The Hot List

by Hillary Homzie

  As Nia dragged her way down the bleachers, Mr. Pan motioned for her to move faster, so she picked up the pace. “Atta girl, Nia,” he said. “I know you can be your normal, enthusiastic self. But you need to take off those beads. You know the rules.”

  “Sorry.” She put her peach speckled beads onto the bleacher and smiled enthusiastically for a mini moment.

  “Can I switch and be with Maddie?” she asked in a fake sweet voice.

  No, then she would be with Maddie and get to be with Hayden and Auggie. No, say no, Mr. Pan, I telepathically pleaded.

  “How about next time?” offered Mr. Pan, who suddenly became my favorite teacher ever. “Today, Maddie and Sophie are going to be partners.” Okay, scratch that. I hated Mr. Pan. He was my least favorite teacher and needed to take a very early retirement.

  Nia gave Maddie an even bigger I-feel-sorry-for-you look.

  But it was me she should have felt sorry for. Maddie wasn’t exactly coordinated. And she was the last person I wanted to be tied up with, doing teamwork. I guess Mr. Pan was taking my suggestion a little too seriously, about pairing some kids up together who had issues. He knew Maddie and I weren’t exactly speaking with each other.

  I grudgingly stepped away from Hayden and grabbed one of the cords. “I can tie us together,” I said to Maddie.

  “Okay,” she mumbled.

  As I bound my leg with Maddie’s, I glanced down at her shoes. Today she wore a new pair of black converse high-tops with peace-sign shoelaces. I thought about saying something to her, such as I like your shoelaces, but I just couldn’t. Because it wasn’t true. I hated her shoelaces. They matched Nia’s.

  Then Maddie said under her breath like a warning, “Blue.”

  Huh? I turned around and, sure enough, Hayden stood behind me. “Are you prepared to win?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “You haven’t seen Maddie and me do a three-legged race before. We’re awesome.”

  “Watch it!” Hayden called over to Trent, who played with him on the lacrosse team. “You guys are going down.”

  “Don’t think so,” said Trent, who was now tied to Ruby.

  Then I leaned away from Maddie as much as possible, considering that we were tied together. Maddie was also doing the same.

  So far, today was not going as I had hoped. Like right now, Squid was doing a little I’m-with-Nia happy dance. Which I didn’t quite get since just yesterday he had told me he was crushing on Maddie.

  Boys were so fickle, really. He should be loyal to Maddie. No, that was crazy. Why would I care about that?

  “Me and Nia, yeah, bay-bee,” Squid sang out, as he shook his hips. “We’re a three-legged legend.” Then he did a front handspring. Of course, he wasn’t tied up with Nia—at least not yet.

  “Safety first, people!” called out Mr. Pan. “Remember, you have to think of yourself as one organism.” If Maddie and I were an organism, what kind of organism would we be? Probably a scorpion. Definitely venomous. “Once the first pair gets to the finish line, the last pair goes,” continued Mr. Pan. “Whoever comes in first wins. Okay, people? Everyone should be tied together by now. Remember, it’s just a simple knot, no cutting off circulation. I wouldn’t want anyone sewn together permanently.” He laughed at his own lame joke.

  “I’m going to be tied to Nia,” called Squid, as if the entire world didn’t already know that. I was going to have to teach him a few principles about playing it cool. I realized I had told him he had to broadcast that he was hanging with cool types, but he had to learn to do it subtly.

  “Hiya, Soph!” Squid called out, a big goofy grin spreading on his face. “Sorry you didn’t get to be tied up with Hayden.”

  I could feel my face flame up. And why exactly had I let Squid know that I liked Hayden? I couldn’t turn my head because I didn’t want to see Hayden and see his probable look of disgust. This day was quickly becoming a nightmare.

  Mr. Pan shouted, “During the race, I’d suggest holding hands.”

  “Don’t think so,” Nia said. She stared at Squid’s hands, which were covered with doodles of little aliens in Magic Marker.

  And I was definitely not holding hands with Maddie. No way.

  Suddenly, Mr. Pan was screaming, “On your marks, get set, go!”

