Luv Ya Bunches

by Lauren Myracle

home Wednesday afternoon. She’s buzzing, that’s how psyched she is! First, chatting with Milla in the computer lab went awesomely. Awesometatiously awesomely. It was as if the old Milla from Pioneer Camp came back from the dead and took over the body of the Popular Milla from school. It was still Popular Milla’s body—authentic Greek chitōn paired with glittery, green, completely inauthentic Greek scarf with little pink flowers on the ends—but with the real Milla inside.

  And this time, unlike yesterday on the playground, the real Milla didn’t stare at her sneakers and say, “Not now.” This time, the real Milla smiled.

  Sure, the dingleberry comment maybe wasn’t Katie-Rose’s shining moment. But it wasn’t a disaster.

  Oh, well, dingleberries happen, Katie-Rose thinks, and giggles. That would make a great bumper sticker.

  And then . . . then! Katie-Rose filmed all of the fifth graders’ Greek Week presentations, and she got some fabulous footage, she just knows it. Like with Natalia and the penith? Oh. My. Gosh.

  Katie-Rose should probably spend some time editing the footage before posting it on BlahBlahSomethingSomething.com, but she’s got to prepare for Potato Olympics tomorrow. Greek Week is ker-azy! But fun. Anyway, she can edit it later—maybe add some effects, maybe do certain scenes in old-timey black and white—and then replace the unedited version with the edited version. Or! Ooo, ooo, even better! She can leave the original footage up and title it “Greek Week, Original and Uncut.” The edited version can be “Greek Week, the Collector’s Edition.”

  Or maybe the uncut version should be the collector’s version? Because don’t collectors collect the versions of movies that are rarer and less mainstream? Hmm, and technically, if she uses “Greek Week” in the title, she should incorporate footage from more than just today . . .

  So many possibilities, so little time . . . especially with a potato to train. Her mom (good mommy!) bought a bag of potatoes at Publix, and Katie-Rose plans to select the biggest, strongest, and most able of the bunch. She will name him Potato von Schnitzel-Fritzle, though he will go by Carl. He will be competing in the luge.

  So. Yes. She’ll upload what she’s got so far, and it’ll be . . . a work in progress. Of course she’ll insist that Yasaman check it out RIGHT AWAY, because all great filmmakers need feedback in order to perfect their art.

  She connects her video camera to her laptop and transfers her raw footage to an iMovie file. Then she logs on to BlahBlahSomethingSomething.com (good golly-wolly, they have got to rename the site), and goes to the page called Movie Madness. Katie-Rose came up with that name, and she thinks it’s quite fab, thanks very much. There, she clicks on Upload Your Video Now!

  A message comes up that makes Katie-Rose laugh out loud.

  Yes, you, Katie-Rose! Yasaman has typed. Follow these simple instructions, and in one to ten minutes, your masterpiece will be viewable by the world! Or at least by me . . . assuming I figure out what this wacky “internet” business is all about.

  +twists finger in cheek+ “What’s the internet, Katie-Rose?” (JK! I’m just teasing you! You know that, right?)

  Katie-Rose likes being teased by Yasaman, because Yasaman teases out of love. And Katie-Rose is pretty darn impressed with the ease of Yasaman’s setup. She hits Browse to find her footage, and then she clicks Upload. Easy-peasy, simple as pie.

  Before jogging downstairs to spend some quality time with Carl, Katie-Rose does one last thing. She sends Yasaman a special “blah-blah” email telling her to go to the Movie Madness page and see what she thinks.

  i haven’t watched it myself, so you’ll be the first to screen it, she types. oh, and i recommend sitting down, cuz it’s going to be *epic*.

  gave Milla Tally the Turtle. She had plenty of opportunities—so why didn’t she do it?

  And now the school day is over, and everyone has gone home, or to gymastics or math wizards or whatever. Violet’s biting her nails and watching iCarly, though she’s unable to keep up with the plot. As for Modessa, she’s probably at her “Deceit, Guile, and Trickery” class, taught by that Greek chick, Apate.

  Ha ha, Violet thinks nervously after coming up with that bit of wit. Don’t be dumb.

  But the question remains: Why didn’t Modessa return Tally?

  sips from a teeny glass of Turkish apple tea, which her mom buys at Akmarket, since it’s not sold at Safeway or Publix. She thinks, and not for the first time, that Starbucks should start offering Turkish apple tea, because it is so good and not all that different from the Red Passion iced tea they serve. It’s just better.

