As Long As We're Together Read online

  “Because they don’t need all that space,” Bowie said, stating the obvious. “It’s just the two of them. If they sell the house, they can live their own lives. They can travel, they can have adventures…”

  As he trailed off, Bowie grabbed a couple of forks and set them on the table next to the fudge. Again, he realized just how much they all had in common, and determined to get that point across to Bex, he stared into her eyes and added, “Like we did.”

  Bex groaned and shook her head as she balled up the plastic wrap and tossed it in the sink. She hated for Bowie to be right about this. But he probably was. She shouldn’t expect her parents to live in that big house all by themselves. They’d already sacrificed so much for Bex and for Andi, and selling the house was a call they should be allowed to make without anyone staging a rebellion. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about the fallout once Andi Shack was no longer accessible.

  “I know I didn’t live there for a long time, but I still thought of it as home,” Bex said, pulling a paper towel from the roll and tearing it into two pieces—one for her and one for Bowie. “And it’s Andi’s home. And if I’d never moved her out, they wouldn’t have to sell it.”

  Bex shuddered as she considered what she’d just admitted. If she was being totally honest with herself, she was blaming her parents—especially CeCe—for selling the house because she didn’t want to face the more difficult truth: that Bex, in fact, would be the one responsible. Worse still, there was a very real chance that when Bex finally broke the news to her, Andi would fault Bex, too. And who could blame her?

  “Huh. Ironic, isn’t it?” Bowie nodded as he sat across from Bex at the kitchen table. Then, about to dig into the fudge, he stopped and narrowed his eyes. “If I’m using that word right. I’m never sure.”

  “You are,” Bex replied, scooping a piece of fudge out of the pan and taking a bite. “I think.” She savored the confection, allowing it and Bowie’s question to distract her, ever so briefly, from the more difficult questions on her mind. Was he using the word correctly? Suddenly, she wasn’t sure, and Bex was usually an authority on those kinds of things. “But if you aren’t using it correctly and I just said you were, that would be ironic.”

  Bex grinned and waved her fork at Bowie before digging back into the fudge.

  “Ah!” Bowie smiled back and ate some more fudge. “Uh-huh.”

  “I think,” Bex added, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know!”

  They both laughed, and Bex breathed a sigh of relief. It really was nice to be discussing something as mundane as word choice with Bowie, even though she knew she couldn’t avoid the inevitable for much longer. Soon enough, Bex was going to have to make some bigger word choices—namely, finding the right ones to use when she finally told Andi about CeCe and Ham selling the house.

  If things had been weird at school for the first half of the day, they got even weirder when it was time for lunch. Walking into the cafeteria, Andi and her friends discovered that that room, too, was split into two sections—this time with big yellow expandable gates running across the middle. On the side marked with Group A signs, beautiful round tables were decked out with white tablecloths, fine china, and flower arrangements, making Cyrus wonder if all the events of the day had been leading up to some sort of twisted, mysterious Bar or Bat Mitzvah bash. On the Group B side, however, were the usual wooden cafeteria tables.

  A bunch of students were already enjoying their meals—or, at least, the Group A kids were, digging into a lavish spread that included giant bowls of shrimp cocktail, bread baskets full of croissants and rolls, and platters laden with fruits and vegetables, not to mention freshly carved prime rib and a deli tray of meats and cheeses. The Group B kids, on the other hand, were attempting to choke down some sort of mystery meat slop.

  After Andi and Cyrus took their seats at one of the fancy tables, Cyrus immediately grabbed some shrimp, savoring each magnificent morsel as he dipped them into the tastiest cocktail sauce he’d ever had.

  How can something this delicious not be kosher? he wondered to himself, chomping down on another delectable crustacean.

  But Andi couldn’t bring herself to eat a bite, especially when she glanced around at the stark contrast between the Group A side and the Group B side. She noticed Buffy and Jonah, looking hungry and miserable, through the diamond-shaped gaps in the gate.

  That was when all the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together in Andi’s brain. “I think I know what’s going on,” she told Cyrus.

  “What?” her friend replied, stuffing some more shrimp into his mouth.

