Meanicures

by Catherine Clark

The first bell started to ring.

  “You’ll need to do a makeup broadcast tomorrow with a public retraction of those comments,” Mr. Brooks told Olivia.

  “A re-whation?”

  “Retraction,” he said. “It means apology. It means you take back what you said in a very public way.”

  Olivia let out an annoyed sigh. “Really? You think that’s a good idea?”

  Mr. Brooks raised his eyebrows. “It’s a very good idea, Olivia. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay, but I think you’re being too sensitive,” she muttered as we headed out the door.

  “And another thing,” I said. “What was with saying you were in charge of the club? I’m working with you. We’re co-chairs,” I added. “ ‘Co’ means two, as in cooperating.”

  “I know what it means,” Olivia said. “I may be spacey but I’m not stupid. Why, what did I say?”

  “You said, ‘I’m in charge.’ ”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s dumb. You’re not in charge. We both are.”

  I threw up my hands. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

  The second bell rang just then, and I was glad to slip down the hall into algebra class. How could I argue with Oblivia and win?

  “Madison? Madison! Wait up!” Cassidy called after me.

  I stopped and glanced back at her. “I don’t want to be late to class,” I said.

  “This will only take a sec,” she said.

  True. Her insults usually didn’t take long. Here it comes, I thought. “Yeah?” I asked.

  “You know I’m having my big Halloween party Thursday night, right?” Cassidy asked.

  “Um … yeah,” I said slowly, remembering how she’d uninvited me in front of the entire middle school cheerleading squad on that humiliating day a week ago.

  “I really hope you can come,” said Cassidy.

  “Really? But you said—”

  “Yes, definitely,” she said. “Tradition’s tradition, right?”

  “Right,” I said slowly. “I guess.” But had tradition meant anything to her lately? I didn’t know what to think of her invitation, but I guessed I’d show up and find out. What else would I do on Halloween? “Can Olivia and Taylor come, too?”

  “Of course. What a ridiculous question,” she scoffed. “Like they wouldn’t be invited?”

  Either she was starting to have a split personality … or maybe our little ceremony had worked some magic, after all. Had she forgotten that we had all been uninvited to the party?

  First the stink bomb, now this!

  Chapter 10

  “Who are you supposed to be?” I asked. I had just opened the door to Olivia, who was wearing a green dress, green tights, and a pair of old pink Ugg boots. She had a purse slung across her shoulder, with fake arrows—actually, on closer inspection, they were pens with feathers glued to the tops—sticking out of it.

  “Robin Hood. I steal from the rich and give to the poor!” Olivia came inside and closed the door behind her. She looked like a fairy that had gotten kicked out of fairy school. “Really, I just needed to find a costume that I could wear green tights with, because those are the only tights I have right now without holes, and this was all I could come up with. I look silly, I know.”

  Taylor laughed. “Kind of. Then again, look at me. This costume was my little cousin’s last year, but since I’m so short I can wear it. There are some advantages to not growing tall.” She twirled around in her Snow White costume, waving her arms in a delicate, graceful, Snow-Whitish way. She wore a black wig that made her hair look like a plastic shell, and a white headband.

  I’d improvised at the last minute, turning myself into a wicked witch with a black cape, a pointed witch’s hat, lots of green face makeup, and a carefully positioned fake wart on my nose. I was wearing a wig from my mother’s testing days—I think it had been tested on about a thousand times, because the long black hair was as matted as a shaggy dog’s.

  “Has anyone figured out why Cassidy reinvited us?” Taylor leaned over to fix her shoe, nearly losing her headband and her wig. “I still say they’re setting us up for something.”

  “And I still say you’re paranoid,” I said. “She seemed genuine when she asked me. And we’ve always gone to her party. Why would we stop now?”

  “Duh. Because she told us flat out last week that she didn’t have space for us,” said Taylor.

  “She must have recalculated. So. Is everyone ready?” I asked.

  We picked up our treat bags for collecting candy after the party, and stepped outside into the cool October night. “I can’t believe it’s nice out,” said Olivia. “This is so unexpected.”

