Akeelah and the Bee - James W. Ellison [20]
“ Bye.”
Javier smiled and rushed to his mother’s car and climbed inside. Akeelah waited for the car to disappear around a corner and then crossed the street to the bus stop. The sun was sinking low in the sky as she boarded the bus back to reality. She replayed her confrontation with Dylan, deciding that even though he might be a talented speller, he was also a conceited jerk and not worthy of all the thought she was giving him. She smiled when she thought of Javier. He was one of the main reasons she felt that she could continue. She fell asleep on the last stretch of the journey. When the bus pulled up to a corner in her neighborhood, the driver woke her up and she practically sleepwalked to her house, unlocked the front door, and came face to face with a furious Tanya.
“Where on earth have you been, young lady? You better have a good explanation.”
“I’ve been studyin’.”
“Studying? Where have you been studying?”
“Woodland Hills,” Akeelah said, stifling a yawn.
She tried to sidestep her mother, who grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Woodland Hills? What were you doin’ there?”
“They got a spelling club and this kid invited me to join it. It’s really good practice, Ma. I learned a lot today.”
“Did Mr. Welch take you? Nobody called me.”
Akeelah hesitated, knowing that what she said next would not go down easily with her mother, but she was too tired to think up a creative lie. “I went by myself,” she said. “I didn’t think the bus would take so long. I’m sorry.”
Tanya stared at her daughter, shaking her head.
“Akeelah Anderson, have you lost your mind? You’re eleven years old. You don’t take a bus to the Valley by yourself. For a bright girl, you certainly can be stupid sometimes.”
“But there was nobody around to take me. You’re never home during the day.”
“That’s because I’m at work tryin’ to earn enough money to keep food on the table. I can’t be traipsing off to no Valley on a whim.”
“It ain’t no whim.”
“It is to me.”
“It was the same thing on the weekend. You couldn’t come. All the other kids had their parents at the District Bee.”
“Well, maybe the ‘other kids’ got parents with time on their hands. Time and money. Now I will not have another child disappearing at all hours. One Terrence is enough. So if this spelling thing means sneakin’ off to the suburbs by yourself, then you can just forget about it. We’re calling it off.”
“We can’t call it off! I’m going to the Regional Bee.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Akeelah. You’re eleven and I’m still your mother.”
“I’m going, Ma. I have to.”
“Not if you flunk out of school you’re not. I just got a letter that says you gotta take summer school to make up for all the classes you skipped.”
“Summer school? But, Ma, I hate Crenshaw. It’s boring, it’s full of idiots, and nobody cares. I mean the students and the teachers.”
“You think they care about you at Woodland Hills? You think all those rich white folks are gonna welcome you with open arms?”
“Well, at least they got Latin classes and the kids don’t have to study in the stairwells. They’re doin’ things right at their school, and we ain’t doin’ nothin’ right.”
“Good for them,” Tanya said. “Hurray for them. But until you finish summer school at Crenshaw, where last I knew you’re still a student, there’s gonna be no more talk of spelling bees.”
“But, Ma, the State Regionals happen during the summer.”
“Then you’re just gonna have to wait to do it next year. Getting a passing grade is more important than a buncha words.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Not only is it fair,” Tanya said, “it’s final.”
Beside herself with frustration and anger, Akeelah turned and stomped off to her room and flung herself down at her desk. She was seething now, all sleepiness gone. She looked at her father’s picture, studied his face closely as she had done so many times before.
“You’d let me do it,” she said out loud. “I know you would. You always encouraged me to do everything. ‘Sky’s the limit,’ you used to tell me.”
She sat there fuming for a long moment, looking at her father expectantly, as though she