  “I bet this is some social justice thing that Metcalf dreamed up.” Again, Andi looked around at the kids in Group A, who had been getting the royal treatment all day, while their Group B peers were forced to do hard labor with zero perks. “We’re supposed to learn how unfair it is that some people get things and some people don’t!”

  “Cool,” Cyrus replied without the slightest hint of empathy or understanding. He simply held up an empty silver dish and asked, “Can you pass the cocktail sauce?”

  “Cyrus, we should do something,” Andi insisted, ignoring his condiment request.

  “Like what?” Cyrus wondered, reaching across the table to take Andi’s cocktail sauce.

  “Like we all stand together,” Andi replied, getting up and walking over to pull Cyrus out of his chair. “And we go over to the B side, and we share our stuff with them!”

  Now the injustices of the day were really starting to hit Andi hard, and she couldn’t possibly let it continue any longer. If she didn’t take a stand, who would? So, marching toward the gate dividing the two sides of the cafeteria, she readied herself to rally the troops and shouted out to Group A, “Who’s with me?”

  Andi smiled with all the enthusiasm she could muster, but the kids in her group either kept eating their fancy meals or stared blankly up at her.

  She cringed and hung her head. “Nobody’s with me.”

  Frustrated as Andi was, it was nothing compared to what her friends in Group B were going through. Sitting across from each other, Buffy and Jonah stared down at their inedible lunch. Jonah held up a plastic spoon, and some grayish-green slime slid off it and back down into his paper bowl. “What is this? It’s docious-atrocious.”

  “Could be soup…could be stew,” Buffy muttered, examining the lumpy stuff on her own spoon and bringing it a bit closer to her nose, which made her stomach lurch. “Ugh! It smells like socks.” Buffy pushed aside her bowl, and then, noticing Andi, who stood at the gate, gesturing frantically at Jonah, she added, “Hey, I think Andi wants to talk to you.”

  Jonah spun around to discover Andi, her fingers curled around the bars of the yellow gate, staring longingly at him. He immediately got up and walked toward her. He gripped the bars of the gate, too, and they stared at each other.

  “I’m coming over to your side,” Andi told him urgently.

  “No!” Jonah protested, glancing around the cafeteria, his face clouding over with genuine fear. “It’s too dangerous—there are teachers everywhere.”

  “I don’t care!” Andi insisted.

  Jonah widened his eyes and shook his head, yet he couldn’t help marveling at Andi’s bravery. “How will you get past the barrier?”

  Looking down at the gate, which was on wheels, Andi easily pushed it open, stepped over to Jonah’s side, and closed it again.

  “Um, what are you doing?” Buffy blinked incredulously at Andi after she and Jonah sat down.

  “I’m not accepting the rules of this community—I’m with you guys now,” Andi told her friend, crossing her arms. Then an uncomfortable chill ran down her spine. It was weird to be the daring one in that moment, when that was usually Buffy’s thing. What had happened to Andi’s friend? Why wasn’t she standing up and fighting for what was right, too?

  But maybe it was Andi’s turn to inspire Buffy, who smiled as they turned to stare across the barrier, where Cyrus was all alone at his table, looking
like he might have eaten one too many shrimp.

  “Did you bring any food?” Jonah asked Andi, his voice full of quiet desperation.

  “No,” Andi replied, noticing that kids at the tables all around them were also hoping she’d brought something edible for them. “I left so quickly I had to leave everything behind.”

  As a collective groan rose from the Group B students, including Buffy and Jonah, Andi couldn’t help pointing out that they were all being kind of judgy.

  But that was when Cyrus picked up a huge bowlful of shrimp and headed for the yellow divider. Buffy practically clapped her hands when she saw him gesturing for someone to let him through. “Cyrus is at the gate!” she told Jonah excitedly, her face lighting up at the sight of him…and, more than that, at the delicious food in his hands.

  Jonah slid the gate open to let Cyrus in, and the moment he arrived, Buffy began leading a chant: “Cy-rus! Cy-rus! Cy-rus!”