  I gazed up at the clear sky, and the nearly full rising moon.

  “Remember last year? It rained and we were completely drenched by the time we got to the party,” Taylor said. “Which was not a good look for a girl band.”

  “Especially not when everyone tried to get us to sing,” I said. “Nightmare.” I remembered how Cassidy had started a chant, demanding that we sing. We weren’t planning on singing. We’d only dressed like we were.

  Once we’d escaped that threat, we’d been challenged to play the Rock Band video game, and with Olivia on drums, we didn’t stand a chance of winning. So why exactly were we so eager to go back?

  “This time there’s nothing they can do to embarrass us,” Olivia declared. “No more group costumes.”

  Taylor laughed. “That just means we’ll get singled out on our own!”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said.

  “Why not?” asked Taylor.

  “I just have a feeling. I can’t explain it,” I said. “Of course, I’m not dressed like a miniature Snow White.”

  We all started laughing so hard that we couldn’t stop. We half walked and half skipped over to Cassidy’s house, which was only about four blocks away. This seemed so normal, going to Cassidy’s for Halloween, like I had every year since I was eight. But a week ago, if someone had told me we’d end up there this Halloween, I’d have said they were crazy.

  So who’s crazy now? I wondered. Me for going after I was disinvited, or Cassidy, for re-inviting me?

  As we neared her house, I could see plastic skeleton heads poking onto the ends of Cassidy’s front-yard fence posts, and cobwebs draped on bushes and trees. A steady line of guests was filing in, while Cassidy’s mother, Amber, was standing outside and handing candy to smaller kids who were trick-or-treating.

  “Whoa. Popular much?” asked Taylor.

  “Hey, Madison!” Cassidy’s mom greeted me. “Taylor, Olivia—it’s so nice to see you guys here. Thanks for coming!”

  “We wouldn’t miss it,” I said with a smile, thinking, We almost missed it, but your daughter did a 180-degree turn.

  We had just walked into the house when Cassidy came to greet us at the door saying, “Welcome, I’m so glad you could come!”

  It was like looking into a mirror—a cracked mirror, actually.

  Cassidy was standing there dressed in the exact same costume as mine: black cape, green face, black wig, pointed black hat, carefully placed nose wart. “Should one of us have been Glinda, the good witch?” I asked.

  Cassidy put her hand over her mouth. “OMG, Madison. Embarrassing.”

  “For you,” I said boldly.

  Cassidy took a step back as if this hadn’t occurred to her, but now that it had, it was crushing her. “How did you get your skin that green?” she asked as she let us into the house.

  I waited for the insult to follow. Like: it almost matches the way your hair looked that day. Or: I didn’t know you were part alien.

  Instead, she said with a sigh, “You’re so good at makeup.”

  That was news to me. “I am?” That wasn’t what she’d thought last week.

  “Yeah. I could never get mine to look as good as yours. Do you think you could help make mine a little better?” she asked.

  “Sure, maybe l
ater …,” I said, edging away. She was acting a little bit crazy. I didn’t know what was going on with her.

  “Help yourself to chips, candy, and punch!” Cassidy said. “Plus there are candy apples, caramel apples, bobbing for apples …”

  “I thought this was a Halloween party, not an apple party,” said Olivia.

  Cassidy gave an embarrassed laugh. “I didn’t realize. Overkill. How stupid of me.” She shook her head. “Excuse me for a sec. Mom!” she yelled, marching outside.

  We walked through the entryway into the large living room. Bowls of food and punch were set out on a table in front of the kitchen. Dozens of kids from school were milling around, snacking and talking, but it was hard to recognize anyone at first because of the costumes.

  A machine sent cloudy wafts of fake smoke across the room, while cans of soda were set out in bowls of swirling dry ice. Strings of black and purple lights dangled over the breakfast bar, while orange and black streamers draped from the ceiling. Every once in a while, a cackling, maniacal laugh could be heard from the stereo speakers. On the coffee table beside me was a vat of disgusting-looking spaghetti brains.

