Click Here (to find out how i survived seventh grade)

by Denise Vega

  “That’s cool.” Rosie nodded. “Okay, you go in first.”

  I looked at her, took a breath, and stepped through the doorway. “Erin, good to see you.” Ms. Moreno greeted me with a smile. “Sit wherever you want for now. I’ll be having experienced kids, like you, lead groups for those who are new at this.”

  That got my attention. Me? Lead a group?

  “You can do it,” Ms. Moreno said, as if reading my mind. Rosie squeezed my shoulder as she swept past me to snag a chair next to Mark.

  I made a face as if to say “I don’t think so,” then turned my attention to the room. Looking at the five clusters of five computers each, monitors shining, mice and trackballs waiting for eager fingers, I couldn’t help smiling a little. I supposed having computers in a circle was going to “promote connectedness,” too, though in this case it might work. Being able to look over the monitor at someone’s face, rather than at the back of a head the way we did in word processing class, seemed like a good thing.

  The back wall had a low row of shelves beneath the windows where computer manuals, paper, and games were shoved in at different angles. I cringed at the sight of a game disc without its case. You can’t treat discs like that; they can scratch and get ruined. On the left wall hung a poster detailing the rules for safe surfing and another explained how to earn points to play different games.

  “Ms. Moreno?” Serena, sitting in a cluster near the windows, had her hand in the air.

  “Yes?”

  “Are we going to have a gossip column? Or an advice column? I could do that.”

  Ms. Moreno stopped in front of her desk. “We’ll talk about content in a few weeks. First we need to get everyone up to speed on how to create web pages.” She picked up a stack of handouts and held them out to me. “Could you pass these out, please?”

  “Sure.” I pulled off my backpack and set it on an empty chair. Jilly’s pin shifted in my pocket as I leaned over. Pulling it out, I looked at it briefly. I rubbed my fingers across the tape, which had rolled back to reveal part of the tragedy face. I put the pin halfway back in my pocket. Then I saw Rosie. She smiled at me and gave me the thumbs-up before looking down at her computer screen. I stuffed Jilly’s pin into an outside pocket of my backpack, out of sight, out of touch, and delivered the handouts.

  “This handout has some of the most common HTML commands,” Ms. Moreno said as I returned to my seat. “We’re going to start there. I want you to learn the commands and how they work before using software that does the work for you.”

  A few kids groaned, but I was excited. I figured I knew enough to tell people about it. Even though I used FrontPage, I often worked on the coding page so I could practice HTML.

  “— will be with Erin Swift.” My eyes shot up. I hadn’t been listening. She must have been assigning groups. “Erin, will you raise your hand so people know where to go?” I lifted my hand slowly in the air, my eyes darting from kid to kid to see who was coming over. So far, no one I knew. Good. Maybe they wouldn’t —

  “I’m supposed to learn web design from Big Foot?” A boy sat down right next to me and crossed his arms over his chest. He had spiky hair and dark brown eyes. I saw part of a chain coming out from the collar of his T-shirt. He obviously thought he had the cool look down, but he was way too skinny and his voice cracked at the end of his question.

  I turned and glared at him. “You can p align your butt to a different group,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Huh?”

  “P align is an HTML code for aligning something on a page.” I looked up to see Mark Sacks standing in the cluster to our right, looking at the boy beside me. “Positioning it. You know, like left, center, right.” He moved his hands to demonstrate each position. “She knows her stuff,” he said, nodding at me. Then he turned and waved his group over, and they all sat down.

  I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning like a crazy girl. Cute Boy had said I knew my stuff! It felt like I grew two feet taller in two seconds. I looked down at my Chucks. Were they smaller and farther away now? Wahoo! Confidence surged through me as I turned to Mr. Spiky Hair.

  “So?” I asked. “Are you staying or going?”

  He looked at me for a moment. His eyes shifted to Mark’s back, then returned to me. He sighed and picked up the handout. “What does HTML mean, anyway?”

  “Hypertext Markup Language,” I said. “Let me show you how it works.”