  As Cyrus began to distribute the shrimp to the ravenous masses, the rest of Group B joined the chorus, pumping their fists in the air and thanking him for his brave sacrifice. Cyrus grinned proudly, thrilled with his newfound fame. Andi might have made a valid point about how unfair it was that some people had been given more than others on that particular school day—but Cyrus had adjusted to that happening long ago. If he was being totally honest, he didn’t entirely mind that the deck had finally been stacked in his favor. It was about freaking time!

  Meanwhile, Andi watched Cyrus being showered with adoration and smiled. “I don’t need a cheer,” she said to herself. “It was enough that I blazed the trail.”

  Once everyone had gotten their fill of shrimp, Jonah’s nose perked up and a huge grin spread across his face. “I smell something.”

  “Cookies,” Buffy said, her eyes widening and her stomach still growling. After all, one bowl of shrimp only went so far with the malnourished Group B. “Freshly…baked…cookies!”

  Buffy and Jonah beamed as they watched the cafeteria workers on the Group A side pull giant sheets of chocolate chip cookies out of an oven and set them on the counter to cool.

  But then Jonah’s smile faded. “We won’t get any,” he said with a sigh. “They’ll go straight to Group A.”

  “No!” Buffy cried, finding her rebel spirit at last. “We can’t let that happen!”

  But the wheels were already turning in Andi’s head. “Or maybe we can!” she pointed out, standing up and grinning.

  Andi walked over to Cyrus and pulled him up from his seat. “Cyrus, I need you!”

  Cyrus insisted he was too full of shrimp to move, but Andi wouldn’t take no for an answer. As Buffy and Jonah encouraged their friends to go for it, Andi dragged Cyrus over to the kitchen on the Group A side, where the cookies were still sitting out on trays, cooling.

  “Hi, we’re from Group A!” Andi smiled at the women behind the counter as she grabbed two huge trays of cookies, and Cyrus did the same. “The smell was driving us crazy; we’re just going to take these out for you.”

  Andi quickly spun around with her trays and motioned for Cyrus to follow her.

  “Group A forever!” Cyrus yelled at the cafeteria workers as he joined Andi.

  When they got a little distance from the window, they turned to each other and Andi shouted, “Run!”

  At first, Cyrus looked worried. “Me? Run?” But then he remembered his triumphant dodgeball turn in gym class earlier that day. “Oh, right, I’m an athlete now!”

  Cyrus and Andi bolted over to the Group B side of the cafeteria. But moments after they made it through the gate and set down the cookies, someone from Group A smelled the baked goods, leapt to his feet, pointed a finger at Andi and Cyrus, and screamed. It was Gus—the kid who had been so proud of solving the baby giraffe pop quiz in first period. When Andi and Cyrus turned and realized they’d been caught, Gus screamed even louder and proceeded to storm the gate. The dude was practically frothing at the mouth, like he was turning into some sort of brains-starved zombie.

  Upon discovering what Gus already had, the rest of Group A jumped up and began to scream and wail, too. It was as if they hadn’t eaten anything, let alone a full gourmet spread, in days, and just like Gus, they were all transforming into the walking—or more like sprinting—dead. Buffy and Jonah tried to hold the gate closed, but the kids from Group A were reaching over the top and wriggling their arms through every available space, pushing with all their might. It didn’t take long for them to force the gate open. And when they did, nobody was safe from their ferocious attack.

  Especially the baked goods.

  With cookies flying everywhere, Group A continued to attack Group B with all their might, committed to getting back what they believed was rightfully theirs. But Group B had had enough; they’d been kicked down and forced to accept that they were inferior to Group A for the better part of the day, and they weren’t going to take it anymore. It was time to fight back, to question authority, to eat the cookies. All the cookies!

  In the midst of the chaos, Gus, stumbling across the crumb-covered cafeteria floor, suddenly looked down at his chest and screamed even louder than before. On the upper right quadrant of his gray button-down shirt was something red and sticky.

