by Denise Vega
“I’ve got to go,” I said suddenly, standing up.
“But we have to plan for tomorrow,” Jilly protested. “And we need to fill out these questionnaires.”
“I did mine already.” It had helped me ignore all those people calling me names outside the principal’s office. I had acted as if my life depended on filling in the answers for my name (Erin P. Swift), my interests (basketball, soccer, computers, having my best friend on the same track as me), and what I hoped to get out of my MBMS experience (to get out, period).
“But what about the bus?” Jilly asked, tapping the map with a polished fingernail. “I know. You come to my house and we’ll walk together.”
“Okay,” I said, even though it made more sense for us to walk from my house, which was closer to the bus stop. Once that was decided, I practically ran from the room. The walls felt as if they had been pushed closer, like that trash compactor in the first Star Wars, which was really the fourth Star Wars, even though it was made first, and the first one was made fourth.
“Call me!” Jilly shouted.
I would. I always did.
Tuesday, August 20 5:00 p.m.
Ok, so I’ve decided to share 1 of my deep dark secrets from childhood. Since I’m 121/4, that isn’t very long ago but it’s still a deep dark secret so…no telling.
When I was younger and something horrible happened to me, I would hide in 1 of 5 different places, depending on the degree of horribleness of the situation. My brother, Chris, always had to come find me, so he named these spots. Of course, he had to explain to me that DEFCON was a military term, short for Defense Condition or Defense Readiness Condition, used when the U.S. was under some kind of military threat. I thought this fit my situations perfectly.
Here they are in order of least horrible to absolutely the MOST horrible of all:
DEFCON 5
My bed. I would throw myself on it when things were just a little bad…like when I tripped over my feet and no 1 saw me, but I still felt stupid.
DEFCON 4
The basement room closet, where I went when things were a little bit worse…like when Jilly gave me the same valentine she gave to Anna Pike in kindergarten…B4 I paid attention and saw that there were only 4 types of valentines in those shoe boxes.
DEFCON 3
The neighbor’s shed…a great hideout with their lawn tools and mower. I went there in 3rd grade when I farted in the girls’ bathroom and Serena was in the stall next to me. You can guess the humiliation that came after.
DEFCON 2
The bushes on the other side of the neighbor’s house…pretty horrible stuff if I came here…like when Louis Barnes announced to the entire 2nd grade that my shoes could be the Nina and the Pinta for the school play. Jerk.
DEFCON 1
The O’Learys’ tree house at the end of the block…the ultimate horrible. Like when Serena put pudding on my chair in 4th grade and I sat in it and didn’t know it right away and walked around with chocolate smeared on my shorts and everyone said I pooped in my pants. Jerkette.
What happened today — the Puppet Incident (aka the PI) — definitely DEFCON 1…but the tree house was packed with kids. I headed for DEFCON 5…more comfortable.
So my brother comes banging on my door today and I’m thinking he’s just checking on me like he used to when I had a DEFCON thing…but get this. He starts YELLING at me about hitting Serena…I’m like, what is that all about? Well, I’ll tell you what it’s all about. He’s CRAZY. Turns out he likes Serena’s older sister, Amanda…convinced that she’ll never look at him, let alone like him, when she finds out I’m the 1 who hit Serena.
Excuse me? If she’s like Serena, he should be THANKING me…but no…he called me a loser and said I was the only person on the planet who could ruin someone’s life from a distance. Can you believe that? What a jerk.
10:00 p.m.Can’t sleep … list time.
Things That Stink
• Humiliation by She Who Doesn’t Deserve to Be Named Even Though She Has a Stupid Romance Novel Name and People Should Be Making Fun of HER.
• She Who Doesn’t Deserve to Be Named was snotty to me at lunch, B4 the PI—“Poor Erin. No Jilly, no 1 to sit with.” When I told her I was meeting someone outside, she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t, but so what? I absolutely HATE that she didn't believe me. (See below for how it turned out. I actually did meet someone outside. Poop on you, S.W.)
