My Life in Smiley: I Got This! (mostly...)

by Anne Kalicky

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Clémentine Sanchez for her

  invaluable help, Alexandra Bentz for her trust,

  Samantha Thiery for her support and management,

  as well as the entire Smiley team.

  For Elisa and Hortense.

  It is officially forbidden

  to read this masterpiece before

  Saturday, April 19, 2127!

  Whoever you are, whatever your name is, if—by the greatest of misfortunes—you’ve stumbled upon this notebook, immediately chuck it as far away as you possibly can or . . . put it back where it belongs. If you refuse to obey this command, my punishment will be TERRIBLE: your head will become covered with pigeon turds, your eyebrows will become three times thicker, snakes will burst from your mouth, your toes will morph into spinach, and you’ll feel like you have to throw up for the rest of your life!

  This is your last chance to avoid becoming a horrifying monster! Never, under any circumstances, turn this page. Dispose of this journal (in a manner so that its proper owner can find it) or prepare yourself for the darkest hours of your miserable life!

  (Um . . . sorry, Mom, if you find this while cleaning my room. . . . love you!)

  after two months of well-deserved vacation. Believe me—being

  a teen and (future) hero isn’t very relaxing.

  Remember last year: the mysterious graffiti on the wall of the secret passage, Raoul Kador’s dirty tricks, the retirement

  home, the prank calls, Ramoupoulos’s PE class, and the anxiety over Conrad’s visit—you know, my English exchange student with the mullet? This little intro to middle school really stressed me out. By the end of June, I was totally exhausted . . . and I still haven’t quite recovered. I think we should alternate between one year of school and one year of vacation, don’t you?

  Like every time I go on vacation, I left my brilliant personal journal at home. But did you see? This time I

  added an even more “discouraging” warning than last year, and apparently no one touched it.

  Still, I did take some discreet notes so I could catch you up on the most memorable

  events of my summer break . . . and I have a lot to tell you.

  For starters, after the end-of-the-year party, that old slug Tom and I hung out for a bit. He tried to teach me some graffiti tricks, but I have to admit I’m a lot better at writing.

  On the wall of the secret passage, Tom wrote: “M + T = blood brothers.” He really wanted us to leave our mark before we went on vacation.

  In July, the streets started to empty out. You could feel the mass exodus from the big cities toward the ocean beaches. Tom and I weren’t so lucky. He took the train to the Basque country, in the south of France, and I headed west toward Brittany. The day before we left, we made sure our time capsule was still safe in its hiding place, buried in the vacant lot.

  Then Tom gave me a present for my birthday ahead of time.

  I was born on August fifth. You couldn’t pick a worse date—in the middle of summer vacation, when no one’s around to celebrate your b-day! But the worst part is that my birthday is right after Marion’s. The very next day! As in, hers is the day before! As in, just before mine! Get the picture? In case you forgot,

  Marion is my older sister, and she is still so annoyyyyyying!

  So my sister’s birthday is the fourth and mine is the fifth. I have no idea how my parents could have done such a thing to me, but the result: total disaster. I’m always second . . . I’m sure I’ve been cursed!

  Anyway, I shouted with joy when I unwrapped Zombieland Anthology: 1 and 2. It’s a guidebook to the video game that gives you all the tricks to beat the levels, survive every world, and save Earth!

  I took the train to Brittany with my sisters, Marion and Lisa. Ever since Lisa ruined my plan with Naïs, I’ve been mad at her.

  WHAT A PEST! Honestly! At the end-of-the-year party I’d organized, I was within an inch of kissing Naïs when suddenly my sister blasted her favorite singer, Ben Didji.

  And of course when I complained the next day that this wasn’t exactly the deal I’d made with Marion (who’d sworn to handle all the music HERSELF), my parents defended their little “darling Lili.” Since then

  I’ve been calling Lisa “Little Diaper” because she’s totally my parents’ baby.

  On the train we ended up next to an old grandma who kept grumbling any time

  we moved a muscle. And it was pretty annoying, since our trip was over two hours long. I didn’t even dare eat the salami sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil that my mom had packed for me.

  I wound up just going to sleep. But I woke up to a message over the loud speaker:

  Even if I was “relatively” incognito on this train, I had

  no clue what to do with myself. I looked around for Lisa: she’d disappeared. I was furious!

  I wanted to race to the restaurant car, but in my rush I accidentally caught the purse of the old lady, who also woke up and began screaming

  STOP, THIEF! Total panic broke out in the train car, the ticket inspector showed up, and . . . dear future human, I’ll spare you the details of this terrible misunderstanding to which I fell victim. When I finally found Lisa one hour later, she was with Marion in the restaurant car, laughing to death at her practical joke. And when I went back to my seat, the lady was sinking her dentures into MY sandwich!

