Mission (Un)Popular

by Anna Humphrey

“Probably not,” she answered. “He’ll be traveling nonstop all year. But then, we’re living here, so it’s not like we’d see him anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “He probably wouldn’t ever come to Darling. But your dad could still see him, right? Em’s dad still lives in New York,” I explained to Maggie and Joyce.

  “Oh yeah? What does he do?” Maggie asked offhandedly.

  “He’s…a stockbroker,” Em said, shooting me a warning look.

  “Does he ever come visit you here?” I asked. “I mean, he must miss you and your mom.”

  I couldn’t help noticing how she averted her eyes. “Work’s been crazy, so he hasn’t had time to yet. But at Christmas he might.”

  Maggie grabbed a lock of Joyce’s blond hair and started braiding it, obviously bored by the stockbroker talk. “Hey, did you see how Des.ti.nee had her hair in the video for ‘Bring It’? In, like, a thousand little braids? Joyce, your hair would look so good like that.”

  “Totally,” I agreed. Then I looked to Em again. “Have you ever met her, Em?”

  “Des.ti.nee? She actually gave me this shirt,” Em answered. It was tight black lace with ruffled sleeves…a little see-through at the front, but she had a camisole underneath.

  “Oh my God!” Maggie said, dropping Joyce’s braid and grabbing the front of Em’s shirt. “I thought this looked familiar. Didn’t she wear this at the VMAs?” I was surprised. I’d never seen Des.ti.nee wear a shirt at all.

  “Yeah,” Em said.

  They both screamed. “I can’t believe she gave it to you. This must be worth like, millions. This is so amazing!” Maggie shrieked.

  It was amazing. Kind of unbelievable, really.

  * * *

  And the clues, odd as they were, kept piling up. When I got to gym class that afternoon, Mrs. Rivera was sitting in her swivel chair, directing, while a few girls struggled to put up the volleyball nets. It was a good thing she was busy, too, because the second I walked into her office, I swore out loud, and I didn’t say “fish sticks” either. The boxes of invoices had multiplied overnight. Not only were they on every surface, but now there was a huge pile stacked across the middle of the room. On the upside, though, the wall of boxes divided the office so it was almost like having my own mini-cubicle.

  I opened a box marked 2000–2001, and a few minutes later I heard the sounds of the game starting up in the gym and Mrs. Rivera crunching her first cookie of the period.

  Except for one paper cut and Mrs. Rivera forgetting I was there and turning up the radio to sing along to “Wind Beneath My Wings,” most of the period passed uneventfully. But with ten minutes to go, I heard a knock on the office door.

  “Oh, hello,” Mrs. Rivera said. “What brings you to my gym?”

  “Vanessa, hi.” It was a voice I didn’t recognize. “I was hoping to speak to Emily Warner for just a second. She’s required to report to my office at lunch hour for counseling. It’s twice now she hasn’t shown. Yesterday, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but today…”

  “Right, Emily Warner.” Mrs. Rivera said. “The dog girl. You know, I was expecting the worst, but she really hasn’t given me any problems.”

  “Well, that much is good to hear. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. Take her for as long as you need.”

  As soon as the guidance counselor left the room, I cleared my throat. Loudly. There was a second of silence while Mrs. Rivera remembered I’d been there the whole time. “Hello, Margot,” she said, from the other side of the boxes, trying to sound casual. “How’s the leg today?”

  “Better, thanks,” I said, picking up another stack of invoices. I heard her open the oatmeal-cookie drawer again.

  The dog girl? I considered this weird bit of information while filing the last of the 2000–2001 invoices. I remembered what Em had told me that day in the hallway after I’d confessed about the glazed ham—that she ate dog food once to see how it tasted. Was that what the teachers were talking about? It was definitely odd, but then, when I was little I used to roll up those tubes of cherry ChapStick and bite the tops off (they smelled so good!), and nobody was making me go to counseling.

  After French that day, Maggie, Joyce, Em, and I all walked out to the yard together like it was becoming a regular thing. The wind was strong, and the leaves were really starting to fall now. I shivered a little in Em’s thin green jacket as we approached Ken and George, who were waiting for us by the ledge, trying to throw Swedish Berries into each other’s mouths and mostly missing.

