by Beth Vrabel
Molly started wailing, I mean really screaming harder than I thought a lump her size could manage, and blocked out the rest of what Becky was saying. “I’ve got to go!” I yelled over the screams. “My sister needs me!”
But instead of going to see what Mom’s new only sunshine needed, I sat on my bed and cried right along with Molly.
Chapter Five
Finally the world’s slowest week ever was ending. I was never really one of those thank-goodness-it’s-Friday people, but that was before my boyfriend told me he hates me, my best friend spent all week making fun of me, the only person who talked to me eats boogers, a lumpy sister screamed all night, and here I was eating lunch alone. Even April had someone to sit with, though she did have to listen to Sheldon spout dinosaur facts the whole time. Sheldon is dino obsessed.
I carried my orange plastic tray, watching the mashed potatoes and gravy quiver and the peas getting dangerously close to rolling over their little partition into the Jell-O. I was watching the tray so closely I never even noticed Henry standing in front of me, blocking my way, until my penny loafers had to skid to a stop to avoid tramping on him. Great. Contaminated Jell-O.
These visits from Henry were about as much fun as Becky’s nightly phone calls, during which she shared all the ways Tom thought I was stupid and ugly. Henry’s visits were at least a little shorter. Every day, the same: “Where’s Tom’s money?”
Here’s the thing: I know five bucks isn’t a ton of cash. And if I asked Dad for it, he’d probably fork it over without remembering to ask why I needed it. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to ask. So every day Henry asked for the money, and every day I said the same thing: “I don’t have it.”
“Well, you better get it,” Henry snapped. He made a jerking motion toward me, like he was going to tip my lunch tray. I jumped back. And now gravy was on my Jell-O. Fantastic.
“Henry, when did you get to be Tom’s sidekick? I mean, isn’t Becky supposed to be your girlfriend?” I looked toward their table, where Becky was leaning into Tom, whispering something in his ear.
“She is my girlfriend!” Henry snapped.
“Not for long,” I sing-songed.
Henry’s jaw clenched so much I could barely make it out when he grunted, “Ten bucks. On Monday.”
“Ten?” I squealed. “You said it was five!”
Henry shrugged. “Well, turns out that ring cost ten dollars.”
“That’s a dirty lie!” I shouted. “They’re only two bucks at the Dollar General.”
Ms. Drake’s heels clipped across the linoleum. Her arms were crossed and her face was mean.
“Ten dollars,” Henry whispered and walked toward my former lunch table, where Tom and Becky now were thumb wrestling.
Ms. Drake stopped in place and waited until Henry sat down to speak. “Everything okay, Lucy?”
“Yeah,” I lied. I sighed and sunk into the seat at my pathetic empty table. Ms. Drake stood there a minute, then walked away without saying anything more.
“The turkey looks particularly purple today, doesn’t it?” a soft voice murmured just behind me. I whipped around. After gym class, when somehow Tom and Henry’s volleyballs kept zooming toward my head, I was on the defensive, I guess. Plus my ears were still ringing with Becky’s too-high, too-girly giggle.
But it was just Sam. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing, and his eyes stayed glued to the disgust-o lunch tray. I slowly turned back around. Great. Now I was getting sympathy smile-grimaces from other solo eaters. I could tell, though, that Sam was still behind me. I whipped around again, and this time his chocolate eyes were square on my face. “What?” I blurted.
Sam stood statue still for a second, then slid his tray next to mine. His Jell-O had stayed edible. “It’s just, this is my table.” Sam sat down and tilted his seat a little toward me. “I kind of thought you wanted to be alone, so I didn’t sit here, but it’s been a week. I miss my table.”
“I thought it was empty,” I blurted again. Later, I thought that might’ve been a mean thing to say. But seriously, the kid is super quiet. He’s easy to overlook. “Sorry. I’ll move on.”
