by Beth Vrabel
I picked up my phone. Tasha answered on the third ring. “What, your thumb’s broken? Calls are for emergencies only. I just got to the chapter where Finn realizes the truth about Maeve.”
“This is an emergency!”
“Emergency like finding out your adopted mother is a witch?”
“This year’s going to be different, Tasha.”
“Yeah, yeah. You said that.”
“I mean it. I have a plan. I mean, I’ve got the beginnings of a plan.”
I heard a whooshing sound and knew Tasha was sitting up on her bed. “What kind of plan?”
“I’m going to right the wrongs of my early education. I’m going to set things right. When I enter high school next year, it will be with a clean slate. I, Pipi McGee, have a year of redemption ahead of me. No one is going to laugh at me. In fact, this year? They’re going to be the embarrassed ones.”
Tasha breathed in and out deeply. “Maybe it’s this book getting to me, but it sounds a little to me like you’re talking about revenge.”
“Redemption… revenge. I’ll take what I can get. Are you in?”
“I’ll be at your house in six and a half minutes.”
Chapter Three
“So, you know this isn’t really a plan, right?” Tasha said a half hour later. “This is, like, a list. A list of grievances.”
I rolled onto my back on the bed with a groan. I tossed the sheet of paper with my eight humiliations listed on it. It fluttered in the air and landed beside me. “Yeah, I know. I need more time to think through all of these, I guess.”
Without warning, Tasha slammed a pillow across my face.
“Hey!” I yelped.
“No!” my best friend yelled. “No, no, no, a thousand times no. No. More. Thinking. You’ve spent more time than anyone’s ever needed thinking about these events. Enough thinking. Time to do something about them.”
I sat up, rubbed my nose, realized I was rubbing my nose, and sat on my hands instead. “Really, I mostly need redemption. Except for Vile Kara Samson and Frau Jacobs. For them, I need revenge.” Revenge.
Suddenly, I had it. “Do you remember last year? That book we had to read in English class—The Count of Monte Cristo?”
Tasha leaned back on her elbows, a smile stretching across her face. “You’re going to go Dantès on them, aren’t you?”
I bit my lip to keep my own smile from bursting through. “So Dantès was punished unfairly and cruelly, right? And then he saw, when he escaped, that everyone responsible had just gone on like nothing had happened. No punishment or redemption or anything.”
Tasha nodded. “Yeah, remember the major theme? Justice, and who gets to deliver it.”
“Me,” I answered as though Tasha had asked. “This year, it’s going to be me. I will not enter ninth grade as PeePee McGee.”
“I love it!” she said. “No more wallowing. Just taking action.” She cocked her head to the side. “But… it didn’t really work out for Dantès, did it?”
“Are you kidding?” I turned to her. “He destroyed everyone.”
“Yeah, but he also messed up a lot of other people,” Tasha pointed out.
“Well, I won’t do that. I’m just going to make things right.” I plopped back down on the bed. “If I can just figure out how.”
Tasha poked my rib. “You’ve already done the first part. You’ve opened yourself up to intention. You intend to seek revenge.”
“And redemption.”
Tasha shrugged. “Whatever. ‘The universe always provides a solution.’ You just need to be open to it and spot the opportunity.”
“Are you quoting The Count of Monte Cristo?”
“No, Pipi. I’m quoting my favorite book. If you’d bother reading it, you’d know.” Tasha sat up and crossed her arms. “Three years I tell you about this book and you have yet to even leaf through it. But, whatever. The point is, this isn’t a plan. But maybe the plan is where Dantès lost his way, where he went full revenge instead of redemption. Maybe we should be looking for any opportunity and then take action instead of creating elaborate plots.”
“So, it’s not like I go in order, redeeming kindergarten, then first grade, then second—”
“Exactly!” Tasha bounced on the bed. “I’ll be on the lookout, too. We’ll cross-check. I’ll hold you accountable and you’ll seize any chance to leave the old whiny, sorry-for-herself Pipi behind.”
