Totally Crushed

by Kristen Tracy

  “Yes. The whole crew,” Ms. Kenny said.

  Principal Hunt gave me a quick look and then pulled out a list. “Does this look like the order I should gather the rooms, Ms. Kenny?”

  “Perfect,” Ms. Kenny replied. “We can take one room every twenty minutes.”

  One class every twenty minutes? Wow. This was going to be a ton of work. We probably should’ve scheduled different grades for different days.

  “And some of the students are dressing outlandishly,” Principal Hunt said. “I gave permission for some of it, but a few people are really pushing the limit. If you think anything is in poor taste, point it out. Student portraits are a privilege. I’m not letting anything crazy in the yearbook.”

  And I sort of wondered if this meant we could refuse to take Anya’s photo.

  When the first bell rang and Ms. Kenny led the first class to us, I was totally crushed by what I saw. Yes, Fletcher and Reece had cat eyes, but it was worse than that. Four members of the boys’ basketball team had worn cream-colored sweaters. Against the screen, they were going to look like floating heads. And this wasn’t an accident. A bunch of kids had dressed in that color. I was stunned. It was like they were using my photo-clinic tips to purposely take a bad picture. It was so rude. My life had so much stress in it, and here these goons were, totally wasting my time and my talent.

  “Hi, Perry,” Tate Lloyd said, flashing me a hideously gummy smile. Okay. I got it. All these popular kids wanted to show up and take terrible yearbook photos. Fine. No problem. I was here to do my job. And I was going to do it. No matter how horrendous these jerks looked.

  “The nerds look great,” Venice said.

  And she was right. Everybody who’d taken our advice looked way better than they would’ve otherwise. But the rest of them. The rest of them. Let’s just say in addition to the cat eyes and floating heads, there was a lot of unblended pimple cream happening. At one point, I couldn’t take it anymore and told Ms. Kenny, “I feel a little mocked.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re doing a fantastic job.”

  But that compliment didn’t make me feel any less mocked.

  “It’ll be okay. Don’t panic. Here come Drea and Hayes,” Venice whispered to me while I took Nicole Salazar’s photo.

  And that was my first hint that things might not be okay. I saw Drea before I saw Hayes. I couldn’t believe they were in the same class. But there they were, standing in a clump of kids from Ms. Stott’s class. They looked good. They hadn’t done anything to sabotage their appearance. Drea sat on the stool first.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound totally normal.

  “Hi, Perry,” Drea said.

  She was quick about it. It definitely sounded like she was upset with me. But I wasn’t sure if she hated me. I tried to ignore that she was wearing one of Piper’s old shirts and a pair of her leggings.

  “It turned out great!” I said really cheerfully after I took Drea’s picture.

  She shrugged. “It’s just a picture.”

  And that was a bigger slam than anybody realized. Because she knew that I’d been trying extra hard to get a good picture of her into the yearbook. And she knew how I felt about my photos. Every single one of them mattered.

  Next up was Hayes. I was so nervous that I didn’t even say anything to him. And he didn’t say anything to me. I took his picture, and he was gone. I didn’t even have time to look out from around the camera. By the time I did, it was just the empty chair. Venice leaned in close to my ear.

  “Don’t read too much into their hate faces or their hate shirts,” she whispered.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. Because I hadn’t even noticed those. But there they were. On the back of both their shirts, written in bright-red marker: NO LOVE 4 HATERS.

  Wow. I felt like I’d been punched in the face. Nobody had ever worn clothes in order to send me a message before. Plus, it sort of stung to see that Drea had defaced one of Piper’s shirts.

  “That might not be about me, right?” I asked.

  “Well,” Venice said, “you really hurt their feelings. Maybe you should apologize.”

  But I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that. Because that would mean having to explain my pops and rehash my feelings about Hayes’s crush on me and Drea’s sister-stealing behavior, and I felt the better solution was not to say anything and let time fix that stuff.