  In our group, Hayden and Auggie went first, and they were creaming everyone by a mile, even Trent and Ruby. It was as if they had morphed into some kind of three-legged rabbit. As they crossed the finish line, they had a lead of half a gym length. “You guys have it,” said Hayden, who was out of breath. Hayden, the Hayden. If people could define words, then he would define hot.

  “You better keep our lead,” said Auggie.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Easy,” added Maddie, and that was when I remembered that she liked Auggie aka Square. She must feel as nervous as me. Although there was nothing to get worried about, since we did have that HUGE lead.

  I could hear Hayden and Auggie chanting our names together like this: “Sophie and Maddie! Sophie and Maddie!” as if we were still best friends.

  I tried to sprint, but I stumbled, and we began pulling at each other, wanting to go opposite ways.

  “Teamwork!” screamed Mr. Pan.

  “Grab her hand!” Hayden screamed as Maddie began to fall.

  “Grab her hand!” repeated Auggie.

  By “grab her hand,” I realized, they meant Maddie’s hand.

  Only because Hayden was screaming it and because I didn’t want to also fall flat on my face, I grabbed Maddie’s hand.

  But it was too late because we tumbled onto the gym floor. Nia and Squid, who looked like flailing human octopuses, actually pulled ahead of us, along with everyone else. Nia was holding Squid’s probably wet, clammy, and full-of-orange-Magic-Marker hand.

  Maddie and I got up and continued pathetically hopping along. Hayden was actually still cheering for us, but it was pretty much a lost cause. Nia and Squid were too far ahead. Why couldn’t I have been Hayden’s partner? It would have been the perfect opportunity to get some actual skin contact with him.

  Even Brianna and Elio, who were tied up together, were beating us. I think everyone was beating us. Maddie and I were hopeless together.

  All at once the chatter in the gym went on pause. As Maddie and I finally made it to the finish line, everyone groaned. Except for Mr. Pan. “Sophie, I could see you hustle at the end there,” he said, even though we both know it was not so true. But Mr. Pan always gave me the benefit of the doubt.

  “Next time, you need to actually work together,” said Hayden.

  “You guys suck together,” said Auggie, groaning.

  “I could see promise there at the end,” continued Mr. Pan.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “We crushed them,” gushed Squid. He raised his arms over his head in a champion pose. “We’re number one.”

  “We did it,” agreed Nia.

  I dashed as quickly as I could back to the bleachers and joined Brianna. “Nice job out there,” she said, laughing. “Not.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, it was so much fun.” Then I realized something: Even though I had lost, Squid had actually won.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the cafeteria before I went to sit down with with Heather and Nicole, I passed by Nia’s table after I got my hot lunch, and I saw Squid point at Nia and wink. “You and me, bay-bee. We were one unstoppable three-legged ma-chine!”

  “You’re hurting our ears,” said Amber, who was the quietest of the Nia table.

  “Sorry, sorry!” shouted Squid.

  The girls at Nia’s table all laughed and held up their hands to their faces and went, “Shun.”

  And then I could hear Ava saying something like “He’s a little too excited.”

  “I know, it’s so sad,” said Nia. Okay, maybe step five and six of my get-Squid-hot plan wasn’t working. Shunning was not a good sign.

  When I put my tray down at my table with Heather and Nicole, I told th
em about the gym incident with Squid and the aftermath. Nicole opened her thermos of soup. “What are you going to do now?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think I’ve got to move on to numbers seven and eight on my plan.”

  “What’s step seven?” asked Nicole.

  “Make him less goofy. And number eight is to get him less hyper and more chill.”

  “But at least Squid looks kind of decent today, right?” said Heather.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, as I ate my chicken salad sandwich. “But he’s still Squid.”

  Nicole nodded. “Exactly.”

  So, somehow, I got Squid to agree to meet me at the library after school for some lessons in acting regular. It was usually open for students who wanted to work on homework and stuff.

  Squid unzipped his backpack and pulled out his notebook, which was scribbled over in unintelligible script from another planet. Balled-up papers, a half-eaten chicken sandwich, a yo-yo, and a wrinkled peach rolled out onto the table too.

  “Squid, did anyone tell you that you’re seriously gross?”

  “Sorry.” He smiled. “But funny, right?” He rubbed his hands together.