• Cute Boy—aka Mark Sacks—will never talk to me again cuz no 1 that cute would ever be around a large-footed puppet who hits people in the nose.
Why I’m Not Losing All Hope
• Rosie said hi back when I said hi after homeroom.
• This really quiet girl named Carla is my locker partner…seems nice.
Ok, so here’s why my not meeting anyone at lunch turned out to be meeting someone at lunch. 1st, I had to sneak outside cuz there was nowhere to sit without letting people know I had no 1 to sit with…but then a miracle happened. I met my word processing teacher, Ms. Moreno. She told me about an Intranet Club that she’s starting. I didn’t even know what an Intranet was. I guess it’s like the Internet, only private, like only in a company or school. She said it will only be faculty, students, and staff who can access the MBMS Intranet. How cool is that? A mini-Internet right in your own school!
But the coolest thing was when she went back inside with me. In the cafeteria, she handed me a piece of paper and asked me to look it over, like I was helping her out on some project or something. Lots of kids saw and looked at us—is that cool or what?
• Ms. Moreno understands my pain.
• I've got this Web Club Intranet thingie.
• Jilly is still my friend, even though she cared more about learning the map to her classes than she did about the PI.
Why is it that the things that stink are WAY bigger than the things that give me hope?
P.S. This is the longest entry in the history of blogging…I wonder if I can get in the Guinness Book.
chapter 4
Pinocchio Stalls
“Have you come up with a plan to get us on the same track?” I asked Jilly the next morning when I picked her up at her house.
Jilly shook her head. “Not yet. But something will come up.” She dug in her backpack and pulled out some Tic Tacs. “I got these for you.”
“Is that a hint?” I asked, fingering my own package of Tic Tacs in my pocket.
Jilly laughed. “No. Your breath never smells bad. I just got you one when I got my supply.” She unzipped her backpack further to reveal about ten boxes of Tic Tacs. “You never know when you’ll be talking face-to-face with a cute boy.”
“Right,” I said, thinking that if I was ever face-to-face with a cute boy (not to mention Cute Boy), I’d need more than a Tic Tac because I’d probably barf from fear.
Jilly kind of bounced as she walked. She looked excited, like she was going to Six Flags or the mall, not to MBMS. She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Here we go.”
Yep. Here we go. Right into the mean-kid-infested jungle.
Before we reached the bus stop, she stopped me. “Sniff test,” she whispered. I rolled my eyes but leaned over and sniffed quickly above her shoulder to make sure she didn’t smell.
“Fine,” I said.
“Other one,” Jilly commanded, twisting at the waist. Eye roll, sniff. All done. I had refused to sniff under her arm the way she had asked me to do the first time she wore deodorant in fifth grade.
“You’re disgusting,” I had told her.
“You’re my friend,” she’d replied, pouting.
“Will you sniff under my arm?” I lifted it high and leaned toward her.
“Well, no.” She pulled back. “All right, all right. You don’t have to do under the arm. But above my shoulder, okay? I just can’t tell by myself.”
I never made her sniff above my shoulders. I trusted Secret to keep my BO secrets a secret. Of course, when I got on the bus, my pores opened wide and not even
the Hoover Dam could have stopped the flood.
“Hey, look. It’s Pinocchio!” someone shouted.
“How’s that right hook?” said a boy in the back.
“I can’t believe you’re famous after one day,” Jilly said as we plopped down in the very front seat, behind the bus driver.
“Famous for being a puppet.” Before Jilly could respond, a boy across the aisle leaned over.
“You must be Geppetto,” he said.
Jilly rolled her eyes, but I could tell she liked the attention. “My name is Jillian,” she said. “Not Geppetto.”
“Okay, Jillian-not-Geppetto.” The boy grinned at her and she smiled back before turning to give me Big Eyes, which meant Can you believe this guy? She was loving it.
