The Class

by Frances O’Roark Dowell

  It was like basic science, right? You had Petra, who was a creep, but she was a popular creep and kept her distance from mere mortals. Becca Hobbes, definitely a mere mortal, was also a butt kisser who tried to get in good with every adult on the planet. Add Becca to Petra and you got—nothing. They were repelling magnets. No matter how hard you squeezed them together, there was always going to be a force field that kept them apart.

  Until yesterday. Man, that had been bizarre when they’d walked into the classroom. Rogan had heard the whole conversation in the hallway—Mrs. Lamprey caught these girls in the art room, blah blah blah, they said they couldn’t explain why they did it, blah blah blah, you need to keep your class under better control, blah blah blah. None of it had prepared Rogan for what Becca and Petra looked like when they’d walked back into the classroom.

  Becca looked like someone had vacuumed all the goody-goody right out of her. She looked like this girl named Gretchen his sisters were sort of friends with. Gretchen skipped classes and stayed out late on Saturdays and had a boyfriend who’d dropped out of high school. Rogan’s mom didn’t like Gretchen because she thought Gretchen was a bad influence.

  Becca Hobbes looked like a bad influence.

  Petra just looked weird. Rogan had never thought she was all that pretty to begin with, the way everybody else did, but now her eyes looked humongous and her head looked too big for the rest of her body. She looked like an idiot, really. It was a total mystery why she’d cut her hair off like that. Rogan definitely didn’t get it.

  Why Mrs. Herrera was on thin ice was another mystery. Ethan’s mom was vice president of the PTA, and he was going to see if he could find anything out, like if Mrs. Herrera had a criminal record or if some of her students last year had also gotten in trouble in the art room. She didn’t seem like the kind of teacher who let her students go wild, though. In fact, she had the most rules about classroom behavior of any of the sixth-grade teachers.

  “You’ll be pleased to hear that we’re spending the class period outdoors,” Mrs. Kafsky, their science teacher, announced as she walked around the room to collect last night’s homework. “That’s right, it’s outdoor journal day!”

  “Can I bring my dog?” Henry asked, and half the class laughed and the other half shushed him. Rogan thought they should have a Henry journal day, where they all made observations about Henry and tried to figure out what was wrong with him.

  “Not today, Henry,” Mrs. Kafsky said. “Just your notebook and your partner. That reminds me—everybody grab a partner!”

  Rogan twisted around in his seat to see if Cole or Ethan wanted to be partners, but they were sitting next to each other and had already partnered up. Okay, so who else might be good? He was about to call across the classroom to Stefan (something you could do in Mrs. Kafsky’s class, but not in Mrs. Herrera’s) when Petra punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Would you mind being my partner?” she asked. “I hate to ask, but…”

  That but hung out there between them, and Rogan wondered how Petra would finish her sentence. But as a result of recent events, I have zero friends? But if you don’t partner with me, nobody will? But I’m madly in love with you and this is the chance I’ve been waiting for all my life?

  “Uh, uh, sure,” Rogan stammered when Petra didn’t bother to finish her sentence, wishing he had the guts to say, Are you kidding? Are you mentally insane? “I mean, you’re good at science, right?”

  “I’m a genius,” Petra said. “I’m Einstein. I’m Madame Curie.”

  “Um, okay,” Rogan said. “Whatever.”

  Her hair was kind of sticking up today, like she’d put some kind of goop in it. He hoped everybody started calling her Goopy Girl.

  The way everyone called him Booger Boy.

  Not a day had gone by that someone didn’t pass Rogan in the hall or stop by his desk and say, “Hey, Booger Boy, let’s do a finger check!” Or “Hey, Booger Boy, find any good ones today?” And it was all Petra Wilde’s fault. She was the one who’d walked by his desk in math the second week of school and said in a loud voice, “Kind of gross, that booger-picking thing you do,” like she’d caught Rogan with his finger up his nose. “Maybe it’s time to grow up and use a Kleenex, Booger Boy.”

