Justine McKeen, Walk the Talk Read online

  Sigmund Brouwer

  illustrated by Dave Whamond

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Savannah—this one is especially for you.

  Text copyright © 2012 Sigmund Brouwer

  Illustrations copyright © 2012 Dave Whamond

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-

  Justine McKeen, walk the talk [electronic resource] / Sigmund Brouwer;

  illustrated by Dave Whamond.

  (Orca echoes)

  Electronic monograph in PDF format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-930-8

  I. Whamond, Dave II. Title. III. Series: Orca echoes (Online)

  PS8553.R68467J884 2012 JC813’.54 C2011-907544-X

  First published in the United States, 2012

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942591

  Summary: Justine has plans to start a walking school bus at her school to help create a greener environment, but not everyone trusts her ideas.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Dave Whamond

  Author photo by Reba Baskett

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  “I wish all cars had smoke coming out of them like that,” Justine McKeen said to her friends Michael and Safdar. She pointed at an old car passing them on their way to school. A long trail of blue-black smoke followed behind it.

  “What?” Safdar said. “You’re the Queen of Green! An old car like that should be taken off the road!”

  The three of them had almost reached the school. There were only a few minutes until the bell rang to start the day.

  “Yes,” Justine said. “I am the Queen of Green. And yes, that car should be taken off the road. But look at all the cars in front of our school.”

  A long line of cars idled as kids were being dropped off. There was also a lineup of buses. Kids exited the buses and ran into the school. “Do you see all the stuff coming out of those cars?”

  “Those cars are a lot newer than that old one,” Michael said.

  “Just because we don’t see any black smoke doesn’t make them better. All of these cars are sending invisible stuff called carbon dioxide into the air. Too much carbon dioxide is bad for the environment. Did you know, if nine kids walk to school all year instead of going in cars or buses, it stops over a ton of carbon dioxide from going into the air? It also saves gas. The less gas we use, the less we have to drill for oil. And that’s good too. Plus walking is healthier for kids.”

  “Let me guess,” Safdar said. “You have a plan. Again.”

  “Of course I do,” Justine said. “I am the Queen of Green.”

  “Let’s hope it’s a better plan than your last one,” Safdar said. “I still can’t believe you talked us into helping you move all that dirt to start a roof garden at school.”

  “Speaking of the garden,” Michael said, “don’t look now, but the janitor is up on the roof. And he doesn’t seem happy to see you, Justine.”

  When someone says, “Don’t look,” the first thing a person does is look. So Safdar and Justine looked up at the roof. Mr. Noble, the janitor, had climbed a ladder to get to the top. His hands were on his hips. He frowned at all three of them.

  “Hi, Mr. Noble!” Justine waved. “Nice to see you!”

  “It’s not nice to see you,” he yelled.

  “I already said I’m sorry! Can I help clean up the mess?” Justine asked.

  “You stay away from me! Your help would only make it worse!”

  Michael and Safdar tried pulling Justine inside the school.

  “Everybody is staring at us,” Safdar said.

  “It’s your hat,” Michael said to Justine.

  Justine wore a wide-brimmed hat with a stuffed bird perched on the side.

  She smiled. “I like my hat. It goes with my dress.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Safdar said, “but what’s your plan for those cars? Plug all the exhaust pipes with bananas?”

  “Good idea,” Justine said. “Or maybe a potato. We just sneak up behind each car and—”

  “I was joking,” Safdar said. “Please don’t try that. Something could go very wrong. Just like the garden on the school roof went wrong.”

  “How would I know two days of rain would make the dirt so heavy?” Justine said. “And how many times does a person have to say sorry?”

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t look now,” Michael said to Justine and Safdar. “There’s the school bully, Jimmy Blatzo.”

  Whenever someone says, “Don’t look,” the first thing a person does is look. So Safdar and Justine looked. Jimmy Blatzo was beside the water fountain by their classroom.

  “Hey, Blatzo,” Justine said.

  “Quit calling me Blatzo,” Jimmy Blatzo said.

  “I know, I know.” Justine grinned. “If I call you Blatzo, people might think I’m not scared of you.”

  “You just said it again.” Jimmy Blatzo shook his head. “I have to get going. You’ve got the same substitute teacher my class had last week. He is a jerk. I don’t want him to know I’m in the hallway.”

  “How come?” Michael asked.

  “Look, kid, did I give you permission to talk to me?” Blatzo asked.

  “Um, no,” said Michael.

  “Then don’t talk to me,” said Jimmy Blatzo.

  “Got it,” Michael said.

  “That’s still talking,” Jimmy Blatzo said.

  Michael silently mouthed the word Sorry.

  “Much better,” Jimmy Blatzo said.