Jilly talked a mile a minute beside me, which helped me ignore the name calling. When we got to school, I dropped Jilly off at her locker and ran to the other side of the school to my locker. The first thing I noticed when I got there was Mark Sacks, aka Cute Boy, pointing at something on the wall. My eyes followed his finger. It was a picture of Pinocchio with a face glued over Pinocchio’s and a very long foot in the place of Pinocchio’s nose. It wasn’t my foot, but it was my face. From the elementary school yearbook. Jilly had wanted to see what I’d look like with a beard, so she painted my chin with chocolate ice cream. Of course the photo made it into the yearbook. And now someone had enlarged it and plastered it on the wall of Molly Brown Middle School.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open. Then Rosie stopped next to Mark. They both looked at the picture. Rosie glanced my way, but I turned before our eyes met.
“Swift!” It was Mark. I turned and hurried down the hall. I didn’t want to hear his jokes.
When I got to my locker, it had another picture taped to it, along with Silly String covering the entire front. I ripped the picture down and pulled off the Silly String as I opened the locker door. String was everywhere inside, too, thanks to the locker vents. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away as I peeled the string off my stuff. Then I started on my locker partner’s.
“Don’t worry about it.” Carla’s voice startled me. “I can get it.” “I’m sorry,” I said, turning my face so she couldn’t see how close I was to crying. I hustled to class, passing another Pinocchio picture on the way. Someone had written a message across the huge foot: FEET APPEAR SMALLER THAN ACTUAL SIZE. I grimaced. Ripping down the picture, I stuffed it into a trash can, imagining I was stuffing Serena’s face into the candy wrappers, sticky ABC gum, and, with any luck, a half-eaten Twinkie with the cream nice and moldy and ready for wearing.
When I got to my word processing class, Ms. Moreno smiled encouragingly at me. She seated us in alphabetical order, and when Mark sat down in front of me, he tried to catch my eye. I pretended my mouse needed cleaning.
Suddenly his face appeared above my monitor.
“Don’t say a word,” I hissed.
“I wasn’t —”
“That’s two words,” I said. “Three if you want to get technical about the contraction.”
Mark sighed, shook his head, and faced front. I could only imagine the puppet jokes I had just saved myself from.
Hurrying from class to class, I endured constant shouts of “Pinocchio!” “Hey, Pinoke!” but I ignored them. I’d been teased about my feet. I could handle this.
At least I thought I could.
After lunch someone attached string to my back, which I didn’t notice until a girl I didn’t know pulled on it, talking in a fakey doll-like voice. “My name is Erin. I have big feet. I want to be a real boy.” What I wanted was to scream in her face. Instead, I ripped the string off and ran into the girls’ bathroom, locking myself in a stall. I fought back tears as I leaned against one wall, breathing in the sharp scent of ammonia as I wondered how in the world I was going to survive the rest of the week, let alone seventh grade, with a start like this.
Moaning, I sat down on the toilet, clutching Jilly’s pin in my hand as the door to the bathroom smacked open.
“Poor Serena,” said one girl. Leaning over, I looked through the crack in the stall. It was two girls Poopendena hung out with.
“She won’t even let me in her house,” said the other. “I stood on her front porch and talked to her through the door.”
“That Erin Swift,” the first one said. I sat up straighter. “I can’t believe she did that. She’s so —”
“She’s a loser,” interrupted the second girl. “Without Jillian, she’s nobody. Did you hear Jillian is on Track C and Erin’s on A Track? Swift is on her own.”
My cheeks burned. I knew I should burst out of the stall, shouting, yelling …something. But I couldn’t. I closed my fist tighter around the pin, letting the sharp point poke into my palm. I just wanted them to go away. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone.
They shuffled across the floor in my direction. My heart raced. What if they looked under the door? I glanced down at my ratty red Chuck Taylors. They’d know my feet.
Pulling my Chucks back on either side of the toilet, I prayed they wouldn’t check. When they passed my stall, I sighed with relief and leaned slightly to the left to peek at them through the narrow gap between the door and the stall. They were drying their hands with paper towels.
