Akeelah and the Bee - James W. Ellison [0]
Title Page
The Present
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
The Present
About the Writers
NEWMARKET MEDALLION EDITIONS FOR YOUNG READERS
Copyright Page
The Present
Akeelah Anderson, small and skinny for a just-turned-twelve-year-old and smart beyond her years, sits in her bedroom staring at her image in the mirror and engaging in one of her favorite pastimes: daydreaming. She removes her glasses, cleans them on the sleeve of her blouse, then replaces them in a single, flowing, absent-minded movement. Slowly her image breaks into a smile.
“Akeelah,” she says in a surprisingly low voice, given her age and slight physical stature, “what a journey for a girl from South Los Angeles. Girls from this neighborhood just aren’t supposed to have journeys like this. Everything seems like a dream. I know this happened and that happened and a whole bunch of other things, too, but it should seem more real than it does. What’s the word for what I’m feeling? Come on, girl, words are what you’re good at. What is it you’re reaching for? ‘Verisimilitude’? ‘Somnambulism’ ? ‘Déjà vu’ ? Nope—they’re all wrong. But there’s gotta be a word for it because it’s how I’ve been feeling all year and it just doesn’t go away….”
She sticks out her tongue and crosses her eyes. “You’re crazy, girl, plain loco, talking to yourself this way. If you start answering yourself, you’ll know you’re in big, big trouble.
“Maybe the word I’m searchin’ for is… what? Maybe it’s ‘magic. ’ Human magic….”
One
The Anderson family—mother, two sons, and two daughters—lived in a mostly black neighborhood in South Los Angeles, a dangerous, forlorn area that often erupted in violence, especially on Saturday nights and most especially on the hot nights of summer. It was light-years removed from the glitter and glamour of Hollywood and the majestic coastline to the west. Akeelah attended Crenshaw Middle School, an unkempt institution with gang graffiti scrawled on the walls. There were dangling pipe fixtures in the bathrooms where, in better times, the sinks used to be. African-American and Hispanic kids crammed into the overflowing classrooms, shouting, cursing, pushing one another, and ignoring the teachers who implored them to quiet down and take their seats. The teachers, for the most part, were tolerated but not obeyed. Already at ten, eleven, and twelve, many of the students at Crenshaw resented any official forms of discipline and fought against them with street anger and street smarts.
Ms. Cross, a petite teacher in her early forties, with lines of worry etched in her features, walked down a row of desks occupied by rowdy seventh-graders. Like all the classes at Crenshaw Middle School, Ms. Cross’s was overcrowded. There were nearly forty students jammed into a small space. They all wore school uniforms, and many of the girls were already wearing makeup. Ms. Cross handed out graded spelling tests. She tried to put on a smiling face, but gave up the effort as the noise level increased.
“You’re all in the seventh grade now,” she said. “What does that mean to you?”
“It mean we be in the eighth grade next year,” said a tall boy lounging in the back of the room.
“Not necessarily, Darian,” the teacher said. “What it means is, when I give you a list of words, you study them. Middle school means taking more responsibility. The average score on this test is very upsetting—barely 50 percent. Totally unacceptable. I know you can do better, but you have to work at it….” She paused in front of Akeelah’s desk. Akeelah was busy whispering with her best friend, Georgia.
“Akeelah,” Ms. Cross said, “I hate to break into your very private conversation.”
She turned to the teacher and said, almost under her breath, “That’s sarcasm, ain’t it, Ms. Cross?”
She tried to restrain a smile.
“I guess you could say that. Tell me something. How long did you study for this spelling test?”
Akeelah shifted her eyes uneasily to some of her classmates who were following this exchange intently. She knew