True Colors

by Krysten Lindsay Hager

  ****

  I was at my locker on Friday when Ashanti yelled to me from across the hall that she had to stay after, but to call her about this weekend. Ericka and Tori were standing nearby at their lockers.

  “Okay, I’ll let you know if Nikolas wants to get together earlier.”

  I knew Nikolas wouldn’t change the time, but I wanted Ericka and Tori to hear I was going to meet a guy at the mall. They just stared at me.

  ****

  Saturday afternoon couldn’t come fast enough. Ashanti and I decided what we were going to wear the night before, and we promised to call each other if either one of us changed our outfits. Ashanti had decided to wear the new jeans she had gotten for her birthday with a Franciszka T shirt. I was going to wear my jeans and a dark pink sweater.

  ****

  I was having another bad hair day Saturday morning and ended up sticking it back in a bun. We picked Ashanti up ten minutes late and Mom lectured me about the importance of being on time up until Ashanti got in the car, and then Mom became all sweet and friendly.

  Mom dropped us off, and we met Nikolas and his friend in front of the arcade. I thought we were just meeting there, but he wanted to go inside. The guys went to play a game which involved shooting the living dead. They thought it was tons of fun. The worst part was you couldn’t just shoot a zombie and be done with it, you’d just shoot part of its face off or knock half a limb off and it was disgusting. Ashanti and I had a good time playing air hockey, even though Nikolas never paid any attention to us.

  Ashanti and I told Nikolas we were going to the food court and he nodded, but kept his eyes on the screen. We bought tacos and tried to find a place to sit, but the food court was nearly full. We found an empty booth over near the Corn Dog Hut. Ashanti didn’t talk much at lunch, and I was worried I was boring her. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said she was just tired. After we ate, we went back to the arcade, but Nikolas and his friend were still playing games, so we decided to ditch the guys and go shopping. We walked around until she said she was exhausted and called her mom to pick us up.

  Chapter Six

  Ashanti didn’t ride the bus on Monday, but Nikolas sat with me. I hoped he didn’t expect me to talk to him or anything because I have a hard enough time remembering to breathe at seven in the morning. In the mornings I just sit like a blob on the bus. Ashanti wasn’t in class, so I went to the library and checked to see if she e-mailed me.

  To: Albright

  From: TI22

  I tried to call you this morning, but you had already left. I’m sick and my dad’s taking me to the doctor. Call me when you get home… if I’m still alive :(

  Ashanti

  To: TI22

  From: Albright

  Sorry you’re not feeling well. I’ll get your homework for you. Hope you feel better.

  Landry

  I asked Jay if he would call her with the English assignment since she likes him. Then I walked to the cafeteria by myself and went to sit at Ashanti’s table with Maggie and Halle.

  “Ashanti’s sick today,” Maggie said, flipping her dishwater blonde ponytail. I didn’t know if she was trying to say, “So you don’t need to sit with us,” but I sat down anyway. Halle was busy reading an article in Seventeen on how to make your eye color stand out.

  “It says lavender shadow makes brown eyes pop, but I think my azure liner works better,” she said. “It also recommends slate and pewter.” She moved the magazine closer to Maggie, making it impossible for me to see, so I got up to get a cookie. I asked if either of them wanted anything and they both looked up like, “You’re still here?” Devon got in line behind me and reached over for a brownie.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Not much. I just listened to a fascinating conversation on eye shadow.”

  “Learn anything?” she asked.

  Yeah, to skip lunch when your friend was out sick. The bell rang, and she stuffed the brownie in her mouth as she paid the cashier. I walked back to class with my cookie in my pocket.

  When I got to science, Mrs. Tamar said she was going to change our seats. I said a prayer I wouldn’t be moved near Tori or Ericka. My understanding teacher decided to make a game out of it and had us draw numbers out of a hat to assign our seats. I had number twenty-four, and the first table had four spots. Even if both of them wound up at a table there would still be a chance I’d have one person there who didn’t hate my guts. Ericka ended up with Arianna, Anthony, and Tad. One down. The next set of seats had three desks in a row. Okay it would suck, especially if I was stuck in the middle with Tori on one side. I prayed as Mrs. Tamar’s hand went into the hat.

