by Coco Simon
Contents
Chapter 1: Who’s Afraid of Middle School? Not Me!
Chapter 2: The Horrible Truth Hits Me
Chapter 3: Humiliated in Homeroom!
Chapter 4: Abandoned at Lunch
Chapter 5: The Cupcake Cure
Chapter 6: The Perfect Plan . . . Almost
Chapter 7: Just Like Old Times . . . Almost
Chapter 8: Just Call Me “Silly Arms”
Chapter 9: Teen Style and Two Tiny Dogs
Chapter 10: The Best Club Ever
Chapter 11: It’s Time to Make Some Cupcakes!
Chapter 12: Middle School Roller Coaster
Chapter 13: Alexis Has an Idea
Chapter 14: The Mixed-up Cupcakes
Chapter 15: How to Bake Two Hundred Cupcakes
Chapter 16: The Purple Dress
Chapter 17: PGC’s Secret Is Revealed!
Chapter 18: The Icing on the Cupcake
Pineapple “Upside—Down” Cupcakes
‘Mia in the Mix’ Excerpt
About Coco Simon
CHAPTER 1
Who’s Afraid of Middle School? Not Me!
Every time I have ever watched a movie about middle school, the main character is always freaking out before the first day of school. You know what I mean, right? If the movie’s about a guy, he’s always worried about getting stuffed into a garbage can by jocks. If it’s about a girl, she’s trying on a zillion outfits and screaming when she sees a pimple on her face. And no matter what movie it is, the main character is always obsessed with being popular.
My name is Katie Brown, and whenever I watched those movies, I just didn’t get it. I mean, how could middle school be that different from elementary school? Yeah, I knew there would be new kids from other schools, but I figured everyone from our school would stick together. We’ve all pretty much known one another since kindergarten. Sure, not everybody hangs out together, but it’s not like we put some kids on a pedestal and worship them or anything. We’re all the same. Back in third grade, we all got sick together on mystery meat loaf day. That kind of experience has to bind you for life, doesn’t it?
That’s what I thought, anyway. I didn’t spend one single second of the summer worrying about middle school. I got a really bad sunburn at the town pool, made a thousand friendship bracelets at day camp, and learned from my mom how to make a cake that looks like an American flag. I didn’t stress out about middle school at all.
Guess what? I was wrong! But you probably knew that already. Yeah, the cruel hammer of reality hit pretty hard on the very first day of school. And the worst thing was, I wasn’t even expecting it.
The morning started out normal. I put on the tie-dyed T-shirt I made at day camp, my favorite pair of jeans, and a new pair of white sneakers. Then I slipped about ten friendship bracelets on each arm, which I thought looked pretty cool. I brushed my hair, which takes about thirty seconds. My hair is brown and wavy—Mom calls it au naturel. I only worry about my hair when it starts to hang in my eyes, and then I cut it.
When I went downstairs for breakfast, Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen.
“Happy first day of middle school, Katie!” she shouted.
Did I mention that my mom is supercorny? I think it’s because she’s a dentist. I read a survey once that said that people are afraid of dentists more than anything else, even zombies and funeral directors. (Which is totally not fair, because without dentists everybody would have rotten teeth, and without teeth you can’t eat corn on the cob, which is delicious.) But anyway, I think she tries to smile all the time and make jokes so that people will like her more. Not that she’s fake—she’s honestly pretty nice, for a mom.
“I made you a special breakfast,” Mom told me. “A banana pancake shaped like a school bus!”
The pancake sat on a big white plate. Mom had used banana slices for wheels and square pieces of cantaloupe for the windows. This might seem like a strange breakfast to you, but my mom does stuff like this all the time. She wanted to go to cooking school when she got out of high school, but her parents wanted her to be a dentist, like them. Which is unfair, except that if she didn’t go to dental school, she wouldn’t have met my dad, and I would never have been born, so I guess I can’t complain.
But anyway, in her free time she does the whole Martha Stewart thing. Not that she looks like Martha Stewart. She has brown hair like me, but hers is curly, and her favorite wardrobe items are her blue dentist coat and her apron that says #1 CHEF on the front. This morning she was wearing both.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I didn’t say anything about being too old for a pancake shaped like a school bus. It would have hurt her feelings. Besides, it was delicious.
She sat down in the seat next to me and sipped her coffee. “Do you have the map I printed out for you with the new bus stop location?” she asked me. She was doing that biting-her-bottom-lip thing she does when she’s worried about me, which is most of the time.
“I got it, but I don’t need it,” I replied. “It’s only four blocks away.”
Mom frowned. “Okay. But I e-mailed the map to Barbara just in case.”
Barbara is my mom’s best friend—and she’s also the mom of my own best friend, Callie. We’ve known each other since we were babies. Callie is two months older than I am, and she never lets me forget it.
“I hope Callie has the map,” my mom went on. “I wouldn’t want you two to get lost on your first day of middle school.”
“We won’t,” I promised. “I’m meeting Callie at the corner of Ridge Street, and we’re walking to the bus stop together.”
