So Not Okay

by Nancy Rue

  Yeah, seven seconds later I got logical again. No way. I picked up my backpack and headed for the garbage can. I didn’t even care if I was out of my seat when the bell rang and I got lunch detention. I wasn’t going to sit all period with a load of trash.

  But I didn’t even get halfway out of my desk when Ophelia grabbed my arm and shoved another computer printed card close to my face.

  “Look at this!” she hissed to me between her teeth.

  She was already crying so hard she had bubbles coming out of her nostrils.

  “You need a Kleenex,” I whispered to her.

  “Read it!”

  The bell rang in time to cover that outburst. Mrs. Fickus opened her laptop to take roll, and Ophelia threw her head down onto her arms on her desk. I could feel eyes watching me like the ones in cartoons when they turn out the lights.

  I reached down and unzipped my backpack so I could stuff Ophelia’s card in with the rest of the trash, but she grabbed my wrist with a snotty hand and squeezed hard.

  Jeepers.

  “Take out your vocabulary homework,” Mrs. Fickus said.

  Zippers unzipped and notebooks appeared on desks. I crammed the card into the pocket of my pack as I pulled out my homework. As soon as I opened my notebook, Ophelia slid another card on top of it.

  When I turned to glare at her, I saw that she had at least five more on her notebook, all of them opened. She took in a raggedy breath, and I knew if I didn’t at least pretend to read the thing she was going to have a meltdown right there in English class.

  I tilted my notebook up, pressed the card against it, and opened it.

  “You should just cross February 14 off every calendar you ever get because who’s ever going to love somebody that stinks like rotten gingerbread all the time?”

  My first thought was, And Mrs. Fickus thinks my imagination muscle needs developing.

  I didn’t get a chance to have a second thought because a shadow with a helmet for a head fell across my desk.

  My life was over.

  “All right, y’all,” Mrs. Fickus said. “There is a box by the door. I will give you two minutes to put every Valentine you have in your possession into that box. You may pick them up at the end of class.”

  Yes, my life was over. I had died and gone to heaven.

  I was the first one at the box, even though I had to sidle past Mrs. Fickus, who was still standing over me like I had invented Valentines and this was all my fault. Before anybody else could even get out of their rows, I had dumped every pink and red envelope. Then I turned around, expecting to see Ophelia and Winnie behind me. But I ran straight into Riannon.

  Her face came into a green-eyed point so sharp I knew if I touched it I’d need first aid.

  “You had to mess it up for everybody, didn’t you?” Somehow the words came out without her even moving her lips. Ophelia had nothing on her.

  I answered her with a shrug—no surprise there—and went back to my seat. I bulged my eyes at Ophelia, but she looked away. Winnie was shaking all over, just like a baby bunny.

  It didn’t occur to me until Mrs. Fickus went back to the vocabulary homework that she wasn’t going to check everybody’s backpacks and purses to make sure all the Valentines had been put in the box. I was an idiot.

  “Kylie,” Mrs. Fickus said.

  Or maybe I had gone to heaven.

  “Would you please collect the homework? Class, please pass your papers to the front of your row.”

  I tore mine out of my notebook. Before I could even tap Mitch, who was sitting in front of me, to take it, Kylie’s pink sweater brushed my arm as she passed. How she did it I never figured out, but she made a small piece of paper come out of her sleeve and land on my notebook without even pausing on her way up the aisle.

  If it had been folded, I wouldn’t have opened it. If it had landed upside down, I wouldn’t have turned it over. But it was staring me in the face and my eyes read it before I could stop them.

  “If you don’t get every one of those Valentines out of here before Mrs. F. sees them, we will take YOU out.”

  The sick feeling in my stomach told me they didn’t mean out for ice cream.

  What it did mean, I wasn’t sure. I tried to focus on the punctuation sheet Mitch passed back to me, but the commas and the colons ran around on the page like the thoughts in my head.

  I’m not scared of them.