  “I think I’m just going to give them space,” I said. “I mean, I’m sure they’ll mellow.”

  And when I watched them walk away that day in their matching hate shirts, I really did believe things would return to normal fairly quickly. Big Boo was almost here. Oral reports were almost due. We had so many other things to be doing. We had so much other stuff to worry about.

  I must have figured something magical would happen and that I would stumble into the perfect Halloween costume. Literally. Which was why I’d agreed to enter the garage with my mother and spend an hour going through the plastic bins. Because maybe one of Piper’s old costumes was out there, just waiting for me to find it.

  My mother understood what I was after. “If you don’t find something here, you can always go as a cat. You look so cute with whiskers.”

  I pictured Anya and her gang of friends and their horrendous cat eyes that I had forever immortalized in the yearbook.

  “I can’t go as a cat this year,” I said. “It’s just not possible.”

  Mitten Man found a piece of paper and chased it around the concrete floor, skittering into boxes.

  “Ghosts are easy,” my mom said. “You could use this sheet.”

  She pulled out an old bedsheet from the dryer. It had a big stain on it, right where my head would be.

  “Do you know how terrible my life would be at school if I dressed like a ghost with a brown stain?”

  My mom must have gone to the nicest middle school ever, because she didn’t seem to understand how urgent finding an amazing costume was to me. I kept pulling things out of the bin and setting them in piles. Tragically, the piles were a little wobbly.

  “You’re making a mess of Piper’s things,” my mom said. “We need to keep some order.”

  But keeping order took time and I didn’t have any of that to spare.

  “Didn’t she go as a jellyfish?” I asked. “Didn’t she win a prize for that?”

  “We don’t have that costume anymore. It involved balloons and rubber tubing and you were obsessed with it and we worried it was a suffocation risk.”

  But that didn’t make sense, because I was five when Piper wore that costume. “How would I suffocate myself? That’s stupid.”

  My mom put her hand on her hip and spoke really harshly to me. “You kept biting the balloons. It was a legitimate concern. Not a stupid one.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Because I didn’t want my mom to get upset with me. I dug to the very bottom of bin number one and set it aside. But when I reached for bin number two my mom stopped me.

  “What about all those piles you made?” she asked.

  Card stock, construction paper, pipe cleaners, glitter, cotton balls, crepe paper. I watched them swaying under the weight of their own terrible height.

  “They’ll be fine,” I said.

  Whoosh. When all the artwork crashed to the floor I felt truly bad for Piper’s stuff. Especially because some of the pieces lost their cotton balls.

  “You’re done,” my mom said. “All you’re doing is wreaking havoc.”

  “But I need a costume for tomorrow!” I said.

  “Why do you do this to yourself?” she asked. “Why would you put something so important off to the last minute?”

  And that seemed like a horrible thing to tell me while I was panicking. Because how I had gotten into this terrible situation didn’t matter at all. The only thing I needed was a solution.

  “Be a cat,” my mom said. “That’s my best advice.”

  I stood there for a few seconds waiting for some better advice, but she didn’t give
me any.

  “Piper has been acting weird and won’t return my texts,” I said. “She won’t even respond to me on PopRat. Maybe you can call her and make her call me back.”

  “Perry!” my mom said in a really grumpy voice. “It’s not your sister’s job to solve your problems. You need to lay off the texts and pops. You’ll drive her away.”

  And that was probably the worst thing my mother had ever said to me. And instead of trying to get her to take it back, I hurried into the house and turned on my computer. Because if my mom and sister couldn’t help me solve my problems, I really only had one place left to turn: the Internet.

  I found it lame how many blogs suggested witches, mermaids, and princesses. None of those things appealed to me. They looked complicated and involved hats or tails or crowns. If I could go as anything, I wanted to go as an animal. But I didn’t want to go as a funny animal, like a cow or a pig. And I didn’t want to go as a large animal, like a hippo or an elephant. It was just so hard.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  I was pretty sure my mom was knocking on my door until I heard, “It’s Dad. Can I come in?”