I started to stand up. Maybe I could hang out in the bathroom until the bell rang. But Sam put his hand around my wrist and pulled me back to my seat. “No, I didn’t mean that. It’s cool, just . . .” He sighed and shoved his hands through his hair, making the curls flatten. “Volleyball stinks, doesn’t it?”
“Like a crap sandwich,” I said. It was one of Grandma’s favorite sayings, but Mom would’ve freaked if she heard me say it. “Wait! You have gym with me?” A flash of hurt feelings covered Sam’s face for a second. It’s an easy face to recognize, since I pretty much see it in the mirror every time I go to the bathroom at school.
Sam stared at his purple turkey.
And just like that, I realized that I’m a jerk. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Sam, even though he was the first person to be nice to me in about a week. So I just went with saying the first stupid thought that flopped in my head. “I’ll give you a dollar to eat the turkey. All of it, even gravy.”
I could only see the side of Sam’s face, since it was tilted down toward his tray, but the corner of his mouth jumped up. “Promise to carry me to the nurse if I start to convulse?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t think I could carry you,” I said, flicking peas off my Jell-O. It suddenly seemed salvageable. “But I’ll drag you for sure. Until my arms give out.”
Sam picked up his fork, stabbed a hunk of turkey, and shot me a grin before opening wide.
“Stop!” I shouted, a bit too loud. I could hear chairs squeaking as people around us turned to stare. “I don’t have a dollar,” I added in a whisper.
Sam looked thoughtful for a second, then said, “How about a different bet then?”
“Like what?”
“Like if I eat this turkey-ish stuff, you’ll . . .”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it.”
For some reason, I nodded. In three seconds, the turkey part of his tray was bare. I pointed to a glob of gravy. Sam held his nose, scraped it with a spoon, and slurped it down.
I applauded, ignoring the squeaks of chairs all around when I did. “You should meet my dad,” I said, thinking of his DDs. “I think he’d like you.”
Sam grinned, gravy making his lips shiny. “Now, your turn,” he said.
The bell rang. “Ha!” I said.
“Nah, you’re not out of the bet,” Sam laughed, but I noticed he was rubbing his stomach. “I just get more time to think about it.”
We walked back to class together. I barely heard Tom’s stupid snorty laugh or Becky’s whispers.
“How long does food poisoning take to be in effect?” Sam asked as he held open our classroom door for me.
“Minutes. Maybe even seconds,” I laughed.
“All right, class,” Ms. Drake said from behind her desk. Her neck stretched as she glared at each of us in turn. I thought her eyes dug into mine a little longer than anyone else, but I bet everyone felt that way. “We’re nearing the start of the last semester. A major part of your grade this year will be determined by an end-of-the-year project that will combine English, social studies, and science. You will be responsible for a ten-page research paper that must have at least three separate sources and a diorama of your topic. Plus, you will need to present your project to the class.”
“A dia-what?” April called out.
Ms. Drake looked even more annoyed than usual. “Diorama,” she repeated. “A three-dimensional display illustrating your topic of choice. And your topic will be an animal.” She pulled a small plastic bucket from behind her desk.
“In this bucket, I have twelve slips of paper with the name of a different animal printed on them. Each of these animals has faced unique challenges and overcame them to varying degrees. Your job will be to learn as much as you can about the animals, figure out
their challenges and approaches to those challenges, find out how they live and with whom they live, and compose your report and diorama.” This is how Ms. Drake speaks. Seriously. It took our class like five minutes to translate it in our heads.
Henry’s hand shot in the air. Ms. Drake nodded toward him. “So, we have to read about an animal, write a paper about whatever makes its life hard, and then make a diorama?”
“Precisely.” Ms. Drake opened her mouth to spout off more stuff, but Sam’s hand slowly rose. She looked just as surprised as the rest of us to see him volunteering. Maybe it was turkey poisoning. I ducked in my seat a little, feeling guilty, but he actually did have a question. A good one, too.
“You said you have twelve animals,” he said so softly even I had a hard time hearing him and I was right behind his desk. “But there are twenty-four of us. Was that a mistake?”