  But I never had anybody threaten me before.

  What are they gonna do? Take away my birthday?

  They just took away Valentine’s Day.

  If I do what they say, I’m a loser.

  If I don’t do what they say . . .

  There was only one way to finish that thought: I would make it harder for Ophelia and Winnie. And maybe even Ginger.

  When the bell rang, I went with a compromise. I scooped the envelopes out of the bottom of the box. But as soon as I got out into the hall, I dumped them into the first trash can I came to and made sure the swinging lid was still swinging when the Wolf Pack went by.

  Without waiting for Ophelia and Winnie, I headed straight for my locker to see if there were any more evil cards in there so I could take them to Spanish class and tear them up into Mrs. Bernstein’s wastebasket in front of Kylie. That’s how mad I was. But when I got to my locker, Ginger stood at her open one, staring inside.

  I wondered why the Pack wasn’t blocking her way. But then she plastered her hands over her nose and mouth and acted like she was about to lose her lunch. One whiff and I knew why.

  The stench of mold is one smell you don’t forget, and I hadn’t. I did an experiment with cheese up in the Spot one time and forgot about it. The next time I went in the cabin, it was gag-worthy. The stink coming out of Ginger’s locker was even worse.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.

  I pointed to the trash can, and as she ran off choking, I pinched my nose with my fingers and looked inside at a plate piled with cookies. I could only stand there for a few seconds or I was going to be joining Ginger at the trash can, but I got enough of a look to notice three things: (A) they were ginger cookies (I knew because Granna made them every Christmas); (B) they were shaped like hearts that had been twisted and distorted until they belonged in a horror movie; and (C) they were half-covered in something blue and fuzzy.

  It took a while for mold to grow that much, unless somebody really knew what they were doing. That meant “somebody” went to a lot of trouble for this. But the bigger question was—

  “How did they get in here?” I said to Ginger, who hadn’t thrown up after all.

  “I guess it was when I left my locker door open.”

  “You left it open?”

  “After English Heidi told me I could come here, that they weren’t gonna bother me anymore.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, instead of “And you actually believed them?”

  “And when I opened it, Mr. V. called me to the end of the hall and said he wanted to talk to me.” Ginger’s eyes watered.

  “What did he say?”

  “He just asked me how things were going in our group, and I started to tell him and then he said I should go to my locker and get to class. And when I came back, here they were.”

  I looked down the empty hall.

  “We have to go or we’re gonna be late,” I said. “I’ll just dump these—”

  “No, let me!”

  Ginger grabbed the plate and pulled it out. The paper plate collapsed and moldy, horror-movie cookies hit the floor with sickening plops.

  “Oh, nuh-uh!” I said.

  No As, Bs, or Cs came to my head. The only thing that was going to happen was that we were going to pick up these . . . things with our hands and throw them away and be late to Mrs. Bernstein’s class and go in there reeking like leftovers somebody stuck in the back of the refrigerator six weeks ago. That was what was going to happen.

  “You go to class,” Ginger said. “You shouldn’t be late.”

  “What a
bout you?” I said.

  She blinked her blueberry eyes at me. I didn’t see how she wasn’t crying.

  “What about me?” she said, as if that was the stupidest question anyone had ever asked her. “I’ll clean it up and then I’ll go to the nurse’s office and be sick in her bathroom and she’ll let me go home early.”

  There was another one of those seven-second things where I teetered. Phee would never speak to me again if I helped Ginger, no question about that. And if the Pack found out, I’d be the next one with moldy baked goods in my locker. But I already knew how this felt. And it was so not okay.

  I shook my head. “I’m staying.”

  But she gave me a little push with a clammy hand.

  “Go,” she said. Her face was stronger than I’d ever seen it. “Please.”

  So I went. All the way I thought that Ginger must have been through things like this before because she knew just what to do. And nobody had ever stopped it.

