Your Life, but Sweeter

by Crystal Velasquez

  Wow. Mona must genuinely like this guy. Too bad he doesn’t seem to notice. Even though Mona is a model and is used to being in the spotlight, she turns into kind of a dormouse around Paul, so he doesn’t get to see the superconfident go-getter she can be.

  Over lunch in the basement cafeteria of the museum, you run your idea past Lizette and Charlie.

  “Wait, let me get this straight—you want to help Mona?” Lizette asks incredulously, putting her peanut butter and jelly sandwich down on the orange plastic tray in front of her and brushing her long black curls over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, I know how it sounds, but I think she really needs—”

  “Mona Winston?” Charlie interrupts, nervously adjusting his tie. Even on the school trip Charlie is in his usual business attire. His feeling is that there are a lot of business moguls who live in New York—Donald Trump, Diddy, Mayor Bloomberg—and if he should run into any of them, he wants to look the part.

  “Yes, all right? You just have to see how she acts around this guy Paul. I bet if she just—”

  “Mona Winston, the model from our school who hates you?” Lizette butts in again. “The one who put gum on your seat just because you scuffed her shoe once? That Mona?”

  “Yes, yes, yes! Guys, focus, okay? I know she can be a nightmare. But I just … I feel sorry for her. I know how it feels to, um, be in her shoes.” You don’t have to spell it out for Lizette and Charlie. One quick look over at the far table where Jimmy is sitting with Ms. Darbeau, showing her his sketches, is enough. Your crush on Jimmy is the worst-kept secret in the school.

  “Bueno,” Lizette mutters softly. “I get it. But what makes you think she would accept your help anyway?”

  Good point. If Lena, your most logical friend, were here, she would have asked you the same thing. “I’ll think of something.”

  The Sony Wonder Technology Lab has got to be one of the coolest places you’ve ever seen. Unlike at the museum, where it was strictly hands-off, you are encouraged to touch and play with everything here. Even the walls light up when you touch them! You wish Jessie and Lena were around to see all this awesome stuff. They both would have flipped over the music-maker exhibit where you get to play with a virtual band. And Jimmy is a pro in their animation studio.

  Only when you see Mona milling around the broadcasting booth does a plan finally form in your mind. In the exhibit, kids get to put on their own news show, and everybody has a role. As much as it pains you to admit it, Mona is a natural in front of a camera. She’d make a great news anchor. And Paul is standing right here, so he’d see firsthand what Mona is like at her best.

  But since Mona isn’t your biggest fan, you’ll have to be creative about getting her to participate. You know just what to say.

  “Hey, this looks really fun, everybody. Let’s do a broadcast. I’ll be the news anchor since I’d be so great on camera.” Scary! You are really channeling Mona’s diva ’tude. You start heading for the anchor desk.

  “Ha!” Mona chimes in immediately, grabbing the tail of your shirt and pulling you back, just as you expected. “I don’t think so. You’d better leave that to the professionals. I’ll be the news anchor.”

  You pretend to be really disappointed and settle for the cameraperson job. You may not be as experienced as Mona in front of the camera, but you’re not bad with a camcorder. And you’re sure you can figure out all these buttons and knobs and make Mona look incredible.

  After the staff member gives your group a quick tutoring session on how all this works, he tells you that you can start rolling. You aim the camera at Mona and count down from five, then Mona starts reading a story on the teleprompter about a local recycling program that is really making a difference.

  “Until the students of PS two-seventeen got involved, the area around their school was a sea of discarded plastic bottles …,” Mona begins, sounding every bit as good as she claimed she would. Now if you could adjust the camera settings so that her image is a little larger and softer …

  That’s what you are going for, anyway. But you end up pressing some button on the side of the camera too hard and it gets jammed. Then every button you press after that just makes it worse. When you look up at the screen, Mona’s image, which had looked perfectly normal a second ago, now looks more like a scary fun-house mirror. One of her eyes is huge while the other is barely there, and her mouth is being stretched so wide that she looks kind of like the Joker in Batman.

