Brooke's Not-So-Perfect Plan

by Jo Whittemore

  “Third is quite admirable,” Coach agreed. “Your main area of opportunity is that you don’t run the plays properly. I gave you several different plays to run yesterday, and you only did half.”

  “But I made goals, anyway!”

  Coach didn’t look convinced. “That’s not the point. I need you to run the plays just as the other girls are. If you’re out there doing your own thing, it’s not a cohesive team effort.”

  “I guess,” I mumbled.

  “It’s easy to get back on top of the ranking. Keep playing well and follow instructions.” He tapped me on the knee with the clipboard. “Now take the night off to absorb this.” He glanced at my hair. “Like it’s snow-cone syrup.”

  When Mom pulled up, she took one look at Heather and me and covered her mouth with her hand, but I could see a smile peeking out from behind it.

  “Don’t laugh,” I said with a scowl. “Or say ‘I told you so’ or ask if I had a grape day.”

  Mom pressed her lips together. “Actually,” she said with a waver in her voice, “I was going to say you look . . . mauvelous.”

  There was a choking sound from behind me, and I looked back to see Heather trying very hard not to laugh. I narrowed my eyes at her but couldn’t help smiling.

  “Don’t make me happy,” I said. “I’m having a bad day.”

  I told her about what Coach had said, but instead of getting angry for me, Mom just chuckled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s just funny that you expect people to take your advice but you refuse to take theirs.”

  “Not when it doesn’t make sense!” I said. “Why should I follow Coach’s plays when I know what I’m doing?”

  “Because he’s the coach!” Mom and Heather said in unison.

  All three of us laughed.

  “The reason is right in the job title,” Mom added. “Believe it or not, there might be one or two people out there who know stuff you don’t.”

  “Wha?” I feigned disbelief. “Impossible!”

  My phone dinged with a new text from Tim.

  Gabby just got home crying about you and Heather. What happened?

  I had no desire to get into it with him. I typed back:

  Can’t talk. On the way to Vanessa’s.

  “Brooke? Are you listening?” asked Mom, stopping at a red light. “It’s one thing to give advice; it’s another to try and fix the problem yourself.”

  “That should be a rule,” I told Heather.

  Her eyes lit up, and she pulled out her phone, tapping away at the keys. “We need to start making a list of rules for the advice column. Rule number one: give advice but don’t interfere.”

  “Rule number two: Some people are beyond help,” I added.

  “Oh, I don’t believe that,” said Heather. “Some people just need extra help.”

  “Like a straitjacket.”

  Heather swatted me. “Rule number three: don’t make fun of the people seeking advice. They were brave enough to ask.”

  I snorted. “If Gabby had really been brave, she would’ve asked Jefferson how he felt herself.” Heather started to interrupt, but I held up a finger. “And if she didn’t like the answer, she would’ve confronted him face-to-face, not bucket-to-back.”

  “I disagree,” said Mom from the front seat. “That’s how you would’ve reacted, but clearly that’s not Gabby’s personality.”

  Heather started typing on her phone. “Rule number four: One answer does not fit all. Offer more than one solution to the problem.”

  Heather and I came up with a couple more rules, like rule #5: keep the advice upbeat, before we reached Vanessa’s driveway. She was already waiting outside with her little brother, Terrell, and when I hopped out, he was as polite as any six-year-old would be.

  “Whoa! What happened to your head?” he squeaked. “You look like an eggplant.”

  “Terrell!” Vanessa bumped him. “Go back inside.” She smiled and waved at my mom. “Hi, Mrs. Jacobs.”

  Mom smiled at her. “I hope you can help these girls.”

  “And quick,” said Heather. “I don’t want to look like this at school tomorrow.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Vanessa, linking her arm through Heather’s. “Because I think you look cute.”

  Mom and I followed them into the house, where Mrs. Jackson greeted us and offered coffee to Mom and cake to all of us.

  “Good luck!” Mom called after Heather, Vanessa, and me.