  “Button,” Ken called. “Catch!” He threw a berry at me, and it bounced off my shoulder. I was just about to tell him to grow up when I heard someone saying my name. “Oh, man,” Ken said. “It’s my competition.”

  I turned to see Amir standing about ten feet away, over toward the basketball courts. Mike was behind him, but Andrew was nowhere in sight. “Margot,” he called again.

  “What does he want?” Em said.

  “Just gimme a sec,” I said to The Group. I walked slowly toward Amir, who was standing with his feet firmly planted, both hands deep in the pockets of his khaki pants.

  “Don’t leave me, Margot!” Ken called out behind me, but I just ignored him.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said as I came to a stop and balanced on my crutches. I nodded to Mike.

  “What’s up?” Amir repeated angrily. “You mess with our man Andrew, you mess with us.”

  “Excuse me?” I answered.

  “You destroyed him. You know that? He couldn’t sink a single shot at practice today.”

  I knew Andrew was upset that I’d lied to him about the party, but saying I’d destroyed him seemed to be taking things a little far.

  “You and George Wainscott. In the bathroom, at Emily Warner’s party. Okay?” Amir added, reading my confusion. “We know. Andrew knows, and we know.”

  “What?”

  “We know that you were”—Amir looked uncomfortable and also disgusted—“with him. Whatever. All the girls on the volleyball team were talking about it in the gym yesterday morning.”

  Yesterday morning? So when Andrew confronted me in the hallway about not being invited to the party, he was really upset about this? My entire face flushed.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I tried to explain. “Brayden walked in on us, and she must have totally misunderstood. George was just in the hot tub and we talked about mittens.” It sounded so stupid.

  “Please, Margot. Don’t insult our intelligence, okay? You go to this party, you don’t invite us, and suddenly you’re hanging out with them—with him”—he motioned toward George—“every day.” He bit his lip in frustration. “You knew Andrew liked you. And then you went in a bathroom with George Wainscott. Do you think he even knew your last name a few weeks ago? Do you think he would have spent an entire morning taking down posters for you or sewing you armpit cushions?”

  “Wait a second—”

  “If you didn’t like Andrew back, you could have just told him that instead of giving him hope. He would have still wanted to be your friend. He thinks the sun rises and sets on you, but honestly, Margot, sometimes I don’t get why.”

  Amir turned and started across the yard. Mike went to follow, but stopped, blowing his long bangs up off his forehead. For a second I thought he was just going to stare at me disapprovingly, or shake his head, but then he actually spoke.

  “You screwed up. Big-time,” he said, summing it up like no other words could. Then he walked away too.

  30

  I Learn About Bad Egg Salad

  MOST MISUNDERSTANDINGS are easy to fix. Like in first grade, when Grandpa Button left his white pipe near my toys and I poured bubble stuff into it, and then he inhaled a mouthful of dish soap.

  (I just explained that I couldn’t find my bubble pipe so I borrowed his. And he admitted that he shouldn’t have left his real pipe near my toy box. And then he bought me a new bubble pipe.) Or last week, when Bryan asked me to take out the garbage, and I said “yeah-
yeah,” because I was watching TV. And then I didn’t do it. (I just explained that I can’t focus on what he’s saying when Decorating by Design is on. And he said next time he’d ask me when I wasn’t watching TV.)

  But other misunderstandings are not so easy to resolve…especially when the person who misunderstood you is refusing to even talk to you, like Erika-with-a-K, and now Andrew, Mike, and Amir. When I passed them in the yard the next morning, they barely even looked my way. And Amir spent the whole day avoiding me, even taking the long way around in math to get to the pencil sharpener. Still, even though I felt awful, I didn’t have all that much time to obsess about it. Because, aside from being an occasion when all of my old friends were officially furious with me, the day also marked Sarah J.’s return to school after her suspension—and it wasn’t pretty.