  Mona is oblivious to all this until Mark Bukowski points at the screen and shouts, “Check it out, Mona is an alien! Run for your lives!” Everybody starts pointing and laughing—including Paul.

  When Mona finally notices what’s happening to her image, she turns a deep red and clamps a hand over her mouth. Before you have a chance to scamper away to the girls’ bathroom and pretend you were never here, Mona locks eyes with you. Instead of the rage you expect to see on her face, all you find is hurt and embarrassment.

  You look around helplessly, really wishing your two best friends were here. But the only person you see not laughing is Jimmy, who is shaking his head at you. “That was pretty mean,” he says sadly. Wait, does he think you did that to Mona on purpose? Unbelievable. Your big plan to get Paul to notice Mona worked, all right, but in the worst possible way. Is there a time-machine exhibit in this place? You’d like to go back about fifteen minutes before any of this ever happened, please.

  You had good intentions. You did. But they backfired big-time. The plan that was meant to showcase Mona’s best side ended up revealing her inner alien instead. She became the butt of everyone’s jokes, and Paul had a front-row seat for the whole fiasco. Even worse, Jimmy seems to think you did it on purpose, which isn’t cool at all in his book. Can you see a way to fix this mess? Or is running and hiding looking pretty good to you right now? Why don’t you start by taking a deep breath … and taking the quiz.

  QUIZ TIME!

  Write down your answers and tally up the points at the end.

  Your two best friends have had a huge fight and haven’t been on speaking terms for days. What should you do? A. Stay out of it! People who step between two friends in a fight only end up getting hit by the crossfire. No, thanks. For now you’ll try to avoid being around either of them and hope the whole thing blows over soon.

  B. Talk to each of them individually about the rift and how it’s affecting you. Hopefully that will inspire one (or both) of them to break the silence and fix things already.

  C. Invite them both over to your house for a study session (without telling either of them that the other friend will be there, of course). They might be mad at you at first for tricking them, but you’re sure once they’re in the same room at the same time, they’ll end up working out their differences. The three of you can never stay mad at one another for long.

  D. Call for an emergency friendship meeting, inviting them to air out their problems while you listen to both sides and weigh in. No one leaves the room—not even to use the bathroom!—until the issue is resolved. This silent-treatment business has gone on long enough. It’s time to take action so that you can all get back to normal!

  You are about to head out to a friend’s birthday party when you realize that you totally spaced and forgot to get him a present. So naturally you: A. skip the party. It’s too late to get anything now, and no way can you show up empty-handed. You’d rather not be there at all than to have to explain how you could be such an airhead and forget to get him a gift.

  B. go to the party but leave right before the opening of the presents. Maybe no one will notice that none of the boxes on the gift table are from you.

  C. tell the birthday boy that you ordered his gift online and it just hasn’t arrived yet. That’s not entirely true (okay, that’s not even partially true), but it’ll buy you some time.

  D. give him something of yours that means a lot to you and that he’s always admired, like your autographed copy of the very first Harry Potter book, or the framed photograph of the
two of you hanging upside down on the monkey bars on your first day of second grade. And you can make him a card on your computer. You don’t have to spend a dime to show your friend how much he means to you.

  This afternoon is your first movie date with your longtime crush. But this morning you woke up with a zit in the middle of your forehead that is big enough to have its own zip code! What do you do? A. Cancel the date and reschedule for next week. With any luck, by then you’ll look a little less like a meteor landed on your face.

  B. Tell him you’ll meet him inside the theater after the movie has started—and you’ll have to take off before it ends. The key is to be in complete darkness the whole time so that there’s zero chance of him catching a glimpse of the hideous intruder living on your dome.

  C. Wear a bandanna around your forehead, covering the offensive pimple. No, a bandanna isn’t your usual style, and it doesn’t go with your outfit in the slightest, but desperate times call for desperate measures!