  “If you shave their heads, I wanna help!” shouted Terrell.

  Vanessa led us into the bathroom, where a box of bottles and tubes was sitting on the counter.

  “Neutralizers, cleansers, and colors,” she explained when Heather and I eyed the container suspiciously. “If it doesn’t wash out or fade, we’ll dye your hair back to its original color.”

  Since Heather was more worried than I was, Vanessa went to work on her first. After scrubbing and soaking, she’d gotten rid of most of the color, but there was still a slight tinge to it.

  “Well.” Vanessa wiped at her forehead, smearing soapsuds across it. “If you want, we can dye it. That’ll definitely hide the rest of the color.”

  Heather studied her reflection in the mirror. “No.”

  Vanessa and I looked at each other, then at Heather.

  “What?” I asked.

  Heather smiled. “Now that it’s not as obvious, I kinda like it.”

  Vanessa pulled out a hair dryer. “Me too!”

  She gave Heather a quick blowout and turned to me. “You’re next!”

  Vanessa put an old towel around my shoulders and set to work with the neutralizer while I sat on the closed toilet. From somewhere nearby, I heard the doorbell chime. Vanessa paused in her work.

  “Who’s that?”

  A couple minutes later we had our answer. Tim appeared at the top of the stairs with Gabby. Her hands were in her pockets, and her head was bowed.

  “Hey, can we come in?” asked Tim.

  Vanessa glanced around. “If one of you wants to stand in the bathtub, sure.”

  Tim laughed until Vanessa moved a shampoo bottle out of the way.

  “Oh, you’re serious.” He climbed in.

  Gabby approached the bathroom door, but I thrust out a halting hand.

  “Wait. Are you armed? Turn out your pockets.”

  “Brooke!” Heather nudged me.

  “I don’t want to be any other colors!” I told her.

  Gabby blushed but showed us her empty pockets. Then she continued to just stand there.

  Tim cleared his throat. “On top of making an excellent statue, my sister also has something to say. Don’t make me poke you with this back scrubber,” he said, waving the brush at her.

  Gabby took a deep breath, and the intake of air seemed to push tears out of her eyes.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry again.”

  And then she let out all the air, along with almost every word in the human language.

  “I’m so embarrassed and I don’t know what I was thinking and I’m so glad you stopped me from making an even bigger fool of myself. I was so hurt that he didn’t want to go out with me and I shouldn’t have asked either of you to get involved and I promise I’ll pay to have your uniform replaced”—that comment was directed at me—“and I think you look really good with purple highlights”—directed at Heather.

  Gabby took another deep breath, but before she could continue, Heather stopped her with a light touch to the arm.

  “I get that you were upset,” she said. “But there has to be a better way to deal with it.”

  Gabby nodded and smiled shyly. “I actually came up with something that’ll help not just me, but other girls.”

  “That’s great!” I said.

  “And we’re sorry too,” added Heather. “We saw your request to ‘Lincoln’s Letters,’ and we felt so terrible! We should never have interfered.” Then she leaned over and gave Gabby a big hug.

  “My request
?” Gabby looked over Heather’s shoulder at me. I nodded.

  “From Betrayed in Berryville?” I said.

  Gabby shook her head. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  I clapped my hand to my forehead. “So there’s potentially another girl out there running around with a bucket of snow-cone syrup?”

  The others laughed.

  “We forgive you,” I told Gabby, smiling. “And we’ve made it a ‘Lincoln’s Letters’ rule not to do anything more than give advice.”

  “We have rules?” asked Tim.

  “Yeah, when did this happen?” asked Vanessa.

  Heather and I went over the list we’d started.

  “And rule number six: If people ask for advice but don’t take it, don’t get mad,” finished Heather.

  “To go along with that, I think we should add another one,” I said. “Rule number seven: never give up on people.”

  Heather smiled. “I like it!”

  “Me too,” said Vanessa.

  “You know what this list needs?” asked Tim. “An official book!”

  Vanessa snapped her fingers. “Be right back.”

