Picture Perfect #3: Best Frenemies

by Cari Simmons

  “Gossip!” said one girl.

  “Friends!” shouted out another.

  “Clothes!” came out another cry. Mr. Nichols wrote this all on the board.

  “Mr. Nichols?” Alice raised her hand. He nodded at her.

  “Um, wasn’t To Kill a Mockingbird also about a girl, though?” she asked. “So did that make it a girls’ book?”

  Mr. Nichols pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, now that you mention it, it was, wasn’t it?” he said. Alice felt a warm sensation and tried not to smile. English was by far her favorite class: they had cool conversations and Mr. Nichols actually seemed to want to listen to what the class thought. “Did you guys recall seeing a lot of gossip, friends, and clothes in that book?”

  “Well,” said Aaron hesitantly. “That book was about a girl but it wasn’t, like, a girls’ book.”

  “So who was it for, then?” said Mr. Nichols.

  “Uh, everybody?” Aaron said, shrinking down in his chair and looking off to the side like he didn’t want to be there anymore.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Nichols. “I’ll quit torturing you guys soon, I promise. But, what are some words you would associate with what you’d call a boys’ book?”

  Nobody raised his or her hand. Mr. Nichols looked around. “Nikki Wilcox, you’ve been awfully quiet,” he said.

  Nikki rolled her dark eyes and pushed up the sleeves of her long-sleeved white T-shirt. “Nobody wants to say anything because they realize already that, like, the whole boys’ books versus girls’ books concept is dumb,” she said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Todd had just kept his mouth shut.” Todd glowered at his hands.

  Harsh but true, Alice thought. The room felt awkward, but Alice was invigorated by the discussion. Mr. Nichols was treating them like grown-ups and actually getting them to think and talk about books instead of just making them read for no particular reason. Finally it actually felt like honors classes were paying off.

  “People should feel free to say what they think in this class—within reason,” said Mr. Nichols. “But listen, I promise I won’t judge any of you, and neither will your classmates. I’m actually trying to get at something here, I swear. Boys’ books. Go.”

  The students threw out words like “fight” and “sports” and “adventure,” which Mr. Nichols added to the board.

  “Good,” he said. “Okay, you may rescue your books from the floor. You can apologize to them too, if you are sorry for mistreating them.”

  “I’m sorry, book!” Todd clowned around, holding his book up in the air and gazing at it. “I will never do that to you again!” The students laughed.

  “Okay, Todd,” Mr. Nichols said. “The spotlight is yours, since you seem to need it so badly today. Do me a favor and read the description of Island of the Blue Dolphins on the back aloud to the class.”

  Todd turned his book over in his hands and cleared his throat dramatically. “The story of a twelve-year-old girl who lives alone on a Pacific island after she leaps from a rescue ship. Isolated on the island for eighteen years, Karana forages for food, builds weapons to fight predators, clothes herself in a cormorant-feathered skirt, and finds strength and peace in her seclusion.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Nichols. “Very nice, Todd. So what do you guys notice?”

  “Well, it does have the word ‘clothes’ in it,” pointed out Aaron.

  “‘Fight’ and ‘weapons’ and ‘predators’” are in there too,” offered Christy, twirling her wooden cuff bracelet around her wrist. “So she’s a tough girl.”

  “Righto,” said Mr. Nichols. “So what do you guys think I’m getting at here?” he said.

  “That Todd needs to stop talking!” offered Ashley Dawson in the back. Everyone laughed uproariously; studious Ashley rarely spoke in class, which made her takedown even funnier.

  “I think you want us not to judge a book by its cover,” said Alice.

  “And that maybe just because a book is about a girl doesn’t mean it’s a book for girls,” added Aaron.

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Nichols. “I know I’m old and everything, but I hope you trust me when it comes to what I choose for you to read. It wouldn’t make for a very interesting class if half of you were completely tuned out when it came to our discussions and homework.”

  Mr. Nichols glanced at the clock on the wall that, for some reason, was protected by a metal cage, as if people were constantly throwing rocks at it. “Good talk today, guys. And with that, it looks like our time is almost up for the day, so I would like to thank you all for such a spirited discussion.” The class beamed at the compliment. “But you’re not off the hook. Have the first three chapters of the book read by tomorrow,” Mr. Nichols said, to a chorus of class groaning. “And be ready to discuss. Clearly you all have opinions and have no problem expressing them, so I expect a lot more good feedback tomorrow.”

