Quite an Undertaking: Devon's Story Read online

  I was getting impatient. “What idea?”

  “With your learner’s permit you can’t drive yourself, but maybe you can find out if she has her license. If she does, and this is the only way this is going to work, ask her if she’ll take you there.”

  “To the cemetery?” It could work. Rebecca wouldn’t invite Jessie along on something so obviously personal and private. I looked toward the front doors of the hotel and noticed that the steady stream of athletes had disappeared. “Missy, I’ve got to go, but thanks for your help. Thanks for being cool about, you know, my news.”

  “Well, thanks for including me, dork, but now you’re required to give me regular updates.”

  “Like after tomorrow’s field trip?” I knew Missy could hear my smile as I stood up and headed toward the ballroom.

  “Oh, my God! You’ll be with her all day?”

  “Yeah, I know. I can’t stand it, but I’ll fill you in tomorrow.” I took my smile and headed toward the Akwesasne Ballroom of the Best Western Inn.

  Chapter Eight

  The Field Trip

  MY ALARM CLOCK picked Tuesday, of all days, to screw up. Breakfast and lunch would have to be the banana I grabbed off the counter as I ran by. I flung my backpack over both shoulders and ran the entire way to school. I know I must have looked pretty stupid running with my backpack bouncing around, but I couldn’t miss the field trip. Rebecca would be there.

  I almost leaped in ecstasy when I saw the two yellow school buses still parked in front of the school. Mme Depardieu stood on the curb looking at her clipboard. I don’t know how I did it, but I picked up speed and sprinted. She looked up and saw me. “Ah, Devón, here you are. We were about to leave wizout you.”

  I blew out a breathless, “Sorry,” and leaned over with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath.

  She checked her clipboard. “Pehriod eight is on bus two. Right here.” She pointed to the second bus.

  I stood up and took a deep breath. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was. I vowed to run every single day from now on, unless it was like ten below or blizzarding or something.

  I stepped up into the bus and knew the chance of being able to sit with Rebecca was miniscule at that point. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to sit in the front seat with Mme Depardieu. I reached the top step of the bus and said, “Sorry,” to the bus driver. The older man reminded me of my grandfather with his snow-white hair and white mustache. He nodded as if he could care less and looked away. As I turned to survey the seating situation somebody yelled, “Way to go, Devon,” and the entire busload of French language students started clapping. I shook my head and took an exaggerated bow. As I did so, I saw Rebecca wave at me. I couldn’t believe my luck. The seat next to her was open.

  I high-fived about ten kids on my fashionably late arrival as I made my way down the aisle. I whipped the hood of my sweat jacket off my head and threw my backpack on the floor. Just as I plopped down nonchalantly next to Rebecca, the bus started moving.

  I smiled at her. “I can’t believe I made it.”

  “Yeah, I was getting worried.”

  My heart warmed at the thought of Rebecca worrying about me. “My alarm clock didn’t go off. I had to run all the way here.”

  “You ran?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All the way?”

  I nodded. “I’m way out of shape.”

  “Not you,” Rebecca said with a look of disbelief.

  “I haven’t been on a regular running schedule since...” I paused not wanting to bring up the funeral again, but Rebecca finished my thought.

  “Since your grandma?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It takes time to get your normal routine back after something like that.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She smiled at me sympathetically.

  I needed to change the subject fast before I got teary-eyed. “Did you save this seat for me?”

  “Kind of. Well, I would have if anybody wanted to sit with me.”

  I couldn’t fathom anyone not wanting to sit with Rebecca. God, she was so pretty. She even managed to make her bulky ski jacket look fashionable. Her fuzzy scarf looked so soft I wanted to reach out and touch it. How could the guys on this bus not have a crush on her like I did? “What do you mean?”

  “No one ever wants to sit with me.”

  “What are you talking about? I want to sit with you.” Now and forever.

  Her eyes softened. “I know you do, but...”

  “But what?” My stomach fluttered. She knew I wanted to sit with her.

  “I don’t know.” She looked out the window at the passing cows.

