Jocelyn. If I were younger, like you, Lou, I probably just could have turned and run home and gotten away with it. Mr. and Mrs. Perkins would have just shaken their heads like What a kooky kid. Or if I were older, like Mom, maybe it wouldn’t have been weird for me to say something like “It sounds like they’re busy; I’ll come back another time” and gracefully turn and walk back down the front path.
But I’m not in elementary school. And I’m not an adult, or even a teenager yet. I’m in the middle. And I couldn’t think of what to do, so I just said, “Uh, okay,” and started walking toward Layla’s room.
As I climbed the stairs, my stomach did that flippy thing it does when you’re approaching the top of a hill on a roller coaster and you’re wondering how bad the drop is going to be. But roller coasters are way more fun than this was.
Layla’s bedroom door was closed, and I could hear laughing over the music. They were listening to the score of Layla’s latest favorite Broadway musical, Scribble. I knocked on the door.
“YOU MAY ENTER,” Layla said in this ghoulish voice we use sometimes when we’re goofing around. I’d always thought of it as one of our special private jokes. As I heard another kid cracking up in response, I realized I was wrong.
I pushed the door open slowly. “Hey,” I said when I saw Layla sitting on her bed.
“Oh. Gus. Hey,” she said. Not exactly the warm welcome I’d been hoping for. “I thought you were my mom. We baked cookies, and she said she’d bring them up here when they’re done.”
She looked like the wicked queen in a Disney movie. Her eyelids were caked with glittery magenta shadow, and she had dark streaks of red on her cheeks. The girl sitting on the floor in front of Layla’s bed fiddling with her phone—Jocelyn—looked the same, except her eye shadow was green.
“Oh, hey, this is Jocelyn,” Layla said, like she’d just realized she should probably introduce two people in her bedroom who were complete strangers to each other. “Jocelyn, this is Gus.”
Jocelyn looked up from her phone. “Hey,” she said, then went back to scrolling through a song list.
“What’s up?” Layla asked. “You don’t usually come over this late on a school night.”
It was true; I didn’t. But why was it weird for me to visit this late on a school night, and not Jocelyn? Were they becoming friends like the Huggers, who spent every minute together and had school-night sleepovers? When they’d known each other for, like, a month, and Layla and I had known each other for most of our lives?
Suddenly I couldn’t imagine asking Layla when she wanted to have a sleepover. Not in front of Jocelyn.
“I just wanted to tell you I can’t text right now, so if you need anything, call our home phone.”
“What happened to your phone?” Layla asked.
“Long story.”
“Ooh, here it is!” Jocelyn tapped the screen of her phone and jumped off the bed to turn Layla’s speakers up. “This is the song I wanted you to hear!”
A chorus of peppy teenage voices started bubbling out of the speakers. I knew that sound from somewhere.
“Wait…is this Spoiler Alert?” I asked. Layla hated Spoiler Alert as much as I did. We always made gagging sounds and skipped to the next song any time we heard them. I’d been wanting to tell her about how they were Heidi Carruthers’s favorite band, because that was evidence of how awful the Addison-Heidi-Marcy trio was. It was one of the topics of conversation on my mental list for the sleepover that I now wondered when we would ever have.
“YES!” Jocelyn squealed. “I love them. My mom said maybe we can go see them next time they tour. I would DIE.”
I looked at Layla. She was just looking at the floor, tracing a flower petal on her rug with her big toe. I knew she didn’t dare make eye contact with me. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t saying anything. I mean, Spoiler Alert? UGH.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m gonna go do homework.”
“Okay, see ya,” Layla said.
As I was heading down the stairs, she called out, “I’ll text you later.”
I was so eager to be gone from there that I didn’t bother turning around to remind her that she couldn’t.
Silent-lunch seating in the Meridian cafeteria is no joke. After the Binaca incident, Mr. Smeed consulted with the lunch monitors and they made a chart that reflected which kids they thought would be least likely to enjoy each other’s company in the cafeteria.