Ms. Drake shook her head. “No mistake. This will be a group project. You will each select a partner. Choose appropriately; you will need someone with whom you can work well, someone who will uphold his or her part of the research, and someone with whom you can work both in and out of class time to complete this project.”
Half the class groaned, the other half cheered. I couldn’t help it; I whipped in my seat toward Becky. Surely this would be the end of the pretending-not-to-like-me thing. I mean, who else would she work with?
But Becky was smiling wide with her huge bubble teeth right into Tom’s stupid snorty face. Just ahead of Tom, Henry turned in his seat. If I wanted to know what my how-could-you face looked like just then, I could see it in Henry’s. He slowly turned back around and swatted Jeffery Daniels on the shoulder until he turned around and agreed to be Henry’s partner. When I turned back in my seat, my eyes burning, there was April, an inch from my desk.
“Partners?” she said, holding out a hand for me to shake. Then she pulled back, sneezed in her hand, and held it out again. The cuffs of her sleeve were crusty.
This is what my life has come to—being research partners with a nose picker.
Just then Sam turned in his seat. “Sorry, April,” he said. “Lucy’s going to be my partner.” He smile-grimaced again. Very softly, he added, “I dare you.”
My smile felt so slow, like my face forgot how to do it quickly. I nodded.
April wandered away, plopping down next to Sheldon. They would be a good pair. Sheldon already was squirming in his seat, blubbering facts about Apatosaurus. Sheldon’s weird obsession with dinosaurs goes all the way back to kindergarten. I mean, even in fourth grade, his shoelaces were covered in fake dinosaur tracks and today he was wearing a sweatshirt with a T-Rex. It looked like one of those iron-on things. I hoped for their sakes that Ms. Drake was including extinct species in her bucket.
When Ms. Drake came to our desks, Sam smiled at me and said, “You pick.”
For some reason, I was a little nervous. Becky and Tom had gotten leopards, which seemed like a really cool animal. Other pairs had mountain lions, polar bears, seals, penguins, and owls. Sheldon was trying to convince April that their pick of elephants could mean mammoths.
“What if I pick something lame, like earthworms?” I stalled. Ms. Drake was glaring at Amanda, who was yelling at her partner Lily for picking squirrels from the bucket. Of course, Amanda is pretty much angry all the time. It’s sort of her defining characteristic.
“Well,” Sam said, “the diorama would be easy. I can make awesome play dough worms.”
I smiled—twice in one day!—and reached in the bucket.
Don’t be donkey! Don’t be donkey!
“Wolves,” I read, too loudly in my non-worm, non-donkey relief. “We’re researching wolves!”
Across the room, Tom let out a howl. Henry barked. Becky giggled.
Stupid wolves.
Chapter Six
“So then, Tom said that it’s perfect you have wolves because you’re such a dog. And Sam is so pathetic that you’re the only person he could pick for a partner, even though no one likes you. And then I said—”
“Becky, I’ve got to go.”
And cry. These after-school I’m-still-your-friend-in-secret calls were not exactly the highlight of my day. I stared at myself in the mirror hanging from the back of my bedroom door. My hair was scraggly and matted. Like a dog.
“But I said that you have some friends,” Becky stammered. “I stood up for you. I think if Tom gets a new girlfriend, he’ll stop being so busy hating you all the time. And then we can be friends at school again.”
I took three really long breaths out of my nose. I noticed Mom doing that a lot when Molly cries and Dad doesn’t seem to hear her. But the breaths just made me make strange puffy noises into the phone.
“Lucy?” Becky asked.
“I’m here,” I said. “I just . . . I don’t like this, Becky. Why can’t you be friends with me everywhere?”
“I told you,” Becky said. “I am your friend, but I want to know what they’re saying about you. Don’t you want to know, too?”
“Are you sure it isn’t because you think they wouldn’t be your friend if you like me, too?” I blurted it out, my heart hammering.
