by Coco Simon
“Yes, and at the same time. Like, you can’t let the apology hang out there and then later do something strong, because she’ll be gathering her strength, thinking she’s beaten you after the apology. And then you’ll never beat her. Let’s think of a plan.”
“Okay.”
I loved that Katie was always helping me. She is a good friend, and I can’t in a million years think of why Callie would have thrown her over for that mean and snobby group of girls. It really meant that something was wrong with Callie. Anyway, we didn’t come up with a plan right then, but Katie promised to keep thinking about it, and obviously, I would too.
We finished our shopping and then checked out. The purchase was expensive, and I was not psyched. I like to make money, not spend it. Let me correct that. I don’t mind laying out cash if I know I’ll make some back on the outlay, but I hate spending money like this, knowing it will go to nothing. I tried explaining this to Katie.
“But you’ll get a good grade!” she protested. “And you love good grades!”
“I know, but it’s like buying a grade.”
“Lots of kids buy grades. I mean, that’s what tutoring is, isn’t it?”
“Maybe . . . ” (That made me stop and think. Maybe tutoring would be a good business to get into one day. Good hours, working with kids, doing stuff you already know how to do, being your own boss . . .)
“Earth to Alexis!” said Katie, and we laughed.
My mom took us for ice cream after the shopping, and we had a lot of fun.
We didn’t run into anyone we knew, and that was just fine by me.
That night, as I lay in my bed in the dark, I thought about Olivia and why she makes me feel so bad. I think it’s because she knows how to hit me where it hurts by accusing me of nerdiness and some kind of pigginess, as if all I do is think about food or sweets or homework. In general, I am having a great time living my life. I love school, I like working hard and getting good grades. I like running a business and making money, and I love my friends and family (except Dylan—not all the time, anyway). But I do sometimes wonder if I’m doing it all wrong. Like, maybe I should be out trying to run with the cool pack or not caring so much about doing well, but instead relaxing more and just hanging out. Maybe I’m trying too hard to be a little adult. Maybe I am a nerd.
Am I?
Do I care?
“Yes, a little bit” is the answer to both, but I’m not going to do anything about it. Like I said, I’m mostly happy in my life. Except whenever I see Olivia.
I rolled over, thinking with dread about what attack she would come up with tomorrow and whether it would be quiet and mean or public and humiliating. I thought about apologizing, but also what I could then do or say to gain back my power from her.
Sighing deeply, I tried to come to terms with the idea that it wouldn’t be something I could plan ahead for; it would just have to happen naturally. In the wild.
CHAPTER 8
Duck!
I met Matt at school Monday morning before classes started. He was dropping off the plans so Katie and I could review them during lunch. It was a treat and a good omen. After all, if your week starts with a great interaction with your crush, you’re starting from a position of strength. At least that’s how I chose to see it (rather than that things could only go downhill from there).
He had the outer dimensions of the house plans ready to go and just had to put in the floor dimensions for the upper two stories. He said he’d have it for me by five o’clock today if I wanted to stop by after school. I wanted to hug him in gratitude, but I didn’t have the nerve, so I just thanked him profusely.
“It was fun,” he said. “The notes from you and your granddad were good. Very detailed, but I’d expect nothing less.” He grinned.
“Thanks!” I said, choosing not to see this as a sign that he considered me a detail-obsessed nerd. I wished Olivia and her little flock would walk by me right now so they could see me laughing it up with Matt Taylor, supercutie! But of course they didn’t. It did give me an idea, though.
I took a deep breath and screwed up my courage. “Hey, maybe when it’s done, you can help me carry it to school on the presentation day? I think it’s going to be a little heavy.”
“Sure, just let me know when,” he said, really easily, just like that.
Yessss! I thought. Eat your heart out, Olivia Allen! But all I said was, “Okay, thanks! See you later!”
After Matt left, I walked slowly to homeroom, happily daydreaming about when he and I get married and how we’d run a big successful corporation of our own and have a couple of children who are really smart and really good dancers . . .
After homeroom I heard someone behind me say, “I hope you got your fill at the baking store this weekend. I thought that place was just for old grandmas.”
I didn’t even need to turn around to see who it was. Quack! I reminded myself. Quack! Quack! But it wasn’t working. I pretended I didn’t hear her, but inside I was panicking.
Olivia continued, “Hey! I heard there’s a new math store opening up. They’re selling all the types of things that you love, like calculators and rulers and—”
“Quack!” I blurted, turning around to face her.
She froze.
“Quack! Quack! Quackquackquack!!!” I yelled.
I knew I had just sealed my fate as a nerd for life, but I was so angry, I had totally lost control. The small, careful part of my brain that was still working knew that quacking was better than yelling bad words at Olivia in the middle of school, but even if it kept me out of trouble, it would mean certain social death.
People around us were staring, and I knew it must’ve made a strange picture, her cringing and me towering over her, quacking loudly and red faced. I was shaking, though, and I didn’t care right now what anyone else thought. I was just trying hard not to smack her.
Finally, she snapped to and said, “What-ever, weirdo!” and walked on, her head held high.