I let the barb slip. “I take opportunities as they come. So long as one of them ends with Vile Kara Samson crying in a bathroom, it’ll all be fine. Frau Jacobs, too. And Sarah Trickle, while we’re at it.”
Tasha’s lips pressed together.
“What?” I said.
She shrugged and picked up the list where it lay between us. “Nothing.” Tasha smoothed it on her knee. “I think this will work. Finn has to do this all the time in Crow Reaper. He prepares and puts himself out there, but he has to wait for the goblin he’s hunting to make the first move. Then he cuts it down.”
“Goblin? That could be a good Kara strategy. But are any of these goblins distractingly beautiful, super nice, and the girl everyone in the world wants to be?”
Tasha’s eyes narrowed and the paper crumpled in her hand a little. “No. None of the goblins are Sarah Trickle. Because Sarah Trickle isn’t a goblin. She’s not even mean. She’s freaking Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, and maybe, first opportunity you get, you should stop hating on the girl.”
“She’s Kara’s best friend. That automatically makes her evil.”
“You’re my best friend. What does that make me?” Tasha snapped.
I blinked at her.
“Just because Kara and Sarah are friends doesn’t mean they’re the same. Besides, they’re cousins. I wonder if they’d even be friends if they weren’t family.” Tasha sighed. “Is it possible your Sarah hatred is more because of Jackson Thorpe than Kara?”
I plucked the list from Tasha’s hand and went to pin it back up on my corkboard. This wasn’t the first time Tasha had tried to convince me that my hatred for Sarah Trickle was unwarranted. Someday she’d see. They’d all see. Sarah Trickle was also going down.
“Maybe I just want Little Miss Perfect to see the effects of her actions,” I said, my voice so stiff and cold I sounded like Eliza. I even caught myself looking down my nose the way my sister often did. “Maybe I want Sarah Trickle to be the new Pipi McGee and I’m going to be the new Sarah Trickle. Ever think of that?” And, as the new Sarah Trickle, I’d be the one Jackson Thorpe always seemed to revolve around.
Tasha stood, pushing her handbag up her shoulder. “Nah. I didn’t think of that. I don’t spend all my life thinking how badly I want to be someone—anyone—else. I happen to like being Tasha Martins. And I happen to like my best friend, Pipi, even if she can be an annoying brat more often than she isn’t.”
“Hey!” I said.
“Taking my opportunities when I see them.” Tasha leaned against my desk next to the glass tank where Myrtle the Turtle peeked out at us.
Myrtle chewed a spinach leaf, her jaw working side to side like she was Tasha’s backup, ready to start laying into me if Tasha let up. “If this is going to work, Pipi, you’ve got to stop feeling sorry for yourself all the freaking time.”
Tasha jerked a thumb toward Myrtle, who snapped her head back into her shell. “You’ve got to put yourself out there. Get out of your own shell.” She looked up at my birds. “Fly a little bit, maybe.”
“You’re really mixing up your metaphors.” Now I was stuck thinking about a flying turtle bird and how I could create it. I shook my head. “But that whole put-yourself-out-there? It’s easy for you to say.” Myrtle peeked out and moved backward toward the shelter of her water bowl.
“How do you figure that?” Tasha asked.
I crossed my arms. “Because you don’t get scared. You just… I don’t know. You just stand up for yourself. I don’t do that. I don’t know how.”
Tasha’s eyebrow
popped up. “Easy? You think it isn’t hard?” Her nostrils flared as she took a couple breaths. “You think I don’t get scared? Don’t have anything to lose?”
I swallowed. “Forget it, okay? Forget I said anything.”
“No, I don’t think I will.” Tasha stood up straight.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How about what I said? I’m not forgetting about it. I don’t just stand up for myself. I make myself stand.” Tasha’s eyes were slits. Her whole body tensed as she leaned toward me.
My heart hammered. I wanted to run, but this was my room and she was my best friend. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“So, think about it.”
“That!” My hand jerked toward her. “Having something to say right away. That doesn’t work for me. When I’m angry, when I’m embarrassed, I forget all my words,” I finally managed. “When I’m upset, I sort of can’t think of any words at all.”
