Me: So?
Stevie: Aha! I was right.
Joey: Can we please stop talking about kissing? It’s gross!
Me: What’s gross about it?
Joey: Um, hello! There’s spit involved, in case you hadn’t noticed. And germs! Tons of germs. And pizza breath. And sometimes the guy sneezes on you.
Stevie: And braces. Don’t forget braces. Total lip lock.
Me: Thou speaketh of such matters which thou haveth not a clue.
Stevie: Don’t thou meaneth “clue-eth”?
After leaving Alex’s room, I felt all jumpy inside. Not sure why. Maybe it was the thought of telling Mom and Dad I got detention for talking during the assembly. It’s not like it was Bad Kids Detention — I just had to stay after class in Ms. Carter-Dunne’s homeroom with Olivia and Wire Rims. But still.
I plopped down on my bed, holding my head in my hands.
“What’s the matter with you?” Joey asked.
“Frogs, for one thing. They’re making my head hurt. Ever since the storm, they sound louder than ever. It sounds like we have a frog right in this room!”
“Um,” Joey said. “I might have something to tell you.”
“I know.”
She reached into a tank under her bed and held out a bright green little frog with masked eyes. “Meet Sir Croaks-a-Lot.”
“He is cute,” I admitted.
“So can I keep him in our room for a little while? I’ll let him go, I promise. As soon as he gets better. He’s missing two toes.”
“We’ll see. You’ll have to ask Mom and Dad, you know.” It wasn’t Joey, or the frog — I just had to get out of there. I grabbed my camera and yanked a hoodie over my head.
“Where’re you going?” Joey asked with a take-me-with-you sad-puppy look on her face.
“Cloudspotting.”
“Cloud spitting? Sounds weird,” Joey said.
“Cloudspotting. It’s like those people in England who like to watch trains, only instead of trains, I’m going to watch clouds. It’s for Earth Science. You know, my big poster board, where I have to document all different types of clouds? I thought I might find some unusual ones, now that the storm is over.”
Joey grabbed her slicker off the hook in the front hallway. “Hurry up,” I said impatiently. “Before all the clouds blow away.”
We stepped out under a sky full of patchy clouds, but the sun was starting to break through. Joey and I headed down the sidewalk toward Three Sisters Park, dodging puddles and climbing over branches knocked down from the storm. By the time we got to the top of Reindeer Hill, I was out of breath and my heart was pounding.
I stretched out on my back, crossed my feet, and folded my hands behind my head, staring up at the blue.
Joey and I lay there for a long time, watching the sky, not saying a word. I could feel the dampness through my shirt, smell the clean air. Something I like about Joey is that she’s okay with being quiet. For some reason — the blue sky, the puffy clouds, the damp earth beneath my back — I felt like a little kid again.
“Look!” I said to Joey, pointing up. “I see a chicken.”
Joey laughed. “That’s a turkey.” She tilted her head. “Or is it a dinosaur?”
The clouds were like shifting wisps of smoke, changing right above our heads. “Now I see a flying turtle.” Click. Click. “No, wait. It’s a giant hand.”
“Sorry to tell you, but your giant hand is a fish with one fin.”
“Do you see a dragon now?” I asked.
“No, but I see a dragonfly,” she said. Click, click.
“Looks more like corkscrew pasta to me,” I told her.
“Only someone who likes to cook as much as you would see a kind of noodle in the sky.” Joey giggled. She moved her head sideways, looking at the cloud from different angles. “The dragonfly looks kind of like a frog on skis.”
“I wondered how long it would take you to see a frog,” I said, snapping a bunch more shots.
“Who knew there were so many different kinds of clouds? Now I see the state of Minnesota, a giant letter H, and a hyphen.”
“A hyphen? Duck, only you would find punctuation in a cloud,” I said, and Joey cracked up. “Do you think you’re going to be a writer when you grow up?”
“Um-m-mm,” Joey said, shrugging her shoulders. “How should I know?”
“Well, I definitely see you as a writer. A writer who uses lots of hyphens. In Minnesota.” Joey grinned, and her two front teeth stuck out.