  And even though I needed to stay focused on searching the web, I said, “Okay. But I’m pretty busy.”

  My dad opened the door and held his arms out wide like he wanted to hug me. Which bugged me, because I’d just told him I was pretty busy.

  “Do you want any help?” he asked.

  “No,” I said in a mopey voice. I clicked on a website that offered patterns to make buccaneer costumes. Never. Click.

  “I understand what you’re going through,” my dad said. “In grad school my department used to have the biggest Halloween party and everybody wore amazing and mind-blowing costumes. I still have pictures.”

  I frowned at him. I didn’t think I had time to make one of those. “I don’t need something amazing. I need something clever, quick, and easy. Something that won’t stick out.”

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “Go as a selfie.”

  I couldn’t believe he was suggesting Piper’s costume from two years ago. “I need something more original.”

  “Let’s stay in that lane,” my dad said, tapping his chin. “Phone culture. What’s popular right now? PopRat. And what’s popular there?”

  I really didn’t want to talk about PopRat with my dad. I was sort of thinking PopRat might have been a mistake, because it definitely wasn’t improving my life yet.

  “Photo filters,” he went on. “Go as a hamster lens.”

  And I was all ready to reject this idea and tell my dad it was totally stupid, but it was actually pretty good.

  “It’s a guinea pig that’s popular right now,” I corrected.

  “Then go as a guinea pig filter,” he said.

  “But I’ll need to wear a frame, right? Or I’ll just look like a guinea pig and not a guinea pig lens, right?”

  “We’ve got an old box in the garage. I can make you a frame. And I know you’ve got to take pictures at the carnival, so I’ll make it so you can set it down.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow what?” my dad asked.

  “Normally it’s really hard to solve my problems. This was easy.”

  “Remember this, Perry Hall. Two heads are always better than one. And your dad has a pretty decent head.” He pointed at me and said, “Bada bing.”

  Which sort of killed the mood. Because “bada bing” was a lame thing to say.

  After my dad informed my mom of my costume idea, we worked as a team to make it. For ears my mom found great fabric scraps that she attached to a headband with her glue gun. My dad made me the perfect frame from an old air-conditioner box that he even branded with the PopRat logo. And I found a great online makeup tutorial that taught me how to play up my guinea pig features, which I didn’t even know I had.

  “Try these on,” my mom said, handing me gray mittens with the fingertips cut off. She’d glued on fluffy fur and converted them into the perfect pair of guinea pig paws.

  I slid them on and the finished product was actually quite good.

  “You should send a picture of this to Piper,” my dad said.

  But I just frowned when he said that. Because Piper was basically ghosting me.

  Just then, my phone buzzed. I got a little bit excited because I thought maybe it was Piper. But it was Venice.

  “Is that a picture?” my dad asked, leaning in and invading my space.

  It figured that she had finished her costume at the same exact time I’d finished mine. We were best friends. Even though I didn’t feel totally in sync with her, our lives were still super connected. Then I looked at the picture and felt bummed out.

  “It’s Venice and Leo in their costumes,” I said.

  “Let’s see,” my mom said. “Ooh. Miners. I love their hats.”

  But I just stared at that photo and felt sorry for them. Because the dirty jackets they were wearing were monstrous. If Venice thought fur was too hot, wait until she spent the entire day wearing that canvas getup and a helmet. She’d be a puddle of sweat by lunch.

  “You should send them a photo,” my mom suggested, lifting up her phone to snap one.

  But I jumped out of picture range and screamed, “No way!” I hid behind a chair to make sure she couldn’t photograph me. “I want my costume to be a surprise.”

  “You’re so dramatic,” my mother said.

  But I didn’t think that was true. I was thinking ahead to tomorrow, where I wanted to make a surprising entrance in my guinea pig costume and impress my whole school.

  “Let’s call this a successful evening,” my dad said with a yawn. “I think I’m ready for bed.”

