Also by Kristen Tracy
Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus
The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Kristen Tracy
Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by Dean Turpin
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89983-6
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Ulla Frederiksen and Fred Bueltmann.
You make my life bigger and better
and horse populated.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing acknowledgments always reminds me that I’m a lucky, lucky girl. Because I get to reflect on all the people in my life who offer me unending encouragement in the form of baked goods, long walks, and motivational text messages. Many thanks to Joen Madonna, Stacey Kade, Dana Reinhardt, Tracy Roberts, Nina LaCour, Brandi Dougherty, Robin Wasserman, Julie Romeis, Christopher Benz, Sara Michas Martin, Maria Finn, Jennifer Laughran, Amy Stewart, Cory Grimminck, Regina Marler, Lea Beresford, Ayelet Waldman, Emily Schultz, and Brian Evenson. And thanks to all the gardeners on Alcatraz who keep me grounded; I’m looking at you, Shelagh Fritz, Dick Miner, Karolina Park, Monica Beary, and Marnie Beard. Extra-special thanks to Wyatt Richards for introducing me to the world of Roosevelt Middle School. Extra-extra-special thanks to Kristin Scheel for sharing her Wyatt, and providing such a story-filled friendship. Double thanks to my family, especially my dad, who took me on an inspiring trip to Bear World that I will never, ever forget. Triple thanks to Wendy Loggia, my brilliant editor, who helps make my books as funny and real as possible. Quadruple thanks to Heather Daugherty for creating a fantastic book cover that I want to both bite and frame. And quintuple thanks to Sara Crowe, my agent and friend. You make everything better.
THINGS TO AVOID IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
1. Homework
2. Jerks
3. Cruddy bear paws
4. Wars of texts
5. Possibly Raya Papas
I had forgotten something important, and no matter how hard I tried to make myself remember it, I couldn’t. My mother and I were on the way to my best friend Sylvie’s house. Sylvie and I were going to plan her upcoming birthday party minute by minute. It needed to be crammed full of games and cake and craziness. You only turned twelve once. I tapped my temple, trying to remember the thing I’d forgotten. Tap. Tap. Tap. Out the window, I caught glimpses of my neighborhood as it whooshed by. A house. A lawn. A house. A lawn. Hay fields. Cows. My gorgeous neighbor, Noll Beck, atop a trotting horse.
“Ooh,” I said, sticking my finger on the window, pointing to Noll and the trotter. But then they were gone.
“What?” my mother asked. She patted my knee. “Are you afraid Sylvie’s mom might snap at you because she’s under a tight doll-assembly deadline?”
I looked at my mother in surprise. “I didn’t know anything about a tight doll-assembly deadline.” Sylvie’s mom painted the eyelashes on ceramic doll heads. And even though I didn’t understand how this could be true, it appeared that demand for these dolls and their black spidery lashes kept growing and growing and growing.
My mother pulled into Sylvie’s driveway. “Mrs. Potaski mentioned it to me on the phone. She sounded stressed-out.”
“This is terrible,” I said. I’d barely made up with Sylvie and won back the right to see her. I didn’t want her mom to snap at me.
“It’s not terrible, Bessica. Just be on your best behavior.”
“I can do that.” I reached for the door handle.
“And don’t forget to ask Sylvie what she wants for her birthday,” my mom said. “The scoping phase is over. We need to track down her gift and get it.”
My mom made buying Sylvie’s birthday present sound like hunting for a moose. It bummed me out to hear that the scoping phase was over. Because that was my favorite phase. I sighed.
“Actually, Mom, that’s not the plan,” I said. Then I stopped opening my door, because it was pretty clear to me that I was going to have to explain the plan to my mom.
“What plan?” my mom asked.
I sighed again. And when I did this I noticed that my breath smelled like breakfast sausage. “I want Sylvie’s present to be a total surprise. So today I’m going to trick her into telling me the top three things that she wants.” I smiled slyly when I said this, because I was pretty proud of my plan. Then I reached in my pocket and pulled out a piece of gum and chomped on it.
“Why don’t you just ask her what she wants?” my mother said. “Be straightforward about it.”
I let out a big peppermint-sausage breath of disapproval. “Mom, birthdays are about surprising people you care about with what they most want in the world. If you don’t surprise them, then you haven’t done it right. It’s a basic birthday rule.”
It alarmed me to think that my mom didn’t know basic birthday rules. I opened the door and got out of the car.
“If you need me I’ll be down the street,” my mom said.
But I already knew this. Because it was the fourth time my mother had told me that she would be down the street.
“I might walk over when I’m finished,” I said. Alma, the new office assistant where my mom worked, had invited her to play croquet. And though I’d only played croquet once, I remembered really enjoying swinging my mallet.
