Stitches and Stones

by Chloe Taylor

  Well, I better run—I have to finish my homework and sewing my twin outfit. Peace out!

  “Rise and shine, honey!”

  It felt like Zoey had just put down her needle and thread and gone to sleep when her dad came in to wake her up for school. She rubbed her eyes and yawned.

  “Were you up late blogging?” Mr. Webber asked.

  “No. I had to finish my outfit.”

  “Well, don’t forget you need sleep to finish growing, kiddo.” He kissed the top of her head. “Hurry up and get ready. I’ll make you bacon and eggs to get you properly fueled.”

  Zoey jumped out of bed and turned on her laptop to check her blog for comments, like she did every morning. There were more than usual this morning. Most were from her regular readers, responding to the tale of the horrible hat trick and saying that it reminded them of their own struggles in middle school. A Sew Zoey reader named Zigzagger wrote a short but encouraging message:

  Boy, does that bring back memories! Don’t worry, it gets better, I promise!

  Then she read a comment from CrossStitchGal:

  Remember: This too shall pass. Right now it probably seems like it won’t, but trust me, it will. This type of thing happens to a lot of people in middle school, but that doesn’t mean it is okay. I don’t know why girls are so mean to each other. Hang in there, honey!

  Come to think of it, that was pretty much what the crew members on the set of Fashion Showdown told her a while back, when she had been a guest judge. Zoey, aided by the smell of frying bacon wafting up to her bedroom, started to feel more optimistic about the day ahead.

  But then she read the next comment, by a reader who had never posted before named Kewlrnu:

  Zoey is a TATTLETALE and a FRAUD. She doesn’t even make her own clothes!

  Zoey looked over at the peace-themed outfit she’d stayed up past her bedtime to finish. How could anyone say she didn’t make her own clothes? She shrugged it off. But then she kept reading and saw another post from a new commenter named ZoeySucks:

  Who cares about this dumb blog anyway? These clothes are ugly! I wouldn’t even let my mom wear them.

  Her blog readers had made criticisms of her sketches before, but they were helpful and constructive, suggesting ways she could make her designs better or easier to construct or pointing out problems that might occur with fabrics. Or saying they didn’t love an outfit. No one had ever been straight out . . . mean.

  The screen of her laptop quickly grew blurry as Zoey’s eyes filled with tears. Knowing there was someone—more than one someone—out there, people she didn’t even know, who were willing to write such nasty things made her feel terrible. Who would do such a thing?

  “Zooooey!” her dad called from downstairs. “Breakfast!”

  Slamming her laptop shut, Zoey jumped up, quickly got dressed in her peace outfit, and ran downstairs. She wasn’t even hungry.

  “Everything okay?” her dad asked as she sat down at the kitchen table. He placed a heaping plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. “You’re looking kind of . . . glum. Eat something?”

  Zoey didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted today to be a better day than yesterday, and so far it wasn’t starting off too promising.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “There’s nothing a few slices of bacon won’t cure,” her brother, Marcus, promised, biting into an extra crispy piece.

  “I like your style,” her dad said. “Groovy!”

  “Yeah, the dress is cool,” Marcus agreed.

  Zoey just hoped her peace-themed outfit would make the rest of her day more peaceful than it had started out.

  Kate looked great in her milk bottle costume when Zoey saw her on the bus.

  “I can’t wait to see you with Libby!” Zoey exclaimed. “You two are going to look awesome together.”

  “Because of you,” Kate said. “Thanks for designing the costumes.”

  “I loved doing it,” Zoey said. “And you helped!”

  “Sort of. Hey . . . what happened to your headband?” Kate asked. “Did it fall off?”

  Zoey reached up to her forehead. The tie-dyed headband she had made wasn’t there.

  “Oh no!” She groaned. “I left it at home! Things were . . . a little crazy this morning.”

  “It’s okay. You still look great without it,” Kate assured her.

