Project (Un)Popular Book #1

by Kristen Tracy

  I pulled away from her. “Huh?”

  And then she didn’t even bother whispering as all the students filed past us to get to the assembly.

  “I want you to take our picture,” Anya said. “It’s Sabrina’s birthday tomorrow. I told her we’d do it.”

  And that seemed totally wrong. Because you couldn’t go around promising people that we’d put them in the yearbook just because their birthdays were tomorrow.

  “Come on,” Venice said. “You need to get down there.” She tugged on my arm and pulled me out the door.

  “What did she say?” Venice asked as we walked down the hall. “You look really angry.”

  I looked behind me to see if Anya was there. And she totally was. Anya, Sabrina, and Sailor were clacking behind us in their matching boots. I felt full of rage.

  “Tell me,” Venice insisted.

  But then I got this amazing idea. It was very brilliant and it took away my rage and filled me with hope. “I need you to help me locate certain people during the assembly,” I said in a soft voice.

  “Like who?” Venice asked in an equally soft voice.

  “The nerds,” I said, with an evil grin. “We’re going to start fixing the yearbook right now.”

  As soon as we walked into the auditorium, there was total chaos and a million people talking all at once. From the corner of my eye, I watched Anya, Sabrina, and Sailor peel away from the class and sit in the front row.

  “You should go up and introduce yourself to Mr. Mortimer before he takes the snake out of that rubber tub,” Venice said, pointing to a giant blue plastic bin on a table next to the microphone stand.

  “Wow,” I said. “How big is that python?”

  “Nine feet,” Mr. Mortimer said as he walked toward me with his hand extended. He was a skinny man with short brown hair and giant glasses, and for some reason it was easy for me to picture him holding a huge snake.

  “Did Ms. Kenny explain that you shouldn’t rush up on the snake or approach its head unless I have both my hands around her jaws?” he asked, powerfully pumping my hand a few times.

  “She did,” I said.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “This looks like a fun crowd.”

  I looked around at the mayhem in the gym. I didn’t know if I saw “fun.” Everybody around me looked like they’d just eaten a ton of sugar and were going nuts.

  “Do you need us to help you do anything?” Venice asked in a chipper voice.

  To my surprise Mr. Mortimer nodded. “Toward the end I like to let a few people hold the snake. When the time comes, can you help me pick out some volunteers?”

  “Totally,” Venice said.

  “Then let’s get started,” Mr. Mortimer said.

  I stood off to the side, on the foul line, while Principal Hunt introduced the guest speaker. She went on and on about his snake credentials. Apparently, in addition to speaking at schools, Mr. Mortimer had a job extracting venom from deadly snakes. And he’d been bitten by a cobra and a green mamba. And sometimes when people got bitten by snakes and the hospitals couldn’t get any antivenom, Mr. Mortimer would donate his blood to help save them. I was pretty sure he was the most famous person to ever enter our gymnasium. And I thought it was surprising that our school could afford him.

  When he finally reached the microphone, the students erupted in applause. I took a few pictures of people clapping like mad and cheering. I found Drea Quan freaking out. And Fletcher Zamora. Leo also had an amazed look on his face, but I refused to take his photo because I really couldn’t stand him. I took a ton of shots of Mr. Mortimer. And a few of Ms. Kenny. When Anya started shooting me hate daggers, I decided to click a few shots of her and Sabrina and Sailor. Their jeans and lavender tops practically matched. And their brown boots looked nearly identical. It looked like they were in some weird eighth-grade-girl gang that dressed alike.

  I paused from taking photos, because what I really wanted was a picture of the snake. Mr. Mortimer called it a carpet python. He said this type of snake was semiarbo-real, which meant it liked to climb trees. In the wild it ate lizards, bats, birds, and mammals. But in captivity this one ate one medium-sized rat every seven to ten days. I took a shot of Rocky DeBoom when he said that, because he looked shocked and grossed out. That was when Venice started whispering the names of other students I should take photos of.

  Winnie Dusenberry looked extra pasty and frightened. If I were that naturally pale, I probably wouldn’t wear so much black. Click.