  “Hey, Blatzo,” Justine said. “What’s the deal with the substitute teacher? Why don’t you want him to know you’re in the hallway?”

  “You’ll find out,” Jimmy Blatzo told her. “And quit calling me Blatzo.”

  “Sure.” Justine walked toward her classroom. Then she turned back. “Hey, Blatzo. What do you think of my hat?”

  “A bird,” he said. “You always dress weird.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “I like it too.”

  Chapter Three

  The substitute teacher’s name was Mr. Barnes. He was tall and skinny and had long stringy hair. He wore a black T-shirt with the name of a rock ba
nd on it.

  The bell rang, and all the students sat down. Mr. Barnes sat behind his desk. He pointed at Justine. “Put your hat in a cage before it flies away,” he said.

  Justine put her hat under her desk.

  “That was funny,” he said to the class. “Why aren’t you laughing?”

  “She is our friend,” Safdar said. “It’s not nice to make fun of the way she dresses.”

  Mr. Barnes stood. He glared at Safdar. “What is your name?”

  “Michael,” Safdar said. “If you have to put a red mark beside my name, I will understand.”

  Now the class laughed.

  That made Mr. Barnes angrier. “What’s so funny?”

  Michael put up his hand. “I am Michael.”

  “Hah, hah,” Mr. Barnes said. “Sure. Very funny.”

  Mr. Barnes sat down and opened a newspaper. “It is silent reading time. Yesterday you read chapter one. Today read chapter two. And keep quiet.”

  Then Mr. Barnes made a loud noise. It was the kind of noise that happens when a person’s body lets out some gas. It was an F-A-R-T-I-N-G noise.

  The class started laughing again.

  “Enough!” Mr. Barnes said.

  As soon as the class was quiet, Mr. Barnes made the same noise, an F-A-R-T-I-N-G noise, except in a higher pitch. It sounded like someone had stepped on a duck.

  The class laughed louder.

  “Enough!” Mr. Barnes roared. He reached under his chair and pulled out a small machine with a tiny speaker. It had been taped under his seat. He looked at it, and it made another loud, rude noise, an F-A-R-T-I-N-G noise.

  On the side of the machine, white letters spelled two words: Farting Machine.

  “Whoever did this is going straight to the principal,” he yelled at the class. “Otherwise, everyone in the class has extra homework.”

  Justine McKeen stood up. She put on her hat. “You can send me to the principal,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” Mr. Barnes asked.

  “Justine McKeen,” she said.

  “The Queen of Green!” said Safdar.

  “Well, now she’s the Queen of In Trouble With the Principal. Go to the office right now. I will be there in a minute to explain what happened.”

  Chapter Four

  Justine sat on a chair outside the open door to the principal’s office. She heard the janitor, Mr. Noble, talking to the principal.

  “Ms. Booth, I have a problem. In this school there are girls who put on lipstick and then kiss the mirrors in the girls’ bathrooms,” Mr. Noble said. “They leave big smooch marks on the mirrors.”

  “Smooch marks?” Ms. Booth said.

  “Smooch marks. In all shades of colors,” said Mr. Noble.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s probably better to kiss mirrors than to kiss boys.”

  “You may think it’s funny. But I don’t. After school every day it takes over half an hour to wipe the lipstick off the mirrors. That stuff is not easy to remove. Can’t you do something?”

  “I will give it some thought,” Ms. Booth said. “How is it going with the hole in the roof?”

  “You mean where the roof garden was?”

  “We’ve been through this, George. It was my fault. I did tell Justine I thought it was a good idea. A roof gets lots of sunshine, and it’s not a place rabbits or deer can get at. I just didn’t expect she would go ahead with it.”

  “Face it,” Mr. Noble said. “That girl is weird. You should see the hat she wore today.”

  “I’m out here!” Justine said from her chair. “And the hat matches my dress perfectly. It’s to remind people about birds and to not harm them.”

  “I like the way you dress,” Ms. Booth called out to Justine. “It reminds me of a flower child from the peace movement.”

  “Thanks. That’s what my grammy says,” Justine said.

  Mr. Barnes stormed into the room. He was holding the Farting Machine. He marched past Justine in to Ms. Booth’s office.

  “Thanks for knocking,” Ms. Booth said.

  “That girl out there taped this under my chair,” Mr. Barnes said. “Justine Queen Green, or whatever her name is.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Mr. Noble said. “I’m telling you. The girl is weird.”

  “George, that’s enough,” Ms. Booth said. “And Mr. Barnes, what are you holding?”

  “It makes sounds,” he said.

  “What kind of sounds?” asked Ms. Booth.

