by Denise Vega
“That’s a book,” I said. “It’s not real life. It’s not my life.” “Exactly,” Mom said. “Things will turn out differently for you.” “Are you saying no one will forgive me in the end?”
“No.” Mom sighed. One of those humongous ones that meant she felt really bad for me. “I’m saying you’re different from Harriet, your friends are different from Janie and Sport, and you’re not nearly as angry as Harriet. You expressed your feelings and everyone has a right to do that. It’s just unfortunate that your feelings were made public.”
I groaned loudly. I’d stayed awake most of the night going over everything I’d written in my blog. “The worst part is that I wrote a lot of that stuff weeks ago. I don’t even feel that way anymore. Even about Serena.”
“Really?” Mom raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. I’d change it to the S.W. Dislike-o-Rama.”
“Oh, Erin,” she said, but she smiled. “Well, we’ve got four days of the break to figure out what to do. Then you’ll go back to school on Monday and face all this.”
I stared at her. How could she possibly make me go back after this? “In the meantime,” Mom continued, ignoring my look, “why don’t you try to get some rest? We’ve got fifteen relatives showing up tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m sure all the cousins will want to sign your cast.” She patted my arm and left.
Throwing myself backward onto my pillows, I stared up at the ceiling. I was never, ever going back to Molly Brown Middle School. No way. And my parents couldn’t make me, not in a million, trillion years. And there was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep. I was living a nightmare. How could I possibly sleep?
chapter 23
Erin Swift, aka Loser
“Are you INSANE?”
My bedroom door banged open and I sat upright in bed, my heart pounding like crazy. Sunlight streamed in my window so I knew it was still daytime.
“Wake up!” shouted Chris, barreling toward me. I raised my arms to ward off an attack but he stopped next to the bed, his hands clenched at his sides.
“What’s your problem?” I said, sitting up and lowering my arms. I rested my cast on my lap, making sure he remembered his sister was injured and therefore should be treated delicately.
Too bad “delicate” wasn’t anywhere in my brother’s vicinity. “My problem? Do you want to know what my problem is?”
“Actually, no,” I said, seeing his blazing eyes. “I changed my mind.” “Too late,” Chris said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you have caused? Do you?”
I glanced quickly up at him and then away. Oh, no. I hadn’t written just about people at my school. I’d written about Chris, too. Serena must have called her sister at the high school. Stupid cell phones.
“You said you felt sorry for me,” Chris snapped. “It was bad enough that you broadcast the fact that I liked — and I mean LIKED in the PAST tense — Amanda. That we saw her kissing Chad but to say you felt SORRY for me?” His fingers tightened on my arms. “The entire school now knows I wear frog underwear.”
“With those baggy lowrider pants, they probably already knew.” I tried to smile.
“That’s not the point. You wrote it down. And you said I was drunk on Halloween. If Mom and Dad find out —”
“I said I thought you might be drunk, I —”
Chris continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “And that stuff about the pictures? All these girls kept handing me their photos, asking me if I’d —” He squeezed my arms tighter and put his nose to mine. “God, I could kill you.” I winced. He must have realized what he was doing because he pushed me back roughly. I smacked my head on the headboard.
“Ow,” I said, rubbing the back of my head.
“You don’t know what pain is, Puppet Girl.”
I stared at him, unable to speak. Except for that first time when he got really mad, Chris had never said a word about the PI, and he’d never called me that name. Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to blink. They would fall if I blinked.
“There,” he said quietly. “Now maybe you’re getting a little closer to knowing.” He stormed out, slamming the door behind him. I stared at the closed door, trembling, my lip quivering as the tears rolled down my cheeks.
Wiping my sleeve across my eyes, I glanced down at my nightstand. A note was propped against my water glass. My hand shaking, I reached out to pick it up.
Erin (Not Harriet),
This is going to work out. I PROMISE! I’m downstairs in my office if you need me.
Hope you slept well.
I love you,
Mom
Poor Mom. She had no idea how truly horrible the situation was. How there was no way in the entire universe that it would work out. I’d lost my best friend, practically the entire school hated me, and now my brother hated me. Again.
The doorbell rang downstairs. A few seconds later I heard footsteps, then a soft knock at my door. “Erin? You awake?” Mom’s voice. She must not have heard Chris storming around slamming doors, waking me up.
“Yeah,” I said. “Come on in.” My hand clenched the covers as the door swung open.
“Hey.” Rosie stood next to my mom. “Did you get my message?”
I nodded and waved her in. “But I think you’re a bit optimistic. I had fifty-seven voice mails. Most of them were hate voice mails.”
“I’m sorry.” Rosie sat in the chair at my desk.
“Are you only here because I didn’t say anything mean about you on my website?”
Rosie laughed. “You did say I might be stuck up.”
“But then I said you weren’t.”
“True,” Rosie said. “But it doesn’t matter. I know I’m not.” She tugged on her braid. “Hmm, am I here because you didn’t slam me like everyone else? I honestly don’t know. I’d like to think I would be here even if you had said something mean about me, but I can’t say for sure.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Rosie smiled and sat down on the edge of my bed. “So, how are you doing?” She frowned. “I guess that’s a dumb question.” I tossed the covers off and stood up, rubbing my cast. “How could this happen?”