  Maybe she’ll write a blog post on apple tea after she watches Katie-Rose’s video. Katie-Rose’s epic video, that is. Tee hee. Katie-Rose cracks her up.

  Come on, come on, she thinks, watching the spinning circle that shows the video is loading. It would be cool if she could figure out a way to make that circle less generic and more exciting. Like a hopping frog, maybe? Hop hop hop until the video has been streamed and is ready to view?

  Ooo, yes, here we go, she thinks, as the static image of Natalia in her Greek horse-riding costume comes to life. Sound blares from the computer, lots of chattering background chaos that sounds exactly like the real, live, chattering background chaos Yasaman hears every day at school. And here it is on her computer!

  Yasaman clicks the Full-screen button, and Natalia, gnawing on her lip behind the cage of her enormous headgear, expands until she’s practically lifesize. Yasaman jerks back, then remembers it’s just a video and leans in again.

  “The life of a typical tween,” Katie-Rose says, her voice overlaying the footage of Natalia typing furiously on her laptop. “A good student—me, for example—would have done her report before the actual moment of the presentations. Alas. I see nothing in this young girl’s future save heartbreak and a lifetime dependency on Tums.”

  Oh, Katie-Rose, Yasaman thinks, giggling. She takes another sip of tea.

  “Let’s peek in on some others, shall we?” Katie-Rose says, off-screen. The camera pans to Katie-Rose’s friend, Max, who is sitting cross-legged and slumpy, his stomach hanging over his dark green shorts. Katie-Rose tsks.

  “Max has been eating too many cheese puffs,” she narrates. “Max is getting a tub. Now, a healthy eater—like me, for example . . . well, to be honest, I eat cheese puffs, too.”

  Yasaman rolls her eyes. Plus, Max is just Max, and he doesn’t really have a tub. No more than Yasaman herself does.

  “. . . fortunate to be blessed with the metabolism of my Chinese forebearers,” Katie-Rose is saying as she swings the camera in a wide arc to capture more of what’s going on. Yasaman gets a kick out of all the costumes, some awesome and some awful—and . . . oh, look, there’s Milla by the water fountain. She’s worried about where to sit. That’s what her expression says. Her white chitōn is super-realistic, though.

  The video zooms in on the food table at the far end of the commons, where there’s a tray of baklava—Yasaman never got around to trying any—and a bowl of sliced and sectioned pomegranates. Katie-Rose zooms in tight on one of the pomegranate sections, so that every juice-filled seed stands out in high resolution, like a cluster of deep red jewels.

  Nice shot, Yasaman thinks. She’s proud of her friend’s artistic eye.

  Katie-Rose is now speculating about the metabolism of any ancient Greek forebearers she might have had (“. . . the gyro is a delicacy I certainly enjoy, though not its slimy cousin, the olive . . .”) but Yasaman is more interested in the slices of life she’s treated to as Katie-Rose pulls back from the pomegranate and closes in on Chance, who’s actually dressed as an olive. Ha, Yasaman thinks. How did she miss that during the actual presentations? Preston, who’s next to Chance, is poking Chance with a long wooden staff, and Chance doesn’t even feel it.

  And there’s Carmen Glover, who never picks her nose, leaning into her cupped hand and picking away. She withdraws her finger, glances furtively at her classmates, and—

  Ew, Yasaman thinks. Carmen, no. She makes a note
to herself: Stay away from the area rug with the geometric patterns. Do not ever sit on the area rug with the geometric patterns.

  “Yasaman!” Yasaman’s mother calls from the kitchen. “I need your help, küçüğüm!” Küçüğüm means “my sweet girl,” and Yasaman likes being her mother’s sweet girl. But right now, she’d rather keep being the fortunate first person to screen Katie-Rose’s epic video.

  “Just a minute, Ana!” she calls.

  On the computer screen, something interesting is happening. The shot shows the beat-up sofa where Medusa—oh, oops, now Yasaman’s doing it herself! That is so bad, she tells herself. Modessa, Modessa, MODESSA.

  The shot is of Modessa dropping down onto her special sofa, since sitting elsewhere would mean sitting on the floor, horror of horrors. Quin is with her, of course.

  “Observe the cruel Medusa, made of terror,” Katie-Rose intones. “To her right, her harpy Quin. I wouldn’t get too close, my loyal viewers, for if you do—”

  “Now, please, Yasaman!” her mother calls. “I want to make katmer for your baba. I need you to chop the onions!”