  “I’ve been hit! I’ve been hit!” Gus screeched in horror, his mouth gaping wide enough to reveal that most of the cookies he’d attempted to consume were stuck in his braces. He was even paler than usual and looked like he was about to faint at the sight of what he believed to be his own blood.

  Buffy ran past him with fists full of her hard-won cookie contraband and assured him that it was just cocktail sauce.

  Gus breathed a genuine sigh of relief.

  Meanwhile, Cyrus was plucking cookies from the floor and shoving them into his mouth. “Five-second rule!” he shouted.

  As kids continued to dive and lunge for the cookies, playing tug-of-war with the trays, Dr. Metcalf stepped into the frenzied crowd and blew a whistle. Finally, the screaming stopped…and the rest of the cookies dropped.

  “Today’s exercise is over!” the principal announced, looking around at the disheveled student body, along with the tables, benches, and floors of the cafeteria—every last inch covered in cookie debris. “There is no more Group A, and there is no more Group B.” Then, noticing one long-haired girl in ripped jeans on the ground, and apparently unaware of Cyrus’s prior offenses, he added, “And we’re not eating cookies off the floor, Denise.”

  As the girl glanced up and rose to her feet, a mortified look on her chocolate-smeared face, everyone turned their attention to Dr. Metcalf, who asked, “Can anyone tell me the point of today’s exercise?”

  “It’s about privilege,” Buffy quickly responded as the principal walked past her. Clearly impressed, he turned and nodded, encouraging her to keep going.

  “It’s about one group thinking they deserve more than another…” Buffy’s voice trailed off.

  Again, Dr. Metcalf nodded, and then he turned to face the crowd of students who were gathered around. “Just because of the color…of their wristband,” he concluded, looking pointedly—and even a bit sadly—into the faces of his students.

  “But, uh, the people in Group A were better,” Gus stammered.

  Jonah grimaced as he shook his head and walked up to Gus, shooting daggers into his fogged-up, cookie-covered glasses. “Better at what?”

  “Good question!” Dr. Metcalf pointed a finger at Jonah, who was posturing like he was about to take Gus down. The principal stepped between the two boys as he continued. “How did I decide who got to be in Group A?”

  The students all looked at each other, dumbfounded. Even Buffy was stumped. But then Andi said, “It was completely random.”

  The principal smiled at her and then shook his head. “Wrong.”

  But Andi insisted that was all there was to it. “I mean, I don’t know—you just said, ‘Andi, Group A; Buffy, Group B.’ ”

  Andi stared up at Dr. Metcalf, who nodded and told her to keep going
.

  “Keep going? Going where?” Andi spun around and wandered among her classmates, trying to recall the exact order in which they had been divided up that morning. “Cyrus, Group A. Denise, Group B.” Andi looked around at the crowd. “Erin, Group A. Farrah, Group…B.”

  That was when it finally dawned on her. “You used the first letter of our names and just went back and forth!”

  “Right,” Dr. Metcalf said.

  “So it was every other letter: A, C, E were in the A group; B, D, F were in the B group,” Andi continued.

  “And so on,” the principal confirmed, his voice barely a whisper as he looked from one student to the next and spoke in the kindest voice any of them had ever heard him use since he’d started working there earlier in the school year. “Nobody here is better than anyone else.”

  Dr. Metcalf paused and let that sink in. As kids scrunched up their faces or turned to look at each other, some of them frowning, others with tears welling up in their eyes, he continued. “Nobody anywhere is better than anyone else.”

  Even the principal seemed like he might cry at that point. He actually seemed nervous, his voice trembling as he concluded, “A lot of problems wouldn’t even be problems if we all just accepted that simple fact. I hope you all learned that today.…”

  Andi stared up at Dr. Metcalf and smiled. As crazy as the day had been—and as crazy as the principal often seemed—it had definitely offered lessons worth learning.

  But then the principal continued. “Because the school board has hired a social sensitivity consultant and she’s asked for your feedback.”

  Suddenly, the cafeteria erupted into a loud roar of complaints.

  “What!” Andi demanded.

  “You’ll be hearing from my dry cleaner!” Gus shrieked.

  “Can you explain that alphabet thing again?” another kid asked.