Becky was silent for a long time. I heard her making puffy sounds, too, so I knew she didn’t hang up or anything. “Lucy, if you’re my real friend, why would you want me to risk having everyone not like me? I mean, I couldn’t stop them from not liking you or I totally would have. But why would you want that for me? Maybe we aren’t friends.”
“No, Becky,” I whispered. “I’m your friend. Really.”
“Are you sure?” Becky said. “I mean, it’s not like I have to call you or pretend anymore? Maybe you want to be friends with Sam more. I mean, maybe that’s your type of crowd now.”
“Oh, come on, Becky!” I snapped. “You know I want to be your friend. Just like before.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it?” Becky snapped right back. “Like, make yourself popular again. Or at least stop hanging out with dorks. Henry might be right. It could be contagious.”
“Make myself popular again?” I repeated. “Are you serious?”
She humpfed into the phone. “It can be done.”
It sounded so simple when she said it. But I remembered her face when she was making her diamond sparkle after The Kiss. I remembered her saying she would do anything—anything—to be popular. Was I willing to do whatever it took to get my seat back at Becky’s lunch table?
“Can you come over?” I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t even check with Mom and Dad or anything. But I wanted her to come over, show me for real that she was my friend. And maybe I could catch some coolness.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Can you ask? I’ll wait while you do.” And maybe ask my parents, too.
Becky said she’d be right back. I held the phone and walked into the living room. I had time to look around and see that laundry was pretty much covering the couch. That Mom was asleep beside the laundry, her mouth hanging open and drool dripping out of the corner of it. Dad was holding Molly and clicking through channels with a remote in his other hand. Becky’s house, however, was sure to be spotless. Her mom had a housecleaner who scrubbed everything her mom didn’t want to touch and everyone always put away their clothes. They didn’t even wear shoes in the house.
“Dad, can—?” But Becky was back on the phone before I could even ask if she could come over.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Did you ask?” I swear, it was like two seconds max that she was gone.
“Of course I asked.” She sounded huffy again.
“Can you come over tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?” I felt sort of ashamed even as I asked.
But before Becky could answer, the doorbell rang. Molly threw out her arms and legs like she thought Dad was going to drop her and started wailing. Mom popped upright on the couch, drool still on her cheek. Dad patted Molly’s back and pointed from
me to the door.
“Hang on a sec, Becky,” I said and stepped over the baby bouncy thing on the floor toward the door. I threw it open and, just like I needed one more thing to make me feel awesome, there was April.
“It’s my birthday!” she shouted as soon as she saw me.
“Who’s that?” Becky called in my ear. “Is that person there for you?” She sounded much too surprised.
“I have cake! At my house! It’s my favorite color!”
“Green?” I asked without really wanting to know.
April nodded vigorously.
“Lucy!” Becky shouted in my ear. “Is someone there? Who?”
“Yeah. It’s a friend.” I said friend a little too loudly to Becky, I think, because Becky got super quiet and April’s face practically split in half with a smile. “I’ve got to go, Becky. She invited me over.”
After I pushed the button to hang up the phone and April still stood there on the doorstep, I realized I had a huge problem. I either had to go to April’s house or lie on the spot in front of my parents. Like I said before, I’m awesome at lying. But my parents are super awesome at calling out my lies. It was a pickle. A big, green, cake-sized pickle.
“Happy birthday, April,” Mom half-yawned. “Of course Lucy can come over.”
“Is that your baby sister?” April asked, staring open-mouthed at Molly. Her hands stretched out toward my lumpy baby sister and she started to step over the doorstep. Soon those crusty fingers would touch my perfect sister.
“We’ve got to go!” I shouted, stepping in front of April. “Got to get to the cake!”
I glanced back at Mom and saw her face flush. Dad looked disappointed. I guess he wanted more time as a family unit or something. “I’ll be back soon. Really soon, I think.”
Dad nodded and kissed Molly’s head, which was odd since I was the one leaving.