  All through Spanish class Kylie’s lookouts kept their eyes on the door while the rest of the class was writing the numbers to a hundred in Spanish. I was almost to sixty, and Ginger still hadn’t arrived. I was relieved that the nurse probably had sent her home.

  For people who couldn’t stand Ginger, the Pack seemed disappointed that she didn’t show up. Kylie looked like she wanted to pinch someone’s nose off.

  Of course, she always kind of looked like that.

  When the last bell rang and Mrs. Bernstein stepped into the hall, everybody ran out—it was Friday after all—except Kylie and the Pack. I took my time leaving, mostly because I didn’t want to talk to Ophelia and have to cross my heart and hope to die a dozen more times.

  The Pack was so focused they talked like I wasn’t even there.

  “What am I supposed to do with these now?” Izzy said. She pulled a bunch of dead flowers out of her backpack and waved them around. My mom would’ve been all over that with a lecture about caring for living things.

  “Not my problem,” Kylie said to Riannon, who said it to Heidi, who turned to Izzy and said, “Do whatever you want with them, I guess.”

  “Should I put them in her locker?”

  “How are you going to get the door open, genius?” Riannon said.

  I knew it was her because her voice was pointy. By then, I was pretending to rearrange the contents of my backpack.

  “I could ask Mr. V again—”

  “Shhhhhhhhh!”

  Apparently I wasn’t pretending hard enough. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and hurried out, not just to get away from them, but because now I felt sick.

  Mr. V was in on it? He kept Ginger occupied so they could put those disgusting cookies in her locker?

  How was that even possible? (A) He wouldn’t and (B) he wouldn’t and (C) he just wouldn’t.

  But he had.

  For the first time I thought maybe Ophelia was right. Maybe we should go back to hiding under the radar if a teacher, a cool teacher like Mr. V, thought this was all funny too.

  The hall seemed like a tunnel as I walked down it. I knew other kids were there, but I couldn’t hear them. The only sound was the voice in my head.

  You could do it, you know. You could tell Mr. V that Ginger wasn’t doing any work in the group and he would take her out of it.

  You could think up another topic and even do the whole project yourself so nobody would be mad.

  You could pretend meanness doesn’t exist.

  Instead of trying to figure out where it comes from.

  I found myself at the bottom of the stairs, between the main office and the front door. I had to shake myself inside to get back to the real. Dad was picking me up. We were going to the Lazy Dog for our traditional Valentine’s Day sundae. Mostly to celebrate Mom being not-a-crazy-person after tomorrow.

  Even though I’d just made a huge decision, I didn’t feel like eating chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, on actual Valentine’s Day, I told Nestlé, “I’m having a hard time loving anybody today.”

  He cocked his cocoa-colored head at me.

  “Except you, of course. Do I even have to say that?”

  Apparently so because he put his paws up on my bed, which I hadn’t even gotten out of yet because (A) it was Saturday and (B) I didn’t have anything to do and (C) I couldn’t think of anything to do.

  Maybe Mrs. Fickus was right. Maybe my imagination muscle had turned flabby.

  I sat up and listened hard. No sounds of coffee grinding and toast popping up were coming from the kitchen. One peek out the window assured me Mom was already gone. With the Valentine’s rush I wasn’t even sure she had come home the night before.

  Could there be a few more things going on? I felt anxious, like I was about to take a test I forgot to study for. Which, like, never happened.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Nestlé.

  I patted the bed, but he was already up there, turning himself around . . . and around . . . and around until he finally curled into a ball that reminded me of a Reese’s peanut butter cup. With a big growly sigh, he rested his head on my leg and moved just his eyes to let me know I could start with the petting any time.

  I stroked the smooth place between his eyes and just like I knew it would, having him all warm and heavy up there with me calmed things down.

  Except for my thoughts about Ginger and Ophelia and Winnie. And worse, about Kylie and Shelby and all the rest of them who morphed into a single mean face in my brain.