  The bell rang and the students stood up, gathering their things to head to the next class. Alice could tell that everyone else—like her—felt inspired by the discussion. She even felt a little more mature, and possibly like she had grown an extra half inch taller, if that were possible.

  “I kind of love this class, don’t you?” she asked over her shoulder to someone she thought was Ashley Dawson, who wore her long, straight dark hair down today, along with a cute black-and-white dress. But Alice did a double take—it wasn’t Ashley she was talking to, it was Nikki, who, with her dark curly hair, white tee, and black skirt, looked like Ashley in Alice’s periphery.

  For a second, Nikki looked like she was going to respond like a normal human being—but then a hard look fell over Nikki’s face. She narrowed her eyes and stomped around her to get to biology. Yeesh, Alice thought. I was just trying to be positive about class. I wonder what her problem is.

  “That was kind of fun, huh?” said Aaron, shouldering his blue backpack as they trekked across the hall to the lab.

  “Yeah!” Alice said, relieved that she wasn’t the only one who liked Mr. Nichols. The honors class was quickly becoming its own group of friends—aside from Nikki. There was a sort of chicken-and-egg situation with Nikki, Alice realized. Was she separate from the class because she was so negative and hard to include, or did she just want to do her own thing, apart from everybody else, and that was why she seemed so cranky? Either way, it’s like she’s making it hard for herself on purpose. Why would she do that? Alice pondered, then shook her head, as if to get Nikki’s grumpy dust off her. It’s not my problem!

  Alice was en route to Ms. Crawford’s class when she saw Cassidy emerge from her math class. Cassidy didn’t see Alice at first, and Alice was able to observe, from a slight distance, how happy and popular Cassidy looked. She wore a bright red dress with black high-tops, and her hair was growing out into a petite Afro, which she wore like a crown. Xia, April, and Evie (who had cut her hair short recently too, although she swore it wasn’t because she was copying Cassidy) hovered around her as they laughed at some joke Cassidy had made.

  Look, she doesn’t need you, a tiny voice in Alice’s head whispered.

  Oh, shut up! Alice thought in response. She marched up to Cassidy and whispered breathlessly in her ear, “Oh my goodness, can we please have an emergency hangout tonight? I need to tell you about the weirdest encounter I just had with Nikki Wilcox.”

  “What? Oh, totally,” said Cassidy. “I need to hear this. Come to my place after school?” Alice nodded, squeezed into biology just as the bell was ringing, and slid into her desk right on time. She glanced over at Nikki, who seemed to be reading her textbook—three chapters ahead. What a weirdo. It was like she went out of her way not to have any friends. Alice wondered what Nikki would be like if she had a best friend, a Cassidy in her life. But that would mean Nikki had actually bothered to talk to someone else for once. Maybe even smile at them!

  Alice pulled the purple notebook out of her bag to write down what had just happened.

  Have you learned anything more a
bout why Nikki Wilcox is the way she is? Is her mother a rhino and her father a crab?

  Alice decided to go ahead and write a good lengthy entry about the last few days. Maybe she’d encourage Cassidy to write something nice and long too.

  You know how we played all that badminton in your backyard last summer and got really good at it? Well, in gym class yesterday this guy from the intramural soccer team went around challenging everyone, and I totally beat him! I wish you had been there to see it.

  Alice glanced up to make sure that she still was engaged with the class. Ms. Crawford was going over photosynthesis, which Alice had learned all about last year, when she’d coaxed a plant to grow through a maze she’d created out of cardboard boxes, in order to reach a sun lamp she’d placed at the other end. She kept the plant with its heart-shaped leaves on her desk at home, where it grew and grew like a girl’s hair, eventually reaching the floor. Last year for Valentine’s Day, she had given Cassidy a few clippings of the plant in a small pink pot, and it made Alice happy to see it growing every time she went to the Turners’.