We stretched out side by side. I could hear the wind in the leaves and my own breath. It felt good to do nothing but watch clouds.
“Hey, we should start calling you Zoey,” I said out of the blue.
Joey leaned up and looked over at me, squinting. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Why not? Because Zoey sounds like a writer’s name. Because I’m feeling . . . I don’t know . . . wild and weird and wonderful today, I think, I mean, I don’t know what I’m feeling, actually.”
Joey bolted up. “Okay, now you’re starting to freak me out because you sound like Alex. The not-making-sense part, I mean.”
“Don’t worry, Duck. I’m still me,” I assured her. But inside I felt like a different me. All fluttery and heart-skippy and breathless.
“So you’re not going to stop wearing socks, are you? Or draw black lines around your eyes and rub perfume on yourself from samples in magazines and start going all gaga for boys?”
“NO! Of course not!” I told her.
“Good. Because I can only handle one weird sister at a time.”
The state of Minnesota had floated away and the capital H looked like a number 4 now. The rest of the sky was filled with flying saucer clouds.
“Did you know if you see a fish in the clouds, it’s supposed to mean that you’re going to be rich?”
“I see a fish!”
“You do not.”
“Did you know if you see a frog on skis it’s good luck?”
“You just made that up. You have frogs on the brain, Duck.”
“Speaking of frogs . . .”
“Yes, Sir Croaks-a-Lot can stay in our room. As long as he doesn’t croak-a-lot a lot!”
I walked Joey home, then grabbed my bike and headed over to Olivia’s. She lives in Pleasant Hill Palisades. Dad calls it Potato Skin Palaces. Say no more. Every house is taupe, tan, raw umber, burnt sienna. A.k.a. brown.
Inside the front door, I kicked my shoes off and padded upstairs in my sock feet to her room.
“Ta-da!” she said, spinning around her room like a jewelry-box ballerina.
“Ta-da what?” Same four-poster bed with canopy. Same comforter with seven hundred matching pillows. Same everything.
“Duh! I painted my room!”
“Wasn’t it always white?”
“It was white. Now it’s Divine Vanilla. Don’t you love it?”
“Yeah, so much I want to lick it,” I teased.
We plopped on the floor, talking about everything from homework to her weirdo cello teacher to favorite pizza toppings. While we chatted, I doodled in my science notebook with my cupcake-scented pen.
Then, out of the blue, she hit me with it.
“That kid so likes you.”
My pen stopped. “Huh? What kid?”
“You know what kid. The kid sitting behind us at the assembly today. Oscar the Grouch. He is so into you.”
“Oh, the kid who got us into detention! He is not so into me. You’re cracked. G-Y-H-E — Get Your Head Examined.”
“Are you kidding? He was only bumping into you on purpose and pulling your hair every other second.”
“Yeah. Which only proves how annoying he is. Besides, if he’s so into me, then why was he talking to you the whole time?”
“Because. Are you really going to tell me you don’t get it? That’s what boys do when they like you. They talk to the person that doesn’t make them nervous, even though it’s the other person they really want to talk to.”
> “You’re wack,” I told her. “He just saw me in Earth Science class probably. And he’s new. He doesn’t know anybody. That’s all. Trust me.”
Olivia made an exasperated pfff sound, ruffling her bangs.
“Do we have to talk about this?” I asked. “You know I hate — Never mind.”
“You’re still mad at me, aren’t you? Uh! You are. You’re mad. This is about camp last summer, isn’t it?”
“What about camp last summer?” I asked in a fakey voice, pretending innocence.
“You know perfectly well what.”
“You know what? Sometimes I wish you’d never gone to that stupid camp,” I blurted.
“Ha! I knew it!” She lowered her voice and whispered conspiratorially. “Because I held hands with that kid, right?”
“Yeah, some kid you knew for, like, half a second!”
“No way. I knew him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Matt.”
“Matt what?”
“Matt . . . something.”