Tasha softened, her shoulders relaxing a little. “I know. But just grab the first ones that float in your head. Even if they’re not the best words, they’ll do. You just gotta stand up for yourself because, frankly, I’m tired of doing it for you.”
I swallowed. Nodded. Standing up for me is sort of how Tasha and I became friends. I remembered in third grade, someone had pulled on one of her braids. Back then her hair reached the tips of her shoulders instead of flowing down her back to her waist the way it does now. This kid behind her had grabbed a braid and tugged.
That smile never left Tasha’s face, even as her eyes narrowed. “Hands off my hair,” she had said in a super calm, pleasant voice—the same one she would use to answer Ms. Fenton’s math facts a couple minutes later. “Touch it again and I’ll kick you in your privacy.” The boy dropped the braid.
“Wow,” I had whispered under my breath.
“What are you looking at?” Tasha asked, with that same eyebrow pop she was directing at me now.
“You. Being awesome,” I had blurted.
“I didn’t think you knew how to talk,” the kid next to me said.
“’Course she can talk,” Tasha snapped. “Mind your own business.”
I had smiled. She had whispered, “It’s really cool that you can talk.” And we were friends. But that standing up for herself aspect never rubbed off on me. Time and time again, she was the one to tell people to knock it off when I was the one running to my official stall in the girls’ bathroom.
Tasha sighed now and dropped her arms. “You know I love you. But, Pipi—”
“Penelope,” I corrected.
She smiled. “Penelope. You want a fresh start? Want things to be different?” I nodded, feeling the corners of my eyes sting for no good reason. “Then be different. Take chances. Put yourself out there. Stop taking your cues from Myrtle.”
“We’ve got this,” I told Myrtle the next morning as I got ready for school. I caught myself rubbing my nose and shoved my hands into my pockets while I kept up the conversation with the turtle. Just because I wasn’t going to be taking cues from Myrtle didn’t mean we couldn’t have a heart-to-heart once in a while. “We’re not going to duck away from anyone or anything. We’re going to find ways to redeem ourselves.”
Myrtle dipped her cold-blooded face into her water bowl. Myrtle didn’t care what I had to say. Myrtle didn’t care about anything except being left alone. Like, if you walked by the aquarium while holding Myrtle, she’d press against your hands with her little legs as if she were trying to dig her way back to the glass enclosure.
I tossed in some carrot slivers and spinach leaves. “Starting today, we’re open to opportunity, and the universe will provide.”
Myrtle pooped a little in her water bowl.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Why are you talking to the reptile?” Annie asked. She only ever called Myrtle “the reptile.” I’m not sure why.
“Why are you in my room?” I said instead of answering.
“Time to go.” Annie was wearing a cardigan and holding her lunch box. Even though there was a day care at Mom’s gym, Eliza had registered Annie to go to a preschool across town. It had “the rigor and expectations” Eliza said Annie needed, adding that the gym day care was too full of kids who spent the whole time they were in there pretending to be chickens and eating finger paint. If you asked me, Annie could use a little more time pretending to be a chicken and eating finger paint. Most of the time, it was hard to remember that she was a kid, because she was so serious. Even the little lunch box she had picked out looked more like a briefcase—black with a gray zipper—than something belonging to a four-year-old. I thought preschool for Annie should be about figuring out how to be a kid instead of acting like a mini adult, but no one asked me anything.
Annie stared up at the birds. She waved a little, with just her fingertips, then stared at me again.
I sighed, dumping Myrtle’s water into the gravel around the dish and pouring in more water from the bottle beside my bed. I squirted antibacterial stuff on my hands and rubbed them together. “Fine.”
Annie watched me with big hazel eyes while I shoved a book into my backpack and zipped it up. She cleared her throat. “MomMom says I shouldn’t ask you why you drew yourself with bacon boobs.”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “And it was an accident. And the boobs weren’t bacon; I was the bacon. Besides, it happened a long time ago and no longer bothers me.”