  Alice, stumped for additional funny stories, glanced over at Nikki, who sat at the lab table a few people down from her, jotting notes furiously on a legal pad while Ms. Crawford spoke. Alice noticed that in profile, as she concentrated, Nikki’s pouting lips made a perfect heart shape, just like Alice’s and Nikki’s plants. But suddenly Nikki’s face transformed into a snarl as she hissed at Aaron Woolsey, who was sitting next to her, “Would you stop that? It’s really annoying!” Aaron had been absentmindedly tapping his pen against the edge of the tabletop while Ms. Crawford spoke.

  “Sorry,” whispered Aaron, looking a little hurt and pointedly laying the pen on top of the lab table. Even Ms. Crawford briefly paused during her lecture but decided to keep going once she realized nothing dramatic was happening. Alice’s heart broke a little bit. Aaron was so nice to everyone—she couldn’t believe that Nikki had just been mean to him!

  YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE HOW MEAN NEGATIVE NIKKI JUST WAS—AND THIS IS THE THIRD TIME TODAY.

  Maybe Cassidy had learned something in ballet or from one of Nikki’s former elementary school classmates about why she was the way she was.

  Oh no. Alice realized, with a pang of disappointment, that she couldn’t, shouldn’t, go to Cassidy’s tonight—she had to read Island of the Blue Dolphins instead. Since she’d never read it before, she had to pay much closer attention than she had to with To Kill a Mockingbird, plus she had homework from math and probably would from biology too.

  It would be smarter to stay home and get her work done, but the idea of not seeing her best friend was just too much, especially after a day like today.

  You can get the reading done, Alice told herself. You made it through last week, right?

  Alice alternated between fretting over what was the right choice and halfheartedly jotting down some notes from class so she could do the homework exercise later.

  The bell, signaling lunch, momentarily saved her from her wishy-washiness. But by the time Alice had gathered her things, smoothed down the skirt of her royal-blue dress, and gotten to the door, she could only just see the top of Cassidy’s head as she and her friends sauntered down the hall to the cafeteria.

  Alice made a decision: I’m going to Cassidy’s house. I’ll get my homework done . . . eventually. She picked her chin up and tried to do an impression of a confident person, one who had time for both homework and friends. At least I don’t look like her, Alice thought as she watched Nikki make a beeline for the door after class, her eyes staring at the ground.

  CHAPTER 6

  NEGATIVE NIKKI DEBRIEF

  I needed this, Alice told herself, feeling the instant relaxation that came over her whenever she went over to Cassidy’s house. She let herself sink in a little deeper into the soft, creamy white leather couch and took a moment to inhale—aaah.

  Mrs. Turner was obsessed with good smells, and so each room in the house was a little treat for the nose. Depending on what Cassidy’s mom was in the mood for, some days the kitchen smelled like apples (others vanilla), the powder room like fall potpourri (others baby powder), the living room like roses (others white musk), and Cassidy’s room like lavender (other days patchouli), thanks to the candles, incense, and essential oils that Mrs. Turner tucked into the corners of the house. Alice wished her mom would embrace Mrs. Turner’s philosophy of “Decorating with scent!” but the one time Mrs. Turner sent Alice home with a cone of incense she had complimented (something that smelled ancient and spicy, like the inside of an old church), Mrs. Kinney had freaked.

  “Is that smoke?” she had asked, seeing the tiny pillar of white emanating from Alice’s desk.

  “It’s just incense, Mom,” Alice explained.

  “Alice, you could burn the house down,” Mrs. Kinney said, and before Alice could protest, Mrs. Kinney grabbed Alice’s glass of water and swept the innocent little cone into the water with Alice’s ruler, creating a hiss sound and a dark cloud in the glass.

  “Mom,” Alice had said.

  “I’ll get you a new water,” Mrs. Kinney said. “And no candles or incense or whatever this is until you get your own house. And even then I think it’s a bad idea.” Alice made do with some essential oil sticks she kept on her vanity stand, but it just wasn’t the same without that quiet little plume of smoke keeping her company.

  “Want to go upstairs?” Cassidy asked, walking out of the kitchen. “I’ve got refreshments,” she said, and waved around two yellow-and-blue plates laden with slices of Mrs. Turner’s killer chocolate cheesecake.