  “Squid. Focus.” I peered up at the clock on the brick wall of the library. I had to be home in forty-five minutes for dinner. Tonight was takeout Chinese food night.

  Squid picked up the yo-yo and did some kind of elaborate trick. “Can you stop with your yo-yo?” I said.

  “Sorry, sorry.” He snapped the yo-yo into his hand and palmed it.

  Humming, Squid stared at the wall, and then turned to me. “I’ve had enough of the library. Can I come over to your house? Please. I want to see what a principal’s house looks like.”

  “Your eagerness is really creepy. Don’t act like you’re excited by stuff. Uneager is much better than eager.” I thought of Hayden. If I acted all eager, I was sure he’d think I was such a dork.

  “You’ve got to look bored like this. Don’t make your eyes get so big and poppy-outy. Slouch and then look past people when you talk to them. Like there might be something more interesting behind them.” I thought of me and Nia at the restaurant. “Make them want to make eye contact with you.”

  I demonstrated for Squid, staring past him, which was a pretty easy thing to do.

  Squid practiced it, but he made his eyes too big.

  “More squinty. Not so alert,” I explained.

  “Okay, okay.” Then he did it for a moment. He stared past me, and through me, and was completely unfazed and nonchalant-acting.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “But that was sooooo boring to be that way.”

  “It’s what you have to do,” I explained patiently. “But if I want to go to your house, why should I lie? Why should I pretend that I don’t want to go? Are you asking me to lie? I don’t like to lie. Because I think it’d be cool to see where the principal lives.”

  “I’m not asking you to become a liar,” I said. “You just have to be sly. It’s like with my little cousin Forest. If I tell him he should eat broccoli, then he leaves it; but then I say, okay, you can’t eat broccoli, it’s just for big boys, he’ll grab the plate back and start gobbling it up. It’s called reverse psychology. You need to use it a little.”

  “Okay, okay. I can do that. No problemo. Want to watch me? I can nail that.”

  “And when you do speak, do like, just little bits. No complete sentences. Don’t say ‘No problemo.’ And remember the not-so-eager-part.”

  “Okay,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Whatev.”

  “But Squid. This is important.”

  Squid grinned and started cracking up. “See, I did it.”

  “Yeah. That attitude was right-on. Like, you’re a little bit tired of me.”

  Squid yawned. “Boring.”

  “Exactly, bored and slightly sarcastic. But huge amounts of sarcasm would take too much effort. Just mildly sarcastic.”

  Squid shrugged. “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s it.” I jumped out of my seat. “This is a breakthrough!”

  Squid didn’t smile. He shrugged. “You’re getting it, dude.”

  He shrugged again. “Cool.” He slouched down into the chair.

  “Squid, I’m liking it. This is good stuff. You just need to remember to apply it. In school and out of school.”

  He looked at me a little confused. “All right, chief,” he said in a bored, low voice. “Whatever.”

  He was almost scaring me. Suddenly, he wasn’t completely Squid anymore.

  At home Dad showed me a bouquet of flowers wrapped in clear plastic cellophane paper. “It’s crazy,” he said. “But now that I have a girlfriend, I’m seeing flowers everywhere. And I just have to buy them.”

  I took a bite of the shrimp with lobster sauce that Dad had picked up from The Golden Lotus. Girlfriend? Did my dad just use the G word? I guess they had been dating now for three months, so it made sense. A few weeks ago I remember that Mynah/Mrs. Tate didn’t want anyone to know anything about their dating situation. I guess since, technically, Dad was her boss, she didn’t want anyone to think she was getting special treatment. “Girlfriend” sounded so regular and out in the open. Suddenly the shrimp stuck to my sides and clawed at me.

  Dad flicked his eyes at the flowers. “They’re fun, right?”

  No, they were carnations. Red ones that looked dyed and cheesy. If he wanted to impress, he should buy her violet tulips. I needed to tell him how bad these were, but I wasn’t going to do it.

  Girlfriend.

  No, let him suffer flower humiliation.

  Luckily, the opportunity presented itself immediately.

  After we finished dinner, there was a knock at the door. It was Mynah/Mrs. Tate.

