Project (Un)Popular Book #1

by Kristen Tracy

  “Maybe your cats knocked over something big,” Anya suggested. “I hear they can sometimes work as a team, like lions.”

  I didn’t know why Anya kept thinking I owned a cat team. I just had Mitten Man. And he was way too independent to work with other cats.

  “So I’m at the gym again, and Victor is here now, so I have to go,” Anya said. “But after you find out what crashed, text me about it so I know that you’re okay. I don’t want anything to happen to my spy.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then I hung up and stared nervously at the kitchen.

  “They’re ruined!” cried a familiar voice.

  But it actually relieved me to hear that voice, because it meant that a destructive stranger wasn’t in my house. When I turned the corner, I didn’t expect to see Piper standing in front of the stove, wearing two oven mitts. First, she didn’t cook much. Second, ever since she stole all our bread my mom had asked her to call before she came.

  “I blew up the dolmades,” she said. She covered her face with the oven mitts and shook her head back and forth. “Isn’t Pyrex supposed to be indestructible?”

  I shrugged, because I didn’t know anything about Pyrex. I walked around the kitchen island so I could see exactly what had happened. “Is that glass?” I asked. Because there were a million shards of something that looked like glass scattered inside the oven and on the floor.

  “Not exactly. It’s a Pyrex baking dish,” she said.

  I remembered that baking dish. But the last time I’d seen it, it had looked much better, probably because it had peach cobbler in it. “What are those green things?” I asked. They looked like weird miniature enchiladas.

  “Dolmades,” she said. “I was making you an after-school snack.”

  It was sort of a relief to see that they were covered in Pyrex shards and inedible. “What makes them so green?” I asked.

  “They’re stuffed grape leaves,” she explained. “I wanted to do something special for you to make up for missing dinner last week.”

  I hated the fact that Piper had flaked on me twice. First, for a monster-truck rally. Then for Bobby. But I didn’t think that unexpectedly showing up and making me weird food really made up for anything. She slid the oven mitts off her hands and walked over and gave me a quick hug.

  “Do you think Mom is going to kill me?” she asked.

  I leaned over and looked inside the oven again. Some of the dolmades had exploded, shooting their stuffing everywhere. “What’s all that white stuff?” I mean, I knew blown-up food should look bad, but this dish looked really disgusting.

  “Rice,” Piper said. “It’s part of the filling. Along with onions, cooked raisins, and nuts. It’s one of my roommates’ recipes.”

  I could not believe this was an actual food that people chose to eat, and that Piper thought she should make it for me. Cooked raisins were evil and ruined everything. Even cookies. Didn’t she know that?

  “It’s hard to know where to start,” Piper said, pulling the kitchen trash can closer to the stove. “Can you hand me the paper towels?”

  It was pretty obvious she’d never cleaned up following an explosion. “Maybe we should call a professional,” I suggested. Because this job looked overwhelming and I actually had important stuff to do.

  Slam.

  “Do you think that’s Mom?” Piper asked when we heard the front door bang shut.

  I nodded. Because other than my dad, Piper, and me, my mom was the only person who owned a key to that door.

  “Hello?” my mother called as she rounded the corner into the kitchen.

  Piper cringed when she saw my mother’s face.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’m not totally sure,” Piper said. “I think it was a defective baking dish.” She pointed toward the open oven door.

  My mother slowly approached the oven and looked inside, a horrified expression on her face. “What were you thinking? How does one person make this big a mess?”

  “I was trying to do something nice for Perry,” Piper said.

  My mother looked at me in an angry way, like I had something to do with this.

  “I had zero idea she was even here,” I said. Because I was super innocent and I wanted my mother to know it.

  “Perry, go to your room while we sort this out,” she said.

  “But I didn’t do anything!” I said. Because it didn’t seem fair to send me anywhere. I should have been allowed to travel freely anywhere I wanted in my own home. I hadn’t blown up the dolmades.