My mother frowned. “Call before you come. And walk through the field to get there. Not the road.”
I nodded. My mom started to back out of the driveway, but then she stopped, lowered her window, and hollered to me.
I ran to her door. I was hoping maybe she wanted to give me emergency money. Sometimes she did that after she dropped me off.
“Yes?” I said, holding out my hand.
“Bessica, sometimes women put too much pressure on themselves to make everything perfect. I don’t want to see you burden yourself that way.”
I kept holding my hand out, waiting for
money. But she didn’t give me any. She just kept talking.
“You don’t need to trick Sylvie into telling you what she wants for her birthday. Do the easy thing and just ask her.” My mom smiled at me in a huge way. Then she slapped my hand and cheered, “Right on!”
Things felt very weird in Sylvie’s driveway. I kept my hand lifted and my mom slapped it again. “Seize the day!” Seize the day? In all my life my mother had never said anything that lame to me before in a driveway. My mouth fell open a little bit in disgust, and my gum toppled out and landed in the grass.
“You lost your gum,” my mom said.
“I know. I’m trying to understand why you’re saying what you’re saying.”
My mom’s smile grew bigger. “I’m glad we had this talk too. It’s a relief.”
“A relief?” I said. Why did saying lame things to me in Sylvie Potaski’s driveway make my mother feel relieved?
“And I want you to know that this is how we’re going to talk to each other from now on, like adults. I’m not going to treat you like a child anymore.”
This was pretty terrible news. Why would I want my mom to talk to me like I was an adult? That was how she talked to my dad, and Grandma Lefter, and Grandma’s terrible boyfriend, Willy, and bank tellers, and all the patients getting toe surgeries at the podiatrist’s office, and a bunch of other people, like our mail carrier. Bleh.
“Mom,” I said. “That’s weird. And I’m going to follow my birthday rules and trick Sylvie into telling me what she wants, because that’s the whole point of having a birthday. Getting surprised by the perfect gift.” I looked my mom right in the eye when I said that, because my birthday was in four months, and I was hoping for a surprise party with a bunch of perfect, surprising gifts. And I did not want perfect, surprising adult gifts.
My mother sighed and looked disappointed. “Try to have a good time.”
“Okay,” I chirped. Then I turned around and ran as fast as I could toward Sylvie’s front door.
I rang the doorbell like a very polite person. And I waited for Sylvie’s mom to answer. Sylvie’s mom did scare me a little bit. Because even when she wasn’t stressed-out, we didn’t always get along. When she banned me from seeing Sylvie, it was because she’d gotten it into her head that I was a bad influence on her daughter. And in addition to enforcing that ban, she also switched Sylvie to a different school. And that had been about a month ago. So things were still a little tense.
“Bessica!” Mrs. Potaski said. She smiled when she saw me, and this made my stomach feel dance-happy and wonderful.
“I brought you something,” I said. I set my backpack on the floor and opened it. Then I carefully pulled out a sack with a blueberry tart in it. “It’s a tart.”
Mrs. Potaski stopped smiling. “Bessica, thank you for the tart. But you shouldn’t feel like you need to bring me a tart every time you come over.”
But that was exactly how I felt. Because I worried that at any moment, Sylvie’s mom might stop liking me and ban me again.
“Bessica!” Sylvie yelled. I saw her at the top of her hallway. Then she ran full speed toward me and did some excited jumping. I hoped her mom noticed all the jumping. Because it was pretty clear to me that Sylvie should switch middle schools and come to mine. Sixth grade would be a lot better if she did that.
“Let’s go to my room and plan the party!” she said.
“Okay!” I said. And then I forgot all about being a polite person and I ran through the Potaskis’ house with my shoes on, yelling, “Party time!”
Sylvie shut her bedroom door. “I’m going with a disco theme!”
I plopped onto the floor and didn’t get excited at all when she said this, because over the summer she’d told me she was going to go with a jungle theme, so all the ideas I had were jungle-based.
“What’s wrong?” Sylvie asked, plopping on the floor next to me.
“What happened to our great jungle idea?” I asked.
Sylvie shrugged.
“Maybe we should brainstorm,” I said. We had to do that in public speaking all the time. We wasted a ton of paper doing it, but I always ended up with at least one good topical idea.
“But I already designed invitations,” Sylvie told me. She turned on her computer and showed me the ecard with pink roller skates.
“Cool,” I said. Then I tapped my temple. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Why are you touching your head?” Sylvie asked.
I frowned. “I think I forgot something.”
Sylvie shrugged. “Let’s plan my disco party and maybe it will come to you.”
“Okay,” I said.