I stayed put, to give myself time to calm down and to let her get a head start away from me. A couple of kids were giving me odd looks, and I was embarrassed. I took a deep breath and then went to the girls’ bathroom, where I took some sips of cold water and splashed my face. I was exhausted after my outburst, and wished I could just go to the nurse and ask to go home. Instead, because I am not a quitter, I trudged off to math, where I knew my enemy awaited me.
In class, Olivia and I avoided eye contact, and when the bell rang, she slipped out of her seat, racing for the door while I held back. At least she wasn’t trying to continue the fight. I wouldn’t have had the strength to face her again. I made my way to gym and the safety of my friends.
Of course, by the time I’d reached them, they’d already heard about the incident from other people. I was mortified the story had spread so quickly. I put my head in my hands and rocked it from side to side.
“Alexis! Stop doing that! Right now!” Mia commanded in a serious voice as she quickly scanned the gym.
I lifted my head. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re a hero, but you’re acting like a loser!” she said, looking sharply back at me.
“What?” I was confused. I was a nerd, and I knew it.
Mia sighed in exasperation. “Kids are talking about how you stood up to Olivia Allen in the hall and won. If you act like you lost, the story will start to change. Get it?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Just act proud,” said Emma.
“Really?” This was weird, because I did not feel proud at all.
“Yes.” Emma nodded. “Trust us.”
Our gym teacher, Mrs. Chen, kept us too busy to talk during class so I couldn’t tell them what happened in detail. Finally at lunch we all got to sit down and talk.
“Now, what happened?” Katie asked, and I told them the whole story, including how Mom always told me to let things roll off my back.
Actually, the timing was perfect, because right as they were roaring with
laughter, picturing me having a duck meltdown in the hall, Olivia walked into the lunchroom. She looked directly at me and my table of friends, laughing our heads off, and she turned on her heel and left.
“You just won,” said Katie, who’d been watching the door. “Did you see that?”
I nodded, but I didn’t feel good about it. “It’s not over.”
“I think you’re wrong,” said Katie, shrugging.
“We’ll see,” I said.
We planned a meeting for later that day at Emma’s and then, at my insistence, talked about other stuff for the rest of lunch. But deep down inside I let myself relax a tiny bit. Maybe I hadn’t committed sudden social death.
“Okay, a few things on the agenda today . . .,” I began at Emma’s kitchen table that afternoon.
“Quack!” said Katie, and she giggled.
“Quack, quack!” said Mia.
“All right, enough!” I cried.
“Sorry,” said Mia with a smile.
I cleared my throat. “On the agenda—”
“Quack!” Emma peeped in a tiny voice.
“Stop!” I hollered, but I had to giggle.
“Quack! Quack! Quack!” They all were doing it at the same time.
I put down my ledger, where I keep track of everything. “Okay, you know what? Fine. Just get it out of your system, okay? We have a business to run here, and we need to discuss some other important items, so when you are ready to act like mature people and not like idiots . . . ”
They quacked and laughed for another minute, and then we began for real.
“We have the shower this weekend, which we’ll need to bake for on Friday, along with Mona’s minis. We also have my mom’s birthday, and I had a great idea. Since she’s turning forty-four, we’ll make forty-four cupcakes, eleven of each kind of the following: pear, something pink and ballerinaish, the strawberry shortcake she requested, plus the bacon ones for my dad. It will be a little cupcake buffet. Okay?”
Everyone nodded.
“No duck cupcakes?” asked Mia with a smile.
“No,” I said sharply. “Next, we have the time capsule project. I made a few notes on this.” I pulled out some spreadsheets and then distributed them. “As you can see, there’s a checklist and then a Q&A section. Everyone needs to fill in their answers to the questions, and everyone should provide one of each of the items on the checklist. Just let me know what you think needs to be added or deleted. It’s only a starting point.”
Emma was scanning the list. “This is going to have to be a really big capsule!” she said.
“I know,” I agreed. “I was almost thinking instead of putting the actual items in, we should just take a picture of them . . . ”
“And we can put a printout of the pictures and a flash drive with everything on it!” finished Mia.
“Exactly,” I said, grinning.
“Great idea! Then the capsule can be really small!” said Katie.
“And we don’t have to part with the things we love,” added Emma.
“Right. So is there anything I should add or remove?”
Everyone was quiet while they read their sheet. Then Katie said quietly, “The part about sworn enemies . . . Do you think we need that?”
I bit my lip. “I wasn’t sure, but I thought it would maybe give us a chance to share what we’ve learned with future generations, like how to deal with bullies and mean girls.”
“By quacking?” teased Emma.
“Very funny,” I said. “Not.”
Mia was thoughtful. “Maybe it should be a more open-ended question. Like, who was the meanest person you ever dealt with and how did you handle it?”
“An essay question?” I cried in dismay.
But the others thought it was a really good idea.
“I know who I’m writing about!” said Katie. (We all did.)
“Syd the Kid, à la Sydney Whitman, will be mine!” declared Emma. “Not that I can take credit for the Whitmans moving to California, but still, that solved it.”
