Project (Un)Popular Book #1

by Kristen Tracy

  I watched his hands to see if he’d make any lame gestures to sell his suggestion. He didn’t.

  “Isn’t botball robotics planning to build a robot that can pick up a Nerf football and do a backflip?” Venice added. “I heard that.”

  Weird. Where was Venice getting her botball information? I hadn’t heard that. I didn’t even know our school had that club.

  “Yeah,” Anya said, trying to sound polite. “We’ve got clubs covered.”

  “But these are unofficial clubs,” Leo pressed. “And unofficial clubs weren’t covered at all last year.”

  “Crafts for a Cause is a great suggestion,” Venice added. Because apparently her favorite activity in the world was agreeing with Leo.

  “Or maybe you could feature fall harvest,” Leo said, clearly ignoring that his ideas were terrible and unwelcome.

  “How would we feature fall harvest?” Anya said, finally sounding as annoyed as I felt. “It’s a nonschool activity that involves heavy machinery.”

  “Let’s not shoot down any ideas. This is a democracy,” Venice reminded us.

  This was really too much. Watching my friend defend Leo’s barfy ideas was driving me nuts. I needed to remember all this to report back to Piper.

  “You could visit farms where kids are helping out with harvest. Hayes Ellsworth helps his grandpa put up the biggest grain field in the county. And Sasha York helps with her family’s potato harvest. Their sorting facilities are huge. I think one of the biggest in the state,” Leo said.

  Anya’s mouth had fallen open. She couldn’t believe Leo’s nerve or terrible ideas, and neither could I.

  But before Anya could say anything, Leo’s number-one fan leaped to agree with him. “I bet those pictures would be stunning.”

  “Sorry to be negative, but Future Farmers of America gets a quarter page already. Last year they squandered it on a prize pig and a group photo in front of a spud cellar. They’re not getting their own section. They’re a club and they’re going to be treated like a club. That’s it.”

  “But if you consider the regional relevance—” Leo said, before Anya cut him off.

  “Farm photography has zero to do with middle school. You should stick to coming up with good ideas on the business side,” Anya said. “That’s where you belong.”

  A chorus of “oohs” floated through the room.

  Ms. Kenny swung open the door. “I could hear you guys halfway down the hall,” she said. “It’s nice to know you all care about the additional section so much, but let’s try to respect everybody and their ideas. This really is a democracy. We vote in ten minutes.”

  And I didn’t think it was too rude to tell Leo any of that, but he certainly looked stung by Anya’s words as he walked off.

  “Wow,” Anya said as she scribbled on her legal pad. “Some people cannot take a hint.”

  “Oh, he took it,” I added, sounding a little snarky.

  Anya smiled at my comment and drew an exclamation point next to her idea about adding a section for What’s Hot. Then I watched as Leo grabbed the hall pass and left the room. I wondered if he was going to go to the boys’ bathroom and cry. I wondered if he was crushed that his rotten student-harvest idea got rejected. I mean, his unofficial club suggestion made sense, but I really didn’t feel I could support it, seeing as how I couldn’t stand Leo.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Venice said, popping up.

  “The hall pass is taken,” I said. Because it was. Plus, I couldn’t stand the idea of Venice running off to go comfort Leo.

  “Can’t I just use a staff lanyard?” Venice asked.

  “Absolutely,” Ms. Kenny said. “If nature’s calling.”

  I watched as a flustered Venice raced after Leo. It was pretty sickening. I mean, I could understand Venice racing after me. But as far as I was concerned, Leo was still basically a stranger.

  “That was intense,” Anya said.

  I nodded. It suddenly felt awkward to be at the table alone with Anya. I wasn’t sure what we should talk about.

  “Okay,” Anya said. “I normally wouldn’t call attention to this, but I’m going to help you fix your number-one problem right now.”

  I couldn’t believe that Anya knew I had a number-one problem.

  “Let’s go get some duct tape,” she said, making her way to the craft corner.

