“But we’ll feel better,” Lydia’s voice rose an octave.
“Will we? Okay, I admit, it was hilarious seeing the Nikes all sticky with mustard and beer hair. But who got in trouble? Us. And who’s on the Crips’ hit list for TP’ing Tony’s cousin’s house? Us. And who ended up with a concussion and almost died? Us. I mean, me. But you could’ve been right behind me. Face it. We’re lousy at this.”
“I think that concussion cracked your skull,” Lydia muttered.
“Yeah,” I said. “It cracked open my head and let a little sense in. Listen, every time we do something mean to the Nikes, we’re just like them. And I don’t want to be like them. I especially don’t want to be like their leader, Ashley Krupps. We’re better than that. Aren’t we?”
No one answered.
“Well, aren’t we?” My eyes circled around the Snob Squad. They all gaped at me, wondering, I’m sure, whether they should call the hospital and have me readmitted. On the psycho ward. It was no use. I figured I’d been wrong abut them. “Would you buy just as good?” I mumbled as I got up to leave.
Prairie said, “N-no. We’re better.”
I turned back. “You bet we are. Anybody want another Eskimo Pie?”
Lydia scowled. “So what do you suggest we do, Jenny? Just let them get away with it? Let people like Ashley Krupps keep on humiliating us forever?” Her voice edged toward a screech.
“No,” I replied, handing her a pie to calm her down. “We’re not going to put up with any more crap. What we need is a new attitude. You said it, Lydia. You called us the Snob Squad. Maybe we should act it. Allow me to demonstrate.” I pushed up my nose with my index finger and strutted across the Peacemobile. Prairie covered her mouth and tittered. She jumped up and copied me, and pretty soon Max was doing it. The Snob Squad Salute.
Lydia met my eyes. She wasn’t convinced, I could tell. This was hard for her. But maybe, like her tarot cards said, she had to make a choice. Finally, reluctantly, she rose and joined us.
Our troubles weren’t over. We knew that. If it wasn’t Ashley and the Neon Nikes, it’d be somebody else tormenting us. We were targets. But we didn’t have to be easy targets. Maybe, if we banded together, we’d make moving targets. And if we kept moving, we might just make it through middle school.
My appointment with the psychologist was Saturday morning at ten. Since I couldn’t persuade Mom to cancel the appointment, I devised a plan. I called it the “Jenny Solano Dummy Up Plan to Frustrate the Head Fed.” My best role was playing the Blob. I looked the part. No one dared mess with my body, and no one was going to mess with my mind, either. Not even a trained professional.
Mom picked me up at Max’s, looking a little shocked over where I’d spent the night.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I assured her. “We only drove the van to McDonald’s and back.”
I guess, seeing the tires on the Peacemobile were flat as Fruit Roll-Ups, she recognized the humor.
The shrink’s office was on the twenty-third floor of a glass and marble skyscraper. Even though we were rising up, up, up, I felt my stomach plunging down, down, down.
The office had Mickey Mouses stenciled all over the walls. Appropriate, I thought.
“Hello, Jennifer. I’m Dr. Sidhwa.” A short, dumpy man came out to greet me. He extended a hand to shake.
I let him waggle my limp wrist. The way he said Jennifer, so exotic sounding, made my scalp tingle. He said hello to my mother and ushered me in. My eyes strayed over my shoulder. I wanted Mom to come with me so bad. She smiled encouragement.
“You can call me Dr. Sid.” He pronounced it Dr. Seed. “Do you have a nickname?” He motioned to me to sit.
“Blubber Butt,” I said, taking the only chair. There was no couch or else I would’ve sprawled out for a nap. It’d been a late night.
He smiled. “I’ll just call you Jennifer.”
“Jenny,” I said. If my scalp tingled too long, I might let down my guard. He had kind eyes.
“Jenny. Your mother tells me you have a problem.”
I rolled my eyes.
He folded his hands. His fingers were short and fat, like Vienna sausages. “Do you think you have a problem?”
“Yeah,” I said. “My mother.”
He chuckled. “Don’t get me started on mothers.” He threw up his hands. “Mine calls me twice a week to ask if I’m engaged yet.”
“Are you?” I said.
He pointed a fat finger. “Don’t you start.” Smiling, he settled back in his chair. “Tell me about yourself. You’re in sixth grade, yes?” He arched an eyebrow.
Okay, I thought. Time to implement the Plan. I just sat there. In a second he’d start to squirm. He’d fill the empty space with speech. A second went by. Then fifteen, twenty seconds. This was getting uncomfortable. How long could he stare at me, eye-brows arched?
He won. I couldn’t stand it. “I’m fat,” I said. “So what else is new?”
“Is this new?” he asked.
“No. I was born fat. Not this fat. But then, I wasn’t born this tall either.”
Dr. Sid smiled. He studied me. “How long have you been this… weight?”
“I don’t know. A year. Do you watch Oprah?”
“What?” He frowned.
Oops, I cringed. It might be against his religion to watch tabloid TV. Even though Oprah was tasteful tabloid.
