said gently. “And I really appreciate your help.”

“You’re gonna do good, li’l girl. I talked to that psychic down the street—Madam Adorne? She says you’re gonna go all the way.”

Derrick-T’s Explorer was parked at the curb down the street from her house. She tapped her hand on the hood while he and two of his homies read from the cards.

“Don’t forget your poem, Derrick-T.”

“Later, girl. You got a job to do first. That’s our deal. You cool with that?”

“Yeah, I’m cool.”

He rolled down his window and stuck out a hand. “Give me five,” he said.

They slapped hands and grinned. She was beginning to think that maybe Derrick-T wasn’t so bad after all. If only she could get Steve off the booze and Derrick-T off drugs…. She shook her head and smiled.

The next day the football team was practicing for the fall season in a weedy lot behind the school. One of the players called her over when she went skipping by. They sat in a circle with Akeelah continuing to jump rope as they drilled her with words.

On their porch each night, Tanya, Kiana, and Terrence (who was showing surprising enthusiasm) took turns with her flashcards. Akeelah sneaked a look at her mother and smiled, and a proud Tanya smiled back.

“How long since you missed a word?”

“About two thousand cards ago.”

“That’s very impressive, Akeelah.”

“Not impressive enough. My goal is not to miss another word before the Nationals.”

“You don’t want to miss none there, either,” Terrence said.

They all laughed.

“You feel confident?” Tanya said.

“More and more.” Then she thought of Dr. Larabee and sighed.

As though reading her mind, Tanya said, “He’s going to be in touch with you. I know he is.”

Each evening before the sun went down, Akeelah jumped rope in her front yard, repeating words to herself as she jumped. “...P-e-l-l-u-c-i-d-i-t-y. ‘Pellucidity.’ I-m-p-r-e-s-a-r-i-o. ‘Impresario.’” And on and on and on, until the sun had set and she was jumping rope in the dark.

Often as she jumped in the front yard, cars would drive by, horns would honk, and drivers would shout out, “You go, Akeelah! Make us proud!”

One night when she stopped jumping and was winding up the jump rope, she noticed some markings on the wooden handle. She squinted at them closely. Etched into the ends of the handles were the initials “D” and “L.”

She continued to stare at the initials, her mind racing. She sat down on the front steps, still looking at the “D” and “L.” Then she shook her head and said, “Well, I’ll be….”

“L” for Larabee.

And the “D”?

“Denise,”
she muttered excitedly. “The name he called me by mistake….”

Akeelah slept poorly that night, tossing and turning and wrestling with her pillow. She was waiting for morning to come, and the time crawled by an agonizing moment at a time. She knew what she had to do. She had to go see Dr. Larabee. Her mother was right—her friend, her mentor, was holding something dark inside and it was festering. She wasn’t sure what she could do, if anything, to help him, but she had to try. She had to accept the truth: he meant more to her than she could say—and it was way beyond spelling. He gave her confidence in herself, something she hadn’t had entirely since her father’s death. He made her feel that she counted. He had done so much for her since they had begun working together; the question that faced her now was, What could she do for him?

She knew that Dr. Larabee was an early riser and she arrived at his house at eight o’clock, cradling a box of flashcards in her arms. He was already at work in his garden, planting flowers. She quietly set the boxes of flashcards on the ground next to him. He glanced at them and then turned to Akeelah, a welcoming light in his eyes.

“Five thousand,” Akeelah said. “Learned ’em all. But I had some help—my mom, Kiana, and Terrence, neighborhood people, and other kids, even the Crenshaw football
team.” She grinned. “It seems like everybody wants a piece of the action.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You should be very well prepared, then.”

Akeelah nodded, then took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “You know, Dr. Larabee…a few years ago my daddy died. It hit me really hard—harder than I knew at first, but when I understood he was gone, gone forever…well, that was when things got really bad. I used to cry all the time. But then I found something that helped.”

Dr. Larabee was standing with a spade in his hand, staring at her. The expression in his eyes was new to her. She wondered if it was fear.

“What was that?” he said.

“I spelled.”

“You spelled?”

“Yeah. Over and over again. When I spelled words, I felt better. My daddy had always loved words, he read all the time, and I think I learned the beauty of words from him. I learned Scrabble from him when I was seven, and we used to play it all the time together.”

Dr. Larabee nodded, absorbed in what she was telling him. “But I wonder why spelling words would make you feel better.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It just did. It seemed like words were my friends.” She paused, stared directly into his eyes, and said slowly, “Maybe when you’re thinking about her, you can try spelling. It might help.”

He returned her stare, and now she could see the vulnerability, the hint of fear.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the wound-up jump rope. She set it down next to the boxes. “Thanks for the loan of it, Dr. Larabee.” She then turned to leave.

Dr. Larabee reached for the jump rope, saw the initials, and felt the sadness welling up in him. He called out to Akeelah’s retreating back: “Wait a minute. Come back.”

She stopped and turned to him.