  D. Go on the date, forehead volcano and all, and even crack a joke or two about it. If he’s cool, he’ll totally understand and look past it. After all, who hasn’t dealt with the occasional visit from the acne fairy?

  You and your buds are in your living room practicing your dance moves for the upcoming recital when you accidentally kick over your mom’s favorite lamp and send it crashing to the floor. Now what? A. Make tracks! If you aren’t home when your mom discovers the damage, she can’t pin it on you, right?

  B. Clean up the mess, throwing the evidence away in a nearby Dumpster. When your mom asks what happened to the lamp, you try your best to convince her she never had a lamp like that and you don’t know what she’s talking about. Better for her to think she’s losing her mind than for you to get in trouble!

  C. Try your best to glue the lamp back together. Sure, it’s missing several chunks and now looks more like a science experiment gone horribly wrong than a lamp, but maybe your mom won’t notice?

  D. Fess up to what happened and offer to buy a new lamp using your allowance. No use trying to hide it.

  You have bitten off more than you can chew at school and now you have a report due, a play to star in, and a track meet to preside over as captain all in the same week. It would be almost impossible to do it all, which means you’ll have to: A. fake being sick and not do any of them. The thought of even trying to accomplish all the things on your to-do list this week is just too overwhelming. If you don’t show up, you’re sure the play and track meet will go on without you. And you guess you’ll have to take an Incomplete on the report. Not ideal, but better than facing all the chaos.

  B. do the report, but bail on the play and the track meet. You’ll be putting the drama club and track team in a bind and they’ll be mad, but facing the fury of your parents if you fail to hand in your report would be way worse. Everyone else will have to deal.

  C. try to do all three. Most likely your team will lose the track meet since you haven’t had time to motivate them; you’ll fumble your way through the play since you haven’t memorized all your lines; and your report will def be less than stellar. But at least you will have tried.

  D. decide to delegate. You hand your star part over to the understudy (who is psyched) and opt for a less demanding role in the chorus; assign the best runner on your team to be cocaptain so that she can pick up the slack until you’re back on your A game; and enlist the help of your folks to help you research your report. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

  Give yourself 1 point for every time you answered A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D.

  —If you scored between 5 and 12, go to this page.

  —If you scored between 13 and 20, go to this page.

  Other people are a real mystery to you, even your closest friends and family. You don’t always understand what makes them tick, and you have a tough time identifying with anyone’s experiences but your own. The secret to it is that, as different as people are, they all experience the same feelings. How you would feel in a given situation probably isn’t much different from how another person might feel. You just have to practice putting yourself in their shoes—even if you don’t think they’ll fit you.

  You just don’t get Mona. You’re so sick of her taking her bad moods out on you. Amy claims she’s acting that way because she secretly has a crush on Paul. But you doubt it. From what you can tell, the only person Mona cares about is Mona. Who does she think she is, anyway? She can’t tell you whom you can or can’t be friends with!

  As your class arrives at the Sony Wonder Technology Lab, you are more determined than ever to talk to Paul, just to show Mona that she can’t boss you around.

  When you first walk in, you notice him by the game-designing stand, with Mona right next to him. You come over and tap him on the shoulder. “Hey, you’ve got to see this virtual surgery machine. You get to operate on a real heart!” Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. Of course it’s a virtual experience, but what guy can resist the promise of a little blood and guts?

  “Cool,” Paul says and leaves Mona’s side to check out the heart surgery with you.

  But he isn’t there for even ten minutes before Mona comes back and swears up and down that Paul’s teacher is looking for him over at the nanotechnology exhibit. Paul drops his scalpel midsurgery and heads away with Mona, who turns around to smile an evil little smile at you.

  That’s how it goes the whole time you’re in the lab. You barely even talk to Jimmy, Lizette, or Charlie because you and Mona are caught in a game of tug-of-war over Paul. How you got sucked into this, you’re not quite sure. You only know that you’re determined to win.