  We were all trying to act like we didn’t care, but secretly I was a disaster. Maggie and Joyce seemed anxious too. I could tell from the way they were talking even faster than usual, and constantly glancing at the door. Em didn’t seem worried, though—even when Sarah walked back into English class wearing a new suede jacket and Lucky jeans. Through some miracle of makeup, you couldn’t even see the gap in her eyebrow, and her skin had stopped peeling. In fact, it looked annoyingly peachy and perfect.

  She sank down into her usual seat, tossing her hair in her usual way. Bethany and Charlie were whispering about her at the back of the room, but she silenced them with a glare. Still, nobody went over to talk to her. And even Mr. Learner seemed to know that it was best to leave her alone, skipping over her entirely when he was calling out people to read sections of Lord of the Flies.

  Maggie and Joyce hung out with us at lunch hour, and we all thought that would be when Sarah would snap, but instead she just waved to us carelessly as she left the yard. “I’m going to meet Matt behind the mini-mart,” she said, as if we’d asked.

  Then after gym, Em told me that Sarah had even changed in a different corner of the locker room, not looking once in their direction.

  But she couldn’t avoid us forever. When we got to French class, Mr. Patachou had the TV set up. “Aujourd’hui, nous commençons notre unité au sujet des annonces publicitaires.” A bunch of us looked confused. “Television commercials,” he explained. Oh. We understood now. Then he explained that we were going to stop the TV after each commercial and talk about the technique the advertiser was using to sell products.

  The first commercial was for deodorant. It showed two girls, both flirting with a guy at a party. They were wearing low-cut black dresses, and when a waiter came by with a tray of food, they both reached for it. The camera zoomed in on one girl’s armpits, and a red circle appeared around the white stain on her dress so we’d be sure not to miss it. Then, in the next scene, you saw the guy leaving the party with the girl who didn’t have marks on her dress. Mr. Patachou stopped the tape.

  Nobody raised their hand, so I figured I’d try. “Ils utilizent la technique de…ummm…” I stalled. “You know,” I said, giving up on French, “they want girls to be scared they’ll never get a date if they use the wrong deodorant.”

  “C’est ça,” Mr. Patachou said, before telling me to say it in French next time.

  Next we watched a car commercial that was apparently trying to use the technique of humor to sell hatchbacks, only none of us got the jokes. Then another one for diapers that showed all kinds of pictures of newborn babies, which made a lot of the girls go “Awww.” Clearly they’d never had to deal with newborn triplets. If they had, they’d be too busy thinking about what would be in those diapers to find it adorable.

  After we’d watched a few more, Mr. Patachou told us to get into groups of five. We were supposed to invent a product and make our own French TV commercial to sell it. Each group was going to take one of the school’s video cameras home to film it.

  Em, Maggie, Joyce, and I all looked at each other. I almost felt bad for Sarah. She was staring down at her notebook so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. I knew the feeling. She’d end up having to tell Mr. Patachou she didn’t have a group. And he’d add her to a group of friends who didn’t really want her there.

  “Sarah,” Em shouted. “We need a fifth.” Maggie, Joyce, and I all gave her confused looks, but she just mouthed, “Don’t worry.”

  Sarah took her time shutting her notebook and gathering her stuff, like it was no big deal, but she must have been relieved. The only other group that didn’t have five yet was Amir, Erik Frallen, Cameron Ruling, and Stuart Smythe. And they’d probably end up inventing some kind of space travel helmet that would have totally ruined Sarah’s hair.

  “So, New York.” Sarah sat down. “Why don’t you just do this project for us, since you know so many celebrities and you’re from New York and you probably know everything about directing movies.”

  “Okay,” Em said pointedly. “As director, my first decision is that Sarah takes the notes. Everyone else good with that?” We all nodded. Sarah glared at us, but she knew she was outnumbered. She picked up her pen.

  “We could do some kind of cosmetic,” Maggie suggested.

  “Yeah!” Sarah agreed. “Like, what about a face cream that burns off your eyebrows? Oh wait”—she smirked at me—“somebody already invented that. Oh, I’ve got one,” she went on. “What about a shampoo with bleach so you don’t have ugly roots all the time?” She looked at Em. “Or mustache bleach? Margot, no offense, but you could use some of that.”