  “It’s like they’re one person,” I said to Nestlé, “and Kylie’s the head and the rest of them are her hands and feet.” It was such a big person, it was kind of hard to remember there were only five of them making it up.

  I wished Winnie and Ophelia and I were like one body. We used to be in a way.

  I flopped back onto the pillows, and Nestlé scooted his way up so his head was on my chest. I tried to think of the ceiling as a piece of paper I could write some numbers on.

  Three of us.

  Five in the Pack.

  Attacking one—Ginger.

  Okay, maybe four if you counted the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of Winnie, Ophelia, and me.

  Nine altogether.

  But how many girls were in our class?

  I tried to remember but (A) I didn’t really pay that much attention to anybody but us and (B) Nestlé was trying to lick my ear. Even I couldn’t think with a tongue in my auditory canal.

  I wriggled out from under him and let him fall asleep there. I dug through the project supplies in the bottom of my closet and pulled out a piece of big paper and some markers. With a sweep of my arm, I cleared my desk and went to work.

  When I was through I found some tape and stuck the paper to the door of my closet and sat on the edge of the bed to look at it. Nestlé sat up too and leaned into me.

  “It’s a chart,” I told him. “Of all the girls in our section. Who knew there were fifteen of us and only twelve boys? I thought there were at least a hundred of those creatures.” I looked at Nestlé, who looked back. “I know you’re a boy,” I said, “but you don’t count as a creature.”

  He seemed content with that and stretched out to sleep again. After today there would be no more getting up on the bed until Mom’s Easter rush started. He had to take advantage of it while he could.

  I let him snooze and studied the chart in silence.

  The Pack Brainy Girls Athletes/Dancers Indies Target

  Kylie Me Brittney Evelyn Ginger

  Riannon Ophelia Josie Mitch

  Heidi Winnie Quinby

  Shelby Ciara

  Izzy

  I had to do the next part out loud, whether Nestlé was listening or not.

  “So there’s one target. And there are five wolves attacking her. Although, if Kylie wanted to, she could turn on Shelby or Izzy at any time. I’ve seen her do it.” I tilted my head at the chart. “If Kylie decided Ginger wasn’t any fun to torment anymore, would Riann
on or Heidi even do it?”

  “Mathematically speaking,” I said to Nestlé, “it doesn’t make sense that 33 percent of the girls in our section should have 100 percent of the power over 7 percent of the girls, when there’s another 60 percent just standing around.”

  Too bad that Kylie and her pack weren’t that good at math.

  But I was.

  The Wolf Pack was quiet Monday at school, even in science class where they were allowed to be the noisiest.

  “I’m glad they’re leaving us alone,” Winnie whispered when our group circled up for our fifteen minutes of project time.

  “For now,” Ophelia said.

  Winnie’s tiny face crumpled. “What do you mean, ‘for now’?”

  Ophelia used her hair as a blond shade so she could peek through at the Pack. “They’re planning something.”

  I didn’t think she should have told Winnie that. The poor kid slid so far down into her desk all I could see were her eyes and the top of her almost-white head. But I had to agree with Phee. All the Wolf heads were bowed together like they were praying. Which I was pretty sure they weren’t.

  “Where’s—” Ophelia pointed at Ginger’s empty desk.

  “Bathroom,” Mitch said.

  “How’s it going, ladies?”

  I felt Mr. V behind me, but I didn’t turn around to look at him. I’d been making it a point not to look at him. His elastic smile wouldn’t seem real to me, now that I knew he’d been in on the moldy cookie prank. Just hearing his voice brought all the disappointment up like it was yesterday’s lunch.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Ophelia chewed at the ends of a hunk of hair. “There kind of is.”

  “Do you want to kind of tell me about it?” He slipped into Ginger’s desk.

  Ophelia looked at me, but I just stared back at her.

  “Anybody?” Mr. V said.

  “It’s Ginger,” Ophelia said. “We only have fifteen minutes to work together in class and she spends most of it in the bathroom.”