“Oprah. You know, the talk show? Never mind.”
“Yes, I know Oprah. I do watch her occasionally. I like her.”
“Really?” That surprised me. “Well, Oprah says if you overeat it’s because you have a void in your life. And she should know. She’s weighed like two hundred and forty-three pounds.”
“She doesn’t look overweight to me.”
“No, because she found her void and filled it. With money, is my guess.”
He laughed. “What’s happened to you in the last year to create this void?”
“What hasn’t happened?” I stopped. The last year. The last year had been lousy. Talk about misery, suffering, loss, and defeat.
“Would you like to tell me?” Dr. Sid said.
If I didn’t, he’d stare me down again. My exhaled stream of breath came out long and low. Why not? “I had this friend, Zoe Zarlengo….”
It wasn’t nearly as difficult to tell the story the second time. Of course, he got an abbreviated version. I didn’t reveal names or dates or places. Nothing incriminating. Nothing important. Nothing deep down.
“It’s very hard to lose a friend,” Dr. Sid said at the end.
“Especially a best friend. I mean, I had Petey, but he died on Halloween.”
Dr. Sid’s eyes widened.
“He was my hamster.”
“Ah.” He looked relieved. “I imagine you loved your hamster.”
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “Even though he was just a hamster, I had him since I was nine.”
“So you lost two friends in one year.”
I nodded. “And the only other person I was ever close to was my sister, and she flipped out last summer.” Oh, my God! It all made sense. That summer after Zoe left, Vanessa started losing touch. Not just with the world; with me, too. Then Petey died. Zoe, Vanessa, then Petey. All gone. “You’re good,” I said to Dr. Sid.
“Excuse me?”
“Three friends,” I said. “I lost three friends in one year. I mean, that’s enough to create a void in anyone’s life, isn’t it?”
“Definitely. So you believe your void is a lack of friends?”
“Oh, no. I have friends. I mean, I do now. Three friends.” Which was kind of ironic, wasn’t it? “Hey, I think my void is filled,” I said, standing. “I guess I’m cured.”
He clapped his hands together. “Wonderful. Perhaps we need to talk a little more. Would you mind?” He indicated the chair.
“Do you give out lollipops at the end?”
“What?”
“Nothing. I guess since you don’t have anyone else’s life to save for an
hour.” I shrugged and sat back down.
“Now,” he said, leaning forward over the desk, “let us go back a minute. You say your sister flipped out. What do you mean she flipped out?”
I cozied down into the soft leather upholstery. This was going to be an extended session.
Afterward, Mom met me in the waiting room. “So, how’d it go?” she said.
I slipped into my backpack. “Good.”
She gave me that look—you know, details? As we walked to the elevator, she asked, “What’d you tell him?”
I smiled at Mom. “Everything. Next week he wants to meet with Vanessa.”
Chapter 14
“You know, making us get weighed in public is psychologically damaging. We’re very sensitive about our bodies at this age. And I should know. My mother’s—”
“Her mother’s a child psychologist,” I finished for Lydia. “Believe what she says.”
Droopy Dietz sighed. “Is there anything about life that isn’t psychologically damaging?” He looked at Lydia. “Don’t answer that. Okay, if it’ll reduce the mental anguish, I’ll move the scale into the office. But people, I need to get your heights and weights for the next phase of the fitness test.”
As we herded toward the office door, I inched my way to the back. Talk about mental anguish. The last time I’d weighed myself I experienced one of Vanessa’s psychotic episodes. Dizziness over the digital readout.
Prairie said, “At least you’re t-taller than me. And my prosthesis weighs a t-ton.”
“Thanks, Prairie.” I smiled meekly. Wish I had something to blame my tonnage on.
Ahead of us, Ashley stomped out of the office. “The scale’s broken,” I heard her say to Fayola. “It weighs at least five pounds heavy.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. That’d put me over the top. That’d jam the works.
Sweat was streaming down my sweats by the time my turn came. Terlitz the Terminator, who was doing the honors, asked my full name and birth date. I was tempted to give him false information, but prior consequences with fake names nixed that notion. “Okay, step up onto the scale,” he ordered.
I did, then jumped off. “Wait,” I said. I kicked off my shoes and peeled away my socks. Tiptoeing back on, I exhaled my last breath. “Okay. Shoot.”
He adjusted the little metal indicator. Up, up, down a notch. No warning sirens sounded. Terlitz scribbled on the form attached to his clipboard. “That’s it,” he said. “Get down.”
That’s it?
Here’s where you’re going to confirm your suspicion about my sanity, or lack thereof. Here’s where you’re going to agree with my mother that I do indeed need professional help.
I said, “So, how much do I weigh?”
He pursed his skinny lips at me. “You really want to know?”
No, I want Ashley Krupps to know so her father can announce it to the whole friggin’ school. I shrugged. “Why not?”
He showed me the form. My kneecaps disintegrated. When I stumbled out, the Squad waited in the wings. Lydia grabbed my arm. “Jenny, are you okay? You’re white as a ghost.”
