Chapter One: Life on the High C’s

Education is a journey on the high seas of life.
—Adrian Culpepper, Assistant Principal

Okay, this time it was LaShonda Powell who got us into trouble. She had written an article for our group’s newspaper, The Cruiser, she called “Life on the High C’s or, Do We Really Need A’s and B’s?” I told her when she turned it in that Culpepper was going to blow up, but you know LaShonda. The girl just doesn’t care.

The last time that Mr. Culpepper had called us to his office he said that it was going to be the very, very last chance we were going to have to shape up.

“He can’t suspend all four of us,” LaShonda said. “I mean, ­really, how would that look on the school’s record?”

“I knew something bad was going to happen as soon as I saw that Da Vinci Academy came in fourth in the Academic Olympics,” Kambui said. “We were supposed to be numero uno!”

“At least,” Bobbi added.

I ­wasn’t worried about Da Vinci being fourth, or even about being suspended. I was worried about being dropped from the school altogether. My grades were way down and I knew it. Da Vinci was supposed to be one of the best gifted and talented schools in the city, and I simply ­wasn’t doing that well. It ­wasn’t that the material we were learning was too hard. In fact, it may have been too easy, and I ­really ­didn’t have to study so I was only paying attention to the stuff that interested me, which was mostly Phys Ed and Language Arts. Somehow I just ­couldn’t wrap my head around the other classes.

When Mr. Culpepper, the assistant principal and chief executioner, came in, he did it with a flourish, breathing through his nose and looking like a cross between a ­really mad Santa Claus and a swishy dragon.

“Well, what are we to say this morning?” he asked, looking over his rimless glasses.

“Or have the grades said enough? Hmmm?”

No response.

“We have noted two trends among this small group of miscreants,” Mr. Culpepper went on. “The first is that none of you are living up to your potential. And yes, we do know your individual abilities because you have all tested very well on the IQ tests. What I strongly suspect is that you just don’t care enough about education or about Da Vinci Academy for the Gifted and Talented. I’m wondering if you are ­really Da Vinci material.”

“We care,” I said. It sounded lame coming out.

“If it were left to me,” Mr. Culpepper continued, raising his volume slightly, “I would stick with the idea that education is about accomplishment and not potential and suggest that you all find other schools, perhaps ones closer to your homes. But since it is the principal, Mrs. Maxwell, who is the dispenser of last chances and not I, we will continue our little adventure a bit further. And, to tell the truth, I rather like her idea. She sees it as a final opportunity to prove you belong here. I see it as enough rope. If you get my drift.”

“What do we have to do?” LaShonda asked. LaShonda was tall, dark, and slightly wild-looking. Fashion design was her thing. She ­could make an entire outfit for anyone overnight. When we had first met in the sixth grade, she had told me that her parents had abandoned her and her younger brother when they were kids and that she lived with him in a group home in the Bronx.

“As you know, for our study of the Civil War, the entire eighth grade is being divided into Union sympathizers and Confederate sympathizers. Mrs. Maxwell, she of the compassionate heart, is appointing the four of you—what do you call yourselves? oh, yes, the Cruisers—to attempt to negotiate a peace between the two sides before war actually breaks out. It will take, in my opinion, more skill and dedication than any of you possess. But for some strange reason, she believes that by actually giving you more responsibility she will inspire you to greater efforts. I, of course, disagree.”

“How are we going to stop a war?” Kambui asked.

“Well, perhaps Mr. Scott ­could take his six-foot frame, his weird hairstyle with dreads on top and Indian braids on the side, and simply make them all go home,” Mr. Culpepper said. “I personally would attempt to negotiate a compromise. Maybe something can be learned from the history of the war itself, I suppose. You’ll also have to have more luck than any of you deserve. But it’s up to you, ­isn’t it?”

When we left Mr. Culpepper’s office we were all down. We knew what he was saying. The “one more chance” had boiled down to just that: one more chance.

“Anybody getting a bad feeling about this?” Bobbi asked in the hallway. “Sort of like he’s handing out menus for a final meal?”

“Look, we’ve got our newspaper started,” I said. “Maybe we can write a series of articles talking about how stupid war is. Let’s ­everybody think about it overnight and have a meeting tomorrow morning before the first class.”

“Maybe LaShonda ­shouldn’t have quoted Mr. Culpepper,” Kambui said.

“What we are doing, Kambui Owens, is publishing a newspaper that speaks for the real ­people of this school,” LaShonda said. “I’m not holding back just because he’s got a little power.”

The Palette was the official school newspaper and Mr. Culpepper was its adviser. Ashley Schmidt was its editor and she was cool, but Mr. Culpepper had final approval on anything, and as far as I was concerned the paper was just a way of putting out school propaganda. When the school got a printer that prints eleven-by-seventeen-inch pages I came up with the idea of an alternative paper. On the masthead of The Palette was the quote from Mr. C.: Education is a journey on the high seas of life. We played off of that and said we ­weren’t on a journey, we were just cruising. I called our newspaper The Cruiser. It was LaShonda’s idea to call our staff—LaShonda, Bobbi, Kambui, and me—the Cruisers.

We published the paper once ­every two weeks unless something special happened and we put out a special edition. We tried to charge a quarter a copy but Mrs. Maxwell said we ­couldn’t make it a commercial venture.

“And in the future”—Mr. Culpepper stepped from his office into the hall—“you will not quote me or any other teacher, official, or staff member of this school without written permission. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, O mighty one!” Bobbi said.

Mr. Culpepper started down the hall muttering something about Cruisers rhyming with losers.

No way we were losers, and if Mr. C. ­didn’t know it, we did. The thing was that Da Vinci Academy was supposed to be all world. We had been written up in the New York Times and Newsweekas a Harlem school that was taking care of business. Three quarters of the kids at Da Vinci were from outside of Harlem and were into that heavy competition thing. Who got the most A’s and turned in the longest papers, that kind of thing. But there were some kids who just were into the sweating and fretting jam. LaShonda called them the “real ­people.”

LaShonda Powell lived in a home with about fifteen other kids. Every morning she had to take her little brother to school in the West Bronx and then had to take the train downtown to Harlem to go to Da Vinci. She was late three or four times a week.

Barbara McCall was a math whiz and played second board on the chess team. She scored straight A’s in Algebra but D’s in about every­thing else. Everybody called her Bobbi.

Kambui Owens, my main man, lived with his grandmother a few blocks from me. Sometimes, when his father was out of jail, he lived with them. Kambui was deep into photography and I figured he had the best chance of becoming famous one day.

My name is Alexander Scott, but my friends call me Zander. Language Arts is my thing and one day I’d like to write screenplays. I don’t ­really have serious issues but I can’t seem to get myself to deal with the work. I usually liked Da Vinci because there ­weren’t a lot of fights. I ­couldn’t stand the kids who were snobby just because they had the smart thing going on. I don’t like snobby ­people.

I was hoping things were going to work out, even if Mr. Culpepper was ready to come down on us real hard. Mrs. Maxwell, the principal, was good ­people and she gave us as many breaks as she ­could. But if I did have to leave Da Vinci I ­didn’t think it would be the end of the world. At least I ­didn’t until I got home that evening.

Excerpted from THE CRUISERS © Copyright 2010 by Walter Dean Myers. Reprinted with permission by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.