  “Twenty…” Please Lord, I won’t spend all my money on celebrity tabloids, I won’t think about boys, I’ll devote my life to homework, and—“two. Who has number twenty-two?” she asked. There were still a couple of other people I didn’t want to sit by, like Stuart or Yasmin.

  Seat after seat was taken until we got to the last table. I had been so busy going over whom I didn’t want to sit next to, and I hadn’t paid attention to whose name hadn’t been called. We were down to the last table of four desks. This was it… the moment of truth.

  “Twenty-four and fifteen. Okay, you may pick up your things and move in an orderly fashion to your desks. Quietly people,” Mrs. Tamar said.

  No one else had raised their hand when she called the last two numbers so all I knew was there were only two of us at the table. It would either be amazing if it was someone I liked or awful if it was somebody stupid who couldn’t help me with the lab work. I took the desk facing the windows, but no one was moving in my direction. Oh no, what if they saw me sitting here and were trying to plea bargain with Mrs. Tamar to sit somewhere else. I’d have to spend the whole quarter without a lab partner.

  “Cool, we’ll be partners.” I looked up as Devon slid into the seat across from me. “I was worried I’d end up sitting with Stuart,” she said. “I gotta warn you, science is not my thing.”

  ****

  I went over to Ashanti’s house after school to drop off her homework.

  “Hi, Landry. How are you doing?” Mr. Russell asked. “I’d invite you in, but the doctor said she’s got mono. She slept all afternoon, and she’s going to be out of school for a while,” he said.

  “Tell her I hope she feels better. I picked up all of her assignments for her. Oh, and tell her Jay Crane might call her about the English assignment,” I said.

  His eyebrows flew up. “You mean the Jay might call my house? I better prepare my answering voice. ‘Ashanti, a gentleman caller for you,’” he said in a British accent. He thanked me for getting her assignments and said he’d have her call me when she woke up.

  I went home and looked up the symptoms of mono and how you caught it. Since Ashanti and I hadn’t shared a drink and she hadn’t spit on me, I figured I was safe and I went to hang out on the couch. Might as well get comfy since I had no place else to go as long as Ashanti was sick. Yup, Mr. Couch and I were going to become real close pals for the next couple of weeks. I sat there watching Simpsons reruns until Ashanti called a few hours later.

  “Jay called me. You are the greatest person since the inventor of Super Yummy Scrummy snack cakes, and you know how much I love those things,” Ashanti said. “And the homework thing — it gave him a reason to call without looking like, you know, a boy calling a girl thing.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “He told me you were worried about me getting the directions for our paper—”

  “Your grades are my first concern,” I said.

  “Of course, so then he asked how I was feeling, and I told him I’d be out for a while so he offered to get my English assignments. Now my dad talked to all my teachers this afternoon who said they’d e-mail the work to me, but Jay doesn’t have to know about it.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Yeah, except my dad said the words ‘gentleman caller’ with an English accent. I died
.”

  “Maybe he’ll think you have a butler,” I said.

  “Well, my dad is going to be working from home part time while I’m sick, but I don’t think he’ll pretend to be the butler. Anyway, will you miss me?” she asked.

  She had no idea. Ashanti had made it easier to get up in the morning. I had found a friend who liked the same things I did, and we had a lot of fun together the last couple of weeks. In fact, getting to know her was the one good thing which came out of the fight. If Ericka and Tori hadn’t stopped speaking to me, then Ashanti and I wouldn’t have gotten to know each another so well. I could tell she was getting tired, so we got off the phone and I decided to start my history homework. I was completely friendless with Ashanti out sick, but maybe my grades would go up with all the extra homework time. However, I forgot to write down the assignments, so I called India for the homework, and we talked until her mom called her for dinner. She was nice to me, but she wasn’t in my lunch hour so I was stuck sitting at Maggie and Halle’s table or hiding out in the library. Still, I wondered if I’d ever be able to break into India’s group of friends.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day, I stood in the cafeteria doorway trying to find someplace to sit. I decided to try Maggie and Halle’s table again. They said “hi” to me when I put my tray down and then went back to their conversation on some reality show. I pretended to be interested in my food and escaped to the library when I finished my sandwich. I picked Jane Eyre off the shelf and sat down to read. It was nice and long so I would have something to do during lunch for a while.