  Everything seemed different from the last time I was here—and not just because it was Halloween. The sofa, the paint colors, everything about the room had somehow changed. When was the last time I’d been here?

  “See that vampire over there?” Taylor pointed to the bobbing apples. “I think that’s Hunter.”

  “Doesn’t he realize he’ll lose all his face makeup if he does that?” I said, trying to ignore the fact that he looked cool as a vampire because I still hated him.

  Then I realized Cassidy was walking over to join him. Her green makeup might soon be swimming with the apples. I kind of wanted to see that.

  While I snacked on candy corn and peanut mix, I saw Cameron dressed as a Red Sox player; there were a couple of lobsters, a waitress, two people dressed as a matching pair of L.L.Bean boots, and lots and lots more vampires.

  “Oh, hi, guys!”

  I peered at the tiger standing in front of us and recognized Kayley.

  “A tiger? Shouldn’t you be a kitten?” asked Olivia.

  Kayley’s whiskers drooped. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing.” Olivia shrugged. “You’re short and not that tough, that’s all.”

  I laughed, amazed that Olivia had the nerve to say that. We didn’t usually say things like that to the mean girls; they said them to us. Meanwhile, Kayley was falling all over herself complimenting us on our costumes, which I knew were not that great. What was going on?

  “Is that thing even attached?” Taylor asked. She reached for the wire tail bobbing on the back of Kayley’s costume and pulled. The tail came off in her hands.

  “Hey!” Kayley said. “Why did you do that?” She grabbed for the wiry tail, but Taylor draped it around her neck, like a scarf.

  “It’s no big deal. You’re just a Maine coon cat now,” said Taylor.

  “I think you mean a Manx,” Olivia said. “Those are the ones without tails. Remember Charlie? He was a foster cat we had for a couple of months?”

  I shrugged. It was impossible to keep track of all of Olivia’s pets, especially the ones her family fostered.

  Instead of being angry about the tail thing, all Kayley said was, “I totally admire you for the way you take in and help abandoned animals.”

  “You do?” asked Olivia. “You never mentioned that before.”

  “Before what?” asked Kayley.

  Alexis walked up, dressed in a mummy costume. “Hi, guys!”

  “Hi, mummy,” said Olivia, snickering under her breath.

  Alexis held out a caramel apple on a small paper plate to Taylor. “Here, Snow White, I brought you an apple. But it’s not poisoned, I promise. It’s delicious.”

  “Why would I trust you?” asked Taylor, refusing to accept it.

  Alexis looked genuinely hurt. “Well, um, do you want something else?”

  “No thanks,” said Taylor.

  “Where’s your tail?” Alexis asked Kayley. “What happened?”

  “It, um, fell off?” said Kayley.

  It was so weird to see them like this. They suddenly had no confidence. At all.

  “You guys look so cute,” Alexis said. “Love the fake arrows,” she told Olivia. “And your makeup is priceless!” she said to me, gushing with compliments.

  “Your costume must have taken so long to do,” Taylor said to her.

  “Not really. There’s a couple of long pieces, that’s all,” said Alexis. “And they attach here, with this clip—”

  “So if I just pull here … wouldn’t it all come unraveled?” asked Olivia.

  “You wouldn’t,” said Alexis.

  But Olivia already had. The strips of cotton unfurled quickly and dropped to the floor, leaving Alexis standing in the middle of the party in just a goofy pink Care Bears T-shirt, and a pair of black gym shorts that looked a size too small. It was almost as bad as being caught in her underwear.

  “Ack!” she screamed. She tried to gather the gauze strips around her waist, but she tripped on them as she fled up the stairs. I thought I saw a couple of camera flashes behind me, like someone was taking her picture.

  “Maybe someone will put that on the Payneston Peeps,” I said to Olivia and Taylor, laughing. “Come on, we’d better get out of here.”

  “Why? This is fun,” said Taylor, grinning from ear to ear. “In fact, I’ve never had so much fun at one of Cassidy’s parties.”

