Green Algae and Bubble Gum Wars

by Annie Bryant

  “Ding ding ding! Five enviro points for Isabel!” Avery shouted. “And using chicle helps the rain forest economy,” she gushed, looking directly at Katani, “because it supports the people who live there and harvest the chicle.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Katani, still touchy from the conversation about the gum factory and the economy the day before.

  “Hours of research, dude,” Avery answered, pulling out a thick packet of papers from her backpack. “And I talked to the people at Glee Gum. But the third point of my master plan is the best of them all.” Avery rubbed her hands together in what she hoped was a menacing way. “My gum is so much better than Kiki Underwood’s that no one is going to care or even want that super yuuugly Tru Blu stuff. That is, once they try my masterpiece.” Avery grinned at everyone.

  “And just how do you plan on doing that?” asked Katani doubtfully. “Not that I’m on her side or anything, but it seems like Kiki’s gum is pretty popular. All the kids at AAJH have been rocking bright blue tongue…if you haven’t noticed.”

  Avery casually waved her hand. “Just watch. Hey, Nick!”

  Nick Montoya jogged over to the BSG. “Hey, guys…hey, Charlotte.”

  “Hi,” Charlotte said softly. Whenever Nick Montoya came around her knees turned to pudding. “Did you get my e-mail?”

  The girls glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, but Maeve looked away. Usually seeing puppy love like Nick and Charlotte’s made Maeve feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Today, however, it made her feel like bursting into tears and running into a bathroom stall. It didn’t help that once—even though it was a while ago—Nick Montoya had been her crush project. But after one disastrous date, it was clear to Maeve and the rest of the BSG that Nick Montoya had eyes only for Charlotte.

  “I was just gonna say!” Nick exclaimed to Charlotte. “I think it’s an awesome idea. I just ran into Chelsea outside, and—”

  “Shhhh!” Charlotte shushed him, tilting her head toward the rest of the BSG.

  “Oh, right, top secret!” Nick answered, dropping his voice. “I mean, uh, I did not just run into Chelsea outside, and she definitely did not just tell me that she’s totally on board.”

  Everyone, including Charlotte, had to grin. “I guess now we know who your partners-in-science-fair-crime are,” Avery teased.

  “That’s great that she, uh, didn’t say that,” Charlotte laughingly told Nick. “Now, I say we talk to Ms. R after class and get her okay…”

  “And then we can meet at the bakery today after school,” Nick said, finishing Charlotte’s sentence, almost as if the two shared one brain.

  Avery rolled her eyes and mouthed, “True Love,” even managing to right Maeve’s perma-frown into a smile. “Listen, Nick, as much as we’d all like to hear about you and Char’s secret meet-up-ez-vous—”

  “Don’t you mean rendezvous?” asked Charlotte, who was not only a word nerd, but had lived in Paris.

  “Whatever,” Avery went on. “The thing is, Nick, I called you over here for a reason.”

  “Oh, yeah? What?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to try a piece of my homemade gum.” Avery broke off another section from the gum roll and extended her hand with the gum resting in her palm.

  Nick leaned in. “Dude. That looks totally sketchy. I mean, totally.”

  “That’s just what I said!” Charlotte cried.

  “It’s actually weewy good,” Isabel uttered between chews.” But I can’t get it to make a bubble…” She made a funny face as she shifted the gum all around in her mouth, trying to blow a bubble.

  “That’s because it’s not bubble gum, Iz,” Avery told her. “It’s chewing gum. You know what makes the bubbles in bubble gum? Elastic. And there’s no way I am putting that in my gum! It’s supposed to be natural, remember?” She shook her hand holding the gumball in front of Nick’s nose. “So…Nick…whadaya say?”

  He gritted his teeth and shook his head.

  “Watch this,” Avery whispered to Katani. Then she declared loudly to Nick, “I dare you.”

  Now Nick looked intrigued. “What’ll you give me?”

  Avery squinted and said in her most serious voice, “Respect.”

  Nick nodded. “Deal.” And with that he took the gum and popped it in his mouth. “Hey! This is rad! You don’t even miss the bubbles…I mean the elastic…whatever. Yo, Dillon, Yurtmeister…get over here.” Dillon Johnson and Henry Yurt ran over to join the group. “You’ve got to try the Ave’s gum, dudes. Avery, set ’em up with some of that.”