I had doodled Oscar the Grouch, and now I vehemently colored in his garbage can. I don’t know why I was cheesed off that my best friend since kindergarten kept talking about boys more and more these days. Maybe I felt left out. Like she was part of a club I didn’t belong to. But I didn’t even want to be in a club that had to do with boys. I guess I was worried that we’d grow apart.
“Stevie, when are you going to wake up and smell the cookies? Everybody in our grade is getting into stuff.”
“What stuff? Going to summer camp?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny. Boy stuff. I know at least two girls our age at school who have boyfriends. And everybody knows Madison Meyers kissed Nick Stephanopoulos . . . in the girls’ bathroom!”
“How do you know that wasn’t just a big rumor?”
“Trust me. I know. Because Madison told Sierra and Sierra told Sara and Sara told me that he stepped on her toe and crushed it with his big old boy feet.”
I let out a snigger.
“There’s even a blog about it.”
“A blog!”
“Face it. You’re going to have to like a boy sometime. Hold hands. Maybe even go out.”
“Like on a date? Are you bonkers?” Inside I was secretly wondering, Why don’t I care about this stuff like other girls my age? Was I missing out on something? Am I weird? Is something wrong with me?
I hated that I was second-guessing myself.
“Are you listening?” Olivia asked, waving a hand at me. “Trust me. You don’t want to be a major boy repeller. You might as well just hang garlic around your neck.”
“At least I’ll keep away vampires.”
“Ha, ha,” said Olivia, inspecting a patch of paint on the wall.
“I think the paint fumes have gone to your head. For your information, I’m not going out with some random kid. It’s so completely and totally embarrassing. I mean, parents would have to drive us! And what if he tried to hold hands or something? People would see.”
“Okay. I get it. All I’m saying is . . . you should talk to that kid. If you don’t know what to talk about, just tell him you need help with your cloud identification project.”
“But I don’t need help.”
“I know you don’t need help. But he doesn’t know you don’t need help. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you need help or not. The point is, you pretend you need help.”
“You need help,” I said. I couldn’t help laughing a little.
“Just talk to him. Be a friend. You said yourself he needs a friend.”
“Hello! What have I been saying? He’s a boy! In case you hadn’t noticed, I have all sisters. No brothers. I don’t know the first thing when it comes to boys.”
“What’s to know?” Olivia starts ticking stuff off on her fingers. “They like sports and UFOs and pulling wings off bugs and taking stuff apart.”
“And you left out the part about how boys can be pretty annoying.”
“At first he was kind of annoying, but then he was pretty funny, don’t you think?”
Silence. I concentrated on my doodling. I drew a sky full of stars and swirly clouds to rival Van Gogh’s. Doodling gave me a chance to half think my own thoughts while Olivia talked her head off, rehashing the conversation from the assembly.
“ . . . and you’re all, ‘My friends call me Stevie,’ and laughing and batting your eyelashes,” she teased.
I looked up. “I was not batting my eyelashes. A person has to blink!” I protested.
“Whatever . . .”
When I looked back down at my night sky, I’d drawn squiggles, peace signs, a butterfly, a moth, and an owl. The owl had two round Os for eyes, and, without thinking, I’d made them into a pair of glasses.
I closed my notebook with a snap. “I better go. Dad’s making his famous curry, and he’ll freak if I’m late for dinner.”
The next day, I was tiptoeing into Alex’s room, trying not to make noise, when Joey popped up from behind the bed. “AAAGH!” I screeched. “Jo-ey! Stop scaring me like that. What are you doing in here, anyway?”
“What are you doing in here?” she asked.
“I asked you first,” I said.
“Okay, okay. I didn’t want to tell you, but when I got home from school, Sir Croaks-a-Lot was not in his tank. He escaped! I don’t know how he got out, and I know I’m not supposed to be in here when Alex isn’t home, but I thought I heard him in here and he might be hiding.”
“I’ll help you look, Duck. Alex will freak if she finds a frog in her room.”
I crawled around on hands and knees, helping Joey look for her frog. We looked under the bed, behind the desk, even under the rug. “How come frogs never croak when you’re looking for them?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Joey. “Maybe if we stop looking, he’ll start croaking.”