  Chet Baez had his eyes covered. That made sense. He liked birds. And didn’t snakes eat those? Click.

  Sasha York needed to learn how to smile. Because her mouth was open so wide I could see her bottom retainer and that was not very attractive. Click.

  Hayes Ellsworth looked hilarious. I liked how much expression was in his face. Even though it looked freaked out and red. Click.

  I had taken so many great nerd photos. I could feel myself smiling. I bet at least six of them would make it into the yearbook. Six nerds! At this rate the yearbook would be super inclusive of everybody in no time.

  “And now I’d like some help from the audience with holding the snake,” Mr. Mortimer said. “She’s not heavy, but she is long.”

  Venice raced out into the crowd and grabbed three perfect nerds: Winnie Dusenberry, Chet Baez, and Derby Esposito. It was like a dream come true. But then I saw something awful. Anya, Sabrina, and Sailor had walked up as volunteers. How had that happened? They didn’t even wait to get picked. And what really drove me nuts was that Mr. Mortimer invited them to be part of the snake-holding line. As I watched them arranging themselves through my lens, I realized I wasn’t going to get an amazing picture of everybody. The shot was too big. It made sense to focus on the snake’s head. And that was when it hit me. We needed to position the nerds as close to the python’s head as possible. If anyone were to fall into the fuzzy background, let it be Anya, Sailor, and Sabrina at the tail.

  “The head!” I shouted to Venice, who was helping arrange the volunteers.

  But she shook her head and looked freaked out. She must’ve thought I wanted her to make one of the volunteers hold the snake’s head. But I wasn’t insane. I didn’t want that.

  “Get Derby closer to the head!” I yelled.

  Derby heard that and looked at me in a very horrified way. I guessed that made sense. But he needed to change that facial expression because it did not read well in my lens.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Then I saw things start falling apart. Anya realized what I was doing. She refused to hold the snake’s tail and began passing people, going under people’s arms and the snake’s own body to get closer to Mr. Mortimer and the python’s head.

  Venice had done such an awesome job arranging the nerds that Derby was holding the snake right behind her brightly colored black-and-yellow head. Even though Mr. Mortimer held the snake’s mouth closed, she kept flicking her dark and wet-looking tongue. It sort of looked like she was flicking Derby’s wrist. He kept trying to turn away from the snake, and he had this weird facial expression, like he was in pain. Was he having a panic attack? My aunt Patrice had had one of those at a picnic once when a bunch of bees landed on our sandwiches. I hadn’t been sure what to do then. And I wasn’t sure what to do now. So I kept taking pictures.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Derby’s skin looked pale and pasty. He started to lean against Mr. Mortimer.

  Click. Click. Click.

  I started to worry that he was going to get sick.

  Click. Click. Click.

  I think other people started to worry about that too, because Principal Hunt grabbed him by the elbow and removed him from the line. It was awful. My hope of taking the perfect snake photo with Derby had been ruined. And what was I left with? Anya O’Shea standing right next to Mr. Mortimer, holding the snake right below her amazingly colored yellow-and-black head. Sailor stood beside Anya, followed by Sabrina. And then came my great group of nerdier kids.

&nbs
p; Click. Click. Click.

  Tragically, they looked nerdy. Anya, Sabrina, and Sailor boldly stood right next to the snake, no fear in their faces, and they also looked cute. From what I saw in my lens, this project had been a complete failure. Winnie, Derby, and Hayes had their faces so squished up in fear that it was hard to recognize who they were. Also, Derby looked like he was on the verge of puking.

  For a final flourish, Mr. Mortimer invited Principal Hunt to kiss the snake’s head. The gymnasium erupted in applause. I wasn’t sure she was going to do it. I mean, even with her jaws being held shut, the python still had a flicking tongue and looked like a totally deadly snake.

  The kiss happened so fast that I missed it. I couldn’t believe it.

  Click. Click. Click.

  I barely captured an unflattering blur of Ms. Hunt’s curly brown hair approaching the python. My angle was wrong. It was completely out of focus. Nothing looked right.