  “There’s glass everywhere,” my mother said. “Go to your room. Take Mitten Man with you. If he steps in this, it will cut his paws.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Okay,” I said. But before I walked out, I took a quick picture of the disaster with my phone.

  I left the blast zone and went to my bedroom. Mitten Man was crashed out on his rug-bed next to my closet. I closed the door to my room in case he decided to bolt. Through the wall I could hear Piper and my mom arguing about temperature and glass and thermal shock. It seemed that my mom was mad about a lot more than the dolmades.

  “Can you take a little more responsibility for this?” my mother yelled.

  “I can’t control what Pyrex does!” Piper responded.

  “This is why you got fired from the Snow Cone Hut!” my mom shouted. “You don’t take responsibility.”

  “I got fired from the Snow Cone Hut because my manager had a personality disorder and I didn’t kiss her butt,” Piper countered.

  Once Piper brought up the Snow Cone Hut manager’s butt, I was pretty sure this fight was going to last until my dad got home. I pulled out my phone and texted Anya. Because she’d said I should do that. And I also sent the picture of the explosion. Because it seemed relevant.

  Me

  My sister Piper exploded a weird snack.

  I stared at my phone. I thought maybe Venice would call me. She should’ve been off the bus by now. I texted her the same message and photo too. And added an important detail.

  Me

  Piper exploded a weird snack. The oven is full of glass and cooked raisins.

  I waited for either one of them to respond. My mom and Piper were still yelling but I also heard banging sounds, so I assumed they were cleaning. And that was going to take hours.

  Anya

  Good to know. Stay safe, infiltrator.

  When I saw that word spelled out, I realized I wasn’t totally sure what it meant. So I looked it up.

  infiltrator (noun)

  a person who secretly becomes part of a group in order to get information or to influence the way the group thinks or behaves. The infiltrator was identified and killed.

  I did not enjoy seeing that word used in a sentence. Next time I saw Anya, I was going to ask her to stop calling me that. Because I really didn’t like thinking of myself as an infiltrator. I thought back to the first day of school and Anya’s hit list and the words next to their names. As much as I tried, I still couldn’t figure out a word for me. Then I saw Venice was texting me and so I stopped thinking about my word.

  Venice

  Cooked raisins are evil.

  I laughed when I saw that. Because it was like Venice was the perfect friend for me. She totally understood how I felt. So I texted her again. And sent her a picture of me making her favorite goofy face. She was going to laugh so hard.

  Me

  Call me!

  Tragically, she sent me a bummer text right away.

  Venice

  Can’t! Talking to Leo;)

  I stared at that message until my eyeballs felt hot. I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even send a return pic. She always sent those. And she’d rather talk to Leo instead of me? Even when I’d sent her photographic proof that things were literally exploding in my life? I felt really mad, but mostly hurt. A tear rolled down my cheek. Because it was one thing for Venice to be friends with Leo, but it was another thing for Leo to become more important than me. I debated what to
text back to her, or if I should even text back at all.

  Me

  OK

  But that was a huge lie. I wasn’t okay with her choosing Leo over me. And if the only way to fix this situation was to follow Anya’s plan, I was willing to do that. I didn’t care what I was becoming. Leo had to go. And if Derby had to suffer a little bit more embarrassment, he’d survive just fine. I had to do what I had to do. Whatever it took was whatever it took.

  Photos Approved

  I’d never rehearsed a lie before, and it made me feel weird. Because I couldn’t show up to Yearbook and act like my normal self. I had to show up to Yearbook and pretend to act like my normal self while delivering a sympathetic and lie-filled plea for Derby. It was pretty hard for me to picture myself doing all that. I didn’t consider myself to be good at deception or public speaking. But I couldn’t focus on that. I dressed in a power outfit, ate my breakfast, and headed to school.