  “This is so much better than doing homework!” Alice said as they climbed the stairs to Cassidy’s room. The wooden stairs were lined with a thick red carpet that ran down the center, so Alice felt like a celebrity whenever they went upstairs.

  “I can’t believe how much homework you guys get,” Cassidy said as they entered her room. It was painted a deep midnight purple and decorated with huge black-and-white photos of Cassidy dancing, twirling and jumping and bowing confidently, like a queen accepting a crown. Alice wished her room looked as sophisticated as her best friend’s. They arranged themselves on the black-and-white carpeted floor, propped up by huge teal throw pillows.

  “What’s up, Dingae?” called a voice from Cassidy’s door. Alice looked up to see David, Cassidy’s older brother, a tall and confident eighth grader with beautiful straight teeth newly revealed after a long and awkward bout with braces.

  When they were little and would fight, David would call Cassidy a dingus, but when Alice was over and the two would play pranks on him during sleepovers (mostly dumb stuff like taping down the light switch in his bedroom or writing notes on the toilet paper in his bathroom), he’d refer to them as Dingus One (Cassidy) and Dingus Two (Alice), and he had decided that together they were Dingae. They hadn’t played pranks on David in a long time, but he still used the nicknames, which Alice secretly loved.

  As an only child, Alice yearned to have someone in the house to talk to who wasn’t her parents. Cassidy reassured her that having a big brother wasn’t all that, but still, Alice suspected it was still pretty fun to have someone else around.

  “We’re just catching up on the day,” Cassidy said, holding her plate out of harm’s way as David inched towards her with one finger out, pretending he was going to dig into her cake. “We have a rude-girl situation on our hands.”

  “Rude-girl situation?” David asked. “You mean aside from the one I see right here?” He pointed at Cassidy.

  “Oh, get out,” Cassidy said. “Don’t you have some eighth-grade business to attend to?”

  “Ah, yes,” David said. “Important matters. Top secret. I can’t tell you about it. You may understand . . . some day. See ya, Number One and Number Two.”

  “He’s such a turd.” Cassidy sighed, settling into her pillows. She arranged her long legs, clad in leggings spotted with gold studs, in front of her and took a dainty bite of her cheesecake. Licking her finger
s, she perused the notebook, which Alice had placed on the floor between them, raising her head and making comments about Alice’s stories.

  “Aaron really seems like a sweetie. We should see if he wants to go to the movies with you and me and Jesse sometime!” and “Did you see that necklace with the bow on it Christy was wearing the other day? I wanted it so bad!” Then she got to the most recent entry, with Alice’s huge furious, angry writing about Nikki.

  “Whoa,” Cassidy said. “Nobody makes my best friend mad like this! Let’s talk.” She set down her plate in a let’s-get-serious way, but before they could talk, the girls were interrupted by a tan-and-black blur that tore into the bedroom, yipping and snorting. It was Bagel, Cassidy’s pet pug, who David must have let inside without giving any warning.

  “No, Bagel, no!” Cassidy laughed as her dog tried frantically to eat the rest of her cheesecake. “Oh my goodness, he is such a little demon. But how could you not love a face like this?” she said, finally catching Bagel and holding his head still in her hand. Alice smiled politely. Just being around Bagel made her break out into hives, start sneezing, and get watery eyes. But on top of that, she secretly didn’t think Bagel was so cute. His eyes were all bloodshot and bugged out of his head, and his face looked like a soda-pop can somebody had stepped on. His little butt had weird little patterns on it. Plus, he barked. All the time. Loudly.

  “Oh well,” Cassidy said. “Out you go.”

  To Alice’s relief, Cassidy escorted Bagel outside and shut the door.

  “This house is so ridiculous,” Cassidy said. “Too many distractions!” Bagel scratched and whined at the door, begging to be let in. “Bagel’s like, ‘Are you sure you’re allergic? Can you check again to see if we can have some fun?’”

  “Sorry, Bagel!” Alice called at the door, and Bagel let out a little wet-sounding huffy growl. The girls laughed.

  “Okay,” said Cassidy, once they could concentrate. “Finally. Tell me everything that happened today with Nikki.” So Alice went back over the day’s events, from Nikki basically saying everyone was dumb during English, to her cold shoulder after class, to her shutting down Aaron Woolsey during biology.