by Kieran Scott
My chest tightened. That stupid prank war. I’d thought it would be something we could all come together over, and it had ended up just splitting us up more. Autumn and Chandra had started fighting during one of the pranks, Sage had met Gabe and started that whole ball of fun rolling, everyone got angrier at Phoebe for not participating, and now we were all in various stages of groundings. Not my finest hour.
“I don’t know,” Tara said, her voice as heavy as my heart. So much for the nothing-can-bring-me-down giddies. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
The next day, things got even worse. Phoebe didn’t show up for school, didn’t call anyone to say she was sick and didn’t answer the phone once in the ten times Tara tried to call her. We had to practice without her, which was near impossible, and everyone was worried. What if Phoebe had really run away this time?
The only good thing that happened all day was something that actually didn’t happen. We didn’t get our geometry tests back, which meant I was granted one more day’s reprieve from having to deal with the consequences of whatever my grade was. Still, it didn’t make the whole Phoebe thing any better.
As I walked out of practice that night, I overheard Tara on her cell phone. She was standing right by the door as we all walked out.
“Phoebe? Oh, good! You are there!” Tara looked over at the rest of us, relieved. “Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . No. . . . Okay. Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Okay, bye.”
She clicked the phone shut and walked over to the waiting crowd. “She’s okay,” she said. “She just said she didn’t want to talk. But she’s going to be in school tomorrow.”
Everyone else seemed to take this as good news and headed off for their cars. Whitney and I hung back, however. Tara looked a little shaky. Like Phoebe hadn’t been all that convincing.
“She sounded awful,” Tara said, shoving her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what to do, you guys. Maybe we should just bag the competition.”
“What?” Whitney said. “No! No way! We’ve worked too hard on this.”
“Yeah, and it’s gotten us nowhere,” Tara said, throwing her hands up. “No one is listening to me, we were like the cheering dead in there tonight, we only have two more days of practice, and who knows if Phoebe will even show?”
Whitney and I exchanged a look. When she put it that way, it did sound sort of like a hopeless cause. If only my whole bonding experiment had worked in the first place. Then we would all be bestest buds and Phoebe would be our one and only problem. But as it was, we would have to find a way to heal a half dozen rifts and usher the single most depressed person I’ve ever come across back into the Land of the Happy by this time tomorrow. Forget regionals, this squad was going to need some divine intervention just to stay together.
Tara tipped her head back. “I just wish I knew how to cheer Phoebe up. But she’s been like this ever since she moved, and it’s just getting worse.”
A stab of guilt pierced my heart as I thought of my Room of Pink Shame, but it was followed by an epiphany so brilliant, I barely had time to register the negative. Suddenly my brain was flooded with what I can only call a vision. A vision of all of us working together. A vision of all of us laughing and having fun. A vision of the exactly perfect way to cheer Phoebe up and bring the squad together.
To borrow a cheesy but wildly appropriate phrase—it was so crazy, it just might work.
“You guys?” I said, looking from Tara to Whitney. “I think I have an idea.”
That night, I found myself crouched in the bushes that lined the park across the street from Phoebe’s aunt’s house with Felice’s backpack sticking into my side and Michelle breathing down my neck. The Mission: Impossible vibe of the prank war was back, but this time we were all in crappy T-shirts and shorts instead of black-on-black. We watched as my brother walked Phoebe to his rust-colored Jeep Liberty and opened the passenger-side door for her.
Wait a minute. He did what?
“That’s your brother?” Karianna asked me.
“At the moment I’m not so sure,” I said.
“He is hella fine,” Jaimee put in.
“And a gentleman,” Felice said.
“Watch it, ladies,” Sage snapped. “He’s taken.”
I looked at Mindy and rolled my eyes. Mindy snickered and hid her mouth behind her hand.
“Then why is he going out with Phoebe right now?” Whitney asked.
“Because we told him to,” Sage said, starting to fume.