“Someone already took down the pictures,” one girl whined. “And after all that work.”
I smiled. Jilly. Nanny-nanny boo-boo on them.
The restroom door opened again and the two girls stopped talking. I shifted my weight to see who came in, but she was just out of my sight line.
The first girl lowered her voice but I could still hear her. “I bet some people will say mean things about the way she looks when she comes back.”
“She deserved it.” I recognized that voice.
“You think everyone deserves it, Velarde.”
“Nope,” said Rosie. “Just her.” I heard footsteps coming closer. “She’s like a tick in a dog’s ear. That’s what my grandma would say. Of course, she’d say it in Spanish, which you wouldn’t understand.” I heard feet shuffling. “She doesn’t have to be so mean to everyone.”
“She’s not mean to everyone,” the first girl protested. “And I can’t believe you called her a tick. I’m going to tell her.”
Rosie snorted. “Oooh. I’m scared.” Her voice was low, near the floor. She was checking under the stalls! I backed up as far as I could as the stall door beside mine opened and closed. I held my breath, wondering if Rosie had seen my feet. A few seconds later I got my answer.
A hand appeared suddenly on my side of the stall, waving its fingers. I wondered if it was a friendly, how-ya-doing wave, or a I-won’t-blow-your-cover-but-you-owe-me wave. It didn’t really matter, though. I was so grateful for those wiggling fingers. I reached out to them, wanting to hold onto them. But just as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.
And then I wondered if I’d seen them at all.
Yes, this is a brand-new page with its very own link. Why, you may ask? Cuz after Rosie wiggled her fingers at me, after I survived my 1st day of detention and went back to my locker, I found a stuffed puppet sitting there, covered with mud and gunk. Someone had propped up a sign that said: ERIN SWIFT, QUEEN OF THE PUPPETS. Spent the next 15 minutes cleaning up…didn’t tell Mom why I was late getting out to the car…should have shown Puppet Porter how some people don’t respect puppets.
Of course the meanest girl in the whole world did this…not her exactly cuz she wasn’t in school today. Even if she was, she’d be 2 chicken to do it herself. She had her stupid friends do it. Jerkettes of the World.
So, cuz of this latest horrible thing and cuz I HATE HER, S.W. gets her very own HATE-O-RAMA web page. Isn’t she lucky.
Public Enemy #1
[Note to self: insert ugliest photo in the world of S.W.]
Serena Worthington, aka Serena Poopendena, Serena Snottington, Serena the Teenage B----.
Things I Hate About PE #1
(besides the obviou
s recent events)
• She’s already 13 and thinks she’s hot stuff.
• She already has some boobs, not just pokies.
• Some people like her even though she’s not a nice person. (What’s wrong with them?)
• She called me names and didn’t get in trouble (that sticks and stones thing is a bunch of poopola).
Revenge Ideas
• Cut off all of her hair, including her eyelashes.
• Throw her into the Forbidden Hedge.
• Spit in her soup.
• Find out which boy she likes and tell him that her mom was the bearded lady in a small circus and it’s only a matter of time B4 her beard starts growing 2.
Random Thoughts
Rosie thinks Serena is an annoying tick in a dog’s ear…she’s worse than a tick…a mosquito, poking at people, sucking their blood, and leaving a bad itch behind.
Chris is giving me the ST (Silent Treatment) cuz his prediction was right. Amanda apparently went off on him about me hitting Serena and told him that only a real jerk would have a sister like that. Hello? I tried to tell him that someone who would blame him for something I did was probably not worth it, but he acted like I hadn’t said anything. How rude is that? Here I am suffering extreme humiliation and pain, and I found it in my heart to reach out to my brother. What does he do? He rebuffs me. (Just read this word today. Isn’t it great?)
Click here to ban Pinocchio signs and references from all public buildings.
Click here to throw virtual darts at S.W.’s face.
Click here to contribute your own Revenge of the Puppet Ideas.
Click here for a reenactment of the Insult and the Punch (must have a video player plug-in).
