Gertie's Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley

words through the orange sticky stuff, so Junior told her what it said. The fifth graders were each supposed to ask an adult to come to school, and they would explain this adult’s career, and it was supposed to help all the students decide what they were going to be when they grew up. Career Day sounded like the best thing Gertie had ever heard of.
    â€œYou always do good at speeches and things where everybody’s looking at you,” Junior said. “So maybe once you’ve given your speech you can tell her about it. I mean, she’ll be proud, right? Your mom?” Junior’s eyes were wide.
    Gertie leaned toward him. “I don’t want to make her proud,” she explained. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s about making her realize I’m important.”
    â€œOh,” said Junior, nodding. “That’s okay, too.”
    *   *   *
    When Gertie got home she collapsed onto her bed. The edges of the glow-in-the-dark stars blurred against the ceiling. She dangled the locket in front of her eyes.
    Her father was back on the oil rig, so he wouldn’t be able to come to Career Day in person, physically, himself, but that was okay. In fact, it was better. This way, Gertie would give the speech and explain her father’s career all by herself. She was a capable and independent woman.
    Her father spent two weeks on the oil rig in the middle of the ocean. He did everything on the rig. He worked, ate, slept, even played video games with the other workers. Then he got to come home for two weeks. Gertie loved when he came home because he’d missed her so much that he’d grab her arms and swing her around in circles through the air. And then he’d have to go away again.
    It was dangerous work, so her father had to be very brave. And it was hard work, so he had to be very strong. Oil rigging was pretty much the weirdest, most wonderful job in the world. Which was why everyone else was going to be blown out of the water by her Career Day speech. Unless … unless Mary Sue brought her movie director father.
    No, thought Gertie, that wouldn’t happen. She just had to think positive.
    She pulled out her blue notebook and wrote Phase Three at the top of a page. Ms. Simms would be stunned when she realized what an amazing public speaker Gertie was. She’d make all the other teachers come to listen. Oh my stars, they’d say to one another, such poise, such a voice, an inspiration, a marvel!

 
    10
    Who Wants to Go Next?
    â€œGive ’em hell, baby!” Aunt Rae called as Gertie barreled out the screen door the next morning.
    Gertie stomped through the crunchy leaves and up the bus steps, her Career Day speech clenched in one fist, her Twinkies in the other, not suspecting anything unusual. She barely noticed the thoughtful way the bus driver munched his toothpick as he gazed into his rearview mirror. She almost didn’t hear the whispers as she ran down the aisle to her seat.
    But when she reached her seat, she jerked to a stop so fast her tennis shoes squeaked against the rubber floor. Junior sat with his arms crossed over his chest. His smile stretched almost to his ears. Gertie stared. Around her, the whispers rose in volume.
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œWhy’d he do it?”
    â€œHe’ll probably get expelled with that—”
    Junior’s hair was shaved to short stubble on the sides of his head, and he had a stripe of longer, gelled-up hair down the center.
    â€œI call this,” he told her, “the Riptide.”
    Gertie sat. She had never imagined that hair could be like this , that it could make feelings unfurl inside a person.
    Junior’s hair made her feel like snapping her fingers at the whole world— mmm-hmmm, oh yeah. The Riptide was the satisfying snick of roller skates over sidewalk seams. It was grape Popsicle, frosty from the freezer. It was seeing your own face reflected,