  But we didn’t go to bed. Because all three of our phones started buzzing.

  “It’s Piper,” my mom said. “What’s this?”

  We all stared at the photo and caption Piper had sent. It was of her and Bobby. They were sitting in a café, smiling and holding up a letter. “We got accepted to teach ESL in Thailand. So thrilled. You’re probably not. Turning off my phone now. Calm down and we’ll talk later. Namaste.”

  I watched as my father’s face began to turn red. “How do you finish college and go to Thailand?” he said. “She’s dropping out!”

  “Let’s not assume the worst,” my mom said.

  “We should’ve put our foot down about Thailand when it first came up,” my dad said.

  “You knew about Thailand?” I asked. Because I had thought I was doing my mother and sister a favor by keeping it a secret and not talking about it in front of him.

  “Of course I told your father about Thailand,” my mother said. “We tell each other everything.”

  And that actually frightened me a little bit. Because there were certain parts of my life that I preferred only one of them know about.

  “I’m going to drive down there right now and kick Bobby’s butt right out of her life,” my dad said.

  “Wow,” I said. Because my dad had never threatened to kick anybody’s butt before.

  “You’ll make things worse,” my mom said.

  “Piper flunking out of college is the worst-case scenario,” my dad said, looking really upset.

  But I felt like it was my job to stick up for Piper. “She might not flunk all her classes. She’s very smart.”

  “You think you’re raising a normal daughter and then she meets one hipster bozo and this happens,” my dad said.

  “Actually, I do think boyfriends ruin people,” I said, trying to stay involved with the conversation.

  “Well, driving to Pocatello and forcing an encounter with Bobby isn’t a good solution,” my mom said. “We need to think strategically.”

  Then they stared at each other and didn’t say anything. I wished I could have offered them a suggestion. But I didn’t know how to break people up, even though lately I’d given that topic a lot of thought.

  “I’m going to text Piper anyway. Maybe she hasn’t turned off her phone yet,” I said. I ran
to the mirror and took a selfie. Then I popped it to her with the caption, “Guess what I am for Halloween?”

  My mom and dad and I stared at my phone, hoping for a reply. But it never came. So we all got ready for bed. While I was brushing my teeth I heard my parents talking.

  “Don’t worry,” my mom said. “I’ve tucked her passport away. She isn’t going anywhere.”

  And that was a huge relief to hear. Because I didn’t want to think of Piper in a cobra-filled country with Bobby. Even if that was what she wanted. Because it wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted wasn’t complicated at all. I wanted a happy life. With my best friend. And my sister. And a great Halloween costume. And for Javier to be a better leader. And no more tasks. And to get an A on my Lake Pend Oreille presentation. And get As in all my classes. And all my Big Boo pictures to turn out. And also the thing with Drea and Hayes to be ancient history. I hardly wanted anything at all.

  When I woke up, I was pretty thrilled to see that Piper had responded to my pop in the middle of the night. As soon as I saw it I started yelling, “She popped me back! She popped me back!”

  My parents came into my bedroom still in their pajamas, looking pretty relieved.

  “What did she say?” my mom asked.

  “Did she mention whether or not she’s still going to her classes?” my dad asked.

  But I just ignored that question. Because of course Piper hadn’t texted me about that. “Okay. She said, ‘Hi, Perry. Love you so much. Don’t worry. I’ll come and give you a big hug before I go. And you look great, Smudge!’ ”

  “I am not letting my firstborn go to Thailand at nineteen,” my mom said. “That’s final.”

  “I’ll email her advisor,” my dad said. “We can set up a meeting. Find out her academic standing.”

  Then he patted me on the head like I was a dog. “At least one of my daughters is keeping her head on straight.”

  And I really didn’t like it when my parents compared me to Piper, even when it was a compliment. So I said, “Maybe Piper needs a break. Maybe going to Thailand isn’t as terrible as we think.” Because my sister usually made pretty good choices.