  Yasaman rises from her desk, keeping her eyes glued on her computer. “Yes, Ana! I’m coming, Ana!”

  Yasaman has missed some of Katie-Rose’s commentary, but now Katie-Rose seems to be addressing an actual person rather than her loyal viewers.

  “Sure, I can do that,” she’s saying. “There’s a macro setting, see?”

  On the screen, the image jumps to a much enlarged shot of Modessa’s bottom, and huh, there’s a hand diving beneath it. It’s Modessa’s hand, as it turns out, since it’s attached to Modessa’s arm, which is attached to Modessa’s body.

  “What about this button?” a male voice says. Yasaman recognizes that voice. It’s Mr. Emerson. “What does it do?”

  “Oh,” Katie-Rose says. “That’s how you turn off autofocus, if for whatever reason you need to take manual control.”

  From what Yasaman can gather, Katie-Rose was no longer looking at what she was filming. The image of Modessa’s bottom jerks, and now it’s at a skewed angle. Or maybe Modessa’s bottom itself is skewed?

  Yep, it sure is. Modessa is for some reason hiking up one bottom cheek, and that hand of hers is fishing around underneath as if something’s poking her. Maybe a tack! Or—ew, yucky!—maybe one of Carmen Glover’s crusty boogers, so dried-up that it’s like a hard, spiky sea urchin, hee hee hee.

  Oh, this is classic, Yasaman thinks. Katie-Rose is going to die and go to paradise.

  “Yas-a-man!” her mother calls. Her voice is louder than it was. Uh-oh, she’s tromping up the stairs. “If I see that you’re on the computer . . .”

  Ack! Yasaman knows she should turn it off, she needs to turn it off this second, but Modessa has found something. She’s closing her fingers around it . . . she’s pulling it out as her bottom cheek sinks back on the cushion . . .

  “No,” Yasaman’s mother says, reaching past her and snapping off the monitor. She jabs the power button, too, and Yasaman’s computer makes a sad whirrrr as it shuts down. “No more computer for you, kiz.”

  “But Ana—”

  Her mother is firm. “Not for the rest of the night. Argue, and I will take away tomorrow’s privilege as well. Now, come. You have hamur to roll out—and the onions.”

  Yasaman casts one last longing look at her computer, whose screen is as blank as an unseeing eye. Then she follows her mother to the kitchen, where the onions await.

  Camilla can’t shake the feeling that V—no, Violet—is staring at her. And the reason she can’t shake the feeling that Violet’s staring at her is because Violet is staring at her. There! See? Just like the first day of school. Violet was staring right at her, and then she jerked her eyes away the second Milla met her gaze.

  But why? Weren’t they . . . kinda . . . friends now? Yesterday during the Greek presentations, they had so much fun. Milla was expecting Violet to be full of fun again this morning. To tell the truth, she was counting on it. She’d even prepared a “bewitching girdle” remark to toss out oh-so-casually, if the opportunity presented itself.

  Stop staring at me like that, Milla mentally tells Violet. You can talk to me if you want. You can come over and use your silly voice and then grin in that way you have, where all of a sudden your face changes and you look full of mischief. But stop staring at me like something’s wrong.

  Milla doesn’t like it when things go wrong . . . but the problem is, there are so many things—at school, at home, at Macy’s shoe department, even—that can go wrong.

  Tainted peanut butter. Flying hot tubs. Lost turtles.

  She’s doing it again, Milla’s radar tells her. And sure enough, a peek from beneath a swoop of hair confirms it: Violet’s light-brown eyes, almost amber, are locked on hers. They’re stunning, Violet’s eyes, but right now they make Milla think of aliens. Has an alien possessed Violet, and that’s why her stare is so intense?

  Being possessed by an alien, that definitely counts as something going wrong. And aliens could exist. Milla doesn’t doubt it for an instant. The world is rarely as it seems: There could be aliens scuttling like cockroaches underneath anybody’s skin, operating that person’s body like a robot, and no one would know it except another alien.

  Violet is not an alien, she tells herself firmly, and she startles herself by abruptly rising from her desk, striding to Violet, and saying, “What?!”

  Violet is startled, too. Her almost-amber eyes widen, and she says, “What do you mean, what?”

  “Why are you staring at me?” Milla asks.

  “I’m staring at you?”

  Milla cocks her head. “Do I look weird? Do I . . . have food in my teeth?” She knows she doesn’t. She is very thorough about brushing her teeth before school. But what else could it be?