  Rogan, who would admit to picking his nose in the privacy of his room, had not been picking his nose, and it didn’t occur to him right away that Petra was saying he was the Booger Boy. He’d been thinking about the postcard written in Chinese that Mrs. Herrera had in her special collection of special things, and whether or not he should take Chinese next year like his dad wanted him to. He’d been thinking about how hard it would be to learn the Chinese alphabet, and how he’d rather focus on getting better at lacrosse so he could be a starter next season.

  The one thing he hadn’t been doing was picking his nose. He never picked his nose at school. His sisters had pounded that into his head: no public nose picking!

  He’d looked up at the sound of Petra’s voice, not sure who she’d been talking to, but already feeling sorry for whoever it was, because once Petra decided you were one thing or another, it stuck.

  How many seconds did it take for Rogan to realize that Petra was talking to him? How long before he felt this hollow, icy feeling in his stomach, followed by the thought that he sort of wanted to throw up? How long before he heard everyone around him laughing? How long before he realized he was going to have to work really, really hard not to cry?

  Pretending to ignore Petra, he’d looked back down at his math book. His heart was racing, like Ethan or Cole had just jumped out from behind a door. Ethan and Cole and Rogan were always pulling stupid pranks to scare each other and they were always calling each other names and making jokes—but they were friends. That was what friends did. Friends farted and blamed it on somebody else. Friends ragged on each other for having butt-faces. It was funny. It was—well, friendly.

  Petra wasn’t being friendly. She was being mean, and Rogan wasn’t used to people being mean to him. His sisters teased him, but most of the time they treated him like he was their mascot or something. It drove Rogan crazy, actually, but as he sat there with his face practically on his desk, he missed his sisters. He wished they’d walk into the room and grab him and take him home. He wished his mom would magically appear and offer to make him a grilled cheese sandwich.

  Thinking about his mom had been a mistake. It was like a signal to start crying. Rogan did his best to resist, but a few of the tears dripped out onto the page of his book. Rogan swallowed. He tried to toughen up, to think about his dad, think about playing Madden Football with him on Saturday afternoons. That was kind of their thing. Guy Time, his dad called it. Sometimes they made nachos for Guy Time, even though the controls got all greasy from their cheesy fingers. His dad would have helped Rogan come up with a sarcastic comeback, something that would have made Petra turn red and scurry back to her seat. Then Rogan and his dad would have slapped high fives. They would have laughed so hard one of them would have farted.

  Ethan and Cole had waited by his desk at the end of class while he put his stuff in his backpack. They didn’t say anything about Petra or boogers. They talked about lacrosse instead, and what a dud goalie Luke was and how they were dead if the team was stuck with him all season. Rogan talked about Luke too, but the whole time his brain was scrambling for a comeback. Funny you should say that, Petra, because, because, because—but he couldn’t think of one thing. He tried to come up with something for weeks, but he never did.

  So maybe he didn’t understand the whole haircut fiasco, but when Petra Wilde had walked back into LA looking like a nearly bald lemur, it had been one of the happiest moments of Rogan’s life.

  * * *

  Now, as the class walked out the back exit and onto the playground, he glanced at his notebook to reread Mrs. Kafsky’s assignment. “Note the effects of recent weather systems on the environment.” Normally he was pretty good at science, but for some reason this assignment seemed to be
written in another language. His brain was all confused, probably from having to partner with Petra’s brain.

  “I wonder what she means by recent weather systems?” Petra asked, walking up behind Rogan. “I mean, recent as in yesterday, or recent in the last six months? Because if it’s the last six months, you can tell that the trees by the fence got pretty damaged by some of the storms this summer. You want to go look?”

  Rogan nodded mutely and followed Petra as she walked toward the fence at the edge of the blacktop.

  “See that, up in that oak tree?” Petra pointed toward some half-attached branches in a tree that looked tired, like it had lost a fight.

  “How do you know it’s an oak?” Rogan’s voice sounded squeaky in his ears, like he was a little mouse. He wanted to kick himself, but instead he squinted upward. Be cool, he told himself. Just shut up and be cool.