  I wasn’t sure how duct tape could solve my problem. I mean, it would be wrong to duct-tape Leo’s mouth shut. Did Anya think I was a barbarian? Because I wasn’t. Was I?

  I watched in disbelief as Anya grabbed two rolls of duct tape and started ripping off short pieces. “This should do it,” she said, handing me a strip of tape.

  “Um,” I said. Because I really couldn’t picture what I was supposed to do with it. Leo was still in the bathroom. Did she think we were going to go in there to tape him? Because entering the boys’ bathroom to launch a tape assault was definitely outside my comfort zone, no matter how much I disliked a person.

  Then Anya did something that caught me off guard. She wrapped the tape around her own hand, sticky side out, and began patting me all over.

  “How many cats do you own?” she asked. “Five?”

  “Just Mitten Man,” I said, turning slightly so Anya could reach my backside.

  “He’s a total shedder,” she added, grabbing a fresh piece of tape and continuing her pat job. “Didn’t you notice you were covered in cat hair before you left the house? I mean, black is very unforgiving. It shows everything.”

  I pressed my own piece of tape to an obvious hair patch near my knee. “I guess I was in a hurry.” But really, I couldn’t believe my parents hadn’t said something. I mean, so far the tape had pulled off what looked like a pound of cat fur.

  “This is really nice of you,” I said, focusing on removing some hair from my stomach area.

  “It’s nothing,” Anya said. “I like you.”

  And seriously, when she said that, my skin goose-pimpled, because deep down, even though I struggled with Anya’s ego and bossiness, I admired her and her talent. And deep down I think I really wanted her to like me, too. So while things weren’t going so hot with Venice in Yearbook today, at least things were going well with Anya.

  “Okay,” Anya said. “What do you bet that Venice and Leo are in the hallway talking right now?”

  It was like Anya was reading my mind. Because that was exactly what I was thinking. “Well, I doubt they’re both in the boys’ bathroom.”

  Anya lightly swatted the back of my thighs with her taped hand and laughed.

  “I’m surprised she likes him,” Anya said. “I don’t really picture them together.”

  Again, it was like Anya was literally inside my brain, thinking what I thought and feeling what I felt.

  “I totally agree,” I said, wadding up my tape, because even if I still had some cat hair on me, I really didn’t care anymore. I wanted to focus on talking to Anya.

  “Prediction,” Anya said, glancing at the door. “We’re going to agree on a lot this year. And we’re going to make the most awesome yearbook ever.”

  I smiled when she said this. And I didn’t worry about where Venice fit into this statement. Because I was really irritated by how she was acting.

  “Can you be discreet?” Anya asked, glancing at the door again.

  Nobody had ever asked me this before. It felt like there was really only one answer. “I think so,” I said.

  “I’m being serious. You can’t tell Venice we’re having this conversation,” Anya said.

  It felt like a total betrayal of my friendship to agree to this. And part of me really wanted to make a run for it and abandon the craft corner. Because I didn’t want to betray Venice. But another part of me, the logical part, knew that bolting from the craft corner would only create a different problem. I really didn’t understand how I’d gotten here. I never would’ve predicted that in sixth grade Venice would sneak out of class to hang out with a jerk while an eighth grader defurred me
in the craft corner. I thought sixth grade was going to be about feeling like I was almost in high school, and learning crazy math formulas, and studying dramatic novels, and possibly doing push-ups while being timed. I wasn’t expecting this. I mean, I was really surprised when I heard myself saying, “You can count on me. I won’t tell Venice.”

  “I need you to keep an eye on Leo,” Anya said.

  Ugh. This was terrible news. He was the last person in the world I wanted to have to look for on purpose.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Okay,” Anya said, releasing an exasperated breath. “I wasn’t planning on showing this to anybody, but I feel like I don’t have a choice.”

  Anya led me to the back of the room and pulled me into a big closet filled with rows of shelves that towered over us. I saw stacks of old yearbooks, extra glue bottles, blue plastic bins, wicker baskets, and several boxes labeled KEEP ME. She led me to the back wall and grabbed a file. “You can’t tell anybody I’m showing you these,” she said. “It’s completely unethical.”