  I was confused, but at the same time I was also pissed that my classmates had hurt Rebecca’s feelings somehow. I leaned in more closely and asked softly, “Why do you think no one wants to sit with you?”

  “You don’t know?”

  I furiously scanned my brain, but came up empty. “No.”

  “Devon, look around this bus.”

  I stretched in my seat and looked around at my classmates. They were the same kids I’d been going to school with since forever. A lot of them since kindergarten, but practically all of them since middle school.

  “I don’t—”

  “You’re looking, but you’re not seeing.” She looked at me with such a serious expression that I felt stupid for missing something that was apparently uber obvious. She pulled up the sleeve to her ski jacket and revealed her forearm. She gestured for me to do the same. She placed her chocolaty velvet skin next to my winter pale skin. She touched her forearm and then touched mine. My heart almost stopped when she touched me, but I tried to ignore it as meaning flooded my brain cells. Her skin was darker than everybody else’s. Including mine. She was the only black kid on the bus.

  I looked into her eyes and saw such a deep sadness in them that I felt guilty being white, and that once upon a time I had probably ignored her like my classmates did. I reached over, grabbed her bare forearm, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. I hoped she understood my gesture to mean that I didn’t condone my classmates’ actions and that I was in her corner.

  She pulled her sleeve back down, and I did the same. I had no idea what to say, so we both looked at the once green cornfields tucked away for winter as we paralleled the Grasse River on our way to Massena.

  I had told Missy there were two main obstacles in reaching Rebecca. First of all, I didn’t know if Rebecca was gay, and second, I didn’t know if she was with Jessie. Maybe I had a third obstacle, too. Maybe Rebecca thought I would be prejudiced against her or something, just because I was white like the rest of the kids on the bus.

  The bus passed the entrance to the Eisenhower Lock and headed into the short tunnel toward the power dam. I decided to ignore all my worries and focus on spending the day with Rebecca.

  Once through the tunnel, the bus made a right turn onto the narrow two-lane road toward the power dam. Without looking at me, Rebecca tapped me on the arm. “Look! Look! See the bird?” She pointed to a bright red woodpecker on an old dead tree.

  “That’s cool.” I smiled at her and was happy she wanted to share the woodpecker with me. I didn’t tell her that the bird was a pileated woodpecker because I didn’t want to seem like some kind of birdbrain nerd. She liked fishing, so maybe sometime I’d talk to her about birds and other nature stuff—like my ideas about the environment. That’s why I was kind of psyched about going to the dam. Maybe we could talk about hydroelectric power and other ways to be green, but I really didn’t care what we talked about, actually, I was just happy to be spending the day with her.

  When the bus pulled to a stop in front of the Robert Moses-Robert H. Saunders Dam, I stood up first, but let Rebecca walk out ahead of me. My pulse soared when she looked back at me with a grateful expression on her face. Oh, yeah, I had just scored another point. Go me.

  My stomach growled as soon as I walked in the lobby of the visitors’ center because the smell of popcorn w
as overwhelming. The two busloads of students filled the small lobby. The guides introduced themselves and divided our mass into four groups. Our group was assigned to the far end of the hands-on exhibit room. I was bummed because you could only eat the popcorn in the lobby, and my stomach protested loudly.

  We gathered around the picture window overlooking the dam, and Rebecca stayed glued to my side, or maybe I stayed glued to her side. Either way, I was proud to have Rebecca as my friend, and I was sorry that it took the death of my grandmother for me to realize what a great person she was.

  Our guide introduced himself as John. He looked like a college guy probably about Missy’s age. I felt bad for him. He probably hated giving tours to high school kids.

  John pointed toward the St. Lawrence River outside the window. “This, as you know, is the St. Lawrence. To get to the visitors’ center today you went through the tunnel under the Eisenhower Lock. The reason the ships go through the lock is because the power dam blocks off the only other potential route in this area.”

  I remembered the few times I’d seen the humongous ships go through the locks. The water heights changed so drastically on the St. Lawrence River that the ships needed the locks to help them navigate their way west toward the Great Lakes or east toward Québec and the Atlantic Ocean.