  Devon wasn’t in science class because she hadn’t finished her math test in her last class. I kept watching the door hoping she’d come in since we were doing a lab, but Mrs. Tamar told me to work with Yasmin’s group. I pulled my chair up to Yasmin’s table and basically sat there while the rest of the table did the lab. No one said a single word to me. After class, as I was walking to social studies, Mrs. Kharrazi called me over.

  “I got the contest results today, and you got second place in the short story contest. Congratulations,” she said.

  It was like the light at the end of a crappy, crappy day. Suddenly I didn’t care about Tori or Ericka. I had just gotten second place in a writing contest, and even they couldn’t take it away from me. Then I got called down to the main office. Everybody made an, “Ooh,” sound, but I knew I wasn’t in trouble. How sad. I was too boring to even get suspended.

  “Landry, your mother is on the phone,” the secretary said, giving me the evil eye for getting a personal call at school. I should have told her at least I didn’t sneak a cell phone into the bathroom to make calls like Yasmin and Arianna do.

  “Hi, sweets. I hate to bother you at school, but Mrs. Myeski called, and they want you to have your picture taken for the paper today. The Ingénue people are paying for it, but you’ll have to get out of school early to do it,” Mom said.

  “Cool!” I said. “Do I—”

  “Wait! Don’t say anything. I had to say you have a dentist appointment so I could get you out early. Make sure you’re in the office at two o’clock and remember — don’t act excited because they think you’re going to the dentist,” she said.

  “Right. See ya, Mom.”

  I was psyched I was going to be in the newspaper. Tori had her picture in the paper once, but it was for playing soccer and she looked constipated as she kicked the ball. Those losers were going to be so sorry they got mad at me when they saw I was on my way to being a celebrity. And, if I did become famous, then I was never going to talk to either of them again. Let them see how it felt to be ignored. I ran into Devon on my way back to class. She had already gotten a call from her mom, but her excuse was “going to the doctor.” We stood in the hall talking about what we were going to wear until the door to the office opened, and we scattered like cockroaches.

  I got out of class at two and had just enough time to stick a few of Mom’s hot rollers in my hair. I washed my face and put on some makeup and went to change. Mrs. Myeski said it was just a headshot, but I wanted to wear something nice since a little of my shirt would be showing. I put on my red sweater, but Mom thought it looked ratty. It was pathetic, but I didn’t have a lot of clothes which weren’t school clothes. Mom told me to wear my navy sweater to the shoot, which sucked because I didn’t want my first publicity photo ever to be in a Hillcrest sweater. I ended up wearing it, but I guess it didn’t matter too much because when we got to the photography studio, they said the photos were going to be black and white. Devon and I sat together. The other girls in the waiting room seemed super stuck up. One girl stepped on Devon’s foot and didn’t even apologize. They only took three shots of each of us. Afterward, they put them on a screen for us to see, and Mrs. Myeski came over to inspect them.

  “Your eyes are sort of shut in this one,” she said. “And you’re trying too hard to keep them open wide in this one.”

  She was right. I looked like a crazed lunatic with my eyes almost popping out of my head.

  “But this one is nice and natural. You just need to work on relaxing your face,” she said.

  Two of Devon’s pictures were perfect. Her mom wanted them to use the one where she was smiling, but Mrs. Myeski said the serious pose was more flattering.

  Devon’s mom said we should go out to celebrate. I knew my mom wanted to go back to the office, but she agreed to stop for some ice cream at Ignatowski’s Ice Cream Palace. I got a caramel marshmallow sundae with extra strawberry whipped cream. Devon ordered the brownie n’ fudge extravaganza. Our moms sat at a separate table from us. There weren’t a lot of people there in the middle of the day, so we took the good table, which was a round booth which looked like you were sitting in a hot air balloon. There was also a booth like a gazebo, but it was where the older high school girls and their boyfriends sat. I was halfway done with my sundae when Devon said we should switch sundaes.