“Oh, good,” Mom said. “I’m glad you finally talked to your old bus buddy.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, and quickly gulped down some orange juice. I hadn’t actually talked to her. But we’d been bus buddies ever since kindergarten (my corny mom came up with “bus buddies,” in case you didn’t figure that out already), so there was no real reason to believe this year would be any different. I knew I’d see her at the bus stop.
Every August, Callie goes to sleepaway camp, which totally stinks. She doesn’t get back until a few days before school starts. Normally I see her the first day she comes back and we go to King Cone for ice cream.
But this year Callie texted that she was busy shopping with her mom. Callie has always cared a lot more about clothes than I do. She wanted to find the perfect outfit to wear on her first day of middle school. And since we only had a few days before school started I didn’t think it was that weird that I didn’t see her. It was a little weird that she hadn’t called me back. But we had texted and agreed to meet on the corner of Ridge Street, so I was sure everything was fine.
I ate my last bite of pancake and stood up. “Gotta brush my teeth,” I said. When you’re the daughter of a dentist, you get into that habit pretty early.
Soon I was slipping on my backpack and heading for the door. Of course, Mom grabbed me and gave me a big hug.
“I packed you a special lunch, Cupcake,” she said.
Mom has called me Cupcake ever since I can remember. I kind of like it—except when she says it in front of other people.
“A special lunch? Really?” I teased her. Every lunch she makes me is a special lunch. “What a surprise.”
“I love you!” Mom called. I turned and waved. For a second I thought she was going to follow me to the bus so I yelled, “I love you too!” and ran down the driveway.
Outside, it still felt like summer. I should have worn shorts, I thought. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a hot classroom sweating a lot and having your jeans stick to your legs. Gross. But it was too late to change now.
Ridge Street was only two blocks away. There were
lots of kids heading for the bus stop, but I didn’t see Callie. I stood on the corner, tapping my foot.
“Come on, Callie,” I muttered. If we missed the bus, Mom would insist on walking me to the bus stop every morning. I didn’t know if I could take that much cheerfulness before seven thirty a.m.
Then a group of girls turned the corner: Sydney Whitman, Maggie Rodriguez, and Brenda Kovacs—and Callie was with them! I was a little confused. Callie usually didn’t walk with them. It was always just Callie and me.
“Hey, Cal!” I called out.
Callie looked up at me and waved, but continued talking to Maggie.
That was strange. I noticed, though, she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She’s as blind as a bat without her glasses. Maybe she doesn’t recognize me, I reasoned. My hair did get longer this summer.
So I ran up to them. That’s when I noticed they were all dressed kind of alike—even Callie. They were wearing skinny jeans and each girl had on a different color T-shirt and a thick belt.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “The bus stop’s this way.” I nodded toward Ridge Street.
Callie looked at me and smiled. “Hi, Katie! We were just talking about walking to school,” she said.
“Isn’t it kind of far to walk?” I asked.
Maggie spoke up. “Only little kids take the bus.”
“Oh,” I said. (I know, I sound like a genius. But I was thinking about how my mom probably wouldn’t like the idea of us walking to school.)
Then Sydney looked me up and down. “Nice shirt, Katie,” she said. But she said it in a way that I knew meant she definitely didn’t think it was nice. “Did you make that at camp?”
Maggie and Brenda giggled.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said.
I looked at Callie. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. What was going on?
“Come on,” Sydney said, linking arms with Callie. “I don’t want to be late.”
She didn’t say, “Come on, everybody but Katie,” but she might as well have. I knew I wasn’t invited. Callie turned around and waved. “See you later!” she called.
I stood there, frozen, as my best friend walked away from me like I was some kind of stranger.
CHAPTER 2
The Horrible Truth Hits Me
You might think I was mad at Callie. But I wasn’t. Well, not really. For the most part I was really confused.
Why didn’t Callie ask me to walk with them? Something had to be going on. Like, maybe her mom had told her to walk with those girls for some reason. Or maybe Callie didn’t ask me to walk with them because she figured I would be the one to ask. Maybe that was it.
The sound of a bus engine interrupted my thoughts. Two blocks away, I could see a yellow school bus turning the corner. I was going to miss it!
I tore off down the sidewalk. It’s a good thing I’m a fast runner because I got to the bus stop just as the last kid was getting on board. I climbed up the steps, and the bus driver gave me a nod. She was a friendly-looking woman with a round face and curly black hair.
It hit me for the first time that I would have a new bus driver now that I was going to middle school. The elementary school bus driver, Mr. Hopkins, was really nice. And I might never see him again!
But I couldn’t think about that now. I had to find a place to sit. Callie and I always sat in the third seat down on the right. Two boys I didn’t know were sitting in that seat. I stood there, staring at the seats, not knowing what to do.
“Please find a seat,” the bus driver told me.
I walked down the aisle. Maybe there was something in the back. As I passed the sixth row, a girl nodded to the empty seat next to her. I quickly slid into it, and the bus lurched forward.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” replied the girl. “I’m Mia.”
I don’t really know a lot about fashion, but I could tell that Mia was wearing stuff that you see in magazines. She could even have been a model herself—she had long black hair that wasn’t dull like mine, but shiny and bouncy. She was wearing those leggings that look like jeans, with black boots, and a short black jacket over a long gray T-shirt. I figured that Mia must be a popular girl from one of the other elementary schools.
