Checkmate by Walter Dean Myers Page B

books and went to her desk.
    Race wasn’t something I was comfortable dealing with. Even if I felt someone was wrong I wasn’t easy talking about it or confronting them.
    The thing was that I always felt bad talking about race but I always thought I should do something if people werecoming down hard on black people. Mr. Culpepper hadn’t said anything against blacks — I didn’t think he liked anybody — but I thought that maybe Caren had heard him say something.
    Marc, Mom’s agent, came over for dinner. He brought a huge bag of hamburgers, sodas, and French fries. He was all excited, talking about a perfume gig for Mom.
    “Perfume is the gateway to high fashion,” he said, wiping some mustard from his chin. “And high fashion is where the money is.”
    “What do I have to do?” Mom asked.
    “The way the director laid it out to me is this.” Marc put his burger down and held his hands up with the palms out. “You’re in a dark room. They can barely see you. Behind you, in the distance, there’s New York at midnight. Maybe a few cars pass. Then there’s a small light on you and we see your profile. Then a male voice asks, ‘New perfume?’ Then you hesitate for a beat and say, ‘If you think so.’ That’s it!”
    “If I’m in the shadows and they don’t see me, how’s that helping my career?”
    “It’s building you up as a woman of mystery,” Marc said.
    Mom rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Will they see the guy?”
    “Only his hand holding a glass of champagne,” Marc said. “It’s going to be interracial, too.”
    “Is that good?”
    “It can’t hurt,” Marc said.
    I thought about what Caren had said. I got a burger, a handful of fries, and started toward my room.
    “What do you think, Zander man?” Marc called to me.
    “Sounds okay, I guess,” I said.
    Everyone in the school had two numbers they had to carry with them all the time. One was Mrs. Maxwell’s and the other was Mr. Culpepper’s. I called our assistant principal, waited for four rings, and was just about ready to hang up when he answered.
    “Hello, Mr. Culpepper, this is Alexander Scott,” I said.
    “And?”
    “Uh, I wonder if I could take Caren to the movies this Friday,” I managed to get out without hiccuping.
    “One moment.
Caren!
” I heard Caren answer in the background. “Do you want to go to a movie with Alexander Scott this Friday?”
    She said yes.
    “Alexander?”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “I will expect you between six-thirty and seven, and I will expect you to bring my daughter safely home by ten-thirty, is that understood?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The phone clicked.
    I hung up.
    Back into the living room. Marc is showing Mom a bottle of perfume. It looks fancy.
    “Zander, are you okay?” Mom pushes the perfume away.
    “I just got a date with Caren Culpepper,” I said.
    “I don’t know her, do I?” Mom said. “Is that wonderful?”
     

THE PALETTE
    Question: Should Da Vinci lose its elite status and be open to all students whether they are classified as gifted and talented or not? These essays were written after a discussion moderated by Ashley Schmidt and Mr. Finley.
    No!
    By Kelly Bena, eighth grade
    Gifted and Talented is, perhaps, a bad name for our school. It would be fairer to call the school Hard Work Academy. We are in Da Vinci because we do the work necessary to do well. If we have special status it is because we maintain high enough standards to deserve that status. Bringing in students who are not willing to do the work is no favor to them and lessens the opportunities of those currently working our butts off to make Da Vinci a great place in which to learn.
    Yes!
    By Demetrius Brown, seventh grade
    Maybe everybody would do the work if they felt special. When you play guitar it’s the top four strings that usually play the melody and everybody is happy with them, but the bottom two strings are valuable also and provide the harmonics. Having a school like Da Vinci is like having a