  “Screw you, Sarah,” I said. I’d just bleached a few days before. Was it honestly that bad already? Still, I wasn’t about to let her know that she was getting to me by going to the bathroom to check, so I pulled myself together. “Okay, seriously,” I went on. “I like the idea of using the technique of social fear, like that deodorant ad. What about a product for people with really big, crooked noses?”

  “Ici on parle français,” Mr. Patachou announced to the room in general.

  “I mean, les personnes avec les nez très grands et crooked.”

  “What about concealer that makes your nose look smaller?”

  “Or a nose-job center?”

  “Or…a cone that you wear on your nose so people won’t notice how big it is!”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Sarah finally spoke up. “Who would wear a cone on their nose?”

  “Nobody,” Em said. “That’s why it’s so funny.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes.

  “We could call it Les Clothes de Nose,” I suggested.

  “Perfect!” Em said. It wasn’t exactly French, but it sounded good. And anyway, practically half of French is English anyway, like le weekend and les hot dogs.

  As we worked, I kept looking behind me, pretending to read the giant calendar on the bulletin board, but really trying to see what George was doing and if he was watching Em. He was in a group with Ken, who was busy making his trademark farting noises with his armpits. You could tell they were going to end up with a really mature commercial.

  “Can you type that up in good copy for tomorrow?” Em asked Sarah, when the bell rang. Sarah rolled her eyes again.

  “Didn’t your grandma ever tell you your face could get stuck like that?”

  “Didn’t your grandma ever tell you not to tell huge lies about everything?” Sarah mumbled at Em, almost too quietly for anyone to hear.

  Em slapped her binder shut, making everyone jump. “I was asking you nicely. Type it up in good copy.” Her voice had a definite “don’t mess with me” tone. She picked up her bag and started for the door. Maggie, Joyce, and I followed.

  “Okay, so you hook the hose up to your butt, right, and then it connects to the gas tank, but how do you power yourself? I mean, where does all that gas come from?” Ken was talking to George as they walked up to our lockers after class.

  “Burritos,” George answered.

  “Of course.” Ken slapped himself on the forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? Dude, you’re a genius.” George fl
ipped his flippy hair, looking proud of himself.

  “So we put burrito holders here and here.” Ken had opened his binder and was pointing to a drawing with his pencil. “And here.”

  “Do we even want to know?” Em turned to us. We all shook our heads.

  “It’s a fuel-efficient, fart-powered family sedan,” Ken explained. “L’Auto Fart-O. Revolutionizing the automotive world and saving the environment, one fart at a time.”

  “You’re so immature,” I said to Ken.

  “And you’re so beautiful,” he said back, obviously just to bug me and shock me into silence. Maggie and Joyce said “Awww,” at the same time, then started laughing. I turned to get something out of my locker so Ken wouldn’t see that I was blushing.

  “You guys want to hang out for a while?” Em asked.

  “Sure, why not?” Sarah J. stuck her giant crooked nose into the conversation.

  “I don’t think anyone invited you,” Maggie said softly.

  Sarah just looked straight at Em, though, like she knew who was really in charge.

  “We’re just going to sit on the ledge,” Em said. “It’s a free country.” Sarah gave Maggie a smug look. “Just don’t go assuming it means we’ve forgiven you or anything,” Em added, which left Sarah looking less self-satisfied. Still, she followed us as we walked to the door, which just goes to show how desperate she must have been to have a group of people to be seen with.

  Bryan was already waiting outside, so I waved good-bye to everyone quickly.

  “See you tomorrow, Margot,” Em called, as The Group settled themselves on the ledge.

  Ken blew me a kiss, which I pretended to ignore.

  “Did you have an enjoyable day?” Bryan asked as he put my crutches in the backseat. He was already dressed for his real estate class in a denim button-up shirt and black pants, along with his usual scuffed loafers.

  “I don’t know.” I flipped the sun visor down and opened the flap on the tiny mirror to check how bad my mustache really was.

  “You don’t know?”