  Rebecca and I moved closer to the window. I pointed to the dam outside the window and said, “Dam.” She giggled at my joke, but covered her mouth with a hand, so no one would hear. My perma-grin sprang to life.

  I remembered from my fourth grade field trip that the dam connected the U.S. with Canada and was a joint project between both countries. If more countries cooperated like that, some of the world’s problems might just get solved. I laughed at myself because I didn’t do this kind of deep thinking during my fourth grade field trip.

  John leaned against the wall near the windows. “Before we move on to the exhibits behind you, I want to give you a quick history of the river. Jacques Cartier was a French navigator who had been searching for a way to navigate a western route from Europe to Asia—the elusive northwest passage—and in 1535 he found the St. Lawrence River that led into the heart of the North American continent. When he first discovered the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, he named the northern shore Canada, so Cartier is thought to have discovered Canada.”

  I whispered to Rebecca, “Yeah, he discovered Canada like Columbus discovered America.”

  She suppressed another giggle and nudged me in the arm with her elbow.

  “Ack,” I said way too loudly. A couple of the kids in front of us turned around, and that made us laugh even more. I had to look away from her, so I wouldn’t crack up completely.

  John continued. “The name Canada, or Kanata—spelled K-A-N-A-T-A—is actually a Huron-Iroquois word meaning village. The native people, the Iroquois in particular, were surprised to find the big ships as far inland as Québec.”

  Rebecca nudged me again, and I shrugged as if to say, “Okay, okay, so he knew about the native Americans,” or should they be called native Canadians? John called them the native people. I decided not to embarrass myself by asking.

  “Ah, Québec,” Mme Depardieu said brightly. “C'est là où se trouve le pont de Jacques Cartier, n'est-ce pas?”

  When John’s eyes grew wide in obvious confusion, she laughed and said, “Pardon. Québec is zeh home of zee Jacques Cartier Bridge, oui?”

  “Oh,” he said with such obvious relief that most of us laughed. “Yes, the Jacques Cartier Bridge crosses right over the St. Lawrence River in Montréal, but Canada doesn’t have the only claim on Cartier. The Cartier State Park, right here in the U.S., borders the St. Lawrence in Morrisville, just west of Ogdensburg.”

  Mme Depardieu had the biggest smile on her face that I’d ever seen. John seemed to pick up on the fact that she was a Jacques Cartier fan and asked, “Is this the French class field trip?” He looked all of us over.

  “Oui, of course. We’re from Grasse River High School.” Mme Depardieu beamed again, but this time her look included all of us. I took satisfaction in her smile because she was obviously proud of her students. I definitely felt a lot different on this field trip than in fourth grade.

  “Oh, Grasse River. Here’s an interesting fact for you,” John continued. “The Eisenhower Lock used to be referred to as the Grasse River Lock.”

  That was kind of cool. Our little river was famous. I decided to put my reporter hat on. Maybe I’d propose an article for the Gazette about Mme Depardieu’s annual mecca to the land of Jacques Cartier. I raised my hand high in the air and hoped I didn’t sound like a jerk asking my simple question.

  “Yes?” John pointed at me. “In the back?”

  “Do you know when the lock was built?” I knew we were at the power dam and not at the lock, but John seemed interested, so what could it hurt to ask?

  “Good question. I’ll detour to that topic for a second, but then I must get us back to the power dam stuff, or they won’t let me have popcorn.”

  A couple of girls in the front giggled.

  “Well,” he continued, “the lock officially opened in 1959. You all remember 1959, don’t you?” The girls in the front giggled again when he looked at them. “No? Okay, well President Dwight Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth were both on the first ceremonial ship through the lock, but it was New York Governor Roosevelt—Franklin Delano Roosevelt that is— that was the first one to push for the lock.”

  I knew that Roosevelt had been the governor of New York State, but I had no idea that FDR, as my Grandma called him, had cared about the North Country.

