So Not Okay

by Nancy Rue

  While Nestlé was scoring down there, I went back into the cabin and sat with my back against the wall. Now I really felt lonely. I wondered what Lydia was doing. She was probably pretty lonely herself, waking up from her surgery. I shivered, even though the sun was still sneaking through the doorway. What if nobody was with her? She never said anything about her family. Dad took her for her blood tests. Where was her dad?

  Then I just kind of knew: Lydia would be praying. She said that was what she always did. She was never alone because she had God. Maybe that was what I should do. What did she say to God, though? Why hadn’t I ever asked her?

  Nestlé’s nose came through the door. I waited for him to push it all the way open before I said, “Come here. I want to smell what you got. Bacon strips? Is that it?”

  Nestlé came to me, tail smacking the wall beside me. I pulled his face up to mine so I could sniff his breath. It was sweet. What was that smell? I put my nose close to his fur, and then I gasped so hard some of his hair went up my nose.

  He smelled like strawberry shampoo.

  I grabbed Nestlé around the neck and really took a long whiff. Something crisp poked me. Nestlé shook himself away and a rolledup paper came loose from his collar and landed in my lap.

  I held my breath.

  Maybe I shouldn’t open it. The paper wasn’t purple, but it smelled like Kylie too. She should never try to be a spy. The CIA would be able to follow her scent without even using bloodhounds.

  So . . . if she was being that obvious, maybe it was just another part of the truce. It would make sense for them to put it in writing so nobody could say they didn’t “try.”

  Only, why deliver it to my house, through my dog? Why not give it to me at school?

  I realized at that point that I was still holding my breath. I let it out and unrolled the paper.

  “If it’s really awful, I’ll stop reading,” I said to Nestlé.

  Yeah, well . . . it was. And I didn’t.

  “The Person We Admire Least,” it said at the top in computer-typed letters.

  Then came paragraph one.

  “The person we don’t admire is Victoria-My-Pet. She really is like a pet. Like your pet dog. She is smelly and shaggy, and she runs around with a pack of other dogs who think they’re special and they’re not.”

  Paragraph two.

  “First of all, V-M-P stinks. That’s because she hangs out with a pug dog named Gingerbread, who makes everyone around her smell like no-deodorant and gross, dirty clothes.”

  It was written in perfect Mrs. Fickus form. I dragged my eyes down to paragraph three.

  “Victoria-My-Pet looks like a dog too. She doesn’t brush her hair, and she always wears the same clothes over and over. That’s because a dog can’t change its coat. She shouldn’t be allowed to come to school looking like that, but she gets away with it because the teachers think she’s a very smart dog. She got all As in obedience school.”

  I tried not to read paragraph four, but I couldn’t make myself stop.

  “But the teachers are wrong because Victoria-My-Pet is not that smart. First, she wrote a stupid paper about being like a bird when everybody knows she’s a mutt. And when we had to find a question for our science project, it took her and her kennel two weeks to think of something. And when they did, it was about why people are mean. We can already answer that question because she thinks it’s about us. We aren’t mean. We’re just honest. If somebody is weird and not cool, we just say it. We don’t pretend we like pug dogs like Gingerbread and pit bulls like Mitch the Witch and chihuahuas like Winnie the Ninny, because they’re the only ones who will hang around with her. All they do is try to hide from us or make us look stupid, but everybody laughs because they’re dogs trying to act like humans. Victoria-My-Pet once had a pretty golden retriever friend named Phee-Phee, but she got smart and she won’t be in their dog pack anymore. She knows we’re going to win, and she doesn’t want to be a loser. We might even adopt her as a pet.”

  The last paragraph was a conclusion, just like Mrs. Fickus taught us. I finally stopped reading there. I could only think of two things: (A) Mrs. Fickus would probably give that paper an A, and (B) at that moment, I wished I was a dog. Then I could just go to sleep like Nestlé and forget I ever read that.

  I went back into the house and put the paper inside my literature book, flattened out. That night I had so many bad dreams about turning into a dog, I woke Nestlé up. That’s when I let him get in bed with me, and Mom didn’t even say anything about it when she came in to get me up.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said as she pulled my curtains open and let the sun blind me.

  If it was that bright through my window, that meant it was already over the tops of the pine trees.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  “Time to get dressed. Did you forget you’re going to see Granna today? Nestlé, down!”

  I had forgotten. How could that have happened? I felt myself scowling as I climbed out of bed. Did the Pack have to ruin absolutely everything?

  “It’s going to be okay, Tori.” Mom was looking at me closely, a perfect curly tendril hanging just right beside each eye. “Granna is doing great. She wanted to wait this long so you wouldn’t think she was never going to be the same.” Mom rolled her eyes. She actually did. “Trust me, she’s just as ornery as ever. So don’t worry. This is going to be great for you.”

  After that, I made a superhuman effort to wipe the worry off my face. It was going to be great. I missed Granna so much it hurt, and nobody was going to ruin seeing her.

  Save the Tears. Gold Thumb. Baby Steps. Walk It, Girl.