  The next thing I knew the snake was being placed back into her plastic case and everybody was dispersing. They flooded down the bleachers in a giant mob. The noise bounced off the floor and walls. I felt an arm on my shoulder and I expected to turn and see Venice. Instead, I came nose to nose with Anya.

  “Send me the photos you took,” Anya said. “I’m so going to use one of those for my Christmas card this year.”

  And then she was off. With her friends. Practically galloping across the polished wood floor in victory. Across the gym I could see Derby shaking as he drank from a water bottle that had been handed to him by Ms. Donna, the school nurse.

  Everything was over. I felt like such a failure. Even with Venice’s amazing help, the kinds of changes we needed to make were beginning to feel totally impossible.

  More Unwanted Advice

  The hours that followed the python assembly felt brutal and unending. After sixth period, I felt totally dazed as I dragged myself down the hallway to my locker and out the front door. I didn’t see Venice anywhere. People began to blur as I made my way down the front walkway and across the street.

  Halfway home I looked down at myself and realized I had four stains on my Hamburg Hoodie. I didn’t even remember getting one stain, let alone four. Being locked in a battle with Anya O’Shea was turning me into a stressed-out zombie of a person. I scratched at the first stain. Mustard. I must have spilled some on myself during lunch. Both Venice and I had eaten corn dogs. The second stain was blue and it flaked off easily. Ms. Stott had asked me to hold a breakaway sphere during her lecture on the layers of the Earth. Maybe some of the Earth’s crust had gotten stuck to me. The third stain looked like dirt. And I guess that happens. But the fourth stain was purplish and oily. I had no idea where it had come from.

  I probably would have stood on the sidewalk scratching at my stains all day if I hadn’t heard the sound of “Axel F” by Crazy Frog blasting out of my backpack. I unzipped my pack as fast as I could and pulled out my phone.

  But for some reason Venice wasn’t speaking. “Are you butt-dialing me? Should I hang up? Hello? Are you there?” I asked.

  When she finally started speaking, her voice was barely a whisper. “I’m still on the bus. I sat too close to the back. And I learned something awful.”

  I wasn’t too surprised to hear this. Total perverts with farting issues and sometimes rubber-band weapons sat at the back of the bus.

  “Maybe you should move forward,” I suggested.

  “No. It’s good information. It’s something we need to talk about right away,” Venice said.

  In the background, I heard the bus door gasping open.

  “Are you about to gross me out?” I asked. She sounded so freaked out about what she was going to tell me that it was freaking me out. I mean, I’d already had a pretty terrible day.

  “Leo rides my bus,” she said in a voice barely audible. “He told me something terrible.”

  “Who’s Theo?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why Venice was suddenly riding the back of the bus and talking to strange people who wanted to tell her terrible things. I would never do that. It was like after I said goodbye to her in Idaho History, my friend had become a totally new person with a death wish.

  “Leo Banks. Our advertising manager in Yearbook. Remember?”

  Of course I remembered Leo. How could I ever forget that creep?

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked. Whatever he told her had to be pretty alarming for her to sound this upset.

  “Leo’s awesome. Don’t hate on him. This is about Anya. I know why she picked us for the yearbook staff.”

  That wasn’t very alarming news. “So do I. She loved your black-and-whites. And my animal shots are good.” It was sort of like Venice had forgotten everything that had happened during our sit-down critique.

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” Venice said. “Okay. I’m getting off the bus now. Call me later, Leo!”

  “Wait. Why do you want Leo to call you?” I asked, making a gagging sound. Did she like him? I didn’t think he was cute. And even if he was, no guy was so cute that you should start risking your life by riding at the back of the bus and having terrible conversations with him.

  “You’re not listening to me, Perry! I’m saying that Yearbook is way more rigged than we realized. We’re the only sixth graders in the class for a reason. And Ms. Kenny is totally hung up on the budget and she lets Anya run the creative side.”

  “We’re fixing this with our great nerd photos,” I said, hoping that at least some of them had turned out.