  Rockefeller Center in December is unreal. There are two lines of angels in white facing one another, blowing brass trumpets into the air. Giant snowflakes made of light are spinning on the buildings surrounding the ice-skating rink. Watching over the skaters is an enormous gold statue in front of a running waterfall. And towering over everything is a Christmas tree that must be a million feet tall with about two million twinkling lights in every color you can imagine hanging from its branches.

  Unfortunately, you’re too busy looking at Mona to appreciate the amazing view around you. Paul was the first to lace up his ice skates and get out there. (According to your teachers, you’ll be here for only forty-five minutes, so you’ve got to make the most of your time.) You’re in a race to lace up your ice skates before Mona does. But Mona seems to be some kind of ice-skate-lace expert. She sits on a bench across from you and giggles as you struggle to untangle the laces and shove your foot inside, then never even looks down as she quickly undoes her own laces, slips her tiny feet into the skates, and crisscrosses the laces with a speed that matches Mark’s hot dog–eating abilities. She’s that fast. She heads out onto the ice, probably loving the slack-jawed look on your face.

  “How did she do that?” you wonder out loud.

  “Easy,” Amy answers, taking a seat on the bench beside you. “Mona used to take ice-skating lessons when she was little. Her mom thought they would help her modeling career. You know, to learn poise and stuff?”

  You shrug.

  “Anyway,” Amy continues, “she took lessons for years, so she probably learned all the tricks the pros use.”

  “As usual, you’re full of helpful information, Amy,” you respond listlessly, not even bothering to question how she knows all this.

  Amy shakes her head happily. “I try!”

  Great. So now the tug-of-war is going to take place on Mona’s turf. You inhale a couple deep breaths of cool December air, trying to psych yourself up.

  “Are you ready?”

  At first you think the voice is coming from your own mind. But then you look up and see Jimmy wobbling unsteadily on a pair of tan skates. He’s holding both his arms out to balance himself and you can already tell that he won’t last long on the ice. Not upright, anyway. It’s pretty adorable.

  “Sure,” you answer. “Let’s go
.”

  Since you’re actually a decent ice-skater, you lead Jimmy out onto the ice, letting him hold on to your arm until he starts to feel more at ease. But even then, he’s skating with his knees bent and his toes pointing at each other, pushing forward in short little bursts.

  “Hey, I think you’re getting better!” you shout encouragingly.

  “Liar,” Jimmy says, clutching your arm even tighter.

  You laugh. “All right, so you skate like I paint. We each have something we’re good at, and that’s why we make such a good team.”

  Jimmy gives you a warm smile and nods his head, and for a second there you don’t even notice that it’s about forty degrees outside. But then you see his eyes shift away from your face and go wide. “Whoa! Where’d she learn to do that?”

  You turn just in time to see Mona doing a fancy camel spin, then a sit spin, as tourists lining the rink whip out their cameras to take pictures. But she doesn’t seem to care at all about the crowd. After each trick, she looks around to see if Paul is watching, which he is. She does a final spin where she leans back, raises one leg behind her, and then lifts her arms in graceful arcs so that it looks like an oval is framing her head. “Not bad,” you mumble grudgingly.

  “Not bad? She’s incredible!” Jimmy exclaims, his eyes gleaming in a way that you hoped was reserved only for you.

  Just then, Mona comes swerving by and whispers quickly in your ear, “Top that, rookie.”

  If that isn’t a direct challenge, you don’t know what is.

  Even though you’re in New York, New York, things between you and Mona are the same old, same old. As usual, you’ve managed to get on her bad side just by existing. But this time you’ve refused to take her bossy mind games lying down. Paul unknowingly became the rope in a game of tug-of-war between you and your nemesis. And after those Olympic-style moves on the ice, it looks like Mona’s going to win his attention after all. But the real victory would be if she succeeded in making you feel insecure. Will you fall into the trap? You know what your mind says, but how about your body? Take the quiz for a quick gut check.