  “Right,” I said. I was pretty sure that I’d never done anything unethical in a closet before, so this situation felt very serious. I was so anxious to see what was inside that folder I partially closed my eyes.

  “Look,” she said. “Tell me these aren’t the worst.”

  I opened my eyes and saw a stack of poorly taken photos. There was an enormous swan that was cropped so badly it was missing half its beak. And a person who was sitting outside at what looked like a picnic table, but it was pretty blurry. And a river and possibly a raft filled with people that had terrible shadows.

  “What kind of animal is that?” I asked, pointing to a huge beast at the top corner of the raft picture.

  “That’s either a mosquito or a crane fly,” Anya explained. “Apparently, it was on the lens.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “These are pretty bad. Who took them?”

  And her response totally blew me away.

  “These are Leo’s photos. He applied for a position as junior photographer last year and didn’t get it. I gave the spot to you and Venice. And now he’s out to get me,” Anya said.

  This all made so much sense. Leo was jealous of me. That was why he was trying to create a toxic triangle with me and Venice. He’d probably been plotting this all summer. He was a bigger jerk than I had realized. Because it was one thing to be jealous of me. But it was a whole other issue to use my best friend to launch a sneak attack and try to ruin my spot in Yearbook. She was going to die when I told her, and also possibly hate Leo more than I did.

  “Remember,” Anya said. “You promised not to tell anybody.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Because Venice should probably know that Leo is using her.”

  “No,” Anya said, grabbing my arm and tugging me a little closer to her. “We can’t tell anybody I showed you these. Only Ms. Kenny and her editor in chief are allowed to review application materials. It’s strict Yearbook policy.”

  A part of me didn’t totally agree with Anya. Because it wasn’t like I had asked her to violate Yearbook policy. She had done that on her own. But another part of me felt I was obligated to honor my word. This was a terrible dilemma. Because I really felt like the whole school should know immediately that Leo Banks was a creep and a user who took awful photos.

  “Here’s the plan,” Anya said, sliding Leo’s photos back into their folder. “First, you need to act like none of this happened. Second, stick close to Le—”

  I interrupted her. “I don’t think that second thing should be part of the plan.”

  “Perry,” Anya said, grabbing on to both my shoulders. “In life it’s important to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  “But—” I tried to launch an argument about avoiding your enemies at school.

  “If we don’t keep him under close watch, he’s going to sabotage us. I can feel it in my gut.” Anya released her grip on me and pointed to her stomach. “Trust me.”

  I looked at Anya’s stomach. I’d never trusted another person’s gut before. Should I start now? Would Venice do this? I wasn’t sure she would. And it felt like I should try to be as good a friend to her as she was to me.

  “I bet he’s telling Venice right now that she should submit all her ideas to Ms. Kenny and bypass me. He’s wicked invested in undermining my authority.”

  That sounded exactly like the advice Leo had already given us. Anya’s gut was really good.

  Leo was trying to ruin everything. “Why is he so evil?” I asked Anya. I’d never really met a villain before.

  “Because I rejected him. And to get back at me, he wants our photos to suck. You heard his ideas. He wants us to travel to farms and photograph potato-sorting equipment.”

  Everything Anya said was really starting to sink in. “How close do I need to stick?” I asked. I mean, she didn’t expect me to eat lunch with him, did she?

  “Eat lunch with him if you can. That’s when you’ll learn the most.”

  I couldn’t even imagine eating lunch with Leo and not puking.

  “Venice wants to have him give us advice over the phone,” I said. “So I guess I should do that, too.”

  Anya looked hurt that Leo and Venice had already been talking about Yearbook.

  “He’s a saboteur. Take as many three-way calls as you can with him. And then call me and report anything I should know.”

  “So now I’m a spy?” I asked. Because it was one thing to stick close to Leo, but it was a whole different ball game to put him on blast to Anya for everything I saw.