Rosie shook her head. “Like Ms. Moreno said, there was a big mixup. We didn’t even get to do anything with your disc last night because everything went wacko. Ms. Moreno had to deal with a server problem and then Tyler forgot to tell Mr. Arnett because he helped Eric format his last page and then things got really crazy.
“Then this morning, the group that Serena is in lost one of their graphic files and we were all trying to find something else to use. And then Mark’s column disappeared, then suddenly reappeared, and then Steve had gotten funny and added things like ‘Janitorial Makeout’ to the event listings, so we had to go through all of those and take out the joke ones.”
Rosie looked at me. “Once all those things were solved, we just published it. I voted to wait for you, but most people wanted to go for it, so we did.” She sighed. “We tried to call first thing, before …”
“I know.”
Rosie threw her arm over the back of the chair. “We heard about it about ten after nine and Ms. Moreno shut the whole Intranet down, but not before someone had printed out your stuff and passed it around.”
I collapsed on the floor, putting my head in the hand without the cast. “It’s a nightmare. It’s worse, way worse, than the PI.”
“PI?” Rosie asked.
“The Puppet Incident.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Rosie had never said anything about that, and I was grateful to her.
“You think it’s worse, too, don’t you?”
“Well, a lot more people are involved, that’s for sure,” Rosie said.
“Jilly thinks I did it on purpose. To get back at her.”
Rosie snorted. “That’s crazy.” She leaned toward me, touching my arm. “Erin, if I was working until midnight three nights in a row, I might accidentally switch some discs, too.” She flopp
ed down on the floor next to me. “She’s just thinking about herself.”
I glanced at Rosie. “She’s not always like that, you know.”
“I know,” Rosie said. “You wouldn’t be friends with her if she was.” I sighed. “I’m not friends with her right now.”
“You will be,” Rosie said. “Don’t worry.” She picked up my cast. “Looks a little bare, doesn’t it?” She signed it: “To the best corny friend in the world.”
I laughed but stopped because it felt strange, then laughed again. We sat in silence for a few moments, giggling every few seconds before sighing.
There was a knock at my door.
“Yeah?”
Mom poked her head in. “Do you girls want anything? Lemonade? Popcorn?”
“Yeah,” we both said together. And laughed again.
Mom smiled. “Lemonade and popcorn coming up.”
I glanced at Rosie. “You know she feels bad if she’s letting me eat in my room.”
We smiled at each other and then I frowned, leaning back against the bed.
“Did Mark read all the stuff I said about him?”
Rosie nodded. “Well, kind of. He read some, but he was so embarrassed he stopped reading. But other people told him about it.”
“I’m SO embarrassed. Is he, like, freaking out about it? Is he totally mad at me?”
Rosie shook her head. “No. Just really embarrassed. Everyone’s calling him Cute Boy. And I mean everyone.”
“It’s better than Puppet Girl or Pinocchio.” I flopped down on my bed. “That’s probably why he didn’t call.”
“Pretty much,” Rosie said.
“And I know Tyler and Serena are mad.”
“She cried.”
I sat up. “What?”
“At first she was furious, and then when everyone started saying stuff to her about the Hate-o-Rama, she ran into the bathroom and started crying. Her mascara was running and everything.”
I shook my head. I had made Serena Poopendena cry. After all these years of torture and torment, I, Erin Penelope Swift, had reduced her to tears.
I felt like the biggest loser in the world.
chapter 24
The Gates of Heck
I was walking on death row. ETM&D (Evil Torture Mom and Dad) had refused my request to transfer to another school, even when I offered to eat all of my veggies, clean my room without being told, clean ALL the bathrooms including the toilets, and never ask for another thing as long as I lived.
“You need to go back,” my dad said. I needed to shrivel up and disappear, but that didn’t seem to be happening either. Mom had offered to take me to school so I wouldn’t have to ride on the bus, but I said no. Her lame attempt at charity came too little, too late. Besides, if I had to go, I was going to do it full force. If she drove me it would look like I couldn’t handle it, like I was avoiding everyone, especially Jilly. No, I would face it head-on. Right away.
I dragged my feet toward the bus stop, my arms wrapped around me to keep warm in the chilly November air. I wondered if there was any possibility that a four-day break and too much turkey and stuffing would make people forget. Or maybe a couple would be caught making out in Puppet Porter’s office or something.
Dream on, Erin.
When I turned onto the street where the bus picked up, I saw Jilly coming from her street. My heart raced, flipped, twisted, practically choking me. In twenty more steps we would be only a few feet away from each other.
“Jilly.” I said it quietly, even though no one else was there yet.
Jilly stood with her gloved hands clasped together in front of her, looking down the street. I could see how tight her jaw was, her teeth clenched so she had a bulge near the back of her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice that I now wore a cast because I’d nearly broken abone.
“Um, Jilly?”
“God,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “When is this bus going to come?”
“I really need to talk to you.” My voice was so small, I wasn’t sure I’d spoken at all. But I knew I had when Jilly whirled to face me.