  But Zoey was upset she’d let herself get so flustered about the blog comments that she’d forgotten part of her costume. So far, Spirit Week definitely wasn’t going according to plan. Still, she was determined to turn things around. By the time she and Kate got off the bus, Zoey had talked herself into believing that today was going to be a much better day than yesterday.

  Her faith was shaken when the first people she and Kate encountered when they walked in the school door were Ivy, Shannon, and Bree. They were dressed as triplets, all wearing the same skirts, tops, and hairstyles. Zoey braced herself for the usual snotty remark about her outfit, but to her surprise, Ivy said, “Love your outfit!”

  She couldn’t believe her ears, especially when Shannon followed up with “So cool!” and Bree chimed in with “Yeah, totally!”

  “Uh . . . thanks,” Zoey said, edging past them and pulling Kate along with her. As they walked away, Zoey thought she heard Ivy mutter, “Thank you for getting us in trouble,” but she wasn’t completely sure.

  Zoey and Kate kept walking in silence until they were out of the line of fire.

  “Hey, I thought Backward Day was tomorrow,” Kate said. “Why was Ivy being so nice?”

  “I don’t know,” Zoey said. “But maybe she wasn’t. I thought I heard her thanking me for getting them in trouble. Did you hear that?”

  “No!” Kate exclaimed. “When did she do that?”

  “When we were walking away. I think she said it under her breath. Maybe I’m imagining it.”

  “Careful, Zo,” Kate warned. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “Me neither.” Zoey sighed. “But I’m not really sure what I can do about it.”

  As much as Zoey tried to avoid Ivy, she couldn’t really help seeing her in the classes they had together. But it was Backward Day for the rest of the day, as far as Ivy was concerned. She kept complimenting Zoey at every opportunity.

  Even Gabe noticed.

  “What’s got into Ivy today?” he asked. “She’s not usually this nice to you. Actually, she’s usually not nice to you at all.”

  “No idea,” Zoey said. She didn’t want to start spreading rumors by telling him her suspicions.

  “Well, she’s right. The peace sign on your dress is really awesome. You made it?”

  Zoey nodded.

  “You’re amazing,” Gabe said. “Libby said you designed her costume too.”

  Zoey felt her cheeks flush, and she started picking at a stray thread on her hem.

  “I love sewing,” she said. “So it doesn’t feel like work.”

  “What, never?” Gabe asked.

  “Okay, sometimes it does, especially when I have to do a zipper. But mostly it’s fun.”

  “Too bad homework isn’t like that,” Gabe said. “It always feels like work.”

  Zoey had to agree with him on that.

  But it wasn’t her homework that ruined Zoey’s afternoon. It was reading more mean comments on her blog post when she sat down at her laptop before starting her homework.

  Some were from the same posters, Kewlrnu and ZoeySucks, the one who called her clothes ugly. But there were new users, too, saying equally mean things. One named Zzzzzzzoey said her Twin Day designs were “snooze-worthy.” All the mean comments were hurtful, but the ones accusing her of not doing her own sewing really stung. She expected her friends to mention the comments, but they hadn’t said a word.

  Am I being too sensitive? Zoey thought. Maybe, but every time I check Sew Zoey, there are more awful comments. They can’t all be wrong . . . right?

  At dinner that evening, Mr. Webber noticed that Zoey was
unusually quiet.

  “Is something the matter, honey?” he asked.

  Zoey thought about telling her dad about the nasty comments on her blog. But she was worried that if she did, he might make her stop blogging, and she loved Sew Zoey. She hadn’t met most of her regular commenters in real life, and they were all different ages, but despite that she felt like they’d become friends, because they all loved fashion design and sewing. People like Fashionsista gave her encouragement to go on when she felt like giving up. She didn’t want to lose all that, just because some people she didn’t know were being mean.

  “N-no,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”

  Her dad and Marcus exchanged glances.

  “What?” Zoey asked.

  “We’re not buying it,” Marcus said. “Come on, what is it?”

  There were pros and cons of having a family that knew you really well. Zoey didn’t want to tell her dad about the comments, so she had to come up with something else.