  “I know, right?” Olivia agreed.

  We helped ourselves to more treats—Cassidy’s mom always had the best collection of Halloween candy—and wandered around, saying hi to people and checking out costumes. We skipped bobbing for apples and headed straight for the Scream movie marathon, then after fifteen minutes of that, raced back to the living room when we heard our favorite song.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something sort of “blah” about this year’s party. Almost like it had never really gotten started.

  “The party’s kind of peaked, don’t you think? Seems like people are leaving,” I said. “We don’t want to be the last ones to go.”

  We started toward the door when suddenly Cassidy reached out and grabbed my sleeve. “You’re not leaving, are you? The party’s just getting started!” Her green makeup was slightly streaked, and it looked like she’d been crying. Then I remembered she’d gone over to bob for apples.

  Behind her was a group of eighth-grade cheerleaders whom I didn’t know all that well.

  “Can you believe it?” I said to them. “Cassidy copied my costume. Again. In fact, she’s always copying me. Of course, our costumes are not exactly the same. Hers is lame, mine is not.”

  Cassidy’s forehead creased in confusion. “How can I have the lamer costume when we have the same costume?”

  “Have you seen your face?” I said. “Your wart is drooping.” I reached out and plucked it off the end of her nose. “See?”

  The other cheerleaders started cracking up and were teasing her as we walked away. As we headed out the door, Amber was walking in.

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked.

  A group of high school students was out on the sidewalk in front of Cassidy’s house. I noticed one of the boys was carrying a carton of eggs.

  “Hey—can I have some of those eggs?” I called after him. I glanced back at the front stoop to make sure Cassidy’s mom was still inside.

  “Sure. Well, wait. How much are eggs a dozen? Couple bucks, right? How many do you want?”

  “Four, I guess,” I said.

  “So, give me two bucks for four.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I have them. You don’t. If you don’t want any …”

  “Fine.” I pulled two wrinkled dollar bills out of the pocket of the jeans I was wearing under my costume.

  I’d never made a deal like this before. It felt kind of like a spy movie: The Egg Ultimatum.
>
  We each took an egg from the carton, then I took a second one. “On the count of three,” I said, aiming at Cassidy’s front door. “One, two—”

  Cassidy opened the door.

  “Three!” Eggs sailed through the night air like shooting stars. Or, rather, falling meteors. One hit a tree. One splattered on the front steps. One hit the living room window. And one hit Cassidy’s hat. Egg yolk dripped down over the brim onto her cape and her face and neck, in gooey strings. Oh, no! Oh, no, Madison!” Taylor cried.

  “Sh!” I said.

  “I can’t believe you just did that!” said Olivia.

  “Who’s out there?” Cassidy called. I saw her wipe her face with the sleeve of her cape. “Ew!” she screeched.

  We took off down the street, laughing. Maybe it was just my costume, but I was definitely feeling wicked.

  Chapter 11

  When I got home later that evening after trick-or-treating, Mom stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, like an angry cowgirl getting ready to draw.

  And by draw, I don’t mean art.

  By cowgirl, I mean she was dressed like one for Halloween. She had on a leather vest and chaps. Her cowgirl hat was a size too small and perched on top of her head like a decoration. She didn’t look like herself at all.

  “Madison? Care to explain?” she asked.

  David was standing behind her, looking slightly awkward in a matching cowboy getup that also seemed a size too small, like mom’s hat. David’s not a small person—he’s tall, big, and burly. He and Mom met when he was helping build this house for us.

  “Amber just called and said their house had been egged. How did this happen?”

  “Um …”

  “Egged by you, I should have said. She heard you, Madison. She heard your voice, and she heard you laughing. You hit Cassidy! I think you know what you need to do now.”

  I do? I thought.

  “Call their house and apologize!” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “What? Me? After everything Cassidy’s done to me, I have to apologize for this one little teensy thing that is actually a very common prank on Halloween?” I asked. Of course, we’d done some other things, too, but if Mom didn’t know, I wouldn’t tell her.