Raven (Orphans 4)

"Please, Jennifer," Aunt Clara said, "stop yelling." William came out and looked at everyone, his face full of surprise. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. "If I knew you put a hole in this . . ." Uncle Reuben threatened. He looked at the blouse again. "I don't know how this kind of a hole would get in there."

"Bugs can do that," I said. He looked up sharply. "We don't have bugs, or at least we didn't before you came," he said. "Clara?"

"Oh, I'll just buy her a new one today, Reuben."

"I'd better not see anything else like this," he warned. He gave Jennifer the blouse back and returned to his bedroom to finish dressing. Aunt Clara went back to the kitchen, and Jennifer and I looked at each other.

"You'll be sorry," she said. "I'm going to wear it anyway and let everyone know what you did."

"Suit yourself," I said. "You'll only make a bigger fool of yourself."

I winked at William.

"What are you laughing at?" she snapped at him, and ran back into her room.

For the first time in a long time, I had a great appetite and ate a big breakfast. Even Uncle Reuben was impressed at how I didn't leave a crumb.

4 A Close Call

When we boarded the schoolbus on Thursday, I had my arms full. Jennifer had to do a social studies project, and she had chosen to make a large visual chart, but there was a good reason she had made that choice. One of her girlfriends, Paula Gordon, who was talented in art, came over and really did most of it. Jennifer pretended she had done it all, and when she showed it to Uncle Reuben on Thursday morning, he raved about it as if it were something a famous artist like Rembrandt or that artist who cut off his ear for his girlfriend might have done. I thought any one of the birdhouses William made in his wood shop all by him-self was twice the accomplishment, and yet I never once heard Uncle Reuben even mention them, much less praise him about them.

As usual, Jennifer basked in the compliments her father tossed like wedding rice over her. When we got ready to leave the house, she was very concerned about getting her precious project to school undamaged. She surprised me by pausing at the door, and in the sweetest voice she could manage, she asked me to do her a favor. I saw she had made sure to ask in front of Uncle Reuben.

"You know how rough the kids are on the bus, Raven. I have to protect my chart. Can you please carry my books, my notebooks, and my lunch bag for me? Please. Someday, I'll do you a favor," she promised, flicking her eyelashes at Uncle Reuben.

What else could I do but agree? I felt like some slave walking behind her, my arms laden with my books and my lunch bag as well as hers. She paraded down the sidewalk and onto the bus, holding her chart up high enough for everyone to see.

"Someone make a place for Raven. She's carrying my things for me," she announced.

It wasn't necessary. I always sat with Clarence Dunsen. She just wanted everyone to know that she could get me to do things for her.

When we arrived at school, she surprised me by taking only the books and notebooks she needed for her morning classes.

"Bring everything else to lunch. I've got to carry this around until social studies," she said in front of her friends, who stood there with thin smiles and laughing eyes.

"Why don't you just bring it to social studies now?" I asked her.

"And take a chance that someone might sabotage it? Never. Remember what happened to Robert Longo's ant farm in science class?" she asked her entourage. They all nodded. "Someone poured water in it and drowned all the ants."

"I wonder who would do that," I said dryly.

"Thanks, Raven," she said, taking her morning class books and shooting off before I could refuse.

I lugged her things along with mine to my first class.

"How come you have two lunches today?" Terri Johnson asked me in English class. I told her, and she raised her eyebrows sharply, the skin in her forehead forming small furrows.

"She's just trying to show off," I said, but Terri still looked suspicious.

"She could ask one of her slaves to do that. Those girls would be glad to do her favors. I've seen it. I don't know what she's up to, but as my granny tells me all the time, a snake can't be a rabbit," she added.

I laughed, but later I began to think a little more about it, too. Just before class ended, I looked at what I thought was Jennifer's lunch bag, only I noticed my name was on it. Why would that be? I, wondered.

I opened what was supposed to be Jennifer's lunch bag. We usually had the same thing. I knew because I had helped Aunt Clara make the lunches. There was an extra small pack wrapped in wax paper in hers. I glanced up to be sure Mrs. Broadhurst wasn't looking my way, and then I unwrapped the wax paper.

A cold but electric chill shot through my heart. I had seen this before. I knew what a joint was.

I had seen and smelled pot around my old apartment. Lila Thomas had tried to get me to smoke it with her once.