Mindy and I both laughed. We couldn’t help it. What did Sage think she and Gabe were, engaged?
“Okay! This is not why we’re here!” Tara said, standing up as my brother’s car disappeared around the corner. “I want no fighting tonight. Not even between siblings,” she added, looking from Whitney to Sage. “We have a lot of work to do, so let’s get to it.”
We jogged noisily across the street, toting brown bags of supplies. The door opened before we even got there and a woman—who looked just like Phoebe would if she spent the next twenty years in the sun—answered the door.
“Hello, Tara! Girls!” she said, smiling even though her eyes looked sad. “It was so nice of you to offer to do this.”
“Just point us in the right direction,” I said.
“Phoebe’s room is upstairs at the end of the hall,” her mother told me as the rest of the squad filed in. “You’re Annisa, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised.
“I’m Lorraine Cook,” Phoebe’s mom said with a smile. “Phoebe’s told me a lot about you.”
Tara and I exchanged a look as the rest of the squad tromped upstairs. I was just as shocked as Tara clearly was that Phoebe had mentioned me at all. But at this point, who knew what went on in that poor girl’s head?
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Thanks for letting us take over the house.”
“Well, don’t thank me, thank my sister. If she ever comes out of the kitchen. She’s making brownies for you all,” Mrs. Cook said. “Anyway, you shouldn’t have too much trouble clearing out the bedroom. I’m afraid Phoebe hasn’t actually unpacked much since we moved here.”
When we got upstairs, the rest of the squad was already moving boxes and bags out into the hall. I stepped past Autumn into the small square room and grimaced. The walls were a dirt brown color and the drapes were dark green brocade. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the suffocation factor.
“What is that smell?” I asked.
“It’s grandma smell,” Whitney said, hands on her hips. “Phoebe’s mom’s mom lived in this room for, like, ever.”
“Well, it is way past time to release her spirit,” Autumn said. She walked right over to the windows and threw them open, then turned and ripped at the curtains. The curtain rod came down with a huge clatter, taking the big ugly hook it was on with it.
We all froze for a second, and then Autumn cracked up laughing and the rest of us joined her.
“Well,” Tara said, slapping her hands together. “Let’s do this.”
An hour later, a boom box spun the latest Britney CD and Chandra, Karianna and Erin were dancing around, using paintbrushes as microphones. Autumn and Mindy sat just outside the room in the hallway, making up bowls of potpourri. Whitney held the ladder for Tara, who was using a roller to whiten the ceiling. Felice had taken the rest of the squad into the hall to go through Phoebe’s boxes and find her curtains and some other homey things she’d yet to unpack. I was on my hands and aching knees, touching up the edge along the floor molding with paint. A wayward hair fell into my line of vision and I wiped it away, slashing pink paint across my forehead. Almost instantly a rag appeared in front of my face.
“Here.”
I looked up, surprised to find that it was Sage offering the rag. “Thanks.”
I leaned back on my shins and wiped the paint away.
“How do you do that?” Sage asked.
“Do what?” I asked warily, sensing an insult coming.
>
“That,” she said, pointing at the floor where I had been working. “It’s like a perfectly straight line. If I tried to do that, there would be pink paint blobs all over the wooden stripy part.”
“That’s molding,” I said with a laugh.
“Okay, molding. Whatever, Trading Spaces,” she said. “How do you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess . . . I’ve moved a lot of times, so I’ve painted a lot of rooms. I guess I picked up a few skills along the way.”
“You’ve moved a lot?” Tara asked, coming down from the ladder.
“Yeah. This is the sixth town I’ve lived in,” I said.
Whitney whistled low and long. “Damn. I’ve never been outta Sand Dune.”
“God. That must suck,” Sage said to me.
“Not always,” I told them with a shrug. “Sometimes it’s cool, you know, getting to start over.”