  “Oh, it’s just Spirit Week hasn’t been as much fun as I thought it would be, that’s all,” she said.

  “Why not?” Mr. Webber asked.

  Zoey told them about the hat prank. Marcus didn’t always read her blog posts, but she thought her dad would have seen it.

  “I’m pretty sure it was aimed at me, but Libby ended up going home a little early because she was so upset,” she said. “It was really unfair.”

  “There’s nothing fair about kids being mean to one another, honey,” her dad said.

  “I’ve been looking forward to Spirit Week so much,” Zoey said mournfully.

  “It’s not over yet,” Marcus reminded her.

  “What’s on tap for tomorrow?” her dad asked.

  “Backward Day. You have to wear your clothing back to front.”

  “That seems like it could be very uncomfortable,” Mr. Webber said.

  “Yeah, especially if you have to go to the bathroom in a hurry,” Marcus quipped.

  That got a giggle out of Zoey.

  “That’s why I designed a special dress that looks like it’s backward but isn’t!”

  “That’s my girl,” Mr. Webber said, smiling. “Always one step ahead of everyone.”

  She wasn’t one step ahead of the mean commenters, though. By the time she sat down to write her evening blog post, there were even more comments, some from the same users and some from even more new users.

  Zoey knew she was going to have to do something, but the problem was she didn’t know what. She thought about talking to her friends, but they hadn’t said anything about the comments, and since she knew they read her blog regularly, maybe that meant she was just overreacting.

  When she finished the blog post, Zoey went to her worktable to look over her outfit for the following day. It had a collar on it—backward, of course—but Zoey felt like it needed a little something extra to finish it off. She looked in her sewing box at her collection of ribbon and other trimmings, but nothing was speaking to her.

  Just when she was about to give up and go to bed, Zoey’s eyes fell on the little tin she used to store buttons.

  “That’s it!” she said, taking it out of the box. She sifted through the tin until she found four big brightly colored flat buttons. Taking a needle and thread, she sewed them onto the back of the dress.

  “Perfect,” Zoey said, observing her handiwork. It always made her feel good to find just the right touch to finish off her designs, like putting in the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

  She couldn’t let the people making bad comments take that away from her. But how could she stop them? Zoey decided she’d sleep on it, and maybe she’d figure something out by the morning.

  - - - - CHAPTER 4 - - - -

  Looking Forward to Dressing Backward!

  Spirit Week continues with Backward Day, and then tomorrow will be Decades Day! It’s backward to the future. . . . Get it? Anyhoo, I’ve made an outfit with a backward collar and buttons in the back instead of the front. Pretty crafty, huh? I’m going to wear a long string of beads down my back, although I’ll probably have to swing them to the front when I sit in class or else I’ll feel like the princess in “The Princess and the Pea,” with all those knobbly things distracting me.

  I love thinking about clothes being backward. It’s totally looc! (“cool” spelled backward). It makes me wonder about turning clothes sideways and upside down and inside out and even slantways (like the Wonkavator in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). How looc would that be?

  It’s nice to have a fun project to distract me from everything else going on. Life has been feeling pretty back to front at the moment, to tell you the truth. Spirit Week has felt more like Spiritless Week. But at least I’ve got the karaoke competition on Friday to look forward to. We’ve got a great dance routine worked out, thanks to Priti, our resident choreographer.

  Okay, making it a short and sweet post today. Hoping tomorrow will be sweet too.

  Usually Zoey loved checking her blog for comments in the morning before school—the comments from her readers gave her a boost of confidence before she started her day. But not this morning. Not since all the new users had started saying nasty things about her.

  This morning she opened her laptop hesitantly, afraid of what she was going to see.

  The first few comments were from her regular readers, telling her what a great job she’d done with her Backward Day outfit, which Zigzagger called “inspired” and SewingMama thought was “So backward, it’s forward thinking!”

  But then . . . there they were. More nasty comments from new Sew Zoey readers.

  That purple peace outfit looked like something a cat vomited up.

