President of the Whole Sixth Grade

by Sherri Winston

  Maybe because I was standing on my hands.

  I needed to figure out how we were going to raise twenty-five hundred dollars.

  Today was a teacher workday, so, thank goodness, no school. I’d invited my friends over to sample a few new cupcake recipes I was working on. Also, we were supposed to discuss fund-raising for D.C.

  “Bree, how long are you going to stand on your hands? You know that freaks me out!” said Sara. Then she snapped a selfie with her phone.

  “Being upside down helps me think,” I said.

  “I heard it promotes hair growth,” said Becks, also holding her phone. But she wasn’t taking pictures, just texting. “Not that you need your hair to grow any more.”

  I shook my head and heard Becks make a sound between a laugh and a snort. My hair, when I was upright, hung past my shoulders. Sometimes, if I fluffed it out, it looked like it was swallowing me. Cool, right? Grandpa said when it was like that, I looked like Cousin It. Hmm…

  Lauren, whose blond ponytail swished when she walked, knelt in front of the oven and asked, “How much longer until this batch is finished?”

  “About two minutes,” I answered.

  “You’re such a great cook, Brianna!” she said.

  “Tell that to my Home Ec teacher. I’m struggling to get even a B in that class,” I said.

  “You don’t have an A in Home Ec??” Sara asked, shocked. “That’s rough.”

  I nodded.

  It felt like the scent of cake flour and chocolate enveloped the whole wide world. My world, at least.

  We’d spent a lot of time in here together over the years. And we’d eaten a lot of cupcakes. We’d started talking about the D.C. trip right here, actually, gushing about how amazing it was going to be.

  “D.C. is going to be craaaaaaaay-zeeeee!” Becks said. “We should definitely go to the White House.” I thought that was a great idea, but wasn’t sure why she giggled when she said it. And she and Sara shared this… look before slapping high fives.

  “Why? What’s so funny?” I asked.

  Lauren said, “Yeah, I mean, going to the White House sounds amazing. But why’re you laughing?”

  “Becks wants to go so she can meet her boo! The First Nephew. Code Name: Neptune. He is so foin!” said Sara.

  Foin. Since sixth grade started—a whole six weeks ago—Sara had upped her urban slang. It was like she’d downloaded some kind of app for street cred and was determined to get her money’s worth.

  “Who?” asked Lauren.

  Becks tapped on her phone. “Him!” She showed us a photo of a kid with hair so long and curly that it covered his eyes. He was standing on a diving board. Wearing a pair of those teeny-tiny swim trunks.

  Lauren blushed and I felt uncomfortable. But Becks said, “He doesn’t know it yet, but one day he’s going to marry me.”

  “And I’m going to be the bridesmaid, and the wedding will be held poolside!” Sara giggled, and this time she and Becks fist-bumped. I gave them a look like Really? If you get the chance to go to the White House, your first quest would be to trap the poor First Nephew kid in a broom closet?

  “Seriously, I can’t wait ’til we go to D.C.,” Sara said. I went back into a handstand. My hair fell in my face and covered my eyes.

  Sara went on, “At least in D.C., I won’t have to deal with my parents.”

  No one said anything. Sara’s parents were getting a divorce. Okay, that was really crummy, right? But lately, Sara was finding a way to work it into EVERY conversation. We’d be, like, “Broccoli is my favorite vegetable,” and she’d be all, like, “We used to eat broccoli all the time, before my dad left.…” When she brought it up, I had to count to ten or a million to keep from just going off!

  Becks glanced up from her texting and said, “Forget D.C. I can’t wait ’til we go shopping on Black Friday.”

  “Christmas shopping plans already?” said Lauren.

  “Mom said I can’t withdraw money from my savings account ’til then,” Becks huffed.

  “Me, too,” said Sara. “With her and Dad splitting, she says money is tight.”

  One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…

  Sara’s mom worked at a bank. The four of us had been saving our money, going to the bank every Saturday to make deposits. We used to call ourselves the Woodhull Society. We got the name from the first female presidential candidate, Victoria Woodhull. She was also into finances and saving. I wrote a research paper on her in fifth grade. Anyway, saving used to be a big thing for us.