“Here froggy, froggy,” I called.
“So, what were you coming in here for?” Joey asked.
“None of your beeswax. I was looking for my . . . poetry book I’m using for Language Arts, if you must know.”
“It’s on your bed in our room.”
“Oh, I guess it was my Earth Science book —”
“In your backpack. Also on the bed.”
“Whatever, Miss Snoopy Pants.” The truth is, I didn’t want to admit to Joey I was looking for one of Alex’s magazines or a book — anything that might help me with The Truth About Boys.
I stood up and ran my finger across the spines of books on Alex’s shelf. Speak. Cut. Crush. Glass. Sold. Feed. Fade. Flipped. Prom. Prep. Peeled. Sleep. Wake. Beige. Lost. Gone. Sheesh! No wonder teenagers grunt and speak in one-syllable words.
Twisted. Trouble. Loser. Lucky. I Was a Teenage Fairy. What do you know? Seven whole syllables.
“I don’t think a frog would be hiding inside a book,” said Joey. “Unless he’s an origami frog.”
I returned Lucky to the shelf and straightened the spines of the books, lining them back up the way they were.
Joey peered into Alex’s closet. “Hey, I know. Maybe Sir Croaks-a-Lot is hiding with Alex’s journal, you know, in the shoebox in the closet under the fleece blanket she made in Girl Scouts one time.”
“So, he’s not hiding in a book, but he can read Alex’s journal?”
Joey shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“Did you try her dresser?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? She’ll kill me if I go in there.”
“Well, she’ll kill you worse for going in her closet and reading her journal. Besides, how do we know he’s even in here?”
“C’mon, Stevie. Help! What if Alex comes home any second and catches us?”
“Us?”
“Please?”
“Shh. Quiet,” I whispered, holding my finger up to my lips. Creck-eck. Creck-eck.
Joey’s eyes got as round as marbles. The sound was coming from the direction of the dresser. I pointed and motioned for Joey to check it out.
Joey pawed through Alex’s underwear drawer.
“Joey, not in there!”
“How do you know?”
“Hey, look at this!” Joey held up a pair of light blue undies. “They have writing on them. What’s Vendredi mean?”
“How should I know? Sounds like some kind of sports car to me.” Joey and I peered more closely at the words — Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi . . .
“It’s the days of the week in French!” I proclaimed, too loudly.
“But Alex takes Spanish,” said Joey. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Keep looking.”
“Maybe he’s in here,” said Joey. “Maybe he’s hiding in Alex’s T-shirts because they’re all soft and cozy.”
Joey flipped through a stack of folded tank tops and T-shirts. “Hey, all these shirts have words.”
TROUBLEMAKER. VERY IMPORTANT PRINCESS. RARE BIRD. FREAK OF NATURE.
“Geez,” I said to Joey. “Who knew Alex had so many tanks, huh?”
“Every single one has writing. She could wear them all at one time and be a walking encyclopedia.”
I couldn’t help cracking up as I looked through a drawer full of jeans.
Joey was still in the T-shirt drawer, and she kept reading them off. BRAT. HIP CHICK. OREGON. PEACE. ACT UP. “Where’d she get all these, anyway? I’ve never seen her wear half of them. Why is she hiding them?”
“She probably layers and wears them under stuff. And she doesn’t want us to know because then we’ll want to wear them too.
“Not me,” said Joey. “Well, maybe the PEACE shirt.”
She dug down to the bottom of the pile. “BAD APPLE, BAD TO THE BONE, B —” Suddenly Joey screeched “Ahhh!” and let the shirt go like it was hot.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I almost said a swear!” Joey slapped her hand to her mouth, covering it as if trying to push the word back in.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Mom gets really mad if we swear and we’re not even supposed to swear in Shakespeare too much, you know, like how Alex calls us milk-livered maggot-pies and stuff.” Joey stabbed her finger at the bottom drawer. “In there. See for yourself. At the bottom of the pile.” She spat out the words. “Alex has a shirt with the B word on it!”
The Cloudy with a Chance of Boys Page 3