  Avery distributed the gum to the boys, who both gave her two thumbs way up. Soon, Avery had kids coming up to her in twos and threes shouting, “Gum! Gum!” Before the first bell rang, half the stock in her duffel bag was gone. As the girls hustled off to class, Avery turned to her friends and snickered, “You see that?”

  Confident that her gum would soon be the AAJH gum of choice, Avery stopped in front of her locker to store the rest. Her face turned purple when she grabbed her locker handle. Blue stickiness smushed through her fingers. She narrowed her eyes and whispered, “Let the games begin!”

  Math Boy Strikes Again

  “Hello! We’re home!” Katani hollered. She and Kelley walked into the hallway and were greeted by silence. “Hey! Anybody here? I said we’re home!” shouted Katani.

  Kelley put her bag down and carefully hung up her yellow raincoat on its proper hook. “This is peculiar.” Peculiar had been her word of the day. She knew it meant weird and had used it five times on their walk home. The only near-disaster was when she asked a man in a cowboy hat, “Why are you wearing a peculiar hat?” Katani didn’t think the cowboy hat man had appreciated that.

  “Hey, girls, how was school?” Patrice appeared in the hallway sucking down one of her banana soy milkshakes. She loved to make them after especially exhausting basketball practices.

  “It was…okay. A little out of control,” Katani mumbled.

  “It was peculiar,” Kelley pronounced. “Too much gum. There was gum everywhere. It wasn’t normal.” She laughed.

  “What?” Patrice raised her eyebrows and collapsed in the easy chair in the den off the hallway. “I need to know more.”

  “Kids can be really immature,” Katani muttered. “Kiki Underwood is trying to be the Gum Queen of Massachusetts—as if being a Queen of Mean isn’t enough.”

  “You guys still call those girls that? Speaking of immature,” Patrice teased. She just loved to get under Katani’s skin.

  “Whatever, Patrice. Besides, some gremlin kids are taking her silly blue gum and sticking it on stuff everywhere. Why anyone could think that’s funny is beyond me. Then Avery made this gum at home that she said was better than Kiki’s and brought it to school today. By lunch, all you could hear at Abigail Adams was chewing and popping. And of course some doodle-brains lack the decency to throw their completely repulsive, used gum in the trashcan. Ugh. Seventh grade can be such a zoo. Now there’s gum everywhere. Doorknobs…chairs…desks…it’s really disgusting. Like totally out of control. I think I’m going to have to talk to Grandma about this.”

  “Out of control,” echoed Kelley. “Totally out of control…and very peculiar.”

  Patrice got up and peered out the window that overlooked the garage. “Are you even listening?” Katani challenged.

  “What? Oh, forgive me if I’m not completely fascinated by your, um, gum story. I’m more interested in the junior-hottie situation going down in the garage.”

  “What junior hottie situation?”

  Patrice shrugged. “I don’t know. About an hour ago some kid came over and wanted to talk to Dad. I’ve never seen him before, but he looks like he’s about your age. He had this crazy messy ‘fro and freckles, and he was wearing these awesome shades.”

  Katani shot over to the window and squeezed next to Patrice. There in her very own garage, on her very own property, chatting with her very own dad, was the one and only Reggie DeWitt. “I’ll see about that…,
” she grumbled as she stormed out of the house.

  “Where are you going, Katani?” Kelley called after her. “She’s in a very peculiar mood!” she remarked to Patrice.

  Patrice smiled. “Very peculiar indeed.”

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, Reggie?” Katani demanded, marching into the garage with her arms crossed tensely across her chest.

  “Yo yo, Kgirl, ’sup holmes?” Reggie greeted her.

  Katani clenched her fists. She’d had about enough of the new Reggie. She turned to her father. “Dad, what’s going on here?”

  Mr. Summers looked confused. “Well, young Reggie here expressed a keen interest in learning the nuts and bolts of—”

  “Ahem,” Reggie coughed.

  “Oh, right. No revealing the top-secret science project.” Mr. Summers chuckled.

  Katani looked appalled. “How do you two even know each other?”