  She squeezed past Heather, Gabby, and me and disappeared into her room, returning a minute later with a leather-bound journal. “Ta-da!” She held it up and showed us the empty pages. “I bought a couple of these for sketches, but I can sacrifice one for the greater good.”

  “Perfect!” Tim took it, along with a pen Vanessa offered. “What was rule number one?”

  While Heather and I repeated the rules, Vanessa worked on my hair, and Gabby called her mom and begged for purple highlights. We all talked and laughed, and Mom and Mrs. Jackson ordered takeout and brought it up so we could eat. It was the oddest and only bathroom party I’d ever attended and the most fun I’d had since school started.

  The only downside was that I’d missed soccer practice and a trip to the library for my history project.

  But I still had plenty of time, right?

  CHAPTER

  8

  Popular Opinion

  When Mom dropped me off at school the next morning, Tim, Vanessa, and Heather were all waiting for me at the curb.

  “Hey, guys!” I greeted them. “What’s up?”

  “Mary Patrick,” said Tim, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Uh-oh.” I peered around him. “What’d she do now?”

  “Just come with us,” said Vanessa, hooking her arm through mine. “She refuses to speak to anyone but our section lead.”

  When we got closer to the building, I could see Mary Patrick by the entrance, wearing a bright-yellow hard hat.

  “Why is she dressed like a construction worker?” I asked Vanessa. “Did she hear how accident-prone you were?”

  Vanessa shoved me.

  “We think she’s on some safety committee,” said Heather.

  “Or that she’s just crazy,” said Tim.

  His guess turned out to be the closest.

  When we approached her, Mary Patrick’s eyes fixed on me.

  “Finally,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if your team even knew who their section lead was!”

  “You can talk to any of them at any time,” I said. “What’s with the Bob the Builder getup?”

  “It’s Toughen-Up Tuesday,” said Mary Patrick, taking off the hard hat and plopping it on my head. “Toughen up!”

  “Uh . . . why?” asked Heather.

  “Because today is when you’ll start receiving feedback about your first column,” said Mary Patrick. “And it won’t all be pretty.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  Mary Patrick gave me a sad smile. “Look inside the hat.”

  I turned it over to find pieces of paper taped inside.

  “‘Brooke Jacobs gives bad advice,’” I read.

  “Oh boy,” said Vanessa.

  “‘She’s not a professional and doesn’t know proper warm-up techniques’?” I lowered the paper. “My coach has us do those stretches before every practice! Why would you show me something so mean?”

  Mary Patrick raised an eyebrow. “That’s actually one of the nicer ones someone told me in person.”

  “In person?” asked Tim, taking the hard hat from me. “Some people wrote in?”

  Mary Patrick crossed her arms. “If you all bothered to read the entire paper and not just your own section, you would’ve seen a request for feedback to be dropped in the advice box.”

  “Um . . . excuse me. You went through our advice box?” asked Vanessa, hand on hip.

  “Was there anything else in it?” I asked. I would die if she’d seen a note from my secret admirer.

  “Anything else?” she repeated. “Advice requests, but I left them there. Why are you staring like that? Do I have something on my nose?”

  “Who told you my warm-up advice was bad?” I asked.

  “Abel Hart, but that doesn’t matter,” she said. “The point—”

  “Yeah, you might as well save your breath.” Vanessa patted Mary Patrick’s shoulder. “Brooke has gone to her angry place.”

  “Brooke, sweetie?” Heather ventured. “If you kill him, you’ll probably get detention.”

  “Abel Hart thinks I don’t know?” I exploded. “He doesn’t know!” I threw down the hard hat and stormed toward the cafeteria, the place I always saw him in the mornings.

  “Wait! I’m not finished!” Mary Patrick called after me.

  I found Abel sitting on a bench with his head tilted back and his big stupid mouth wide open, trying to catch home fries that another dumb goon was throwing at him. So much for the sophisticated Young Sherlock.

  The next flying potato piece I snatched in midair.

  “Hey!” Abel frowned at me. “I had that!”