“Who’s moving to California?” asked Matt as he ambled into the Taylors’ kitchen from outside.
My heart skipped a beat. He was wearing a light blue hoodie that made his eyes look electric, and his hair was all wind-tousled and messy. So cute. Sigh!
“Hey, Alexis, I’m just going to run up and finish the plans. I’ll be right down with the printouts,” he said.
“Great. Thanks.”
“So tomorrow is our baking day?” said Katie. “For the project?”
“Yup. Maybe at my house?”
Katie agreed, and Emma and Mia wanted to come too.
“You guys must have lots of other stuff to do. I think Katie and I can handle it. I feel bad taking up your time with my project.”
But they insisted.
“Look, like Katie said, this could be a whole new line of revenue for us!” Mia pointed out.
“We wouldn’t miss it,” said Emma firmly.
That night I pulled my dad aside and told him about the plans for the cupcakes. I also told him about a few ideas I had for presents for my mom, including a spot for her dollhouse and having my granddad deliver it before the weekend.
My dad loved all my ideas and said I was very thoughtful, which, of course, I liked to hear. I don’t know if he would have said it if he knew I’d quacked at someone at school today.
When my mom came to tuck me in, I couldn’t bear telling her about what had happened with Olivia today. I knew she’d chastise me for being mean and also for not having apologized yet, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me. But I could tell she knew I was holding something back by the way she kept asking questions but nothing directly.
In the end, she gave me a kiss and said she’s always available for discussions.
Phew.
CHAPTER 9
Rallying
The day of reckoning had arrived. On Tuesday afternoon, it was time to bake the gingerbread and to begin the house. I felt like I was on one of those cooking challenge shows, with all the crazy ingredients assembled before me. Licorice whips, molasses, ginger, sprinkles, eggs, flour, cookies; plus rulers and knives and paper . . . It was wild.
But first, the gingerbread.
Katie and I made a triple batch in my mom’s huge KitchenAid mixer. Mia and Emma actually sat at the kitchen table and did homework while we did that, because it was the “boring part.”
When it was time to roll out the dough, and cut and score it, they came and helped hold the templates—which I’d cut out last night—in place over the dough, and offered opinions on how things should be laid out on the pans. This was deemed the “hard part.” I only hoped it wouldn’t get much harder than this. Compared to gingerbread architecture, baking cupcakes is a sweet walk in the park.
While we worked, we discussed the spreadsheets for the time capsule and made a plan to shoot the photos of our items on Saturday at my house, after my mom’s birthday party.
Katie slid the trays into the oven to bake. We’d have to do about six rounds of baking before all the gingerbread was done. It smelled good, but it was not that appetizing looking, all shiny and brown. Katie laid out the next slabs of dough on waxed paper and tweaked them a little. I felt useless, watching her work.
“Any sightings today?” asked Mia. “I didn’t see her in homeroom this morning.”
I knew who she meant. “No,” I said.
“She was absent,” said Emma, not looking up from her notebook.
“What?” I was shocked. “How do you know?”
Emma looked up. “She’s in my science class. Some kid told the teacher.”
“I wonder if she was sick . . .,” I said.
“Or just scared!” cackled Mia.
“Don’t even joke. I don’t want to be a mean girl. You know that. After all, I’d be doing to her just what she’s been doing to me, and look how bad it made me feel.”
We were all quiet for a minute.
“Well, let’s see if s
he has the sniffles tomorrow,” said Katie, quietly cutting dough on the counter.
For whatever reason that got us giggling, and any discussion of Olivia was finally put aside. I did feel guilty, though, and I had been all day. I’d actually been looking for her at lunch, planning to apologize and just get the whole thing over with, but, as usual, when I want to see her, she’s nowhere to be found.
The time passed slowly, and batches of dough went in and came out. Katie trimmed them carefully after they came out, to get rid of the puffiness they get from baking, then she laid them out on racks to cool. I was amazed by how she knew to do all this stuff and finally had to ask.
“Well, my grandmother likes to bake, and we bake a lot together. Every Christmas we make a simple gingerbread house. And my mom is really good with her hands, you know, because she’s a dentist. Obviously, I kind of inherited that. The good with the hands part, not the dentist part. And then I went to that cooking camp and learned some stuff. And, you know, I watch cooking shows and go online to read about baking all the time. It’s just . . . a lot of the skills transfer from project to project pretty easily.”
“Cool,” I said, thinking it was the same with my business skills.
Just then the doorbell rang, and it was the UPS guy. He handed me a package addressed to me, and I signed for it, wondering what it could be. Then I looked at the return address.
“It’s from my grandma! She found the pear dress!” I said, shaking the box and hearing something soft shift around inside. “I’ve got to run upstairs and hide this,” I said. And it was lucky I had, because when I came back down, my mom had arrived home from work and was chatting with my friends in the kitchen.
“Girls, I’ve got some bad news,” she said, but she was smiling. “I’ve got to make dinner, so we’re going to need to close the bake shop for the night.”
“But, Mom!” I protested. “We’re right in the middle of it!”
