Gabriela Speaks Out Read online

  For Keith

  — T.H.

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Forever Friends

  Chapter 2: Big School, Big Day

  Chapter 3: Egg Salad and Enemies

  Chapter 4: SPLAT!

  Chapter 5: Go with the Flow

  Chapter 6: Twinkle Toes

  Chapter 7: If I Were in Charge

  Chapter 8: Awesome Sauce

  Chapter 9: Rocking It

  Chapter 10: If Speaking Were like Dancing

  Chapter 11: A Change of Plan

  Chapter 12: Sparks

  Chapter 13: A Solution to an Impossible Problem

  Chapter 14: Building Bridges

  Chapter 15: For Your Eyes Only

  Chapter 16: Pink Tutus

  Chapter 17: Everyone Welcome

  Chapter 18: Two in the Place of One

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Learn more about Gabriela

  Request a catalogue

  Preview of The Real Z

  Copyright

  Okay,” my best friend, Teagan Harmon, said. “One word that describes this summer. Go!”

  “Just one word?”

  Teagan nodded, a sly smile spreading across her freckled face. The two of us were over at Teagan’s house, sprawled across her back lawn. I was full to bursting with Teagan’s grandfather’s one-of-a-kind raspberry lemonade and top-secret-recipe chicken salad. The day couldn’t have been more …

  “Perfect!” I declared, barely able to contain the word inside me.

  Teagan sat up and pulled her strawberry-blonde hair away from her neck. Normally, Teagan wore her favorite turquoise beanie, no matter the weather. But the end-of-August heat was too much even for her. Mr. Harmon, Teagan’s grandfather, had called the heat “downright oppressive. The kind of weather that makes you too hot to do anything, even think.”

  Not for me, though. I couldn’t stop my mind from replaying the events of the summer over and over like they were scenes from a movie. And I couldn’t stop hitting rewind.

  In my head I saw Liberty Arts Center, my favorite place in the world, an old brick building that sat right smack in the middle of Germantown Avenue. Mama, the director of Liberty, called the center the jewel in the crown of the surrounding community. And she was right—the community depended on Liberty for art and dance classes, poetry, too, and our yearly Rhythm and Views show that featured it all. But just that summer, Liberty had suffered a massive electrical failure that threatened to close the center for good. It took the whole Liberty family coming together—dancers, poets, and artists—to raise money for the repairs. We did a viral video, rallies, and my most favorite event of the summer by far—a performance in the park that I’d choreographed. The thought of it put a smile on my face to rival the August sun. The August sun that would soon turn into September, which meant …

  “Now, what’s one word you’d use to describe starting middle school?” We’d be starting sixth grade at Kelly Middle School in just two weeks’ time.

  “Huh? Oh, um …” Teagan blinked rapidly, as though I’d just snapped her out of her own thoughts. “Um,” she said again.

  “Let me help you out. Mega-crazy-exciting!”

  Teagan gave me a look.

  “That is totally one word,” I said, “and I’m sticking to it. What about you?”

  Teagan lay down beside me and then sat up quickly again. She tied her hair up into a ponytail, then reached for her coding notebook, which she’d nicknamed Cody. She began flipping mindlessly through its pages.

  Teagan was a lot of things. A problem-solver. A genius (though she didn’t like when people called her that). What she wasn’t was the kind of person who was ever at a loss for words, much less a single one.

  “Exciting is a good word,” she said softly. “And perfect is a good word for this summer.”

  “Of course!” I shouted, propping myself up on my elbow. “We saved Liberty, and put on an awesome show with awesome dancing and equally amazing poetry, courtesy of …” I cleared my throat dramatically and made a show of pointing from Teagan to me.

  She managed a weak smile that was nothing like the sly, playful grin she’d flashed at me only moments before. The last time I could remember seeing that look on her face was last month, when we’d gotten into our first-ever argument about the way Teagan used to jump in and talk for me all the time when I stuttered. I didn’t like seeing that look on Teagan’s face then, and I liked it even less now.

  “Wh-What’s wrong?” I asked, my nerves—and my stutter—getting the best of me.