“Don’t you think you’ve said enough? Don’t you think you’ve hurt enough people by talking?”
“It was private!” I protested. “No one was supposed to see it. And I don’t —”
“It doesn’t matter if you didn’t want anyone to see it! You said you hated me. Hated me, Erin! And you think I’m selfish and stuck up and a big baby. You wanted to strangle me, then decided to just put a muzzle on me.” Her eyes blazed as she stepped toward me. “You said I had small boobs. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is? Can you imagine how many people were looking at my chest all day long? Do you know how many Mounds bars I got last Wednesday? The vending machine ran out of them.” Her voice was high and I knew she was trying not to cry. “I thought you were my friend, Erin. But you’re just a big fat hypocrite!” She stomped a few feet away from me, but I saw tears spring to her eyes.
“I also said you were my best friend and I couldn’t believe you wanted me for a friend. And you made me pick between the two of you. What was that about?”
“We’re not talking about that right now, Erin. We’re talking about you writing mean and hateful things for the entire school to see.”
My breath was coming fast, my heart pounding. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”
“Hey! There she is!” Two eighth-grade boys sauntered up, one of them pointing at me. “You’re the one who wrote all the stuff on the website,” he said, then shook his hips. “Am I a hot tamale?” He made kissing noises, then turned to his friend. “Got a pillow? I want to make out.” They both cracked up, leaning against each other for support.
My whole body tensed and I bit my lip to keep from crying.
The other one came over and put his face close to mine. “Where’s Cute Boy? Has he declared his undying love?” He raised his arm. “Will you sniff under my arms to check for BO?” Then he turned to Jilly. “And isn’t this your best friend that you HATE?”
Jilly’s back stiffened.
“Shut up!” I shouted. “Just SHUT UP!”
I took off running down the block just as the bus turned the corner and headed for our stop. I didn’t stop running until I was four blocks away, had turned three more corners, and was standing safely in front of the RV parked on the side of our neighbor’s house. They usually drove it down to Texas at this time of the year, but something had come up so they were staying home. I bent down and felt under the rim of the motor home until my fingers located the hide-a-key. I’d seen them get the key out several times when they would get the RV ready for a trip. I looked all around before slipping inside, closing the door behind me.
The RV was cold and quiet. In front of me was the kitchen, a small square of tile with a sink, a stove, and about a foot of counter space. To my right, behind the driver and passenger seats, was a table tucked between two cushioned benches, like a booth in a restaurant. Across from it stood a couch. Above the cab was a bed. To my left was the bathroom and a bedroom, just a mattress and two pillows, without any bedding.
I wrapped my arms around me, shivering on a small rug. DEFCON 0. Even Chris didn’t know about this and it was the first time I’d used it. I pulled off my backpack and slid into the booth, resting my hands on the table. I hadn’t planned for this. I had no food, except one emergency Snickers and an old Tootsie Pop I’d started carrying around since my conversation with Mr. Foslowski. I had no books. No games. No paper. Nothing to do.
After what seemed like years, I stood up and crept to the window that faced our house. I was just feet away from where I had started this morning and yet it felt like miles. I knew my mom was inside our warm house, working on her latest client’s website down in her basement office. Hmm. Maybe I could sneak in and get some books and some food. Warm up a little. No. Too risky. She was always popping upstairs, especially if a client called. She used that time to tidy up while she talked.
I let the
curtain drop and turned around. I’d just have to stay here until 3:45, when I could safely walk in the door and tell her how I’d survived the whole BN (Blog Nightmare).
Sighing, I rummaged through the cupboards, looking for something to eat or read. I found a mystery novel under the front passenger seat and a box of crackers in the cupboard near the sink. Two blankets were stashed in a drawer under the bed and I pulled them out, wrapping them around me as I settled back into the booth.
At 8:35 by the dashboard clock, I heard our garage door go up. I ran to the window and peeked through the curtains as our car backed quickly down the driveway. Mom put the car into drive and sped down the street. Gee, she was in a hurry. But what a lucky break. After watching the car turn at the end of the block, I ran out of the RV and got a bunch of supplies from the house and used the bathroom. Then I ran back. Who knew where Mom had gone or when she’d be back?
It took me four hours to read two hundred pages and devour the box of crackers. A quick check of the dashboard clock told me it was noon. Three hours and forty-five minutes to go. And I mean GO. I needed to pee again. I wondered if it was okay to use the bathroom in the RV. I decided I’d better hold it. I could do it. Didn’t I go all night without peeing?
Sleep. That would get my mind off my bladder. I grabbed the blankets and climbed up on the mattress at the back of the RV.
When I woke up, I hurried to check the time. Three thirty-nine! Wow. I’d done it. I was cold and stiff but I’d made it through my first day back at school without going back to school.
I quickly put everything back the way it had been, including the empty box of crackers. Then I grabbed my backpack and the key and hustled out the door.
Both of my parents were pacing around the living room when I came in. They turned to look at me at the same time, their faces registering relief and anger.
“Where have you been?” My dad strode over and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“I —”
“The school called first thing this morning, wondering why we hadn’t called in your absence,” my mom said. “Your dad and I have been looking everywhere for you.”