So I started thinking about Sylvie’s party, and my mind took off like a rocket. But I couldn’t make it stay focused on disco stuff. It kept brainstorming jungle ideas. “You’re going to need a ton of cool crud,” I said. “Coconuts. Palm trees. A tiger piñata. Grass skirts. Fake parrots. An inflatable volcano.”
“That’s not disco,” Sylvie said. “That’s jungle.”
“Yeah,” I said. And we both just looked at each other. “Maybe you could have a double theme?”
“Maybe,” she said.
It was thrilling to hear her be so positive.
“If we get our butts in gear, I bet we have time to make at least four piñatas!” Last year, when we read A Wrinkle in Time, Sylvie and I had made an IT piñata for extra credit. It had turned out pretty cool. Except for the caved-in brain area.
“Whoa,” Sylvie said. “Four piñatas? That’s extravagant.”
My eyes got very big when she said this. “Exactly. You will have the most extravagant disco/jungle party ever!”
Sylvie looked doubtful. But I kept making the list. “We’ll also need torches and stuffed monkeys. And maybe some safari hats.”
“I’ll ask my mom to buy butcher paper and we can draw a lot of this stuff,” Sylvie said.
I folded my arms across my chest in a disapproving way. I didn’t know how she planned to draw an inflatable volcano or a safari hat.
“I’m not a millionaire,” Sylvie said.
And when she said that I felt bad for both of us. Because if Sylvie had been a millionaire, we’d have been able to plan a much better disco/jungle party.
“Let’s focus on my guest list,” Sylvie said.
“Okay.”
We scooted closer together. I really liked hanging out with Sylvie. Lately, Sylvie liked hanging out with her new friend Malory and Malory’s ferret. And while I didn’t hate Malory, I also didn’t enjoy spending time with her or the ferret. Sylvie was my best friend. We didn’t need anybody else in the picture.
“What about Angel Karlinsky?” Sylvie asked.
I had never met this person. Sylvie went to South Teton Middle School and had a ton of friends, and I went to North Teton Middle School and had basically zero friends; we ran in different crowds now.
“How many people do you get to invite, again?” I asked.
Sylvie sighed like she was sick of answering that question. “Fourteen.”
“That’s right,” I said. I kept forgetting that number because it didn’t make any sense to me. Ten made sense because that was a common unit of people measurement. And twelve made sense because that was a common unit of donut measurement. But fourteen? I’d never heard of that being a unit of measurement for anything.
Then I got a great idea and I squealed, “I know exactly who you should invite to your party!”
“Really?” Sylvie asked. She sounded very skeptical. Maybe because we didn’t know the same people.
I tapped the invitation on the screen. “Invite the richest kids at your school, because they’ll give you the best presents.”
Sylvie frowned. “That’s a terrible idea, Bessica.”
I frowned back at her. It didn’t feel pleasant to have my idea judged so harshly like that by my best friend.
“I want to invite somebody from each of my classes. That’s six. And you and Malory. That’s eight. And then there are four gi
rls I really like in my dance class—Dinesh, Winnie, Iris, and Kirby.”
“You know a person named Dinesh?” I asked. Because that seemed like a weird name for a girl or a boy.
Sylvie nodded. “So that’s twelve. And then I was thinking I’d let you invite somebody.”
“Really?” I asked. That was so sweet of Sylvie. I considered the possibilities. Then I felt panicked and my breathing got breathy, because I didn’t know if I knew anybody at my school well enough to invite them to Sylvie’s party. I’d started middle school with a brand-new haircut and no friends. I’d been eating lunch with Annabelle Deeter and her friends for a while now, but I hadn’t seen any of them in their bare feet. And I hadn’t been invited to their houses. Also, I’d never seen their baby albums. So we weren’t that close yet. I watched Sylvie type Kirby’s email address.
“I can’t decide who to invite,” I said. “Can I tell you later?”
Sylvie didn’t look thrilled.
“Please?” I asked. Sylvie had never turned me down before when I used that word. The trick was to say it in a way that sounded very sincere.
“I don’t want to put you in a tough position. Is one invitation not enough?” Sylvie asked.
“Oh, it’s definitely enough.” One invitation was plenty. I just needed to make the best choice possible.
“You could always ask Alice Potgeiser,” Sylvie said. “That would be a good way to get to know the other half mascot.”
My mind zoomed so fast it almost knocked me down. I finally remembered what I had forgotten.
“What’s wrong?” Sylvie asked. “You looked really freaked out.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Do you need some water?” Sylvie asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not supposed to be here,” I said. The words tumbled out of me.
“Why not?” Sylvie asked. She stared at me with a bunch of concern on her face.
“I’m supposed to be at school!” I said.
Sylvie blinked at me. Sylvie was always blinking. “It’s teacher in-service day. Why?”
Bessica 2 - Bessica Lefter Bites Back Page 1