  I crushed the home fry in my fist, then offered him the paste. “Still want it?”

  Abel looked from the potato shrapnel to me. “Well, I’m hungry, so . . .” He reached into my palm.

  “Ew! Stop that!” I scraped off my hand and wiped it on my jeans. “And stop saying mean things about me!”

  Abel blinked up at me. “I didn’t say those mean things about your socks! I don’t know where that rumor started.”

  “That’s not what I—” I paused. “There’s a rumor about my socks?” I glanced at my feet.

  “Yeah, that you only have one pair.” He looked down. “Because you only wear that pair.”

  “They’re athletic socks. They all look like this.”

  “All . . . two of them?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  I thumped him on the forehead. “I have a drawerful! And that’s not why I’m here! You said I gave bad advice.”

  His forehead wrinkled for a second and then relaxed. “Oh, that! Yeah, you totally gave bad advice. If you stretch like that before you run long distance, you’ll mess up your muscles.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I run long distance,” he said flatly. “Also, my dad is a sports physician. You should really do your research before you answer your questions. And if you want to make it in Young Sherlocks.” He gestured to the guy who was throwing home fries and opened his mouth wide again.

  I wedged a dirty napkin in between his teeth and walked away.

  Heather and Vanessa were waiting for me in the hall.

  “Sooo. That sounded like it went well,” said Heather.

  “He said I should do research!”

  Heather and Vanessa looked at each other.

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “When I say it out loud, it does make sense.”

  “It’s your first column,” said Heather.

  “We’ll add that to our list of rules,” said Vanessa. “Rule number eight: fact-check your advice whenever possible.”

  I sighed and trudged toward homeroom. “Mary Patrick said there were meaner ones than Abel’s.”

  “I’m sure there were nicer ones too,” said Heather.

  And she was right.

  In fact, a d
ebate started in my PE class based on my column, with half the people on my side and half the people against. No doubt about it, words held power.

  And apparently a certain attraction. In between each class, I saw Tim with at least one girl walking by his side, talking his ear off.

  “I can’t believe you quote Shakespeare!” one girl gushed. “You are so sophisticated.”

  I didn’t bother interrupting to mention that Tim had been armpit fart champion on our coed baseball team.

  Nobody seemed to argue with Vanessa’s advice on fur since most kids at our school were of the same mind. She’d shown me her Toughen-Up feedback, which had simply been “I prefer feathers.” And Heather’s advice on friendship was nothing but friendly, so she had it easy.

  For some reason the lack of feedback bothered both of them.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” I told Vanessa when she met me at my locker for lunch. “You should be glad nobody has anything to say about you.”

  “Don’t you get it? Great advice gets noticed and terrible advice gets noticed, but when readers don’t have a strong opinion either way . . .” She shrugged. “Vanessa who?”

  “You get plenty of attention,” I said. “Your fashion choices guarantee it. What do you call these, by the way?” I grabbed one of her sleeves, the bottom half of which was attached at the waist of her shirt. “You look like you’re about to take flight.”

  Vanessa laughed. “They’re called ‘batwing sleeves,’” she said.

  I grinned. “No way.”

  “Yes way!” She spread her arms wide. “Now, let’s flap on down to the cafeteria.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Pass. I need to practice soccer plays.”

  Vanessa wrinkled her forehead. “But . . . food.” She pointed to her stomach.

  “But . . . wannabe team captain.” I pointed to myself. “If I want the job, I have to run Coach’s plays perfectly.”

  She crossed her arms. “How come you take his advice but not mine?”

  “Because you want me to wear yellow,” I told her. “And I’m a girl, not a banana.” I held up my gym bag. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to lace up my turf talons.”

  I probably looked weird, clacking across the cafeteria’s patio in my cleats while everyone else ate mini pizzas. And it was definitely tough running plays without anybody in the other positions, but I got it done and still managed to scarf down a burger before the bell rang. Never mind the fact that I probably smelled as bad as Sir Stinks a Lot.