Annie blinked at me.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Annie nodded. “I don’t like to talk about things, too.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She blinked at me a couple more times. Then she sighed and said, “Mostly things I’m spying on, but also other stuff. Like that sometimes I can see my nose out of the corner of my eye when I’m trying to see something else, and then all I can do is see my nose and I can’t stop. I see it right now, even though I’m looking at you.”
This time I blinked at her.
“Girls!” Mom called. “We’re going to be late!”
“And that we’re all going to die someday,” Annie added.
“Good talk, Annie.”
Chapter Four
Tasha wasn’t messing around with the whole universe-will-provide-when-you’re-open-to-it concept.
During homeroom, the universe straight-up provided.
“All right, class,” Mr. Harper called out shortly after the first bell. This in and of itself was unusual. Mr. Harper eased into the day, something we had all noticed last year when he taught seventh-grade social studies. Ricky was really the one who discovered a handy Mr. Harper hack—if you casually mentioned The Great British Baking Show, Mr. Harper’s lesson would derail faster than a soufflé falls. The next hour would be devoted not to the Dust Bowl but instead to the harsh challenges of the Bread Bowl. It got to the point where even well-placed British slang meant we could all slouch back in our seats and grab our phones for some me-time before the next class.
Homeroom the day before had been mostly Mr. Harper telling us about the unappreciated art of biscuit towering, thanks to Ricky saying cheerio when Mr. Harper handed out a sheet of classroom expectations. And this was bloody convenient, as it gave me a moment to imagine snogging Jackson Thorpe.
Ah, Jackson Thorpe.
My deep, unrelenting love for Jackson Thorpe had begun at the tender age of eleven, when he stood beside the ladder as I climbed out of the swimming pool.
“Wow,” he had said, his huge eyes the same blue as the overly chlorinated water. “Hope you’re good.”
That’s how I chose to remember the interaction, anyway. (The actual rest of the sentence he had said was “at swimming so you can get away from Pipi’s warm spot.” The sentence, strictly speaking, had been directed to everyone but me. And everyone else had chanted Pipi pee-peed in the pool. Which I hadn’t. Not that it mattered. No one would swim next to me the rest of the day, which meant just me and one other person in the far swim lane. It
ended up being an okay day, I guess, all things considering.)
But, oh. Jackson Thorpe.
He sat on top of his desk now, his legs bent and feet on the seat. Five other guys, all of them basketball players like him, sat around his desk. Jackson’s dark blond hair had been long and floppy last year. This year he was going for a close-cropped style. He had changed up his whole look, now that I made it past those blue eyes. He was wearing—I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing real life—a black T-shirt. And black jeans. And black shoes. This was the dream outfit—the clothing he always wore in my dream sequence when he showed up on my front porch with a red rose and an overwhelming sense of guilt for the years he had spent laughing at me now that he suddenly realized I was actually his true love.
“Where’s your jersey, man?” one of the basketball players asked.
They didn’t know him like I knew him. No one did. No one else realized that Jackson reinvented himself every year. Last year, it was as a jock—soccer star, basketball star, baseball star. The year before that, in sixth grade, he was super into gaming, with a Minecraft shirt for every day of the week. By March, everyone who was anyone was playing on this elaborate server he had created to look exactly like the school. So, yeah, I was not part of the server, but I’m told there was a one-eyebrowed character who had a puddle of yellow around her. So, I guess I was sort of part of that experience.
This year, I guessed Jackson was still figuring stuff out. Whatever he ended up with would be incredible, I was sure of it.
The other guys were wearing their gold and navy basketball jerseys. “What do you mean you’re not playing?” one of them said.
Jackson shrugged. “I’m not into it this year. I’m, I don’t know, evolving, I guess. I spent a lot of time this summer thinking. You know, being philosphizable.”
“Philosphizable?” one of the guys repeated. “You mean, philosophical?”
“Yeah. And evolving.”
“Evolving? What the—”
But then Jackson jumped to his feet and, in one fluid movement, pulled a notebook from the backpack leaning against the side of his desk. He flipped it open and slouched back against the desk with his feet crossed at the ankle.