  That’s not a peace outfit. That’s a freak show outfit. Because Zoey is a freak.

  There were replies from Sew Zoey regulars saying that Zoey was absolutely not a freak and that the peace outfit was adorable. Maybe they gave Zoey courage. Maybe it was because she’d had a good night’s sleep. Or maybe she’d just had enough. She went to the blog administrator section of her blogging platform. After a little searching, she found out there was a way to block the usernames of the people who were posting the mean comments, so they couldn’t comment on Sew Zoey anymore.

  There. Done!

  Zoey felt better right away, like her blog was her own again. It felt like it was back to the fun, safe, community of friends it had been before. But still, she worried. What if someone believed the lies in those comments? And why did those people hate her blog and her clothes and her so much? They didn’t even know her!

  She’d always been excited to come home from school and check her blog, but now it filled her with dread. She was worrying about her blog problems when she bumped into Priti in the hallway at school.

  “Wow, Zo, you’re more mopey than my grandmother’s bassett hound,” Priti said. “Looks like you need a cheerleader, and I know just the person for the job—me!”

  With that, Priti gave a flamboyant leap, which ended in a dramatic pose, right in the middle of the crowded hallway. Zoey couldn’t help laughing. Priti didn’t mind if other students were giving her funny looks. She was just herself, and that was enough to cheer up Zoey.

  “Oh, you’ve got to see this!” Priti exclaimed. “I’ve come up with this amazing tap dance routine I could perform during the bridge part of our karaoke song.” She handed her books to Zoey. “Watch, and be amazed!”

  Zoey watched, along with a few other students who stopped to stare, as Priti performed a short tap dance routine in the hallway. Everyone clapped when Priti finished with a flourish of jazz hands and tapping feet.

  “That was amazing,” Zoey said to the now panting Priti. “But are you sure you want to take on something new? I’m having a hard time remembering the dance we’re doing for the rest of the song.”

  “It’ll be worth it.” Priti took her books back from Zoey. “But I still think we need something more to make absolutely sure we win. Wait! I know! Can you do something to make our Schoo
l Color Day outfits stand out for the karaoke competition?”

  Zoey thought for a moment, and then she remembered the fabric in the Holbrookes’ spare room closet. “I can make some fab accessories with that sparkly sequin material we found in your hat closet,” she said. “Why don’t I come home with you after school, and we can start working on them? We can practice the song at the same time.”

  Priti’s smile faded. “No . . . it’s okay. My mom and I can drive it over later.”

  “Why?” Zoey asked. “Maybe I can join you for one of your mom’s Indian fusion dinners! I’m still drooling over that calzone thing!”

  “No,” Priti insisted. “My parents aren’t . . . um . . . I mean, my dad has the flu.”

  Zoey was confused. Mr. Holbrooke seemed fine the other day when they were over at Priti’s house, and her friend hadn’t mentioned anything about anyone being sick until now. Maybe it was just one of those twenty-four-hour bugs, she thought.

  Priti continued, a little less flustered. “You know, I wouldn’t want you to catch any flu germs or anything. Especially before our big performance.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Zoey said, realizing that Priti didn’t seem to want her to come over. “Tell your dad I hope he feels better.”

  “Oh . . . sure!” Priti called over her shoulder as she rushed away down the hall, as if she were suddenly and desperately anxious to get to class.

  Zoey could see that Priti wasn’t acting like her usual upbeat self. Maybe Priti’s dad really was sick, but it also seemed like Priti didn’t want to talk. Zoey wondered if Priti would confide in her soon or if it was time to ask her if she needed to talk. She wished there was some kind of friendship manual, with all the rules written down like sewing patterns, step by step by step.

  Zoey was still thinking about Priti when she passed by Ivy, Bree, and Shannon in the hallway between classes.

  “Hey, Zoey,” Shannon said, waving to her. “How’d you do your hair like that?”

  Zoey had done her hair in a backward—or, well, upside down—French braid, in honor of Backward Day. She spoke cautiously, bracing for a snide remark to whatever answer she gave. “Why?”