“Are you from Richardson?” I asked her. “I used to go to Hamilton.”
Mia shook her head. “I just moved here a few weeks ago. From Manhattan.”
“Mia from Manhattan. That’s easy to remember,” I said. I started talking a mile a minute, like I do when I’m nervous or excited. “I never met anyone who lived in Manhattan before. I’ve only been there once. We saw The Lion King on Broadway. I just remember it was really crowded and really noisy. Was it noisy where you lived?”
“My neighborhood was pretty quiet,” Mia replied.
I suddenly realized that my question might have been insulting.
“Not that noisy is bad,” I said quickly. “I just meant—you know, the cars and buses and people and stuff . . .” I decided I wasn’t making things any better.
But Mia didn’t seem to mind. “You’re right. It can get pretty crazy. But I like it there,” she said. “I still live there, kind of. My dad does, anyway.”
Were her parents divorced like mine? I wondered. I wanted to ask her, but it seemed like a really personal question. I chose a safer subject. “So, how do you like Maple Grove?”
“It’s pretty here,” she answered. “It’s just kind of . . . quiet.”
She smiled, and I smiled back. “Yeah, things can be pretty boring around here,” I said.
“By the way, I like your shirt,” Mia told me. “Did you make it yourself?”
I got a sick feeling for a second—was she making fun of me, like Sydney had? But the look on her face told me she was serious.
“Thanks,” I said, relieved. “I’m glad you said that because somebody earlier didn’t like it at all, and what was extra weird is that my best friend was hanging around with that person.”
“That sounds complicated,” Mia said.
That’s when the bus pulled into the big round driveway in front of Park Street Middle School. I’d seen the school a million times before, of course, since it was right off the main road. And I’d been inside once, last June, when the older kids had given us a tour. I just remember thinking how much bigger it was than my elementary school. The guide leading us kept saying it was shaped like a U so it was easy to get around. But it didn’t seem easy to me.
We climbed out of the bus, which had stopped in front of the wide white steps that led up to the front door. The concrete building was the color of beach sand, and for a second I wished it was still summer and I was back on the beach.
Mia took a piece of yellow paper out of her jacket pocket. “My homeroom is in room 212,” she said. “What’s yours?”
I shrugged off my backpack. My schedule was somewhere inside. I zipped it open and started searching through my folders.
“I’ve got to find mine,” I said. “Go on ahead.”
“Are you sure?” Mia looked hesitant. If I hadn’t been freaking out about my schedule, I might have noticed that she didn’t want to go in alone. But I wasn’t thinking too clearly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you later!”
After what seemed forever I finally found my schedule tucked inside one of the pockets of my five-subject notebook. I looked on the line that readHOMEROOM . . . 216.
So I wouldn’t be with Mia. But would I be with Callie? She and I had meant to go over our schedules to see what classes we’d have together. Now I didn’t know if we had the same gym or lunch or anything.
Maybe we’re in the same homeroom, I thought hopefully. I studied the little map on the bottom of the schedule and went inside. From the front door, it was pretty easy to find room 216. It looked like a social studies classroom, I guessed. There were maps of the world on the wall and a big globe in the corner. I scanned the room for Callie, but I didn’t see her, although Maggie and Brenda were th
ere, sitting next to each other. Almost all of the seats were taken; the only empty ones were in the front row, where nobody ever wants to sit. But I had no choice.
I purposely took the seat in front of Maggie—partly because I knew her from my old school, and partly because I wanted to get some info about Callie.
I set my backpack on the floor and turned around. Maggie and Brenda were drawing with gel pens on their notebooks. They were both tracing the letters “PGC” in big bubble print. When they saw me looking, they quickly flipped over their notebooks.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you know if Callie is in this homeroom?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Maggie asked, and Brenda burst out into giggles.
“Um, okay,” I said, but I could feel my face getting red. Callie and I had never hung out with Sydney, Maggie, and Brenda at our old school, but they had always been basically nice. At least, they’d never been mean to me.
But I guess things had changed.
The bell rang, and for the first time, I felt a pang of middle school fear. Just like those kids in the movies.
It was a horrible thought, but I knew it was true…. Middle school wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped!
CHAPTER 3
Humiliated in Homeroom!
Luckily, the homeroom teacher walked in before Maggie or Brenda could say anything else. Mr. Insley had dark brown hair and a beard and mustache.
“Welcome to homeroom,” he said, smiling. “This room will be your first stop every morning before you head out to your classes. I can guarantee that this will be your easiest class of the day. On most days, we only have three things to do: take attendance, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and listen to announcements.”
“Yeah, no homework!” a boy in the back of the room called out.
“You’ll get plenty of that in your other classes,” Mr. Insley said, and a bunch of kids groaned. I had to admit that it made me nervous. I had heard that there was tons more homework in middle school, but I hoped it wasn’t true.
“Today is your lucky day, because you get to have homeroom with me for an extra ten minutes,” Mr. Insley went on. “I’ll be giving you some tips about how to get around this place.”