  As I gathered everything I needed for Yearbook from my locker, I caught a glimpse of myself in my mini-mirror. I looked nervous. And foggy. I was breathing so fast that my breath had clouded the glass. I wiped off the fog with my hand and shut the door. I kept having doubts about this entire operation. I mean, should I really have been focusing on Derby? Shouldn’t I have been focusing on my grades? And improving my friendship with Venice?

  But all my doubts flooded out of me the instant I walked into Yearbook. Venice and Leo were giggling in the craft corner, looking at each other’s hands. I approached them with extreme caution, because I was afraid to uncover why they were looking at each other’s hands. I feared they’d decided to start going out. And maybe they’d agreed it was time to hold hands in public. That explanation seemed both likely and terrible. But once I got closer, what I found was much worse.

  “Look at what Leo let me do to his pinky,” Venice said, pointing to Leo’s awful hand.

  I blinked and blinked again.

  “Is that a war horn?” I asked. I looked at my own pinky, which still had most of the polish intact from when Venice had painted it. Leo’s pinky looked exactly like mine.

  “It is a war horn!” Leo said. “Venice dared me to get it last night and I totally did.”

  He got it last night? That didn’t make sense to me. “You painted your own war horn?” I asked. I was a little bit impressed that Leo was so good at using nail polish. I wouldn’t have been able to paint my own war horn. Venice was the only person I knew with those kinds of skills.

  “No,” Venice said, laughing. “I went over to Leo’s to do math homework last night. And I dared him. And he let me. Can you believe it?”

  I could not believe it. “You went to Leo’s last night?” I asked. “Your mom lets you do that?”

  That seemed nuts. My mother would never let me do homework at the house of a horrible seventh grader I barely knew. But Venice seemed so happy and oblivious about everything. It was hard for me to talk to her without yelling. Because if she knew who Leo really was, she would not be at his house on a school night painting his pinky with a war horn. She would freeze him out and never speak to him again.

  “Our moms work in the same crew,” Leo said.

  This was truly a shocking development. I had no idea that Leo’s mom worked for the same catering company as Venice’s mom. Why hadn’t Venice told me that? “Since when?” I asked in a disgusted way.

  Venice shrugged. “Probably years. But I didn’t know that until I was telling my mom about Leo and she figured it out.”

  I could not believe that Venice had talked to her mom about Leo. Furthermore, I couldn’t believe that on a night when I was home stuck in my room—literally forced to stay in there with my cat because of a dangerous Pyrex explosion that had left shards of glass in our kitchen area—that instead of calling me and seeing if I was okay, she was painting a gross boy’s pinky at his house. And I was also a little surprised that Leo didn’t mind going around school with his nail painted. What kind of jerk was this kid? Taking in all this new information made the room spin. Whiteboards. Chairs. Tables. Fluorescent lights. I sat down next to Venice and glared at Leo’s pinky. I was stunned. I wasn’t even sure how life would go on after this point. Everything felt ruined. My friendship. My future. Yearbook. And then, in the middle of my dizzy spell, I found myself saying these persuasive words. Where had they come from? I didn’t know. They just started tumbling out.

  “Last night I had probably the best idea I’ve ever had in my life,” I said.

  Venice sat up a little bit straighter and smiled. “Is this about your topographic map? Did you find a way to label your rivers?”

  Venice’s words bounced off me. I totally ignored her. I was on a roll.

  “We need to pick somebody who deserves a little bit more popularity. Somebody who will appreciate it,” I said. “I thought of somebody who needs to be recognized right now, or he might remain invisible forever.”

  “Sounds like you’re leaning toward Chet Baez,” Leo said. “I can see that.”

  I shook my head. “We need to give somebody a second chance.”

  “The hot-dog puker?” Leo asked, sounding very surprised.

  I couldn’t believe how annoyingly impatient he was. I cleared my throat and leaned forward. And then I said the name in a slow and solemn way. “Derby Esposito.”

  I could tell by the way Venice flinched that I’d really stunned her with this announcement.

  “The drama geek who hyperventilated at the python assembly?” Leo asked.