  Now Becks and Sara seemed to want to make more deposits at the mall than at the bank. Another change I didn’t like.

  Sara and Becks launched into a discussion about fashion, then went all gaga over Prya and Paisley.

  Who are Prya and Paisley, you ask?

  Paisley (PĀZ-lē)—A troll doll in designer clothes. Laughs at her own jokes and wears too much body spray, so she smells like a garden exploded in her underwear. A poor student, grade-wise, yet she always has something to say.

  Prya (PRĒ-ah)—See above. Plus, she looks like she just discovered a turd in her lunch box; so her nose is always scrunched up. When she laughs, she collapses in on herself as though jokes have the power to dissolve her spine.

  “You can’t really want to hang out with those girls, right?”

  Sara looked at me and said that the Peas were known for their fashion sense. (Prya and Paisley were called that—the Peas. Ugh, right?) I thought they were known for not having a whole lot of sense, but I kept it to myself.

  Becks looked up from her texting and said, “Maybe you should try to get to know them, Bree. You don’t have to be so judgmental all the time.”

  “I am not judgmental! And no thank you to getting to know them!” I answered. “They’re mean and cliquish and rude.”

  Becks went back to texting. Over her shoulder, she said, “Anyway, don’t worry about the fund-raising. We’ll get it done!”

  “Unless she falls and breaks her neck first. Brianna, stand up. You’re freaking me out!” said Sara. Snap, snap! The phone’s camera whirred.

  “Know what freaks me out? The fact that you’re dressed like one of those dolls our moms wouldn’t let us play with when we were little because they looked too… what was the word your mom used, Becks?”

  “Provocative,” she said, taking a hit off her inhaler. Becks’s asthma was legendary.

  Then we cracked on her a little. I said she looked like she’d been attacked by a pop princess.

  “No!” said Lauren. “More like she got beat up by a rogue band of Barbies and forced into one of their special little closets!”

  We all hooted.

  Sara said, “Ha-ha. Very funny. So? Pink is my new color. It’s extra-girlie, like me. And Brianna, I love you, but you’re not exactly a fashionista.”

  Now they were laughing again, only this time at me. All good, I could take it. I shifted my weight from one hand to the other.

  Becks said, “Jelly bean is not a fashion statement.” Okay…

  Just then, the timer beeped. I flipped down from the wall. One of Katy’s scabby cats wandered into the kitchen and I quickly chased it out. My sister was in high school. She was one of those girls who wanted to save every stray animal on the planet.

  “Nobody cared about how bright my clothes were when we were in elementary,” I said, brushing cat hair off my hands and rinsing them in the sink. Using an oven mitt, I took out the cupcakes and scooped batter into another muffin tin while the hot ones cooled.

  Becks scooted over to let me onto the stool beside her at the kitchen island. “Bree, we’re not in elementary anymore. This is the big time. Middle school. I might not be dressed in head-to-toe pink like Sara, but, well, sometimes I think about changing—”

  “We don’t need to change!” I cut her off.

  Sara was busy posing. Snap! Snap! Snap! Three selfies in a row, a personal best. She said, “Well, I like my new style.”

  “I think you lo
ok like a puffball!”

  We all turned around to see my cousin, Liam. He was five years old, wearing a plaid hunter’s shirt, his face round as a chocolate moon pie. Lauren and I were cracking up. He was right. With those ridiculous pink boots and that fuzzy pale pink hat, Sara did look kinda like a puffball. A skinny puffball.

  Becks rolled her eyes. “All I know is, once I lose about twenty pounds, I’m buying a whole new wardrobe. I think I can lose that much between now and the time we go shopping.”

  I said, “God, Becks! Would you please stop all this ‘I gotta lose twenty pounds’ foolishness? Besides, I read that trying to lose more than two pounds a week is, like, dangerous.”

  Becks was not having it. She said, “Being fat is dangerous, too. Bree, you just don’t get it! You’re teeny-tiny.”

  I shot back, “In fifth grade you never worried about your weight.”

  Her eyes got big and her expression grew dark. She was almost shouting. “I DID TOO CARE! I cared about my weight, I just didn’t say anything!”

  I turned back to her. “You were fine then, you’re fine now. Why do you need to lose weight anyway?”