  “My mom has an app that identifies trees and plants. You take a picture and the app tells you what it is. Besides, mostly it’s oaks around here. My aunt and uncle live in the eastern part of the state where it’s all pines, and everything looks so different. Like another planet. Anyway, we better write this stuff down.”

  Was it an act, Petra talking like she was a normal human being? Had little pieces of hair gotten into her brain? Probably, Rogan thought as he wrote down his observations. Then he looked around the playing fields because he couldn’t let Goopy Girl make all their scientific discoveries. “Over there,” he said, nodding toward the baseball field, where the earth sloped into a gentle hill behind the home team dugout. “There was a lot of rain last week, so maybe it’s swampy at the bottom of that hill. And if it is, maybe we’ll find frogs.”

  “I love frogs,” Petra said, sounding perfectly serious. “My mom has an app for frogs, too.”

  Rogan thought he’d like to meet Petra’s mom. She sounded like an interesting person. He wondered if she knew what a jerk her daughter was.

  They reached the hill behind the dugout, and sure enough, there was a long, thin puddle at its base. “Look!” Rogan said in a loud whisper, forgetting to be cool. “A bird!”

  “My mom doesn’t have a bird app,” Petra whispered back. “What do you think it is? A sparrow?”

  “It’s usually a sparrow,” Rogan said. “Or a wren.”

  “Let’s put sparrow.”

  They each wrote in their notebooks. Rogan would have liked to have written something about Petra while he was at it, how she was smarter than he’d thought she was and how this fake nice act was getting on his nerves. Of course she was acting nice. She’d totally messed up yesterday, so now she had to act like a real human being so everyone would like her again. Not that everyone liked her before. Actually, nobody liked her before. But she’d been this kind of queen and people had been scared of her. Now they were freaked out by her, the way her head looked so big and her hair stuck out in little tufts, and that was a totally different thing. Petra would probably do anything to get back on her throne. Even act like she was a decent human being.

  Okay, well, if she was so nice now, maybe it was time for Rogan to get to the bottom of what had been bugging him ever since the first week of September. “So that thing about me picking my nose when I wasn’t actually picking my nose?” he said as they started walking back to the school building. He could hear how dumb he sounded, but he had to ask. “Why say it? Why say it to me? Because I wasn’t. Picking my nose, I mean. I was just sitting there doing my math.”

  “What?” Petra stopped walking and turned to look at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That time in math you told me to quit picking my nose and I wasn’t picking my nose?” Rogan repeated. “Why did you do that?”

  Petra shrugged. “I really don’t remember.”

  Rogan could feel his face grow hot. “So you’re saying you never said it?”

  “No,” Petra said. “I’m saying I don’t remember saying it. I probably did say it, though. It’s kind of what I’m good at.”

  “Everybody calls me ‘Booger Boy’ now, so thanks for that,” Rogan told her. He turned and started walking again. “It’s really what I hoped would happen this year.”

  Petra trailed behind him for a few feet before saying anything. When she caught up, she touched Rogan on the shoulder. “I’ve decided I’m not going to say stuff like that anymore.”

  Like Rogan cared. But he couldn’t help but asking, “Why not? Because of your hair?”

  “My hair? What’s wrong with my hair?” Petra asked, and then she laughed, like what had happened to her hair was some kind of private joke. “No, it’s not because of my hair. It’s just because… I guess it’s just boring to say that kind of stuff. There are a lot more interesting things to talk about, right?”

  Rogan stared at her. “Do you get that I was not picking my nose? Because I can’t tell if you understand that you totally made that up.”

  “I get it,” Petra said. “And I’m sorry. I would be happy to issue a statement that I have never seen you picking your nose and that I’m pretty sure you have never produced a booger in your life.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Rogan said. “Well, anyway, sorry about your hair. Maybe it’ll grow back one day.”

  To his surprise, Petra looked—what? Embarrassed? Hurt? Whatever she was feeling, she just shrugged and started walking in the other direction. “Okay,” she said, “thanks, whatever,” and Rogan waited for her to add “Booger Boy,” but she didn’t.

  Mrs. Kafsky whistled and yelled, “All right, scientists, let’s head back to the classroom and report our findings!”