Ghost. That was a good word. I was a ghost. A ghost of my former self. “I lost six pounds,” I said.
“All right!” Max held up a palm and I smacked it.
“P-plus five,” Prairie said, “if Ashley’s right about the s-scale.”
Hey, yeah. I decided to believe Ashley Krupps was telling the truth, just this once. Eleven pounds. “I don’t know how this happened,” I said, slowly shaking my head.
“I do,” Lydia said. “You’ve been sharing all your candy with us—that’s how.”
I looked at her. She might be right.
“Okay, folks, I have a few announcements,” Mr. Dietz said. “Could we rally round?”
In slo-mo we all shuffled over to the tumbling mats. “First,” he said, “I have the results of the relay races.” He consulted his sheet.
We all zoned out, or at least I did.
“Best overall time, the Oakland Raiders.” I applauded, to be polite. I wished it’d been Kevin Rooney’s team since I’m deeply in love with him. He came in second. “Worst overall time,” Mr. Dietz paused. He caught Lydia’s eye and sighed.
Oh, great, I thought. More public humiliation. More suffering, more defeat…
“The Neon Nikes.”
There was a loud intake of breath in front of us. Ashley wailed, “That’s impossible!”
“ ’Fraid not,” Dietz said. “You girls missed two races. I had to give you zeroes. I don’t know what was so all-fire interesting up there in the bleachers, but I didn’t think it was my responsibility to come up and drag you down for your heats.”
“They were probably plotting to get us,” I whispered to Max. She smirked. Lydia heard and snickered.
“And you kept dropping the baton, too,” Melanie said to Ashley.
“I did not.”
“Did, too. And you never let me run the last leg. I’m the fastest,” Fayola said.
“You are not!”
“She is, too,” Rachel jumped in.
“That’s enough,” Dietz cut them off. “You’ll have a chance to make it up in this next phase. And, let’s see. Most improved time: the Snob Squad.”
“What!” we all cried together.
“Yes,” Max cheered. We high-fived.
I couldn’t believe it. Then I could. I mean, we started out as slow as Saskatchewan. Where is Saskatchewan? Canada, right? Anyway, with Max’s encouragement (or threat of execution by the Crips), we must’ve picked up speed.
“The next phase will be strength building,” the Dietzman said. “You can work in your same teams.”
Melanie raised her hand. “Do we have to? I don’t want to be on Ashley’s team anymore,” she said.
Rachel said, “Neither do I.”
Ashley slashed them dead with machete eyes. She turned the fire on Fayola. Fayola said quickly, “I think we should switch. Mix up the teams.”
I raised my hand. “I think we should keep the same teams. It’ll be a lot easier to keep track of, paperwise.”
The idea appealed to our gym teacher, you could tell. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ll keep the same teams.”
Max and Prairie smacked palms. “Wait a minute.” Lydia waved her hand in the air. “I think we should change.”
I looked at Lydia. My spirits sagged. I thought for sure she was with us, that she’d made the right choice.
She said, “I think we should keep the same teams but be allowed to change leaders. We want our team leader to be Jenny Solano.”
My face flared a fire stick.
“Sure, sure. That’d be fine,” Dietz said. “Can we get started now?”
“When did you decide this?” I whispered while Dietz droned on about how to use the weight training equipment without injuring ourselves or others.
“While you were in g-getting weighed,” Prairie said.
“It was unanimous.” Lydia smiled. I looked at Max. She slugged my shoulder. Good thing I still had some fat reserves left.
Leader? Me? Suddenly I felt different. Changed. As if the old me had died and a new me had been born. A vision materialized in my mind. The Death card. Maybe this is what Max meant by a change of consciousness. A death and a rebirth.
“Jenny, snap out of it.” Lydia snapped her fingers in front of my face.
“Must be the concussion,” Max said.
“P-permanent brain damage.”
“You guys.” I waved them away. “All right, as your newly elected commander-in-chief, my first duty is to inform you that Sunday is my birthday. You are all invited over Saturday night for a sleep-over. That’s an order, not a request.”
Max clicked her army boots together and saluted. “Yessuh.”
Prairie and Lydia saluted, too. That made us all collapse into hyena hysterics. Ashley stormed past and snapped, “Shut up.”
We all did the Snob Squad salute, finger to nose to Ashley. She just sneered and
stomped away toward the principal’s office. Strange. I didn’t hate Ashley Krupps anymore. At least not as much as I used to. I felt kind of sorry for her, if you want to know the truth. Ashley was just being Ashley. I forgave her for that. Someday I might even forget.
My last thought, before the whole class got put on notice was, This is going to be the best birthday I’ve ever had. Between the four of us, we might eat enough cake to fill my void. To fill all our voids. Yes, I thought. Mow down misery, snuff out suffering, laugh at loss, defy defeat. Next year was going to be better. Sweet, as Lydia would say. Isn’t that how revenge is supposed to taste?
Revenge of the Snob Squad Page 7