  Thursday, September 12

  I Am Web Designer, See Me Code

  Of course, I didn’t tell the guy in the Intranet Club on Tues. what HTML really stands for: Hot Tamale Mark Love. I definitely have Hot Tamale Love for Mark Sacks. Rosie got me started on the hot tamale part. That’s what she calls good-looking boys. She doesn’t know about the Mark part.

  I can’t stop thinking about him…keep telling myself he’s just my friend, he’s just my friend, but can’t seem to stop thinking, I wish he was my boyfriend, I wish he was my boyfriend.

  Ok, Erin, QUIT IT.

  Went over to Jilly’s to do homework after school. She was playing fashion model while I was doing math cuz she couldn’t decide what to wear. I’m like, why in the world are you asking me? You’re the fashion queen. She said she was desperate, which made us both laugh.

  I guess she’s got this girl in 2 of her classes who is Miss Popular…the usual instant hate girl—blond, some boobage, etc….but this 1 is also smart, Jilly says, which really has her freaked out.

  I told Jilly she was smart, which was kind of true. Jilly is smart, but she does just enough to get by, so her grades don’t really show how smart she is.

  Anyway, she finally got her oldest sister, Becca, in the room. Becca is the Fashion Empress to Jilly’s Fashion Queen…Tried to concentrate on my homework but I couldn’t. Jilly freaking out was freaking me out.

  Had to go home early…just couldn’t watch anymore.

  chapter 8

  CORN-ered

  Intranet Club was the BEST. My group hung on every word I said and learned HTML really fast. We were already putting some pages together because it turned out I knew the most about web design. Even more than the eighth graders. Our group was in charge of the “School Life” section, which included stuff like faculty interviews, awards, and a page called “A Day in the Life” where we profiled a few kids, then typed up a journal, which everyone would get to read once the Intranet was live online.

  The only boring thing we had to do was list the courses and descriptions offered at MBMS, as well as the schedules for each track. But that only had to be done once, which was nice.

  It also turned out that I was a pretty good leader when I knew what I was talking about. A couple of the eighth graders even asked me questions. And Tyler, formerly known as the Boy Who Wouldn’t Take Instruction From Big Foot, was really into it and seemed to have forgotten all about thinking I was a dork. He asked me all kinds of questions and told me how smart I was.

  “It’s only because my mom’s a web designer,” I said modestly. “Nah,” Tyler said. “Even if both my parents were web designers, I wouldn’t know the stuff you do.”

  I just smiled and showed him how to change the font size in his heading.

  Mark’s group was in charge of school events — arts and music, sports, and such. Not only did they list the events but they had reviewers and sportswriters covering each one. They had set it up like a newspaper, with digital photos and everything. Very cool.

  “I can’t log on. Why can’t I log on?” Rosie sat at her computer, tapping angrily at the keyboard. “I have to get the letters to the editor ready by the end of the week.” Rosie was in a group with an eighth-grade team leader, and they were in charge of all correspondence we received. This could be letters to the editor, letters for the weekly “Tell Us About It” column, or webmaster comments or complaints. Since we weren’t going live until just before Thanksgiving, we asked a few kids to write in with questions or comments, and Rosie would include these
in her first “Tell Us About It” column. Once we were live and the whole school had access to the Intranet, any student could send in a question or comment.

  “We need a different name,” I said during our break. Mark, Rosie, Tyler, and I were heading for the gym to shoot baskets. “‘Intranet Club’ is boring.”

  “Yeah,” said Mark. “What about Web Club? We could be the Webbies.”

  “The Webbies?” Rosie, Tyler, and I said it at the same time, raising our eyebrows at him.

  “Okay, so that was stupid,” Mark said, laughing.

  “What about the I-Club?” I said. “The letter I.”

  “The I-Club,” Rosie said. “Cool.”

  “People might think we’re reading eye charts and stuff,” Mark said. “Not people in the know,” I said.

  “Right,” said Tyler.

  There were a few kids in the gym when we got there. Rosie was a decent player, Tyler was horrible, and Mark and I were pretty even.