  Teagan looked away from me. “I’mnotgoingtoKelly.” Her words came racing out of her in one breath.

  “What?”

  Teagan looked down at Cody and started flipping through it again. Pages filled from top to bottom with letters, numbers, and symbols flashed by. “I’m not going to Kelly,” Teagan said, more slowly this time.

  “What?!” I said again, but I’d heard her loud and clear. I had chosen “excited” for my one word, but if I had to pick a second it would be a word I’d learned last year: “foreboding.” School wasn’t like Liberty for me—it wasn’t a second home where I could speak through dance, the language I spoke best. It was the place where my stutter got in the way so often that some days I hardly spoke at all. Unless Teagan was there, and now she wouldn’t be.

  “B-B-But wh-why?” I asked. “Wh-Where are y-y-you going to g-g-go? Wh-What a-about about—” Sadness and confusion welled up inside me and I struggled to get my words out. There was a time when Teagan would’ve filled them in for me, but now she waited patiently. This made me feel even worse. Sometimes kids at school made fun of me when I stuttered, especially this one girl, Aaliyah Reade-Johnson. But never Teagan. A hole opened up inside me, too big to fill with all the words in the world.

  “I’m going to Main Line Tech,” Teagan said, her voice quavering. “My grandpa found out about their STEM programs—they’re the best in all of Philadelphia. I applied earlier this year, and they put me on a waiting list. I thought—” Teagan reached up to dab at her eyes. “I thought I’d never get off that list, and in a way, I was happy. I wanted to go to Kelly with you, but they called last week and said there was a spot open if I wanted it.”

  “B-B-B-But why w-would you want it?” I cried, fighting back tears.

  “Because they have all these math and science classes, even coding classes, and—oh, Gabby, I’m sorry.” Teagan burst into tears.

  I couldn’t help but join her, and for a few minutes, we sat beneath the cloudless, late-August sky, crying our eyes out.

  “Who-Who’s g-going to h-h-help me take o-on A-A-Aaliyah when she c-calls me R-R-Repeat?” I asked, sniffling.

  “You can take her on all by yourself,” Teagan said, wiping her eyes on the back of her arm. Her face was bright red and streaked with tears. “Besides, you’ll have Isaiah.”

  Isaiah Jordan was a boy we’d met just a couple months ago. Obsessed with all things Shakespeare, he’d been the one to offer the rec room at his father’s church as a place to hold Liberty’s programs while the center was closed. It wasn’t long before he became part of our poetry group and one of our good friends. This would be his first year in public school—he’d gone to private school up until fifth grade. So, I did have Isaiah. And my cousin Red and Bria and Alejandro, the rest of the poetry group, even though they’d be in seventh grade. But it just wouldn’t be the same without Teagan. I felt a fresh wave of tears coming.

  “Gabby?” Teagan said. “We’re still going to be best friends. Nothing will change. I promise.” She reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “You r-really pr-pr-promise?” I asked.

  Teagan nod
ded. I squeezed her hand back. Teagan jumped suddenly, as though an idea had just occurred to her. She pulled a pencil from Cody’s spiral spine, opened to a clean page in the back of Cody, and at the top of the page she wrote Forever Friends. Then she held the eraser to her chin, thinking, before she began to write.

  Forever friends through thicker and thinner

  She handed me the notebook and pencil.

  “You-You are wr-writing a poem in-in C-Cody?” I flipped the notebook closed and pointed at the cover, where Teagan had written: Cody Harmon, Property of Teagan Harmon. Sole Purpose: Coding. And then, in all capital letters: AND ONLY CODING.

  “I take Cody with me everywhere,” Teagan said. “I want to take this poem with me everywhere, too.” She reached over and flipped Cody back to the poem.

  Beneath Teagan’s line I wrote:

  Through blackouts, rallies, and a girl named Aaliyah

  Teagan giggled as she read what I’d written. She nodded for me to continue, so I wrote another line and then handed the notebook back to her. By the time Mr. Harmon came to the patio door and called, “Gabby, your mom is here!” we’d filled up almost the whole page.