  Sara cut in, “Becks has a crush on Bakari Jones. He’s in the band.”

  I said, “You mean that little dude who thinks he’s funny?”

  “He is funny. And cute!” Becks said. We sat in silence for a few seconds, letting Becks get a hold of herself. She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. After a few more seconds, she slid off the barstool.

  She said, “I just don’t want to be the fat girl. I mean, look at this!” She plastered the front of her shirt over her stomach. Okay, I admit, the shirt was too tight. Actually, I had noticed she’d been wearing all her clothes tighter.

  “Stop that! You wouldn’t have that problem if you just wore bigger shirts,” I said.

  “Oh, please, Brianna. You… you just don’t understand what it’s like to be heavy.”

  I countered, “Becks, you’re not—”

  But she cut me off. And the change in her tone was so hard and loud, even the old clock on the stove seemed to freeze.

  “Brianna, people at school, even the ones who mess with you about dressing too bright like a jelly bean or whatever, they think you’re cute. They say, ‘Brianna Justice? You mean the cute girl with all the hair?’ Or they’ll say, ‘She’s so adorable.’ That’s what people say about you behind your back. You know what people say about me?

  “They say, ‘That’s Rebecca. No, not Rebecca Robinson. The other one. The fat one. The one who hangs around with the girl in pink and the cute little one with the clipboard who bosses everybody around!’ It is no fun to have people say that kind of thing to your face, Brianna. That’s why I’m getting rid of this belly.”

  We all stared in horrible silence as she reached down and grabbed the soft fluff of her stomach, the part that squished over the top of her too-tight jeans. My mouth was completely dry. I’d never seen Becks so angry. I took a breath. In my mind, I said, Be easy, Brianna! I figured being a leader meant keeping your cool, you know. Just, be easy.

  “That sure is a big belly!” Liam said.

  We gasped. Not because he was wrong, but, well, even before this meltdown, we’d fallen into a pattern with Becks. She’d say something mean about how her body looked and the rest of us would spend the next half hour trying to convince her she was wrong.

  Apparently, five-year-olds didn’t understand the subtlety of middle school insanity.

  “Well, if you’re really serious, maybe you could come work out with me and my mom. You know, I go to the gym with her on the weekends,” I said.

  For some bizarre reason, I felt responsible, like I had single-handedly given Becks unwanted belly fat, and then, like a maniac, went around shrinking her pants and tops so she’d feel extra-uncomfortable.

  She shook her head. “Never mind, Bree. I’m going to lose weight on my own. You’ll see.”

  I shooed Liam away and went back to my baking.

  With a batch of cupcakes cooling and another ready to go into the oven, I joined everybody at the counter.

  “Um, fund-raising?” Lauren prompted again, crossing her arms.

  I said, “Yes, about fund-raising. Anybody ever hear of Torture the Teacher?”

  Torture the Teacher was just one of the fund-raising ideas I’d found on the Internet. You get a bunch of teachers to agree to different types of “torture.” Goofy stuff like wearing their clothes inside out, or dressing like the ’80s, stuff like that. You charge a dollar per ticket and you get kids to buy chances to use them to vote on the teacher they’d like “tortured.” The teacher with the most votes wins. Or, actually, loses.

  Sara said, “Torture sounds kinda mean, Bree. What if we get in trouble?”

  “Oh, Sara,” I said. “They’d be agreeing to the torture. See? No one is going to get into trouble.”

  She said, “Well, saaaaaaaaar-reeeeeeee! I didn’t get it at first. I’m not in honors like you and Becks.”

  Becks, glancing up from her text-a-thon, snorted. “Honors is not all it’s cracked up to be. It ain’t all that.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard I almost saw the future. Becks never used to use poor grammar, like ain’t. She was really changing.

  So it went back and forth like that. Eventually, they all agreed the fund-raiser sounded like a good idea. We talked about a few others that they liked, too. I took notes on my trusty clipboard.

  “Brianna, you know, if you got an iPad or something, you could get an app that acts like a clipboard to keep up with your ideas,” Sara said. “You’ve had that thing since we were in second grade. Remember the time you made those cakes and got in trouble for selling them at recess?”

