My Name Is Not Easy (36 page)

C O U P O N S A N D B O M B S H E L T E R S / C h i c k i e
She’s talking about the car, of course.

“You want everything,” I say.

Th

en I notice the small print under that picture. I lean down close and read it. “Hey, did you know you can earn a car with Betty Crocker coupons?”

Out of the side of my eye, I see Bunna straighten up suddenly.

“What’s Betty Crocker coupons?” Rose asks.

“Th

ey’re on the tops of the cake boxes,” Bunna says.

Evelyn scowls at Bunna.

“How many coupons?” Rose asks.

How in the heck does Bunna know about cake coupons?

Th

at’s what
I
want to ask.

“I think it says fi fty thousand,” I say. I have to squint hard at the small print, because I’m not wearing my new glasses. I’m not wearing my glasses because I think I look more sophisticated without them, and a person with freckles needs all the sophistication she can get.

“If you could aff ord to buy fi fty thousand cake mixes, you wouldn’t need to pay for a car with coupons,” Evelyn says.

Th

en she gives Bunna a look—an Indian warrior look.

“C’mon girls,” she says. “Let’s
go
.”

It was Bunna’s idea, all right, but Junior wrote it down. Th at’s

when we discovered that Junior knew how to write a really good letter. It was Father Flanagan who made it happen, of course. Father started making plans the minute Bunna burst into class.

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

“Look here, Father, look at this!” Bunna is practically hollering, waving the letter like a white fl ag.

Father takes it and reads slowly, nodding his head. Th en

he looks at the picture of the blond girls with the cake boxes.

By the time he’s done looking back and forth from one to the other, he’s smiling.

“Th

is project would take a lot of work,” he says. “And we’ll need some students with fi rst-rate penmanship.”

I raise my hand right away. “I have great penmanship, Father,” I say. I’m not bragging. It’s true, and everybody knows it.

“So do I,” Bunna says.

Everyone laughs, of course, because everyone knows that Bunna’s handwriting is a train wreck.

But in the end we all wrote letters, good penmanship or no penmanship. We each wrote hundreds of letters, copying the same words over and over:

Dear Mrs.____________________,

I am a student at Sacred Heart School,

a parochial boarding school situated

in the heart of Alaska. Most of the

students here are Native Alaskan, and

many of us had never been outside our

home villages prior to coming to Sacred

Heart. Our school, Sacred Heart, is run

by the generous donations of God-fearing

citizens like yourself. We are currently

in desperate need of a bus to enable

us to enjoy the learning opportunities

and sports activities available to us

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y / C h i c k i e
throughout our region. We have discovered

that if we save up enough Betty Crocker

coupons, we can earn a bus for our school.

We hope that you will be willing to save

coupons for us. . . .

Sincerely,

_____________________, Sacred Heart student

We wrote about 5,000 of those letters, sitting there in the library every day before dinner, writing and writing. Me and Bunna sat next to each other and got into some sort of unspoken competition over it. I was faster than he was, which gave me endless satisfaction.

Sister’s the one who makes me late to the library one day—

she needed help in the laundry. But it’s Amiq, of course, who has to make an issue of it. He starts yapping the second I slide into my chair.

“Look here, Snowbird. Bunna’s winning,” he says.

I grab a piece of paper and start writing as fast as I can, slowly realizing that something is going on, something I can’t deny.

Bunna isn’t writing. He isn’t writing one little bit: he’s watching me and he isn’t even trying to hide it. I can see him, out of the side of my eye, just staring. I look up, very fi rmly, look him square in the eye. I fi gure I’m going to stare him down and make him feel about two feet tall, but he just grins right back at me, tall as ever.

“Where were you?” he says.

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

Where was I?
All of a sudden, I feel this fl uttering feeling in my stomach—I swear, just like in the songs—and just as suddenly I notice Bunna’s eyes. Bunna has these really, really soft brown eyes, the kind that make you feel warm and happy when you look into them. Chocolatey brown. His eyes are a sweet, chocolatey brown. I notice them for the fi rst time right then and there—and can’t for the life of me imagine how I failed to notice them before. All of a sudden I just have to stand up, quick, because two things have just occurred to me, two things that surprise me right down to the very tips of my toes: 1) Bunna likes me, and 2) Th

is does not bother me, not

one little bit.

“Laundry!” I blurt it out without even thinking. “I was doing laundry.” Th

en I get up and just about run out of that

room. I go as fast as I can, because Amiq is sprawled out at the table by the door, watching us, and I just know he’s going to say something to embarrass me, which he does.

“Hey, Snowbird. You’re blushing,” he says.

“Too much hot air in this place!” I snap, marching off with as much dignity as I can manage.

I hear Bunna laughing behind me, but I don’t mind at all because it’s a warm laugh, and I’m already out in the hall. And by now, I’m practically laughing, too.

Even though there’s no one here to see me, I am smiling all the way down the hall, every step of the way, right past the cafeteria, past the gym and past the portrait of President Kennedy, who is smiling, too. Like he just touched the moon.

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