  Violet blushes. “Sorry. No. I don’t know why I was staring.”

  “Oh,” Milla says. “Well . . . are you mad at me?”

  “No! Why would I be?”

  “I don’t know,” Milla says, but she feels better hearing Violet say out loud that she isn’t.

  “Well, I’m not,” Violet says.

  “Good.”

  “Are you . . . mad at me?” Violet asks.

  Suddenly, this whole exchange strikes Milla as funny. “No. Why would I be?”

  “Good question,” Violet says. She smiles. It’s a tentative smile, but a smile nonetheless, and it makes her look so much less like a possible victim of alien possession.

  “So . . . um . . . how’re things?” Violet asks. She draws her thumb to her mouth and raises her eyebrows, like she truly wants to know.

  Milla shrugs. “Good. You?”

  “Oh, I’m, uh . . . I’m nothing. I’m great. I was just wondering how you are.” She sits up straighter, looking more and more like herself with every passing second. “Any exciting new developments in your life?”

  At the front of the room, Mr. Emerson has begun his let’s-get-started routine, which involves sitting on the front edge of his desk and clearing his throat.

  “Does having a pet potato count?” Milla says.

  Violet grins. It’s the quick-flashing mischievous grin, and it makes Milla happy. “Hmm. Does it do any tricks?”

  “Take your seats, please,” Mr. Emerson says. “Max, you’ve sharpened enough pencils.”

  “But—” Max says.

  “Sit down. You, too, Milla.”

  Milla says bye to Violet by making a goofy expression, then glances over at Max, who’s having a struggle abandoning the pencil sharpener. Milla knows from Pioneer Camp that Max is Katie-Rose’s neighbor, and that they’re friends. Also, based on Katie-Rose’s anecdotes, she knows he’s a nice guy. A little . . . odd, but nice.

  “Max,” Mr. Emerson warns.

  Max looks pained. He’s got a whole handful of pencils, and less than half of them have sharp tips. One of the unsharpened ones is worse than simply unsharpened. It’s broken off at the top with no lead showing at all, and Milla kno
ws how disconcerting that is.

  He holds it up so that Mr. Emerson can see, and says, beseechingly, “Can I just . . .?”

  Mr. Emerson regards Max as if he is a trial. Milla knows he doesn’t mean it, though. “All right, Max. Sharpen it and sit down.”

  As Milla slides into her seat, she ducks her head to hide her smile. She (secretly, privately, totally confidentially) thinks Max is kinda cute.

  potato and come to the front of the class,” Ms. Perez says to her class. Katie-Rose thinks she looks really cute today. She’s wearing a funky turquoise dress with diagonal ruffles along the bottom, and since it’s a dress and not pants, no meanies could trash-talk about her . . . undergarments . . . even if they wanted to.

  Ms. Perez scans the room. “Who would like to go first?”

  Katie-Rose’s hand shoots up. In an extremely bizarre twist, Modessa’s does, too. Katie-Rose doesn’t get it. Why does Modessa want to go first? Modessa never wants to go first. Modessa never wants to go, period.

  “Modessa,” Ms. Perez says, surprised. “Terrific.”

  Modessa rises from her desk and saunters to the back of the room, where each fifth grader has a hook for jackets and a cubby for backpacks, messenger bags, and random other stuff. The cubbies are organized alphabetically, so Katie-Rose’s cubby is in between Yasaman’s (yay!) and Modessa’s (un-yay).

  It takes Modessa a long time to get out her potato. Katie-Rose shares a look with Yasaman. She even has time to whisper, “Hey, did you like my video?”

  Yasaman nods. “I didn’t get to watch it all, but what I saw, yeah. It’s awesome.”

  “Modessa?” Ms. Perez prompts.

  Katie-Rose cranes her neck over her shoulder. Why is Modessa standing so near Katie-Rose’s cubby? Step away, Katie-Rose says in her head. She doesn’t want Medusa germs jumping onto her stuff.

  “Ready,” Modessa says, pivoting on her heel and giving Ms. Perez a smile. Ms. Perez, who doesn’t know Modessa made fun of her underwear, smiles back.

  Potato in hand, Modessa goes to the front of the room. “This is Tate-Tate,” she announces. Tate-Tate has blue magic marker eyes and inch-long black eyelashes. Her lips—it’s clearly a girl—are pursed and pink. “Tate-Tate is going to compete in ladies gymnastics.”