  The minute I saw Granna sitting up in bed wearing earrings with five shamrocks hanging down to her shoulders, I knew it was going to be great.

  “It’s about time you showed up!” she said.

  “You two have a lot to catch up on,” Mom said. “I’m going to go grab some coffee. You want hot chocolate, Tor?”

  “Bring me some,” Granna said. “And a meatball sandwich. The food up here is for sick people.”

  “I told you she was ornery as ever,” Mom said to me.

  I grinned all the way to my earlobes.

  “Come over here,” Granna said.

  I went to the bed, and she motioned for me to bow my head so she could kiss the top of it, just like I wanted her to.

  “Victoria, my pet,” she said.

  Yeah. That’s when I lost it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Granna let me cry until the front of that funky gown thing they made her wear was soaking wet like Nestlé had slobbered all over it. Then I sat up on the bed beside her and told her everything. Everything. Even things I didn’t know myself until they came out of my mouth.

  Like when I told her about Ophelia, I said, “Why did I do all this stuff for Ginger when sometimes it’s hard to even like her, but I couldn’t do what Ophelia wanted even though I love her?”

  “Why do you think you did that?” Granna said.

  I wiped some remaining stuff from under my nose. “Because it was the right thing to do.”

  “Then there you have it. Do you remember the last time you and I sat in church together?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Jake was preaching about the Good Samaritan, and I told you that was your solution.”

  “Oh, yeah. And I thought Lola Montez was supposed to be my solution.”

  Granna nudged me with her elbow. “Lola can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to being daring. The whole time I’ve been lying in this bed, you’ve been out there being the Good Samaritan. I’m proud of you.”

  “But, Granna . . .” I felt myself starting to cave again. “What do I do now? They’re just laughing at me for even trying. That paper they wrote . . .”

  “Is a pack of lies and you know it.” She gave me another elbow nudge. “Are you being who you are?”

  “I think so.”

  “If anyone criticizes you for being exactly who you are,
she’s wrong. No matter who she is.”

  Granna rested her head back on the bed, but she kept watching me with her eyes like Dad’s. And mine. Smart eyes.

  “This looks like a heavy conversation.” Mom crossed the room from the doorway and handed me a Styrofoam cup with a lid on it. Then she looked at me. “What’s going on?”

  “She’ll tell you,” Granna said. “And I strongly suggest you listen. But you both need to go because I need a nap. They don’t let you sleep at night around here.”

  I let her kiss me on the top of the head again.

  “Will you please say it, Granna?” I said.

  “You mean, ‘Victoria, my pet’?”

  “Yes.”

  She whispered it, and I smiled. It was ours again.

  Mom took me home and made me some real hot chocolate. We sat by the fireplace the whole afternoon, and now that I’d talked to Granna, I told Mom everything too. Only I wasn’t crying, so I gave her more detail. We had to turn on lights and feed Nestlé when I was done, that was how late it was.

  We ate our leftover pizza, and then it was Mom’s turn to talk.

  “First of all, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it had gotten this far because I didn’t listen to you. You’ve told me everything now, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You know I can’t just let this go.” Her eyes were wide and serious, and they flickered with the fire in them. “When your dad gets home tomorrow, I want us to go talk to Mrs. Yeats.”

  “It’s not a ‘Report Alert’ yet!”

  I was bordering on arguing. But Mom just paused like she was trying to remember which one ‘Report Alert’ was.

  “Nobody’s really in trouble,” I said. “They don’t hit or—”

  “I call someone coming to our house and putting a note on our dog’s collar ‘trouble.’ That’s trespassing, for one thing.”

  “But if you and Dad go to the principal, then it’s like we failed.”

  She tapped her lips. “How do you figure that?”

  “Because we couldn’t stop it ourselves!”

  “Sweetie . . .” Mom cupped my chin in her hand. “You’ve done so much by yourselves already. Sometimes you have to let the grown-ups take over.”

  “Just give us two more days. Please? We’ll do our presentation, and then they’ll know we aren’t going to chicken out. Then you can back us up. Please?”

  Mom paused a minute before she said, “I’ll talk to your dad when he gets home. You have at least until then.” She lowered her face like she did when she needed me to really look at her. “But you have to promise me that if anything happens at school that makes you or the other girls scared, you’ll call it a ‘Report Alert.’ Okay?”

  I nodded and hugged her. The hug was because she was using our words. And like I said, I wasn’t the hugging kind.

  When I got to the lockers Monday morning, Winnie was standing there alone, and she was holding something to her chest and crying.

  My antennae went up so far they almost popped out of my head.

  “What’s wrong, Win?” I said.

  “Look.”

  She held out what she was holding.

  “Is that our report binder?” I said.

  Winnie nodded. She was crying so hard, she couldn’t even talk.

  “Where was it?”

  She pointed to the floor in front of her locker.

  “It was just sitting there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When you got here?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I looked around. The halls were still quiet except for a locker door slamming someplace else.

  “So somebody just dropped it there?” I said.

  “I guess I did.”

  “When?”

  “Friday?”

  I squirmed under the straps of my backpack. “You didn’t drop it. I saw you put it in your backpack.”

