I have seen the signs.

       At 8 A.M. the sun hadn’t hit our building yet like it did every single summer morning, teasing me to get up, get out, get playing. Far below our eighth-floor apartment, the street was still in shadow.

       Marble notebooks are on sale in six-packs for $2.99.

       If that’s not enough hints for you, all-day barbecues smoke the air today: hot dogs, hamburgers and beef patties, too.

        You don’t have to be a fortune-teller to figure it out.

       It’s Labour Day. School starts tomorrow.

       Butterflies have landed in my belly and I can’t eat a thing. I can’t wait to see everybody. I have to tell them everything!

       The phone keeps ringing for my mom. She’s already been to three Parents’ Association meetings at Utopia Central, my school down the block. Grade Five parents are in an uproar. The gossip is thick as sea fog.

       Nobody’s happy. Not my principal, Mrs. Rosenblatt, who demands things her way. Not the teachers, who love things their way. Not the parents, who need things their way. This is the first time they all want the same thing — new classrooms! They complain us Grade Fives will be stuffed into sardine-tight rooms under a black tar roof on the tippy-top floor of Utopia Central School. We’ll have the biggest classes since 1920 when the building first opened to let in everybody’s great-great-grandparents fresh off the boats that brought them here. Psst . . . there’s more . . . the board can’t afford reading teachers so we don’t have any . . . all the teacher’s assistants who stop the little ones from crying got fired . . . and two aides are left to supervise lunch for 1400 kids.

       In the evenings, at those parents’ meetings, parents yell a lot. My mom says families protest down at the board, too. They holler so loud, you can hear them across the zooming parkway. Chelsea’s mother can let go such a shrill scream, all the pigeons fly off. She’s the president of the Parents’ Association.

       “Some kids are bigger than me!” she shouts over the phone today, waking up my dad snoozing in front of the television. “After Christmas, they’ll be ten pounds heavier. How are so many kids going to fit in ONE room? We need another classroom for Grade Five RIGHT NOW!”

       My mom frowns. “Wait, they told us in June. Families will move away. No-shows, they call kids who don’t come back. But what about those parents registering new kids? The line was so long, it reached from the school to the subway entrance, four blocks away.”

       I have my own issues. On the last day of June, my best friend and I put our report cards side by side: 5A said Ah Kum’s; 5D said mine. We’re gonna be living on two separate planets. Last year, Ah Kum and I were split apart in Grade Four. Looks like it’ll be forever now.

       Ah Kum’s name suits her; in Chinese it means “orchid.” She’s a flower trying to bloom in a spot where it can’t, like some shady garden, or poking out of a crack in the sidewalk.

       “I’ll be all alone without Ah Kum,” I complain all summer.

       “Maybe we won’t be getting any more notes home about how much the two of you talk,” my mom reminded me.

       My dad said, “Maybe you’ll learn more.”

       My sister, Lakeisha, just stuck her seven-year-old nose up in the air and grinned.

       “See what happens.” My grandma patted my braids. “Things have a way of working out. You and Ah Kum will find a way to be together.”

       The one and only bright spot about going back to school is a sneak peek at Willie. I can’t even say his name without squealing. He’ll be in 5C, down the hall. No, he did not tell me himself. I got it through the grapevine.

       Willie only spoke to me once. Actually, he didn’t really speak to me, but kind of said something so cool, I never forgot it. On Field Day, near the end of June, his soccer team won the tournament. Afterward, he smacked hands with a Jamaican buddy of his. It happened to be right by my ear.

       Here’s what he yelled: “Everything cook and curry!”

       I don’t know if they were talking about food (Cook? Curry? I am always hungry, too) or about the game. Whatever it meant, they high-fived it up in the air without their feet even touching the pavement. Willie’s hair, a mess of dreadlocks, was flying, too. It sure is a stretch to understand how boys think. But now that I’m ten, it’s the first task I’m gonna tackle in Grade Five: boy watching.

       This brings me to the subject of clothes. Are you ready? Here’s what Utopia Central School recommends for a successful start to Grade Five:

       No midriffs

       No tank tops

       Nothing skimpy

       Nothing sleeveless

       Nothing too tight

       Nothing above the knees

       Excuse me, but what’s left? A skirt, my grandma says. Not on me. Skirts stop at my thighs when they are supposed to halt at my knees. Even capris become shorts on me. Whatever am I going to wear? I can’t show up with a cute little back-to-school outfit like Lakeisha. Her hair will be tied in pink ribbons and she’ll wear a pleated jumper. I want to appear so cool, like I just happened to be born in my clothes.

       We went shopping on the avenue Saturday, past ten Korean nail salons, the bodega, the Jamaican meat pattie takeout window (hours 11 A.M. to midnight), the library with more closed hours than open ones, the subway entrance, Singh’s Sweets, Peking Panda where shrimp chow fun can be stir-fried in five minutes, and stopped at Old Navy.

       I am now as ready as I can be. I got the clothes I wanted for the first day, a Jamaican meat pattie wrapped up for lunch, and the morning walk to school arranged with Ashley and her mom and my friends Amber and Chelsea. But I’d gladly change back into my summer clothes, the jeans that got skin-tight and the T-shirt that is too skimpy, if I could be with Ah Kum.

       Did I mention that I am not too crazy about my new teacher either? I have never met Mrs. Gauthier personally. I did take a note to her once, but she never looked up from her desk. Just stuck her hand out to take it and went on working. She didn’t take a second to have a peek at me. That tells me something. She’s not interested in kids, just in teaching. I need a teacher who will like me as I am.

       Here’s what I want even though nobody asked. I wish we could put all the Grade Fives in a giant extra heavy tumbler like at Suds ’N Us Laundromat, then shake us and swirl us all around. Inside, we’d cling like magnets to our friends. Out we’d tumble, fresh and shiny new into each classroom with our friends smiling back at us like polished mirrors from across the aisles. For me, it’s not about the numbers of kids. It’s about Ah Kum and me. So either it’s a jumble, a trip to Mrs. Rosenblatt’s office to tell her this won’t do, or else I’d be willing to try voodoo.