  “You’re my ally,” Anya said. “And next to me you’re the most important member of Yearbook.”

  This was so much pressure. But I kind of liked it.

  “I can’t let Leo ruin the yearbook,” Anya said. “And neither can you. You owe it to our school.”

  As I stared at a dusty box of dry-erase markers and a broken pencil sharpener, a part of me felt Anya should just take all this information to Ms. Kenny and get Leo kicked out of class, because it was serious stuff. But then I worried that Venice would get kicked out of class too, because she was basically working with Leo to destroy our yearbook even though she didn’t know that was what she was doing. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around a problem of this size.

  “Can I count on you?” Anya asked.

  Back in the classroom, I could hear Venice calling my name. I felt so anxious about seeing her now that I’d agreed to keep secrets from her.

  “You can count on me,” I said. Piper was going to die when I gave her this crazy update. Good thing I had a sister with a background in psychology.

  “You won’t regret it,” Anya said. Then she gave me a quick hug. “Let’s get in there and vote for a What’s Hot section. Plus, I need you to write some captions.”

  And so I hurried back into the classroom and sat down next to Venice. It was amazing how different things felt for me from a day ago. Was my life perfect? No. Was Yearbook perfect? Not even close. But sometimes in life you’ve got to accept what you cannot change.

  Shopping for Sixth-Grade Portraits

  Walking home from school, I got the worst text ever.

  Piper

  Bobby’s hurt. No dinner tonight. SORRY!!

  I was sort of stunned that Piper had sent me such a short and terrible text. Even her emoji didn’t feel apologetic enough. She should’ve sent me a hundred crying faces. I wrote her back as fast as I could, because I thought maybe I could change her mind.

  Me

  Is he in the hospital?

  Piper

  No. His back is out. Needs me to rub Tiger Balm on it and walk his dog.

  It bugged me to see that tongue. Because nothing about what was happening was funny.

  Me

  When you cancel on me you make my life feel worse. SO MUCH IS HAPPENING!!!

  I stared at my phone, hoping she’d text me an apology and cancel on Bobby and come to dinner.

  Piper

>   Dinner this weekend. Can’t wait for an update. I’ll bring falafel. Namaste!

  I read the texts again to make sure Piper was really canceling on me to feed a dog and rub some balm. She was. Then I just stopped moving and stared at the sidewalk. This meant I was going to have to endure the Venice-and-Leo situation without any help until the weekend. I wasn’t sure I could do that. I mean, in addition to Yearbook, Venice and I also had English, Science, and Idaho History together. And it was really hard to act like everything was normal. Today when Ms. Stott made us create a food chain and explain the difference between a producer, a consumer, and a decomposer, and I drew grass, a rabbit, and mold, it took a ton of restraint for me not to label my mold Leo. Because I wasn’t an idiot. If Leo started hanging out with Venice, there would be less time for me. And that wasn’t how my friendship with Venice worked. We both gave each other all our time. We were total besties.

  Before Venice and I started sixth grade, we’d had the most amazing summer ever. I’d traveled with her family to Yellowstone National Park, where we ate s’mores twice a day and watched Old Faithful erupt. Plus, in addition to viewing the geysers, I’d also watched Victor do push-ups in the campground dirt, and that was pretty thrilling, because just like Anya had pointed out when she saw his photo, Victor was hot. And Venice had traveled with my family on a trip to Lake Powell, where we ate apple fritters for breakfast and rode a water weenie every afternoon. Even though nobody told us to, we took turns riding in the last and bumpiest position on the weenie so neither one of our butts would get sore. We looked out for each other like sisters, even when nobody was paying attention. My life felt so far away from those moments with Venice. My world felt like it was shifting, and I didn’t feel ready to end up in a new place.

  At the sight of a car swerving toward me and honking, I jumped off the sidewalk and fell onto a random lawn. Then I realized the crazy driver was my mom and she was only pulling up alongside me.