  “Going-to-the-bathroom sounds,” said Mr. Barnes. “Like this—”

  Justine heard an F-A-R-T-I-N-G noise. She hoped Mr. Barnes had made the noise with his mouth.

  “I see,” Ms. Booth said. “And you say that Justine McKeen put it under your chair.”

  “She confessed. I demand you punish her!”

  “And it would be nice if you did something about the smooch marks,” Mr. Noble said. “Maybe that was Justine’s idea too. Smooching mirrors to save the planet.”

  “Smooch marks?” Mr. Barnes said. “What kind of school is this?”

  Justine heard Ms. Booth sigh. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

  Both of them stomped out of the principal’s office and stopped to glare at Justine.

  “You are a weird, weird girl,” Mr. Noble said to Justine. “With weird, weird ideas.”

  Then they stomped out into the hall. It was Justine’s turn to talk to Ms. Booth.

  Chapter Five

  “I see these more often than you might guess,” Ms. Booth said. She was holding the speaker that Mr. Barnes had found under his desk. “It’s a remote-control farting machine. I take them away from Jimmy Blatzo all the time. He gets a new one whenever he can save enough money. I happen to think they are funny. But only when it’s appropriate. Do you think it’s appropriate to tape one under a teacher’s chair?”

  “No,” said Justine.

  “Why did you do it?” Ms. Booth asked.

  Justine didn’t answer.

  “Well,” Ms. Booth said, “at least tell me where the remote control is. I’ll need to take that from you too.”

  “Um,” said Justine.

  “You don’t have the remote control, do you?”

  “Um,” Justine said again.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ms. Booth said. “You don’t even know it needs a remote. This doesn’t seem like the type of thing you would do. So the question is, why did you confess to doing it if you didn’t?”

  “Mr. Barnes said everyone would get punished if no one stood up. So I thought I would save everyone else from trouble. Plus, Mr. Barnes said he would send whoever did it to the principal. I thought it would be a good way to get to talk to you. I’ve been trying to meet with you, but the secretary keeps telling me you are too busy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you too busy to talk to me because you are mad about my idea for a garden on the roof?”

  “I admit it seems like every day you try to bring me an idea to help the school go green. Remember, I asked you to write them down instead of coming to see me all the time?”

  “Did you read the letters I sent you?”

  Ms. Booth grabbed the first three letters off the pile. “Not all of them.”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you. I have a really, really good idea this time. Could you listen to just one more? Please?”

  Ms. Booth smiled and nodded. “If it was important enough to take the blame for something you didn’t do, I suppose I should hear what you have to say. What is your next idea?”

  “A walking school bus,” Justine said.

  A funny look crossed Ms. Booth’s face.

  “I don’t mean school buses with legs. I mean instead of kids taking a bus to school, they walk. Together. In a group. Too many people talk about helping the environment but never do it. I think it’s time to walk the talk.”

  Ms. Booth leaned forward. “You have two minutes. Tell me your idea.”

  Chapter Six

  “It is really good for the planet,” Jus
tine said. “And it’s good for kids too. A walking school bus doesn’t use gasoline, and it doesn’t send engine exhaust into the air. Kids will get extra exercise every day. Plus they will have fun talking with their friends as they walk through the neighborhood. A grown-up leads the walking school bus. The grown-up is called a driver, but really the driver just walks with everyone else.”

  “Setting it up sounds like a lot of work,” Ms. Booth said.

  “No,” Justine said. “All you have to do is create a walking-school-bus route. Each route would have nine kids on it. You make sure the route has as few streets as possible to cross. The driver would stop at the first kid’s house, and then move on to the next kid’s house. The walking school bus would arrive at the same time every day, just like a real school bus with a real schedule. The only difference is the kids walk instead of riding the bus. It would be great if our school could organize at least ten walking school buses.”

  “Sorry,” Ms. Booth said. “If it is a school activity, I would need signed permission slips from the parents.”

  “I already found walking-school-bus permission slips on the Internet. I printed them out for you.”

  “Sorry,” Ms. Booth said. “If it is a school activity, the students will need adult supervision.”

  “A walking school bus works like a train,” Justine said. “You have one parent at the front of the bus and one parent at the back of the bus.”

  “Sorry,” Ms. Booth said. “That would require two parents every day. We can’t afford to pay them.”

  “If they are volunteers,” Justine said, “you don’t have to pay them. And the school will save money if you don’t need to run a real school bus.”

  “Sorry,” Ms. Booth said. “I don’t have time to do all the work to get it started.”

  “That’s okay,” Justine said. “I will do all the work. I will plan the route. I will find kids who will join the walking school bus. I’ll make sure to get all the permission slips signed. I will even go door to door and get a list of adults who will volunteer to supervise every day.”