  Reggie spoke up, sounding slightly more like his normal self. “I’m a big fan of your father’s work. He was the one who did the wiring for the new movie theater downtown. I wanted to work with the best, so I called the theater and they referred me to Mr. Summers…your dad, I mean.”

  “Ever since I got my big commission for the new gum factory, I’ve been able to cut out a lot of my smaller jobs to spend more time at home. And after all,” her dad continued bashfully, “he is my only electricity fan to date. But don’t worry, scout—I’ll still have plenty of time to give you a hand with your project, too. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Katani opened her mouth, ready to yell that she did mind, that she couldn’t stand Reggie DeWitt, and she wanted nothing more than for him to march his baggy jeans and his phony personality out of her garage, off of her property, and away from her dad. But instead, she bit her lip and uttered with all the strength she could possibly muster, “No. No problem. I’m gonna go start my homework.” She ran over and kissed her dad on the cheek. “Love you, Dad.”

  “Love you, too, princess.”

  Katani did her most confident, model walk—she had walked the runway once in New York—right out of the garage.

  “Hey, Katani!” Reggie called after her.

  She froze and slowly turned around.

  “You forgot your scarf in the science room yesterday.” Reggie waved the yellow silk in the air.

  Katani hated feeling forgetful or anything less than her usual pulled-together self, so it didn’t help that she had to walk all the way back across the garage to retrieve the scarf. Plus, her father noted, “That’s very nice of you, Reggie.”

  “So…,” Patrice probed when she returned. “What’s the deal with McCutie?”

  “You can’t be serious,” Katani said, disgusted. “Reggie DeWitt is so…so…annoying.”

  Patrice threw back her head and began to laugh hysterically.

  “What?” Katani cried. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh…nothing.”

  Katani squinted. “You can’t do that. You have to tell me. What?”

  Patrice wiped a laughter tear out of the corner of her eye. “It’s just either you have like, a major crush on that kid, or Kelley’s totally right…you are peculiar!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Dream-Crush Cowboy

  Maeve was being haunted, not by a ghost, but by the image of Bailey. Wherever she went, whatever she did, she saw Matt’s girlfriend. She couldn’t even enjoy wearing her favorite pink ensembles, because all she could think about was Matt telling her, “I really couldn’t care less about clothes.”

  Maeve marched around her bedroom, glaring at her reflection in her dresser mirror. “What does she have that I don’t have?” Maeve wondered aloud. Matt had said that Bailey was thoughtful. “I’m thoughtful too,” Maeve attested, pushing away the nagging guilt that she’d behaved less than thoughtfully on a number of occasions that week.

  After an hour of pacing and serious contemplation, Maeve finally arrived at the conclusion that there was only one reasonable explanation for Matt choosing Bailey over her, and that was that Bailey was a sophisticated woman while she, Maeve Kaplan-Taylor, was…not.

  She wondered what she would look like when she was Bailey’s age. Maeve studied her face in the mirror and suddenly had an idea. She ran into Ms. Kaplan’s room and returned with her mother’s charcoal-colored eye liner and max-volume mascara. Maeve had a little makeup collection of her own, but it had been decided by the higher powers (her parents) that she was much too young for eyeliner and mascara.

  With all the precision she could muster, Maeve very carefully outlined her big, blue eyes and combed the gooey black mascara through her long lashes. “Wow!” she breathed as she stared, pleased, at the result. “Hello, Mr. Agent. I’d love to go to LA and star in your zabillion dollar movie. Of course, I have to finish up my important scientific research on the importance of organically grown daffodils. Can you wait for me?” She dusted her cheeks with blush, smeared on dark red lipstick, and tied back her hair with a big silver clip.

  Maeve waltzed over to her big teddy bear sitting on the chair in the corner of her room. “Why, hello, Caleb. Why of course I’ll be going to Bedazzle’s after the Golden Globes. You’d like to go with me? Well, D-Cap did ask me first, but I’m still free for the Oscars if you’d like to—” Maeve stopped suddenly as she heard a quiet giggling noise coming from the hallway.

  She quickly dashed over to the door and opened it, knocking over Sam, who’d been perched outside with his eye glued to her keyhole. “Ow! Maeve!”

  “Sam! Were you spying on me?” she demanded. “Mom! Sam’s teasing me again!”

  “Was not! Mom, Maeve is lying to you!”

