But Raven’s parents didn’t leave. Instead, her father tried again to explain. “Um, the message on the machine said Raven was talking back.”

“Talking back, speaking up,” said Raven, still trying to avoid facing them. “I just call it, a big ol’ misunderstanding, which brings us back to buh-bye!”

While Raven’s back was turned, Mrs Baxter waved her husband over. On the wall, she noticed a newspaper clipping with a photo of a middle-aged man. The headline beneath it read: “Local school’s Mr Petracelli honoured for outstanding community service”.

Then she pointed to “Ms Petracelli” and mouthed “Raven” to her husband. He nodded. And they closed in.

“Still here?” muttered Raven nervously, her back still turned to them. “All right, still here, okay.”

She’d completely erased the blackboard, so she needed something else to do fast. Quickly, she crossed over to the bulletin board and pretended to read it.

“Oh, look, bake sale!” she cried.

When her mother and father followed right behind her, she veered away and walked to the other side of the room again.

“Ms Petracelli,” said Mr Baxter, “we took off the entire afternoon to come down here.”

“So we’re not leaving until we get this whole thing sorted out,” added Mrs Baxter.

Raven found herself back at the blackboard. Looking for something to do, she picked up two erasers and began to clap them.

“All right,” she muttered, “not gonna leave, okay, oh, okay, oh —”

As her parents drew closer, she veered again and found herself facing a tabletop globe.

“What is this doing here?” she announced. Holding it in front of her face, she crossed to the windows. “I didn’t know Brazil was that big!”

“It’s funny,” said her mother. “We were just saying how responsible Raven’s become.”

“We even got her a new phone,” added her father.

“And she loves that phone like a puppy,” blurted Raven. Oops, she thought, then quickly added, “She said. To me.”

Just then, the computer made a sound.

Great, thought Raven, a distraction! “Ooh look, got mail,” she said, crossing the room yet again. Looking down at the computer screen, she started typing furiously.

“What bothers me the most,” her mother went on, “is that if Raven was having a prob-lem in school, why didn’t she come to us about it?”

“Any thoughts about that, Ms Petracelli?” asked her father.

Raven sighed. “Well, if I was Raven — which I’m not — maybe she’d be afraid to come to you because she thinks you want her to be perfect ...she said to me.”

Continues next week

Based on the popular TV series created by Michael Poryes and Susan Sherman. Illustrations: Uday Deb