  John continued, “Roosevelt wanted the locks to protect our military ships in the Seaway in the event of war. The cost was enormous, and most people didn’t see the need for a seaway from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. Roosevelt persevered, though, even from the White House. He died in 1945, but President Eisenhower gave the lock project in Massena the final push, and it was finished in 1959. That’s why the lock is named for him.”

  I felt bad for President Roosevelt. Okay, the whole St. Lawrence-FDR Power Project was named after him, but maybe the lock should have been named for him, too or at least hyphenated to the Roosevelt-Eisenhower lock. I laughed to myself. No, that would have been too much.

  John smiled at me. “Okay, the history part is finished, and now your tour turns into science.”

  He asked us to stay on one side of the exhibit hall and briefly explained some of the hands on demonstrations we’d see along the way. He encouraged us to read the signs and try everything out.

  “Try to understand the underlying physics behind each exhibit,” he told us just before he set us free. “Fourth graders turn the knobs and press the buttons without understanding. This is your chance to get it this time. You have about twenty minutes on this side and then once Lynn’s group is out of the way, we’ll continue up the other side.”

  Rebecca and I turned toward the exhibits.

  “I wish we could have gone to the lock today, too,” I said. “It’s kind of cool.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Rebecca agreed and smiled at me in a way that made my knees wobble. “Hey, maybe we can go there next summer. We can watch some ships go through. Jessie hates stuff like that.”

  Another point for me. Take that Jessie. Of course, I didn’t say it out loud. I just smiled and said, “That’d be fun, and then we’ll go fishing, right?”

  “Absolutely.” She nudged me lightly with her elbow again. “Hey, are you coming to my dance concert?”

  “Of course. Three weeks from Friday.” I knew the date of her dance concert by heart.

  “Right before Christmas. Ooh, Devon, I’m sorry.”

  I had no idea what she was sorry about. We were looking at an exhibit about transformers, but I couldn’t see why transformers would make her apologize. “Sorry about what?”

  “I brought up Christmas.”

  “Oh.” A quick wave of sadness overtook me, but I fought hard to let it go. “That’s okay.” I took a dee
p breath and exhaled slowly. “Tomorrow, it’ll be one month.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, and on Christmas day it’ll be exactly two months.”

  “Oh, that sucks.” She put a hand on the sleeve of my jean jacket in sympathy. “That’s going to be a hard day for you.”

  I saw my opening and silently thanked Missy for the idea. “Yeah, and I haven’t been back to visit her yet.” I looked down, but watched her out of the corner of my eye.

  “Oh, you haven’t?”

  I almost got lost in her soft sympathetic brown eyes, but I gathered up my courage and threw out the bait. “No, I only have my permit, and I don’t have a car, so...” I held my breath and hoped she would go for it.

  “Oh, Devon. You should have asked me. I can drive you. I got my license in September, and if the cemetery’s locked, I can get the key.”

  “You can?” I remembered to breathe again and wished I could hug her.

  “Of course I can. This Thanksgiving week is a little busy, though. My Aunt Lucinda, my mom’s sister, is coming up from Norwich and spending the whole four-day weekend with us. I’ll be lucky if I can sneak away for the basketball game on Friday.”

  “I hope you can,” I said way too quickly.

  “I think so. My mom knows that Jessie’s my best friend.”

  Best friend. Is that all, Rebecca, or is it more than that?

  “Hey,” she continued, “maybe we can go visit your Grandma next week after school sometime. Okay?”

  “Okay. That’d be awesome.” I looked away, afraid my expression would betray how I really felt about her. She had to know that I liked her. How could she not? How could anybody who saw the way I looked at her not know I was falling in love with her? Well, maybe it wasn’t love because I didn’t really know what love was yet, but it was definitely stronger than anything I felt for Marcy Berger in eighth grade and all those other crushes I’d had along the way.

  We walked on silently, and I pretended to be fascinated by the old photographs of the dams on the St. Lawrence River. I let Rebecca lead the way through the exhibit hall, and remembered that on the night Jessie stranded me at Bruster, I decided that I would follow Rebecca wherever she led, and here I was following her around on our field trip. I couldn’t help the smile creeping up my face.