  “That’s not enough,” Venice said. “We’re going to have to do way more.”

  And that was the moment when I started having a ton of doubts. About everything. I mean, was Leo even telling the truth? And did I really want to spend the rest of the school year battling a superpopular eighth grader who had a very powerful will? What if I simply turned in a few nerd photos and followed Piper’s advice? I could build a better yearbook next year. I mean, I had so much on my plate anyway.

  PE with Ms. Pitman felt brutal because I had her second period, when her legs were still fresh. And English with Ms. Torres required all of my brain because she was way too enthusiastic about poetry written during the Great Depression. And Science with Ms. Stott often involved chemicals and dead stuff. I mean, having to learn and smell terrible odors at the same time wasn’t a picnic. And Idaho History with Mr. Falconer was a memory marathon. Because I didn’t find the state of Idaho interesting enough to remember stuff about it naturally. So I drilled everything into my short-term memory with flashcards and hoped for the best. Last period I had Math in Focus with Mr. Pickering. Which required real work. I just didn’t know. I wasn’t sure how much of my life I should devote to Yearbook.

  “Are you listening to what I’m saying?” Venice asked.

  “If we let Anya build the yearbook the way she wants it, we’ll still end up doing something and we’ll probably get an A.”

  “Shut up!” Venice said.

  Wow. “Did you just tell me to shut up?” I asked. Venice never told me to do that. She loved hearing my input and ideas.

  “I did. An easy A isn’t why we applied to Yearbook. Remember? All the photos you took? You stalked Mitten Man for days to capture him perfectly curled up in that sink.”

  I stopped walking. Why was Venice being so mean? “I did not stalk Mitten Man! Take it back!”

  “You followed him around for—seriously—half a week,” Venice argued. “I’m not judging you. I’m just reminding you that your pictures matter.”

  I wasn’t sure why this conversation was turning me so angry and paranoid. To calm myself down I started walking along an invisible balance beam on the sidewalk.

  “Leo said that Anya said she wanted to pick sixth graders so she could boss us around,” Venice said.

  Based on what I’d seen today, that did sound an awful lot like Anya. But it bugged me for some reason that Leo was the source of all this new news.

  “And Leo said that Anya said she’s been planning her perfect
yearbook since last year. And that she’s already got it laid out. She actually has a dummy yearbook already made, and she’s filled in everything with pics of her friends. And that’s what our yearbook is going to be,” Venice said.

  That did sound pretty terrible. “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes. And Leo also said that she’s obsessed with the boys’ volleyball team and hates the theater club,” Venice added.

  “Hmmm,” I said, trying to process everything Venice was telling me. I was really surprised when I looked up and saw that I was standing in front of my neighbors’. Never in my life had I balance beam-walked that far.

  “We need to do way more than take pictures of a few nerds!” Venice said.

  “Um, we don’t really have a ton of options,” I said.

  Clearly, Anya had been positioning herself for this opportunity her entire middle school career.

  “We need a new plan!” Venice said.

  Venice was acting like such a mess. She needed to pull herself together and remember what was most important here. Our friendship.

  “Perry, are you paying attention? We have new information.”

  Venice sounded so panicked that it started to panic me. She had never gotten this upset in elementary school unless we were both freaking out about something together. Leo was basically a stranger. Why should he have this kind of power? Why was she trusting him 100 percent? I didn’t like the way this felt. “How do we know Leo is telling you the truth?”

  That was when Venice’s voice totally changed and she started yelling, which was rare for Venice because she was basically the most supersweet person ever. “Why would Leo lie about any of this? Of course he’s telling me the truth!”

  When I felt this anxious, I had to keep moving. So as I thought about Venice’s pro-Leo argument, I gently kicked at my neighbors’ mailbox post and decorative brown mulch. It really bothered me that Venice was yelling. I was her best friend. I just thought she should have been handling this differently. It made me really suspicious of Leo. “Maybe he doesn’t like Anya and he’s trying to get us to gang up on her.” Kick. Kick. Kick.