Our cafeteria tables are small, and usually they’re pushed together to make longer tables where big groups of kids can sit. But for silent lunch, the cafeteria staff separate these little tables and put just four kids—two girls and two boys—at each one. I guess they figure that will be less fun for us than a table of all boys or all girls? This shows you how grown-ups think.
At any rate, on the first day of assigned lunch, it was clear that the Map of Misery was a success. All up and down our row, you could see kids approaching their designated tables with feelings ranging from uncertainty to dread to outright terror.
My particular table, table 4, was empty. I wasn’t sure which would be worse: being the last person or the first person to arrive at your table. I plunked down my bag lunch and waited to see who my cellmates would be. I figured they must be in line to buy school lunch, because I was still alone, debating whether to start eating or pretend to focus on something else, like my shoelaces. Or the one tiny white dot on my fingernail.
But just then another lunch-from-home person approached my table. It was Tyler Peterson, the only kid besides Heidi who hadn’t been part of the Binaca challenge. He was carrying a red lunch box with a picture of the Beatles on it, and he set it down across from me on the table.
“Why are you sitting here?” I asked him after looking around quickly to make sure no lunch monitors saw me “violating the silence.” “You didn’t get in trouble.”
He didn’t say a word, or even look at me. Just pulled out his chair and plunked down his lunch box.
Here’s something that’s important for you to know, Lou: kids at Meridian Middle do not carry lunch boxes. They just don’t. They either buy school lunch or they bring brown bags from home like I do. So the fact that Tyler had a lunch box was already weird. We had been at Meridian long enough by now for him to notice that no one else carried a lunch box anymore.
But that’s not even the weirdest part. And the fact that he was sitting at a silent lunch table when he wasn’t even being punished wasn’t the weirdest part either (although that was still pretty weird). Since I’d barely heard him speak in homeroom, and he wasn’t saying anything to me now, I started to think maybe he hardly talked at all. I was wrong.
As soon as Tyler sat down, he opened his lunch box, took out a sandwich, apple, and potato chips, and set them on the table. Then he used his thermos to prop up the lid of the lunch box (the part with the Beatles picture on it), turned the lunch box around…and started talking to it. In a really bad British accent.
“ ’Ello, lads,” he said in a loud whisper. I looked behind me to see who he was talking to. No one was there. I turned back around as he was opening his potato chips and saying “Crisps from Mum again today, eh?” He definitely wasn’t talking to me. He didn’t even seem aware I was there. And then I realized he was talking to the Beatles. The Beatles on his lunch box. And this continued for the rest of the week we had assigned lunch seating. Even after the other people at our table arrived, Tyler kept talking to his lunch box. He kept it to a whisper, and he piped down any time a lunchroom monitor strolled by, but he never stopped for more than a few minutes.
By the end of silent-lunch week, I figured out that the Beatles were the only people Tyler wanted to talk to, and he didn’t really care who knew about it. And since he didn’t care about talking to other kids, he didn’t care about silent lunch, even when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Th
ere are just so many kinds of people in the world.
The other two kids at my assigned table were Nick and Quincy. I guess this was a relief. I mean, it could have been way worse. I know it seems like it shouldn’t matter who you’re sitting with when you can’t even talk to them, but somehow it still did. Silent lunch would have been truly unbearable sitting across from Gabe shooting milk out of his nose. (Just shows how little Smeed knows about us; if he’d really wanted to torture me as he designed his seating chart, I would have been sitting with Gabe.)
Here’s something I noticed about silent lunch: It makes you feel like an animal in a zoo. Everyone looks at you, and you wonder what they know about you, and what they’re thinking. There was no poster beside our “habitat” saying:
Mr. Smeed’s homeroom class, male and female. In captivity because of a gambling ring started by one of the females, Augusta Reynolds. Eats turkey sandwiches, pizza, cookies, and Nachos Fiesta. Do not talk to them. Cannot speak under threat of detention.