  So when we finally got to our randparent’s house, I was at my wits’ end and completely starving. Luckily, Grandma Ragny had prepared her famous “pasta diphore”:

  her super special version of spaghetti and meatballs. . . . Ta die for!

  Overall, staying with Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny was pretty cool. For starters, my parents made an exception to the only-one-hour-of-video-games-a-day rule.

  Thanks to the book Tom gave me, I beat Zombieland 2. And guess what? At the end of the book, there was a flyer advertising a new game that looks flippin’ sweet: Dogs of Hell. Apparently, it’s about a hero who has to save his son from Lucifer’s imprisonment. He has to fight the hounds that guard the gates to each level of the underworld.

  On top of that, Grandma Ragny announced that we’d have dinner in front of the TV every night. There’s nothing

  better than salt and vinegar chips and hot dogs while watching an old Western! Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny love the old classics. Grandpa has a whole collection of VHS tapes. Dear future human, you’re undoubtedly wondering:

  What in the world

  is a VHS tape?

  Well, try to imagine a kind of box that can save movies shown on TV using a machine called a “videocassette recorder.” It was cutting-edge stuff back when Grandpa Joff was younger! But even in my era it’s outdated, and I bet Grandpa has to be one of the last people on earth still using this funky machine.

  Besides that, we visited the beach, went fishing, hiked, and learned a card game from Marion called “Scum.” Each player has cards and has to put down a card greater than those of the other players. The winner—whoever gets rid of all their cards first—becomes President,

  and the person in last place becomes . . . Scum.

  If this game sounds fun to you, future human, you can probably find the rules of the game in the historical archives of the last century. At first, I wasn’t really feeling it: cards aren’t normally my thing, and playing with Lisa when I was still mad at her was out of the question.

  But in the end, the game turned out to be a darn good way to pass the time while Grandma and Gra
ndpa were napping. I have to say, I demonstrated great strategy and skill from the very first game.

  But one day Grandma woke up early, and when she saw us playing cards, she seemed really interested. Obviously, we didn’t tell her the real name of the game. Instead, we told her we were playing “President.”

  And since it was her first time playing, I mopped the floor with her from the get-go. I was so excited that I slipped up.

  Grandma Ragny WAS NOT pleased and sent me to my room to

  “contemplate” how to “respect your elders.” I wanted to argue and remind her about the time last year, at the retirement home, when I proved my loyalty to senior citizens. But after some thought, I decided silence was my best defense. To be honest, I’m pretty sure Grandma is just a sore loser.

  While we were there, there was also a meteor shower, and that, dear future human, is something I never miss. It’s the PERFECT OPPORTUNITY to wish on a shooting star, and IT WORKS!

  Not that I’m superstitious or easily tricked . . . I just have past experience. One day, when I was (a lot) younger, Grandpa and Grandma insisted

  we visit Aunt Géromine, Grandpa Joff’s sister. I didn’t have anything against Aunt Géromine, but I remembered she had beehives on her patio. I was terrified I’d

  be stung and end up in the emergency room.

  By chance, the night before, I saw a shooting star and made a wish that we wouldn’t go to her house. The crazy thing is when we got to her house, there was a note on the door.

  She’d left to go island hopping with a guy she’d fallen madly in love with only a few days before! Double shocker!

  But I was relieved to avoid the whole ordeal. That was when I realized there was a way to get whatever you wanted at

  least ONE TIME a year.

  After that, I did a fair amount of research online on wish making, and, with all modesty, I can say I became an expert.

  I learned all of the rules to guarantee that a wish will come true. I am already thinking about my next bestseller: When You Wish upon a Star! Anyway, since the incident with Aunt Géromine, I’ve stuck to the tradition. Every summer, in the beginning of August, Grandma Ragny makes a snack and we set up lawn chairs in the garden. But this year, things got a lot more complicated than expected.

  Dear future human, you obviously know better than anyone that stargazing demands EXTREME CONCENTRATION.

  But the whole family was ganging up on me. Every time I spotted a shooting star, someone else had already seen it.

  So my wish had NO

  chance of succeeding, since there can be only ONE wish per shooting star. To make things worse, Lisa was yelling out her wishes at the top of her lungs, which totally broke my concentration. I was afraid I’d get all mixed up and make some crazy wish like, “Please make Ben Didji fall in love with me.”

  And all four of them wouldn’t stop asking me questions, so many that I had a hard time mentally reciting the formula I’d memorized ahead of time.

  If I run the numbers, I bet that out of the fifteen shooting stars I saw, I made only about three valid wishes.

  My parents joined us right after

  to celebrate my birthday and . . . Marion’s too. I’d spent a good chunk of my summer break trying to put the ad for Dogs of Hell in plain sight where Grandma and Grandpa would notice it. But when I blew out my twelve candles and unwrapped my presents, I saw that all

  of my efforts had failed miserably.