  “I don’t care! It’s here!”

  Winnie hugged the binder again, and I shut up. For a minute. Then I said, “So how come you’re still crying?”

  “Because . . .” And then she really, really started crying. In huge sobs that sounded like she was going to stop breathing.

  I got her by the arm and took her over to our spot under the window and made her sit down on the floor with me. Then I found a wadded up, but clean Kleenex in the bottom of my backpack and handed it to her. Although, that clearly wasn’t going to be enough. She had it soaked before I could even get her to talk.

  “You gotta tell me what’s going on. Lydia says we have to be honest with each other. We’re a tribelet.”

  “No, we’re not.” She stared down at her hands, clenched together in her lap in a little pink ball. “I got three prank phone calls this weekend.”

  “The Pack?”

  “Uh-huh. The last time my grandmother took the phone from me, and she heard one of them say something really awful.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. Gramma wouldn’t tell me. But she made me tell her what was going on and she wouldn’t even let me finish. She just said—” Winnie choked, but I couldn’t let her stop yet.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m not allowed to be in the tribelet anymore.”

  Winnie broke all the way down then and cried and cried against my shoulder. Mitch found us like that, and she stared down four or five kids who thought they were going to stop and gape. Then she sat down on the other side of Winnie, and I told her what happened.

  “I got calls too,” Mitch said. “We have an unlisted phone number, so that’s weird.”

  “It’s all my fault!” Winnie said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said to Mitch. “Did your mom find out?”

  She nodded her grizzly head. “She told me to call them back and say worse stuff. She said I shouldn’t let them get the best of me. I told her I wasn’t into an eye for an eye and then she left me alone.” Mitch looked like something was itching her. “I sure want to though.”

  “Want to what?” I said.

  “Get back at them. Look at Win. She’s a mess. I’m sick of them doing this to her and you and Ginger. I could take them all out, you know.”

  “No.”

  All three of us looked up to see Ginger standing over us. She was wearing a striped top and brand-new red tennis shoes and her hair looked kind of silky.

  “We can’t give up,” she said. “We have to take back the power.”

  “I’m not allowed to anymore,” Winnie said. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

  She scrambled up and took off down the stairs. It felt like the air was shrinking. Now we were down to three.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who’s still in?”

  “Me,” Ginger said.

  “Me,” I said.

  Mitch grunted, naturally, and stood up and put her hand down to pull me to my feet.

  “Me,” she said.

  “And you won’t punch anybody?”

  “No. It’s stupid anyway to fight like that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, Baby Steps.”

  “Save the Tears,” Mitch said. “And Gold Thumb.”

  Ginger shifted her gigantic backpack. “Then, Walk It, Girl.”

  The first three periods of the day went smooth, even with only two of us to shield Ginger. I would have felt safe loosening up on that some if the Pack hadn’t barked every time we passed them. They weren’t loud barks; the Pack was too smart for that. Personally, I didn’t even think they sounded like dogs. I just focused on keeping Mitch from growling at them and Ginger from running away with her tail between her legs. I mean, like, if she had one.

  Right before fourth period, that was when things got strange.

  I escorted Ginger to the restroom without anybody harassing us. I did my usual hand washing while Ginger looked for an empty stall. She tugged on one door, and it wouldn’t open.

  “There must be somebody in there,” I said, trying not to sound
impatient. She still drove me nuts sometimes.

  “There’s no feet under it,” Ginger said.

  She was right about that.

  “It’s probably just stuck. Try that one.”

  Ginger disappeared into another stall, and I went back to rinsing. I wouldn’t put it past the Pack to lock the doors from the inside and then climb out underneath.

  I shook my head at myself in the mirror. Was I serious? None of the Wolves would ever crawl around on the bathroom floor.

  “Oh!”

  I turned around and said, “Ginger?” but I knew that little noise hadn’t come from her.

  “I’m hurrying,” Ginger said.

  I didn’t answer her. I was looking at the stall with the stuck door. A foot was just being pulled up, and some fingers hooked into the top of the door for a second. Just long enough for me to see the nails bitten halfway down.

  “Phee?” I said.

  “Yeah?” she said. Her voice sounded almost as tiny as Winnie’s.

  The door opened, and Ophelia stepped out. Her face was so white I could almost see through it.

  “Were you standing on the toilet seat?” I said.

  “Me?” Ginger said from inside the stall. “No!”

  “I’m talking to Ophelia,” I said.

  Only I wasn’t. When I looked back, the bathroom door was swinging shut behind her.

  Ginger emerged, face bewildered. “What was she doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  And I didn’t want to know. Because every reason I could think of hurt way too much.

  Fourth period was our last time to meet to plan our presentation. The Pack was in the lab, practicing with pom-poms, so we could talk more freely. That is, if anybody had had anything to say.

  Ophelia just played with her braid. I noticed it was cut close to the band at the end so there was nothing left to chew on.

  Winnie sat there hugging the binder like she was afraid somebody was going to snatch it right out of her arms.

  Mitch didn’t talk because, well, Mitch was just Mitch.