  Dad didn’t look surprised at all. After he hugged her, he explained, “Mynah had to drop off Nia for art class.” Great. With Maddie. The art class where they first met and “bonded” over watercolors.

  “I’d love to see some of her artwork,” said Dad, carefully hanging up Mynah’s coat on a hanger.

  “Me too,” said Mynah. “So far she hasn’t brought back too much.”

  That’s because all she does is talk and goof off with Maddie, I thought.

  She walked through the living room into the kitchen. Opening up the fridge, Mynah took out the Brita pitcher. Behind the pitcher was our turkey for Thanksgiving. Mynah and Nia were going to see relatives in Denver for Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have to do it with them. I had that to be thankful for.

  I watched Mynah fill up her glass. “Want some water?” she asked.

  I shook my head. The filter had been in there forever and was probably poisoning the water, but I didn’t say anything as she took a sip. I guess that was evil.

  “If you’re hungry, there’s a salad from Whole Foods,” said Dad. “The kind with those pecans you like.”

  “Yum,” Mynah said, as Dad got the salad out for her. “Y’all, I won’t say no.” Since when did he get anything from Whole Foods? He called the place “Whole Paycheck.” Usually he shopped at King Soopers. This was definitely somehow Nia’s hypnotic influence seeping into my family. The thing was, I had actually been telling my dad to buy stuff like organic milk for a while because it was healthier, but he kept on saying it was a rip-off. So, partly, it annoyed me that the Tates had this abnormal influence over people, like my dad and Maddie.

  Dad sat down next to her as I stood there feeling, suddenly, like a ghost in my own house. I had no clue that Mynah was coming over. Didn’t she have a daughter? Nia? Why was I thinking about her? I shouldn’t worry about Nia. Was I crazy?

  Maybe suffering would make Nia more human. Nah.

  My stomach twisted.

  I didn’t realize that he was going to put the flowers to good use so soon. Dad nodded over at the buckets of shrimp and lobster sauce on the counter. “Want some?”

  “Oh, I’m good,” Mrs. Tate/Mynah said with way too much hidden meaning.

  Later I called Nicole and Heather to ente
rtain them with stories about coaching Squid and then I started sniff-crying, as I thought about Dad and Mynah. Mynah and Dad. The truth. That they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

  Ugh.

  “What’s wrong, Sophie? Tell us,” said Heather.

  “You have to,” said Nicole.

  “Okay,” I said, sniffing again. And then I told them all about my dad and Mynah Bird.

  I told them everything so fast that I started to babble. “My dad got her carnations,” I said. “Red ones. They looked brown on the tips and cheesy. And he called her his girlfriend. She thinks carnations are cute. I have a feeling she’s going to stay overnight.”

  “Wow,” said Nicole. “Think how you could go through her folders at night and let everyone know what’s going to be on the pre-algebra test.”

  “Now, there’s an advantage for you, right?” said Heather.

  “Not that I’m going to do that.” But it did make me feel better, and the three of us laughed on the phone about me being the pre-algebra spy for the entire seventh grade.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As I strolled into the caf, I checked out what Squid was wearing. We’d had a four-day weekend because of Thanksgiving, and I was afraid that over that time, he might have reverted back, style-wise. Good, he had on his long-sleeved skateboarding T-shirt. There were no superheroes or zombies in sight.

  But then I saw something that made my skin prickle and feel hive-y.

  In the middle of the cafeteria, Elio and Squid and Gabriel had stacked a giant pile of Legos. Legos were cool. I mean, when I was seven I had actually gone to Legoland outside of San Diego, but that’s because I was seven. This was middle school, and they were making spaceships and making spaceship-type sounds and laughing goofily about it. And everyone was staring and whispering at them, especially the Nia/Maddie table.

  Legos. Really, that was one step away from building blocks.

  Elio had some kind of master Lego builder T-shirt, as if he had planned some sort of geeky Lego-themed day. No. Everything that I had worked so hard to build would crumble unless Squid distanced himself from Elio and Gabriel and their heaps of little plastic toys that snapped together. Step 9 (Find non–yo-yo playing, non–muddy-footprint-measuring friends) of the Squid plan had to be activated, like now.