  Forever friends, through thicker and thinner

  Through blackouts, rallies, and a girl named Aaliyah

  Through my bumpy speech

  And my non-dancing feet

  Even though I can’t speak a lick of code

  And I speak HTML, Java, and Go

  I have your back, your front, and all your sides

  Main Line Tech or Kelly

  We’ll stay best friends

  For real

  Bona fide

  Ready, Gabby?” Mama called upstairs.

  I was as ready as I was ever going to be. My hair was done in a neat, bouncy ponytail, courtesy of Mama. I had on a brand-new outfit still creased from sitting in a shopping bag in the back of my closet, and my book bag, filled to capacity with school supplies, was firmly on my back. In less than an hour, I’d be opening my first-ever locker and changing classes and—

  My phone buzzed. A text from Teagan: Happy first day of school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Happy first day of school to you, too! I wrote back and tried to ignore the pang of sadness in my chest that Teagan wouldn’t be with me.

  And remember—only an 8% chance! she replied.

  Last week, when I asked Teagan what I was supposed to do when Aaliyah Reade-Johnson made fun of me, Teagan went right into Teagan Problem-Solving Mode. She opened the calculator app on her phone and did a lot of complicated math to figure out the chances of me having any classes with Aaliyah. “Eight percent,” she had assured me. “In other words, slim to none.”

  If I could count on anything in this world to be right, it was Teagan’s math. I sent her one last bunch of heart emojis, slipped my phone into my backpack, then turned to my gray-and-white cat, Maya, who was curled up in the fuzzy chair beneath my loft bed. “I’m officially in middle school, Maya. Wish me luck!” But Maya just rolled over onto her back, eyes still closed, and purred. Unlike Maya Angelou, the poet I’d named Maya after, my cat did not have a way with words.

  I turned off my bedroom light and went downstairs, where I found Mama, Daddy, and my older cousin Red waiting for me by the front door.

  “I thought we were going to have to hit Control F to find you,” Daddy said, smiling.

  Mama always said Daddy’s job as a network engineer made him see the whole world as one big computer. He and Mama were just as excited about me starting middle school as I was—maybe a teensy bit more—and both were going to drop Red and me off.

  “This is a big day,” Daddy said as we followed Mama out the front door.

  “It is a big day,” she agreed. She’d even swapped out her usual dance teacher uniform of a leotard, yoga pants, and a long cardigan for a silky blouse and some sharp black slacks.

  Even though I couldn’t wait to be a middle schooler, I really wished Mama and Daddy would stop using the word “big.” Big just reminded me how many classes I’d be in without Teagan. About how big a deal my stutter seemed when teachers called on me in class. Some tiny tap dancers started tapping in my belly. I clamped my hand over my stomach to stop them.

  “Don’t worry, Gabby,” Mama said, smiling, as she opened the car door. “We’ll get that tummy filled. We’re stopping for bagels on the way.”

  I took a deep breath and slid into the backseat beside Red, who flashed me his toothiest, chipped-tooth grin. Red had been staying with Mama, Daddy, and me for the past six months while his mother, Mama’s sister and a doctor in the military, was overseas on what Red called “a tour.”

  Before he put on his seat belt, Red leaned over to me and whispered, “It is a big day, cuz. You won’t forget it. Just wait and see. It’s gonna be awesome.” He wriggled his eyebrows.

  There it was, the word “big” again. The more Mama, Daddy, and Red said it, the more those three letters started to feel like they were looming over me, casting shadows everywhere.

  “I should tell you, though,” said Red, lowering his voice, “there are a few things incoming sixth graders need to know.”

  “L-Like what?”

  “Like the fact that all of your classes are in the basement, and most of the rooms down there are filled with mold. Oh, and they serve you leftovers for lunch.”

  I stared at Red. Leftovers? Classes in the basement? Mold? The tippity-tapping in my stomach picked up pace.

  “You c-can’t be sssserious!” A vision of Isaiah and me sitting down to a lunch of bread crusts and half-empty containers of apple juice flashed through my mind. “Th-Th-That’s not even l-legal!” I shouted.

  Red’s smile dimmed a bit.