  “I’m better at web design,” Tyler gasped when Rosie and I beat him and Mark in a two-on-two game.

  I laughed, and Rosie and I high-fived each other. “Is there anything you’re not good at?” she asked as we headed back to the lab. I was so shocked I stopped right in my tracks and Tyler nearly bumped into me.

  “Watch where you’re stopping.” Tyler grabbed my shoulders briefly from behind before stepping around me, grinning as he passed.

  “Sorry,” I said. He and Mark walked ahead of us, but I stayed put. Rosie smiled and shook her head. “You are, you know,” she said. “Good at stuff.”

  “I’m Goody Morgan,” Jilly squealed as we stood in front of the board outside the drama room the Monday after tryouts. Goody Morgan was the female pilgrim with the most lines. Jilly had made her mom drive us to school that morning so we would be the first people to see the cast list. All I could think was, Thank God. I didn’t think she’d make it through the weekend. She spent most of it rehearsing what she’d say if she got a different part from the lead, things like, “Well, Goody Stanton has more depth to her character” and “Woman Number Three is important because she represents the relationship between the white people and the Native Americans.”

  “See?” Jilly said, bringing me back to the cast list. “Goody Morgan, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot Jillian Hennessey.”

  “That’s great, Jilly. Can we go now?”

  “Wait,” she said. “What about you?” Her finger ran down the list of characters, then stopped. “Look. You’re an ear of corn.”

  “What?” I leaned in to get a better look. There it was, printed in a nice field-of-corn yellow from an ink-jet printer. “‘I’m all Ears’” Ear of Corn … Erin Swift.” I groaned. Didn’t anyone know this was middle school? Plays using fruits and vegetables as characters went out with the third grade. “I didn’t try out for an ear of corn,” I said. I hadn’t tried out for anything. I mumbled my lines on purpose, sang off-key, tripped over a chair, and missed my cue more than once. I did everything possible not to get a part at all. I only went because Jilly wanted me to.

  “You’re part of the chorus,” Jilly said. “See? Corn, peas, potatoes, yams. All the vegetables are represented.”

  “I’m not going to be an ear of corn,” I hissed in Jilly’s ear. “I’m barely over being —”

  “There she is!” said a familiar and unwelcome voice behind me. “From puppet to ear of corn. You’re moving up in the world, Swift.”

  I whipped my head around to see Serena standing behind us, smiling her you’re-a-loser-and-I’m-not smile. She had been selected to play Goody Stanton in the play, the female with the second most lines.

  “Shut up,” Jilly and I said at the same time.

  “Oooh. Are you going to hit me again? Let’s see, that would mean more detention. Or maybe a suspension. Or wait, possibly expell — expellation.”

  “Expulsion,” I said. I couldn’t help it. I hated when people used the wrong word.

  “You would know,” S.W. said. Then she turned to Jilly. “I see you got the lead. Again. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, Serena.” Jilly pretended not to hear the snot factor in Serena’s voice. “See you at rehearsal.”

  When we were out of earshot, I groaned loudly. “There’s no way I’m going to spend the next eight weeks as an ear of corn around her.”

  “It’ll be fun,” Jilly said. “Just ignore her.”

  “That’s like telling me to ignore a truck barreling down the highway at me.”

  “Well, move to the side of the road, Erin. You’re going to have to deal with her for the next eight weeks.” Jilly fluffed her bangs and tossed her hair. She’d been doing a lot of hair tossing these days. I wondered if she was turning into a horse.

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” I said as we headed toward her locker. Several people called out to us as we passed, and we smiled and waved. Even though they included me in their greetings, I sometimes wondered if they’d notice me if I wasn’t with Jilly. After all, this was her territory. Though I came over to this part of the school every morning, it still felt strange. As if I had crossed over the border into a place I didn’t quite belong. But I liked being noticed in a good way, not for my feet or being called a puppet. Or now an ear of corn.

  An ear of corn. What was I thinking? I planned to spend the next eight weeks as an ear of corn because of Jilly. This seemed to be pushing the limits of friendship, in my opinion.