  “My friends and I always switch so we can taste what everybody got,” she said.

  I tried to ignore what I had read about salvia and mono online. It was kinda cool she would want to share with me. After all, Arianna and Yasmin always shared food at lunch, but my ex-friends never wanted to share anything with me — not even popcorn at the movies. I slid my dish over to her and tried not to gag as she told me about the time she, India, and Peyton had all gotten the flu after they shared a triple chocolate explosion. I guess Devon hadn’t learned anything from our chapter on germs and bacteria in our science book.

  ****

  The next day I missed the bus and I expected Ms. Ashcroft to glare at me when I walked in late, but instead she congratulated me on getting second place with my story in the Michigan Young Pens Contest. However, I overheard Ericka talking about me in science class.

  “It’s not like it was first place, you know,” she said and Tori agreed. So I didn’t win the contest. What had they won lately? Then Ericka made a remark about my hair.

  “Looks like a dye job,” Ericka said.

  “A bad dye job,” Tori said.

  “She only got picked because models have to be super scrawny. Who knows, maybe washed-out hair colors will become trendy,” Ericka said laughing.

  I walked over to my seat and slammed my books on my desk. Tad congratulated me on the writing contest, but all I could focus on were my ex-friends whispering on the other side of the room. Devon was absent, but we were doing a worksheet so I didn’t mind sitting alone. We watched Anne Frank in history, and India and Peyton congratulated me on the contest.

  “So what are you wearing for your audition?” Peyton asked.

  “I got an outfit from Franciszka T. It has a black and grey striped long sleeved sweater, and then it’s like a strapless grey dress which goes under it with a wide black belt.”

  “It sounds cute. Devon’s super excited about the whole thing,” she said. “Her mom kept her home because she’s had a sore throat last night.”

  Great, the girl I shared ice cream with was ho
me with a sore throat. Fabulous.

  “Her mom’s so overprotective,” India said peering at the TV. “Hey, is it the guy from Schindler’s List? I can barely see from here.”

  “Put your glasses on, dork. Yeah, it’s him. Landry, what chapter are you guys on in French?” Peyton asked.

  “Oh crap. I forgot to do the homework for chapter nine,” I said. I couldn’t even do the work now because I had left the handout in my locker.

  “Chapter nine? She handed those back in my class.” Peyton went through her binder and pulled them out. “Here, just copy them on notebook paper and tell her you spilled something on your sheet.” I started to thank her, but she cut me off. “No, you helped me out before.”

  I spent the rest of the movie copying her work. It was a good thing I had my homework done because Mrs. Aniston freaked out when Thalia forgot hers, and she wouldn’t give her a pass to get it out of her locker. Mrs. Aniston said we had to be mature enough to bring our homework to class.

  Devon was back the next day. “Congratulations,” she said. I asked if she was feeling better.

  “Yeah, but now I have all this extra work. I had to take a math quiz during lunch, and now I’ve got the stupid lab from the other day to do,” she said as Mrs. Tamar came over to see if Devon was going to stay after to make up the lab assignment.

  “I don’t have a ride home today,” she said. “Could I do it during lunch on Monday since the field trip is tomorrow?”

  “Well, I have an appointment, so I won’t be here then…”

  “I could come in during lunch to help,” I said. It’s not like I had anything better to do.

  At the end of the day, Ms. Ashcroft announced what cars we’d be in for our field trip to the art museum. It took about a half hour to get there, and it would suck if I got stuck in a car with one of my ex-friends. Ms. Ashcroft read off my name, along with three boys, and Ashanti and Tori. Great, with Ashanti out sick and Tori acting like Ericka’s new best friend, the trip would be a blast. I thought about pretending to be sick tomorrow, but Mom would never let me miss school unless I was throwing up. I called Ashanti when I got home to see if she was feeling any better. I was hoping she’d say the doctor realized she didn’t have mono after all, but then she told me she had a blood test and she was definitely going to be out of school longer.