  “Everything all right back there?” Daddy called, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  “Everything’s fine, Uncle Rob,” Red said quickly. Then, to me, “Calm down, cuz. I’m just messing with you. Your classes aren’t in the basement and there’s no mold anywhere in the building, at least so far as I know. And they can’t serve you leftovers.” He flashed me his chipped-tooth grin again. “Middle school is awesome. Just you wait and see.”

  But what if it wasn’t awesome? What if I had mean teachers? What if I couldn’t get my locker open? The what-ifs piled up all around me, so many that a bagel with butter and jelly from my favorite deli couldn’t even take my mind off of them.

  By the time we pulled up to Kelly and spilled out of the car, I wasn’t so sure I was ready for middle school. At all.

  The tiny tap dancers started up in my stomach again, and this time I was sure they’d brought five friends apiece.

  Speaking of friends, Red couldn’t wait to find his. No sooner did his feet hit the sidewalk than he took off, calling, “See you later, cuz, Aunt Tina, Uncle Rob.”

  “Not so fast, Clifford,” Mama called after him.

  Red came reluctantly back, his hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki cargo shorts.

  “A picture for your mom first?” Mama asked, opening the camera app on her phone.

  Red obliged, sticking his tongue out at the last second.

  “I think that’ll do it,” Mama said, laughing and shaking her head.

  He slapped me gently on the shoulder. “Good luck today, cuz.” He wriggled his eyebrows. Then he turned to Mama. “Before I go. Aunt Tina, maybe you can ease up on that Clifford stuff around here? I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  Mama laughed again and Daddy joined in and for a moment my nerves settled down. But seconds later, Red was gone and my insides started to jitterbug again. I looked up to find Mama and Daddy staring down at me, concern etched across their faces.

  “Are you all right, Gabby?” Daddy asked.

  “I-I. I just-just—” I stopped. Mama and Daddy waited patiently while I found my words. “I-I’m j-j-just scared,” I said at last. And before I knew it, there were a million more what-ifs in my head.

  What if I didn’t make any new friends?

  What if I didn’t have any classes
with Isaiah? The Jordans had just gotten back from their vacation yesterday, so I hadn’t had a chance to check with Isaiah.

  “Oh, Gabby, you’ll make plenty of friends,” Mama said, doing that thing where she practically reads my mind. “Do you know why? Because you’re smart. You’re caring, and you’re talented and brave. Just think of all of the stuff you did this summer to save Liberty.”

  “And if people make fun of you for stuttering, ignore them and keep right on talking,” Daddy said. “Just like Mrs. Baxter always tells you.”

  Mrs. Baxter was the district speech therapist. I’d been working with her since second grade, and she must have told me a million times already to ignore people who made fun of me. But sometimes, it was easier said than done, especially if one of those people was Aaliyah Reade-Johnson.

  “And why don’t we just ask Isaiah if he has any of the same classes as you?” Mama said, looking over my shoulder.

  Isaiah and his parents were climbing out of a sleek black Cadillac. Today, Isaiah wore his favorite Prose Before Bros T-shirt while Mr. Jordan, who was the tallest man I’d ever met, wore his usual three-piece suit and shiny-as-a-new-penny shoes. Isaiah’s mom was almost the complete opposite of his dad, short, squat, and dressed down in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Daddy waved the two of them over, and while he and Mama chatted with Isaiah’s parents, I compared schedules with Isaiah.

  “We have math and lunch together!” I said.

  “‘As good luck would have it’!” Isaiah declared, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Isaiah was here with me, spouting Shakespeare lines, and we had math and lunch together. The tiny tap dancers slowed down a bit and then a bit more.

  The bell rang.

  Mama and Daddy grabbed me for one last hug. Mr. Jordan squeezed Isaiah’s shoulder. His mother planted a big, sloppy kiss on his forehead.

  “You remember what we talked about, right?” Mrs. Jordan asked.

  Isaiah nodded. With another shoulder clap and a second kiss, Mr. and Mrs. Jordan were gone.

  Mama herded Isaiah and me together for a photo and then said, “You two are going to be fine, right?”

  “‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,’” Isaiah replied.