  Maeve knew there really was no worse sound than a mother thudding down the hall to deal with her screaming children. Maeve and Sam were both trembling as they realized their mistake. “What is going on here? Sam, it’s nine o’clock. Why aren’t you in bed?”

  Ooo, two points for me! Maeve cheered silently. Sam was up past his bedtime.

  “Um…um…Maeve stole your makeup and woke me up.”

  “Stop it, Sam!” Maeve shrieked, batting her brother’s hands away as he grabbed the shimmery scarf she had draped over her shoulders. Her brother was being so annoying that Maeve wanted to scream.

  “And Maeve,” Ms. Kaplan put her hands on her hips, “what’s going on with this atrocious stage makeup look?”

  “You mean I look like I belong onstage?” asked Maeve hopefully.

  “No, dear. It’s not a compliment. You have got on way waaaay too much makeup.”

  “Oh.” Maeve felt a little sorry for herself, but in one second had recollected her bearings and remembered, “But Mom, Sam was spying on me!”

  Ms. Kaplan raised her arms in the air and cried, “Enough! Sam, in bed now. And by the way, young man, if you don’t stop torturing your sister, you’re grounded for the whole month…and I mean it! Maeve,” Ms. Kaplan opened the door to Maeve’s bedroom and ushered her inside, “young lady, you’re coming with me.”

  Maeve wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but she followed her mother into the room. Ms. Kaplan sat on the bed and motioned for Maeve to do the same. “Okay. So what’s wrong, sweetie?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  Ms. Kaplan squinted. “You’ve been moping around this house for days. Honestly, you made more noise before you could even talk, Maeve. Now be honest with me. Is it school…friends…parties? Are you sneaking out of here to go to a party?”

  Maeve furiously shook her head. “No! No way, Mom.”

  “Well, I don’t see any other explanation for this,” she waved her hand in front of Maeve’s overly decorated face and continued, “unless…,”

  “Unless, what?”

  Ms. Kaplan stroked her daughter’s face and asked softly, “Are you in love?”

  Maeve’s lower lip began to tremble. “I’m not in love,” she squeaked, and at that moment she couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst into tears. “I’m—I’m completely heartb
roken!” Maeve began to sob and collapsed into her mother’s lap.

  Ms. Kaplan reached out and patted Maeve’s back. “Shh…shh…there, there, sweetie. I feel terrible…I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend.”

  Maeve sat up and blubbered, “That’s ’cause I never did!” Then she threw herself back down.

  “You want to talk about it?” asked Ms. Kaplan.

  “No,” Maeve heaved. “Well, maybe. You see, there’s this guy. And he’s a little bit older…actually quite a bit older than me. And I thought he really liked me, you know? ’Cause he was always extra nice to me, and he even had this nickname for me—Mix-Master-Curl. Isn’t that cute?”

  “This guy,” began Ms. Kaplan, “he wouldn’t happen to be a certain”—she raised an eyebrow—“tutor?”

  Maeve breathed a deep sigh. “Yes.”

  “So all this makeup and”—Maeve’s mother looked at the discarded shimmery scarf on the floor—“…stuff. This was just to look older?”

  Maeve nodded. “Matt told me that he—he—he—” Her voice started to quake and then she wailed, “has a”—sniff, sniff—“girlfriend.” Maeve cried as her mother stroked her back. “It’s this college girl…she’s totally unglamorous and like, way into science, and he thinks she just s-s-super a-awesome and I’m j-just s-s-so sad!”

  Maeve’s mother leaned over and plucked a tissue out of Maeve’s pink, fuzzy tissue box. “Here, honey. You got a little schmutz.” She directed Maeve to her reflection in the mirror, and Maeve saw that all the eyeliner and mascara that she’d so tenderly applied was now running down her cheeks in two thick, black streaks.

  Maeve screamed, “Aaah! I look horrible! No wonder Matt doesn’t like me…. I’m a hideous mess!”

  Ms. Kaplan had to stifle a small giggle. Even in her daughter’s hour of despair, she still managed to transform the scene into something fit for the silver screen.

  “To think,” Maeve moaned as she wiped the black gunk off her face, “I was so”—sniff, sniff—“sure he was my”—sniff, sniff—“soul mate!”