  I slowly let out a breath. “Let’s stop calling him a geek,” I said. “I think that’s part of his problem. He’s forced to wear all these labels.”

  Leo looked confused. “He calls himself a drama geek. He wears a T-shirt every Tuesday that says WORLD’S BIGGEST DRAMA GEEK.”

  I really wished I could push a button and send Leo to live on a different planet. He really didn’t belong on Earth with us.

  “Perry,” Venice scolded. “It was insane when he tried to raise that duck in his locker. Duck poop contains bacteria that’s harmful to people. He should have known that.”

  This was going to be harder than I had realized. “I know it’s easy to blame Derby for being Derby. But isn’t Derby only behaving like Derby because he doesn’t know how else to be?”

  Leo looked at Venice. “He really tried to raise a duck in his locker?”

  And that was when I pulled out the big guns. “Don’t you think the reason Derby tried to do that is because he felt his life was missing something?”

  Venice looked unconvinced. “Probably a duck,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  And when she did that, when she folded her arms, I got really offended for Derby. Because it was like these two felt he didn’t deserve to be popular.

  “If we’re being serious about picking somebody who deserves a spot, then we’d be ridiculously cruel to choose anybody besides Derby.” Then I slammed my hand on the table and stood up. “And being in What’s Hot wouldn’t be a temporary solution. It would be permanent, because that picture will last forever. We have one chance to turn Derby’s life into something awesome. And I think we should take it.”

  Once I finished, Venice and Leo remained totally quiet. Maybe slamming the table was a bit too dramatic for them. Then I noticed that Venice looked like she was on the verge of tears.

  “What you just said was amazing,” Venice said.

  Leo nodded and I watched his stupid bangs fall over his eyes.

  “So you agree with me?” I asked. Because it seemed totally unbelievable that she would.

  “You’re right. If anybody deserves this chance it’s Derby,” Venice said.

  I had to smile when Venice said this. Because Anya was going to die when she heard it. But in a good way.

  “Our first step should be hanging out with him and getting to know what makes him tick,” Leo said. “Find out what hidden talents he has.”

  “The section has to be delivered to Ms. Kenny in three weeks,” Veni
ce said. “That means we need pictures and captions. And a reason to include Derby at all.”

  Venice and Leo looked toward me to see what I had to contribute.

  “We should spend a ton of time with him,” I said. “I say we start by eating lunch with him.” I almost laughed when I said that, because I totally couldn’t imagine eating with Derby. But ever since Leo had started joining us, lunches had become a painful patch of time for me anyway, so I didn’t care if we invited the school’s biggest goofball to join us.

  Leo flipped his bangs out of his face. “And he’s in PE with me and Math with both of us.” He jerked his thumb at Venice when he said that.

  “Lunch?” Venice asked.

  I kept pushing my argument. “Derby will only change if we lead him toward that change. Lunches are critical.”

  Leo started laughing and I felt myself getting hot. I couldn’t believe he would laugh at me right in my face like that.

  “You are so awesome,” Leo said. “I didn’t see this coming at all.”

  I thought it was pretty rude for Leo to say he couldn’t see my awesomeness coming. It had been there the whole time.

  “Let’s do this,” Leo said. “Let’s take Derby Esposito and make him popular. And let’s show Anya that her section belongs to everybody.”

  I think Leo stuck his hand out like he wanted to do a cheer or something, but that felt unnecessary.

  “Glad we settled that,” I said, ignoring his hand. “I’m sure you’ve got some business things to do. Venice and I need to see if Ms. Kenny has approved the assembly photos yet.” Ms. Kenny was supposed to email the handful she’d approved, but we still hadn’t gotten them. We were hoping she had sent them this morning.

  Leo smiled. “Okay. I guess I’ll go back to my table.” He winked at Venice twice. And she tried to wink back at him, but Venice was actually a terrible winker, so she just squinted her eyes shut at him, her left one more than her right.