  Rogan found Ethan and Cole over near the jungle gym. “Make any great discoveries?” he asked them as they followed Mrs. Kafsky inside, and when they shook their heads no, he said, “I found a sparrow in a puddle. Pretty big deal.”

  “How was the hairless wonder?” Ethan asked. “Did she ask you if she could shave your head?”

  “She was goopy,” Rogan said. “Totally Goopy Girl.”

  He really didn’t want to talk about Petra. He didn’t want to think about her, or her hair, or the fact that the last thing he’d said to her was sort of mean, but it didn’t feel good to say it, not the way he thought it would.

  Scientifically speaking, it had felt pretty bad.

  Chapter Nine

  Ariana

  Wednesday, October 4

  All Wednesday morning Ariana couldn’t stop glancing over at her lunch bag, which was hanging from a peg in her cubby. She could hardly concentrate, she felt so excited about the invitations stowed beneath her sandwich and chips. She was going to have a party, and she loved throwing parties!

  Okay, not really a party. For a party you needed at least six people. Not that that was a rule, but it was one of Ariana’s Guidelines for a Happy Life. With six people, you could have two teams of three for games, which made it so much more exciting than two teams of two. But Ariana’s mom said she could only invite three girls for Saturday, so really it wasn’t a party, it was just a plain old sleepover.

  But sleepovers were good! Sleepovers meant popcorn and movies and séances and ghost stories. She’d had a sleepover in August with Meryl and Katie and Schuyler from Girl Scouts, and they’d acted out scenes from Little House on the Prairie, even though they admitted to each other they were probably too old for that kind of pretend play. Still, they’d had so much fun! Ariana played Nellie Oleson, which was especially neat because she got to be mean and cranky, which was totally the opposite of who Ariana was. Her mom always said she was born with the cheerful gene, which was a good thing, right? Better to be cheerful than to be like Lila or Rosie, always sneering and scowling and looking down their noses at people.

  Finally the clock read 11:40—time for lunch! Okay, 11:40 was actually a little early for lunch, but Ariana had started to think of it as elevenses instead of lunchtime, ever since her mom packed a note in her lunch that read, “Nearly eleven o’clock,” said Pooh happily. “You’re just in time for a little smacker
el of something.” Ariana knew she was too old for Pooh the same way she was too old for Little House or Barbies, but Pooh made her so happy! Why shouldn’t she be happy?

  She’d stored the invitations in her lunch bag because she planned on handing them out at lunch: one for Ellie Barker, one for Becca Hobbes, and one for Elizabeth Hernandez. Although she wasn’t advertising it, this was really a Get Well Soon, Becca! party. Because something was clearly wrong with Becca Hobbes. First there was the whole haircutting incident on Monday, which you had to admit was pretty strange, even if it probably was all Petra Wilde’s fault. But then yesterday Ariana had seen Becca dog-earing books in the book nook! Mrs. Herrera made a big deal about treating books like sacred objects and set out baskets of bookmarks all over her classroom so that no one would ever feel like they didn’t have a choice but to mark their place by bending over the corner of the page.

  It felt crazy to Ariana, seeing Becca dog-ear those books! What was next? Was she going to rob the school store? Spray-paint graffiti all over the playground?

  Becca clearly needed her help, and a sleepover was a great place to start. In fact, Ariana was almost glad it wasn’t going to be a regular sort of party. A sleepover would be small and intimate. And Ellie and Elizabeth were the perfect people to invite. Ellie because she was new and didn’t have the same expectations of Becca’s behavior that everyone else did, and Elizabeth because she was so nice.

  When she got to the cafeteria, she found Elizabeth sitting with Aadita and Cammi. For some reason, Ariana had pictured Elizabeth, Becca, and Ellie sitting together, which of course they never did, but it would have made handing out invitations a lot more convenient. Now she’d have to wait until they went out on the playground after lunch. She certainly couldn’t give Elizabeth an invitation and not give Aadita and Cammi one. Gosh, it was strange to see Cammi without Becca by her side! It was like Pooh without Piglet, Calvin without Hobbes, Curious George without the Man in the Yellow Hat.