“Yeah, except when everyone you meet is a bitch to you,” Whitney said. Was it just me, or was she looking pointedly at Sage? And then at Tara?
“What? I’m not that bad!” Tara said.
Everyone in hearing distance laughed. I turned bright red and stood up, my knees cracking along the way.
“All right, all right!” Tara said, raising her hands in surrender. “Okay, I am that bad.” She looked at me and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” she said. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch when you first got here.”
And every moment since then? I thought. But I said, “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry too,” Sage said.
Okay, that nearly knocked me off my feet.
“What? I am,” Sage said indignantly when she saw my dumbfounded expression. She crossed her arms over her stomach and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “It was just . . . when you first got here, Daniel would not stop talking about you and . . . well . . . it was really annoying.”
Daniel couldn’t stop talking about me? What? Huh? Details! I needed details! But wait a second. Yeah. That had to have sucked for his girlfriend. I suddenly felt kind of sorry for Sage on a girl-solidarity level.
“But Daniel and me . . . we aren’t together anymore and . . . we have to be teammates, so . . . for what it’s worth . . . I’m sorry. Especially for the whole paint thing,” Sage said.
I looked at the floor and bit my bottom lip. I had expected us to bond, but this Dr. Phil moment was a little more than I’d bargained for.
“It’s okay, you guys,” I said finally, tilting my head. “I . . . uh . . . thanks.”
Sage and Tara both smiled and there was an awkward silence broken only by the irritating overproduced sound of bad pop music. I was wondering if any of us were ever going to speak again when Chandra dropped her brush and walked over to the doorway.
“Autumn, I’m sorry I said your thighs were fat.”
“It’s okay,” Autumn said, scrambling to her feet to hug Chandra.
There was a beat of silence, and then Whitney let out a laugh through her nose and everyone cracked up.
“That’s what you were fighting about?” Tara demanded between gasps. “That’s what you’ve been driving us all crazy over?”
“What?” Autumn said, releasing Chandra. “It wasn’t about the comment itself, it was the spirit in which it was said!”
This just made us all laugh harder. We could hear the other girls rolling around in the hallways, and tears streamed down my face. By the time I caught my breath again, my stomach hurt like I’d done a thousand crunches followed by a Pilates chaser.
But even more acute than the muscle pain was the realization that everything was going to be fine. If Sage and Tara and I could make up, and Autumn and Chandra could get past their thigh problem, there was hope for us yet.
“They’re gonna be here in five minutes!” I hissed as we all rushed around the room. “Come on, you guys! Where’s the curtains?”
Felice and Lindsey rushed in with one set of white eyelet curtains; Maureen and Michelle brought the others. Felice used the step stool to hang one set while Michelle climbed on the bed and hooked the others into place. Tara and Whitney bunched up the plastic tarps and shoved them into green garbage bags while Autumn and Erin placed bowls of potpourri around the room. We’d already sprayed the place with air freshener to cover up the paint smell, which had eradicated all traces of mothballs and peppermint hours ago.
“They’re here!” Mindy whispered, jumping away from the window. I heard the car engine dying outside, the sound of a car door slam.
“Oh, God! The ladder!” Sage cried. We grabbed for it and folded it up together, narrowly missing smooshing my fingers in the process.
“It looks great, you guys,” Whitney said. “Let’s go! Across the hall!”
We rushed into Phoebe’s aunt’s room with the ladder and the garbage bags, our hearts pounding. Tara turned off the light and we all stood there, fifteen of us in a huddle, fighting to catch our breath. I heard Phoebe’s footsteps on the stairs, then in the hall. I looked at Mindy and we were both grinning. A glance around the twilit room showed me we all were.
The door across the hall creaked. I held my breath.
“Oh my God! What the—”
Tara opened the door in front of us and we all came out into the hallway behind Phoebe.
“Surprise!”
Phoebe screamed her head off, turned around and saw us, and burst into tears. But this time, they were good tears. She was smiling as she grabbed Tara up into a crazy-tight hug.