  Lauren was snorting, she was laughing so hard. “Bree, that was so funny. You made these little cakes in your Easy-Bake Oven and brought them to school and sold them. And you used that thing to keep track of just how many you sold. How much money did you make selling that stuff?”

  “Eight dollars and twenty-eight cents! And yes, this is the same clipboard. It’s my lucky clipboard. Why do I need to change? I used it to calculate the first money I earned, and I plan to use it when I calculate my first million.”

  “Yeah, we all know you hate change almost as much as you looooooove money,” Becks said.

  I said, “Well, we all like saving money.”

  “Not as much as you,” Becks grunted.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I crossed arms over my chest. My head got to swiveling and I waved my finger around as I talked. “Last year all of us cared about our savings accounts. All of us went to the bank together and made deposits. It’s only been since the start of the school year that some of us have decided to act all brand-new and stop meeting up for our Victoria Woodhull Society meetings!”

  “Okay, girls, let’s not fight,” Sara jumped in. She was always playing peacemaker. I wondered if that fit in with her new, ultra-girlie personality. “Bree, Becks is just saying we all know that money is, like, the most important thing to you.”

  For some reason, her saying that stung. Like I had been hit in the face with a dodgeball. Money would never be more important to me than my friends. They knew that, right?

  I sighed. Part of me had hoped we could talk. Really talk. About middle school and feeling weird and fake. Once upon a time, our futures were all set. We’d planned them out—together. I just wanted to remind them of that without sounding lame.

  But I couldn’t help myself. When I reminded them of our lifelong plans—of me becoming a cupcake-baking millionaire; Becks, a famous author; Sara, an Olympic horseback rider; and Lauren, a famous Hollywood stuntwoman—Becks and Sara shared another one of their looks.

  Sara came over and gave me a hug. Random hugs were a thing in middle school. Girls hugged all the time, some clinging to each other like life rafts, some constantly offering or receiving piggyback rides. Becks tried to get me to ride on her back once, but I told her I’d rather shave my head and donate m
y savings to a school that taught bullies how to steal lunch money.

  Sara sighed. “Oh, Bree, that’s what we wanted when we were little. I mean, when we came up with those futures, we were just kids.”

  Seriously? “Sara! We were talking about this stuff, like, two months ago. Remember? We were down at the stables where your family keeps its horses. You were with Buttercup.”

  She made a face and sighed extra-dramatically. “Well, you know, that was before I found out my parents were getting divorced. We can’t keep the horses anymore,” she said, grabbing her phone and moving around the kitchen taking pictures of herself.

  “No biggie. I think I’d outgrown the horses, anyway.” Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!

  And there it was. The fakery. She was telling a big, fat lie. I knew it. She knew it. And she had to know we all knew it. Why was it so hard to just admit she was sad? Why was it getting so hard for any of us to say what we were really feeling?

  The timer on the oven beeped again and I removed the second batch. We all took turns using my pastry bag to squeeze frosting designs onto the already-cooled cupcakes. Everyone sampled except Becks. The guilty feeling I’d had earlier about her weight came back. She normally loved my cupcakes. Now I really did wonder if she blamed me for some of her weight gain.

  Becks said she wasn’t hungry. No one tried to convince her otherwise.

  We didn’t say much else. Maybe we’d all had enough fakery for one day.

  Civics Journal

  Ancient Rome and Middle School

  Mr. Galafinkis told us that myths and stuff like that were real popular in ancient Rome. I’d heard this expression about “opening Pandora’s box” before, but I never knew what it meant. He said it came from the Greeks, but during the time of ancient Rome, they created their own version. He said the ancient Romans were always borrowing from the Greeks and not giving them credit. Sorta like hip-hop artists are always stealing from classic R&B singers and never giving them their due. (At least, that’s what Grandpa says.)

  So, back to Pandora’s box. Mr. G. said this Greek god, Zeus, gave his daughter Pandora a jar or box or whatever as a wedding present. He told her to never open it. Well, of course she did, and all the evils of the world flew out. Mr. G. says when people think of Pandora’s box, they’re looking at how something seemingly innocent, like opening a box, can turn into a big deal, like, you know, unleashing evil on the whole world.