  Grandpa and Grandma gave me a Pietro bag for school, but it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. . . .

  Since I’m starting German

  this year, I also got a bilingual dictionary from none other than Aunt Géromine. Inside I found a bookmark—or more like a piece of cardboard with bees drawn all over it. On every bee was written a name: Mireille, Giselle, Noëlle, Marcelle. . . . It scared the crap out of me!

  Then my parents brought out an enormous package. All of a sudden, I thought:

  “Sick! A new bike? A folding scooter? A motor scooter?

  A new video game console? The Niphon 12?”

  I was just starting to make a comprehensive list of dream gifts in my head when my mom explained that the whole family had put together a giant party bag with twelve gifts for my twelfth birthday.

  And what about Marion? Well, she got . . . a pair of LEATHER PANTS!

  Question time: when will I FINALLY

  be able to get ADULT presents?

  This whole birthday thing must’ve completely traumatized me, because the following night I had a nightmare about going back to middle school!

  Luckily, there was at least ONE thing that could salvage my unsuccessful shooting star night: the friendship and love bracelets from Lisa!

  My sister spent her entire vacation making all kinds of them.

  She explained that you had to make a wish when you put the bracelet on your wrist, and on the day it breaks, your wish will come true. It was the perfect way to double my chances of kissing Naïs this year. I absolutely had to have one!

  I understood right away that she was employing the same methods of extortion that I’d used on her.

  Since she was born, I’ve always been a role model for Lisa . . . but it’s still annoying when the student surpasses the master.

  I tried to trade her my hot dog notepad and the light-up owl for a bracelet, but she said my presents were total garbage. Between us, she’s got some nerve—she helped pick them out for me!

  But in the end she offered me a deal: if I agreed to play “Shrimp Splash” with her at the beach, she’d give me a bracelet. This “game” consisted of jumping in the waves and yelling, “Shrimp splash!”

  The first person to fall has to imitate a whale and spit water in the air. I DIDN’T have a choice. . . . I agreed, and she promised to give me a bracelet after I played with her at least once.

  I fulfilled my promise the next day, but at one point—I don’t know how—I wound up with my head in the sand. Lisa yelled, “Shrimp splash!” and I started imitating a beached humpback. And then! Guess who I saw walking along the beach with her parents? You’ll never believe me: NAÏS! I’m positive it was her!

  But by the time I got up and finished wiping away the salt water that was stinging my eyes, she’d disappeared.

  What a coincidence, huh? There was roughly a 1-in-3.51 billion chance that we would meet, and destiny

  brought us within two feet of each other.

  Thankfully she didn’t see me, or at least I don’t think she did. Dear future human, you better believe that after that, I spent A LOT MORE time at the beach hoping to see her. And I decided I needed to stack all the odds in my favor if I wanted to become a mega hunk.

  In one of Marion’s magazines I ran across an article that seemed promising:

  "LOOK YOUR BEST

  AT THE BEACH, EVEN LAST MINUTE!"

  Just what I needed! The article gave all sorts of advice to get “a firm body ASAP,” “silky soft skin,” “the hair of a siren,” etc. I did push-ups every

  morning and slathered my hair and body in oil.

  The result? I got sunburned all over, I never saw Naïs again, and my guns stayed the same: nonexistent. The only good news was that Lisa made me a friendship bracelet.

  I made my wish when she put it on my wrist. Now, “All we have to do is wait,” like Grandpa Joff says when he casts his fishing line!

  And finally, what I’ve told you about so far is nothing compared to what I suspect Marion was up to. Would you believe it, future human, if I told

  you I’m 98.96% SURE that, during the summer, she went out with Tristan Le Bouzec—the neighbor’s son?

  The Le Bouzecs run the souvenir shop in the village, the one where I bought the key rings for my parents and Marion during fall break last year, remember?

 
; Tristan is seventeen years old, and he’s going to be a senior. He lives there in Brittany. We’ve known him forever because he knows how to make forts better than anyone. And, well, this summer he and Marion were stuck together like glue. I have proof!

  Marion asked Grandpa Joff to teach her how to speak like a local.

  I saw

  multiple texts full of hearts from a certain “love inTrist.”

  I discovered an XL T-shirt with “From Brittany with Love” on it hidden under Marion’s pillow.

  Monday

  At long last, in three days I start seventh grade. I have a feeling this year is going to be AWESOME! I’m sure my genius will finally be recognized. Well when I got home, there was something that dampened my mood. You see, there were two postcards waiting for me on my desk.

  From afar, I thought it was Tom and Naïs who had written me, and my heart starting pounding. Have I mentioned I really like Naïs? She sure is