“You guys did this?” she asked, looking around at all of us. “You did this?”
“Yep. We did,” Whitney said. “What do you think?”
“I think . . . I think it’s amazing,” Phoebe said, stepping into her Barbie-pink room. The curtains fluttered in the breeze, kicking up a little of the rose-scented potpourri. “It’s exactly the right color. Exactly.”
“We took a hunk out of Annisa’s wall,” Erin said. “The guy at the store matched it.”
“Thank you, guys,” Phoebe said, turning to hug Erin, then me. “Thank you so much.”
As Phoebe went around hugging everyone and we all laughed and beamed and chatted, I realized that this was one of those moments I was going to remember for the rest of my life. It didn’t even matter how we did at regionals on Saturday, because at that moment we weren’t just a squad. We were friends. Real friends.
Tara found her way over to me in all the mayhem and knocked my elbow with her own. “You know what, Gobrowski?” she said under her breath. “You might not make a bad captain one day.”
My grin widened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But only after I’m long, long gone.”
“You should’ve seen her face, Gabe. It was classic,” I said as we walked into the house that night. “Thank you so much for going out with her.”
“It was no problem, trust me,” Gabe said, pocketing his keys. “Phoebe is a down girl.”
“Oooh. Do I sense some competition for Sage?” I asked, pausing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Shyah. Not on your life. I think I’m done with high school girls,” Gabe said. “For now, anyway.” He sighed and checked his watch. “I better get back to school. I have an early class. See ya, kid.”
“Later,” I said.
“Hold it!”
My father’s voice sent a chill down my spine. He stepped into the foyer from the kitchen, causing both Gabe and me to freeze in our tracks. You could have heard the collective gulp in the next county.
“I just had a very interesting phone call about you two,” my father said, jingling the change in his pocket.
Gabe and I looked at each other, blank but dreading. What had we done now? My father paused between us, prolonging the agony as he cleared his throat and ran his hand over his hair.
“Apparently someone by the name of Lorraine Cook thinks my children are blessings from heaven,” my father said, looking at us with mock suspicion. “What did you two do tonight?”
<
br /> Gabe cracked a grin and lifted his chin toward me. “I’ll let Annisa tell you,” he said. “I gotta go start making good on your investment in my future.”
“Uh-huh,” my dad said as Gabe closed the door. His eyes slid over toward me and he smiled. “I talked to Captain Longo as well. He told me that he’s reviewed the officers’ statements from the other night and it appears that when they drove up to West Wind High, you and two other kids were leaving the premises.”
“I told you!” I said, elated. “As soon as I found out what we were doing there, I—”
“I know, I know,” my father said, leaning into the banister. “So based on both these phone calls, your mother and I have decided not to keep you from cheering.”
“Yes!” I cheered. I hugged him over the banister and jumped up and down.
“Provided you passed that geometry exam,” my father said.
He tried to look all stern, but it didn’t work. I could tell he was proud of me over the call from Mrs. Cook. And I could tell he was a little chagrined over the call from Captain Longo. He hadn’t entirely believed in my innocence until an authority figure had backed me up, and he felt badly about it. I probably should have been all indignant and tried to milk his guilt, but I was in too good a mood. And it felt kind of good that he cared enough to feel bad.
“Don’t worry about the test,” I said. “I had good tutoring.”
“Good,” my father said. He reached out and ruffled my hair. “I love you, kiddo.”
“I know,” I said, my heart swelling a little. How many good moments could one girl take in a single night? “I love you too.”
Thursday after school, I ran straight to the gym and sprinted over to Tara, who was deep in discussions with Coach Holmes. She saw me coming at the last second and stepped back, but nothing could stop me from barreling right into her side and giving her a huge bear hug.
“I got a ninety!” I exclaimed. “A ninety!”
“Okay, back up,” Tara said, extricating herself from my grip. “What are you on?”