But there didn’t have to be a sign. Everyone knew why we were there, eating in pitiful silence. Word about the gambling ring had spread quickly, and all kinds of crazy rumors had sprung up around it. Like that we were drinking vodka in class. And that there was a thousand dollars on the table when Mr. Smeed walked into the room. Sarah asked me after school one day if it was true that Nick had gotten third-degree burns on his tongue from the Binaca. (He had not.)
I could tell what people were thinking as they walked past our row of tables. Some people, like Sarah, looked sympathetic. (I actually felt bad for Sarah too; she said that since I had to sit with my homeroom, she was either going to be stuck with some kids she knew from Minter who just traded stickers at lunch…or she might just read a book by herself in the courtyard like Elaine Farley.)
Other people had faces full of pity when they looked at us. On the first day of silent lunch, Ms. Tedesco and I briefly made eye contact as she walked past our row on her way to the salad bar. She gave me a sad little smile and looked away. I wondered if she was thinking, She probably became a delinquent because her parents got divorced.
And then there were the people who seemed happy to witness our punishment. Specifically Addison, Marcy, and Heidi, who at some point had also allowed Amber into their lunchtime crew. (I guess Amber had gotten tired of me ignoring her texts about Nick and moved on.) The four of them wore matching smug smiles as they sat in the row beside ours. They also had matching silver hoop earrings, matching silver bangle bracelets, and matching silver ballet flats. The Silver Sisters.
All week long I got to hear their conversations during lunch. Most of the time it was deadly dull. For example:
Addison: “What if I always wore my hair in a side ponytail like it was the eighties?”
Heidi: “And, like, leg warmers and pink mascara and all that?”
Addison: “No, just the side ponytail. And I acted like it was normal.”
Marcy: “That’s hilarious.”
Amber: “You should totally do it.”
Sometimes it was slightly more interesting:
Amber: “If you could go to the dance with anyone, who would it be?”
Heidi: “Probably Rob Vinson?”
Addison: “Ugh, I don’t think there’s anyone in this school I’d want to go with.”
Marcy: “Yeah, you’re right.”
Amber: “Yeah, me neither.” (Hmm. Apparently Amber’s Nick crush was over. Either that or she didn’t want to admit it to the other Silver Sisters.)
And other times their conversation was clearly about me. I could tell because it would be preceded by one of them making a not-so-subtle glance my way. For example:
Addison: “If you had to wear glasses, wouldn’t you just make your parents get you contacts instead?”
Marcy, Heidi, and Amber in unison: “Yes, totally.”
Or:
Heidi: “It’s so weird that you used to be friends with her.”
Marcy: “We weren’t really friends. She was just in my class.”
I wanted to yell, “You were the one who followed me everywhere when I wanted to be left alone! For a whole year!” But I didn’t. And not just because I wasn’t allowed to talk. Something told me that it wasn’t safe to point out the truth with those three. Silence was easier.
Nick and Quincy heard these conversations too. When the Silver Sisters talked about ponytails, Quincy looked at me and rolled her eyes. Same when they talked about dates for the dance.
When he overheard the glasses conversation, Nick pointed to his eyes and held out an open hand to me. He wanted me to hand him my glasses. I took them off and gave them to him. He put them on and stuck his tongue out, then hooked his fingers behind his ears and wiggled the stems of the glasses to make them bounce up and down on his nose. He looked ridiculous, and Quincy and I started to laugh.
“This doesn’t sound like silent lunch to me, girls!” A lunch aide wearing a name tag that said MS. VANWICKLE was walking by our table at exactly that moment. Of course, no one had ever noticed Tyler talking to the Beatles, but one laugh from Quincy and me got us in trouble.
“You’d better take this seriously.” Ms. Vanwickle lingered by our table for a minute, presumably to make sure we were being sufficiently serious.
The Silver Sisters looked over and smirked again. But as Nick slid my glasses back to me and Quincy tried to stifle her giggles in a fake cough, it was suddenly easy to ignore them.