  Jilly took my arm and squeezed it. “Thanks for doing this, Erin. I don’t think I could get through it without you.”

  I sighed. Jilly always seemed to know just what to say when I changed my mind. Giving her a half smile, I tugged at my earlobe. “I’m all ears.”

  Jilly grinned. “See you after school.”

  I wondered if anyone else would be an ear of corn for their friend. Somehow, I doubted it.

  Monday, September 23

  Corn. That’s right, folks, I’m playing an ear of corn in the Thanksgiving Harvest play. If Jilly wasn’t so excited that I’m doing it with her, I would have turned my kernels in right away. But it was all she could talk about the entire ride home. We’ll start script reading next week and full rehearsals in 2 weeks and it just totally bums me out…can’t even believe I’m going to spend good after school time singing along with a bunch of vegetables. The things I do for friendship!

  But I have to say Jilly has done things for friendship, too…like taking down the Pinocchio posters. She was so funny cuz when I thanked her she smiled and then got a weird look on her face and took off…maybe she’s feeling shy about it, which is even weirder.

  Today I sat with Mark and Tyler and Rosie at lunch. Rosie had a strange brown drink in her thermos…told me it was chocolate atole and asked if I wanted some. Mark was behind her making these “No, don’t do it” gestures, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings…tasted a little strange, but I drank most of it cuz it was nice and warm.

  Then Mark told me it was basically corn mush…Corn! Don’t talk about corn around me! Rosie thinks I’m insane to do the play and I can’t explain to her that NO isn’t a word I can really use with Jilly.

  Things That Are Freaking Me Out

  • I’m corn.

  • Serena Poopendena is in the play, 2.

  Things That Give Me Hope

  Ms. Moreno told me she was so glad I was part of the Club and, I quote, “We can really use someone like u.” Someone like ME.

  Question: Who does Ms. Moreno need for the I-Club?

  A. A puppet

  B. An ear of corn

  C. A large-footed mammal

  D. None of the above

  The correct answer is E for ERIN PENELOPE SWIFT!!!!

  Hear that, Serena? Jilly? Ok, that was weird. Why did I write Jilly’s name, too? Whatever. MBMS rocks.

  chapter 9

  Playing With Our Food

  Today we had corn — I mean play — practice. I’m now after school four days a week. Monday and Wednesday for the play, Tuesday and
Thursday for I-Club. Fridays I get off for good behavior.

  I have one line: “I can’t HEAR you,” and I’m supposed to draw it out. Mrs. Babish, the drama teacher and director of A Harvest to Remember, wants me to cup my hand around my ear when I say it. Geez. And we have to learn three songs and sing them as a Vegetable Medley. That was my name for our tasty little group.

  The stage sat at one end of the gym, with stairs running up on either side for access. The heavy gray velvet curtains were pulled back against the sides and the skirt across the top of the stage was frayed, the MBMS emblem in the middle starting to fade.

  On the way up the steps to the stage, I saw Mr. Foslowski, the now-famous custodian, catcher of illicit smooching.

  “Don’t even think about using one of my closets,” Mr. Foslowski would say to any boy and girl within an arm’s length of each other. Then he’d hold up a threatening bottle of Windex and a crumpled paper towel.

  Right now he was running a large dust broom across the stage. “Look out, young lady, coming through.”

  I jumped over the end of the broom and watched him continue across the stage. He looked back at me. “You alone?”

  “No. I’ve got a bunch of vegetables joining me any second.”

  Mr. Foslowski nodded. “Good. There’s safety in numbers.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You look familiar.” He peered at me. “I know. You’re that girl up on the wall.” I cringed as he shook his head. “Those posters were a bear to get down.”

  “You took them down?” I glanced over at Jilly, who was talking animatedly with the other actors. She smiled and waved at me. I waved back uncertainly.

  “Nine of them,” Mr. Foslowski said. “They’d used that double-stick spongy tape. If I could’ve caught them, they would have been the ones scraping it off the walls.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked. “You didn’t put them up there.”