I know you were excited for Halloween this year, Louie. You decided around April that you were going to be a marshmallow; then you changed your mind and said you were going to be a tube of toothpaste. Then a vampire. Then Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. By the time October finally rolled around, you were back to marshmallow. At that point you were talking about your costume all the time, and I could tell you were disappointed that I had way less interest. I remember the day you gave up. We were both sitting at the dining-room table doing homework and you said, “Gus, if I’m being a marshmallow, maybe you could be a chocolate bar and we could dress Iris up like a graham cracker and together we’d be a s’more.” And I just rolled my eyes and said, “No thank you.” That was when you sighed and muttered sarcastically to yourself, “Well, that was a good conversation starter, Louie.” And Mom overheard you and came in to give you a quick little hug.
Anyway, I’m sorry, Lou. In the weeks since then, I think I’ve understood a little more about how much you want us to do things together. And you should know that my Halloween wound up being pretty boring. Embarrassing, even. Here’s the deal with Halloween in middle school: As far as I can tell, it’s really only cool to care about it during certain hours, like at night when you get free candy. You’re allowed to wear your costume to school…but almost no one does. There’s no class party or costume parade around the schoolyard. No parents come to take pictures of how cute you all look. The only kids I saw wearing costumes were Natalie Daniels (ballerina, of course) and Tyler Peterson (Beatle, of course; I don’t know which one).
I was wearing a new jacket that day. Well, new to me. It was Mom’s old navy blue coat from when she was in high school that has those cool gold hook-and-eye buttons down the front. Usually I only wear it when we have to dress up for something, but my regular coat still had mud all over it from when Iris had jumped on me with happy doggy greetings—and filthy doggy paws—the day before.
So I grabbed Mom’s old coat on my way out the door, and didn’t remember until I was almost at school that it was Halloween. Not that I would have done anything differently; it’s not like I worried anyone was going to think this jacket was some kind of costume. But then someone did.
“Oh!” Ms. Tedesco squealed when I walked into social studies. (I was still wearing the jacket because her classroom is always cold for some reason.) “Were you inspired by your trip?” she asked.
I thought she was just aski
ng a general question about our DC trip again, since that was her favorite subject.
“Um, yes?” I figured that was the safe answer. It was not.
“I knew it!” She clapped her hands together and did a little jump. “Even though he’s really associated with Philadelphia, not Washington. But of course he was still one of our finest founding fathers!”
I truly had no idea what she was talking about. I just nodded at her and slunk over to my desk.
After the bell rang and everyone was settled, it started to become more clear.
“Okay, class, happy Halloween!” Ms. Tedesco beamed. “And may I extend a very warm welcome to our very own…Benjamin Franklin!”
She held out her hand like she was introducing the Queen of England (or, well, Benjamin Franklin). And her hand was extended in my direction. I turned around to see who she was talking about. The only person behind me was Syd, using his pencil to carefully shade the spaces in the letters printed on his notebook cover. I turned back around.
Gabe Garrett had swiveled in his seat and was facing me. “Are you supposed to be Benjamin Franklin?”
“Me? No!” I looked up and realized that Ms. Tedesco was, in fact, directing her gaze at me. As was the entire class.
“Oh, you’re not?” Ms. Tedesco looked brokenhearted. “I just thought with that jacket, and your hair looks wavier today…and of course, the glasses.”
Of course. The glasses. I needed contacts. I needed money. I needed to get a job.
Unbeknownst to me, Mom was already on the case.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mom said as we folded towels together the Thursday night of silent-lunch week (which was also the day after Halloween).
“I can have my phone back?” I asked.
“No. You still have three days until that punishment is over. But I’ve been thinking of what you said about wanting to buy contacts. And I might have another way you can make money. You know, apart from being a gambling kingpin.” Mom gave me a sideways glance, and I think I saw a smirk behind the bath towel she was folding.
The 47 People You'll Meet in Middle School Page 8