The Mean Girl Meltdown

by Lindsay Eyre

  The room was tiny with just one toilet and one sink. I took care of business and was just about to wash my hands when a piece of paper slid beneath the door. Weird, I thought.

  A vacuum sound turned on. A cloud of white blew up into the bathroom. It blew onto the walls and the floor. It blew up on my hair and skin and all over my clothes. I covered my face with my hands as the white stuff got into my eyes and mouth.

  I’m being attacked by dust! I thought. But this wasn’t dust. Dust would be dustier, and it would smell bad. This stuff smelled good, like Ginny when my mom changed her diaper. Baby powder!

  The vacuum sound ended and I put my hands down. White stuff still floated in the air, but most of it had settled. The bathroom was a mess. My entire body was covered in baby powder. I looked like a Sylvie ghost.

  Footsteps came down the hallway. I had to clean this mess up fast. The baby powder wouldn’t brush off, so I turned a knob on the sink. Water exploded from the faucet, shooting up into the air. I screamed and tried to turn it off, but the knob broke off in my hand. I backed away, only then noticing the OUT OF ORDER sign below the mirror.

  There was a pounding on the door. “Hey! What’s going on in there?”

  Oh no! It was the rink manager. Maybe I could jam up the sink so the water would stop. I ran to the paper towel holder, but none of the towels were poking out.

  “Open up!” he growled.

  “Just a minute,” I said. I pushed my hand up into the paper towel holder to get the towels, but my fingers got stuck. “Ow!” I whispered. “Ow, ow, ow!”

  I heard the jangle of keys.

  “Hold on!” I shrieked as I tried to pull my hand out.

  The door opened. The rink manager looked at me. He looked at the bathroom. “What is this? No one’s supposed to touch that sink!”

  While the manager rushed toward the fountain of water, Coach Diaz walked into the bathroom. Half the team was behind him. “Oh my goodness!” he said. “Sylvie, are you stuck?”

  “Look at her!” Jamie Redmond said as she and her munions peered in the doorway. “She’s covered in baby powder, and she broke the bathroom!”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” everybody said.

  My dad came to my room later that night to tuck me in. I kicked my blankets around so they were messy and tucking me in would take a long, long time. I made my face calm so he’d want to stay.

  “How’s my little team captain?” he said.

  Team captain. My heart shrunk in my chest. I hadn’t scored today. I hadn’t even done a good job unifying. The rink manager had yelled a lecture at me until Georgie’s dad told him I didn’t break the bathroom on purpose.

  “What’s the matter?” my dad said.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Did I tell you that I’m the fastest on my team?”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” he said, leaning on the bed with one elbow. “How do you handle the puck?”

  “I almost scored today,” I said.

  “Almost?” my dad said.

  “It was close.” I picked at an orange thread on my quilt. It was a loose thread. If I pulled hard enough, it would come right out.

  “I wasn’t good at shooting when I first started playing,” my dad said.

  “Really?” I pushed at the orange thread so it would go into place.

  “You should see if you can get some special help with your shooting.”

  “Could you help me?” I asked. “You’d be great at special help.”

  My dad sat up. “I wish I had time, but I’m so busy right now. Maybe later in the season.”

  Which meant no. I stopped pushing the loose thread. “Dad?” I said. “What do you do if you think someone is trying to get you?”

  “ ‘Get you’?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘get you’?”

  “Like they want to play pranks on you,” I said.

  “Pranks?”

  I looked down at the thread. “Like maybe they loosened the lid on your water bottle so water pours all over your face. That kind of thing.”

  “Is this happening to you?” my dad said. He sounded disappointed. No one wanted a kid who got water bottles dumped on their face.

  “I’m speaking metaphysically,” I said.

  “Metaphysically, huh?” He sighed. “Well, I’d probably start by standing up for myself.”

  That was a grown-up kind of answer that wasn’t any use. “You mean getting them back?” I said. “Like revenge?”

  A crash came from somewhere down the hall. “Sam!” my mom shouted. “Help! Cale’s stuck in the bathroom cupboard again!”

  “Sort of,” my dad said, leaping to his feet. He aimed a kiss at my forehead but missed. “Good night, sweetheart.”

  He flipped off the light and ran from the room. I watched him go, then pounded a fist on the orange thread. I needed to get revenge on Jamie Redmond, plus I needed to find special help. But how was I supposed to do that?

  * * *

  “Do you know a boy named Max?” I asked my brothers the next morning. Tate and Cale know everyone in the neighborhood, and everyone in the neighborhood knows them. “He’s a high school boy,” I said. “And a champion hockey player. He might live around here.” Max was the only person I could think of who could give me special help besides my dad.

  “We know him,” Tate said. “We call him Mad Max.”

  Cale nodded. “And his sisters are Madder Hattie and Maddest Tess.”

  “They’re twin girls our age, and we hate them,” Tate said. “They have another brother too — I forget his name.”

  “We went to their house once,” Cale said. “Mom thought it would be a good idea for twins to be friends with other twins, even though they’re girl twins.”

  “It wasn’t a good idea,” Tate said. “Except we got to taste Mad Max’s secret hockey training juice. He wants to sell it for a million dollars.”

  “It tastes like cotton candy smashed into water,” Cale said.

  “It was epic,” Tate said. “He lives way down on Josh’s street.”

  Secret hockey training juice? That sounded interesting. “Will you take me there if I pick you up from kindergarten today?”

  “No,” Tate said.

  “Yes,” Cale said.

  “Good,” I said, hurrying off to tell my mom to write their teacher a note. I don’t normally pick them up from school because it’s like herding wild hyenas, but today would have to be an exemption.

  * * *

  Team captains shouldn’t need special help, so I told Miranda and Josh and Georgie that my mom was making me pick up the twins from school. “You guys had better walk home without me,” I said. “It’s going to take a long time, because the twins refuse to walk. They skip the whole way home. And they insist on starting over if they skip on a crack.”

  “There are a lot of cracks in the sidewalk,” Josh said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to suffer with me.”

  So my friends left, and I picked up my brothers alone, no problem. We saw no one important as we walked out of the school and into our neighborhood. No one would ever know where we were going. No one would know I needed special help.

  We were walking up to Max’s house when my friends appeared. Just like that. “We were waiting for you at your house, but you never came,” Miranda said.

  “This is the house of that hockey player,” Josh said. “The one that came to our class.”

  “What are you doing here?” Georgie said.

  Shoot, shoot, shoot! I thought. I tried to look boring so they would go home. “The twins are friends with his little sisters,” I explained.

  “No, we’re not,” Tate said.

  “We hate them,” Cale said. “They are not epic.”

  I sighed, imagining a panther covering my brothers’ mouths with its paws so they could never speak again.

  “We’ll come with you,” Josh said.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said, but Georgie was already following my brothers up to the p
orch. Miranda, Josh, and I ran after them. The front door flew open. In the doorway were two twin girls with matching outfits and matching scowls.

  “We are ghosts,” Tate said, raising his arms up like a ghost. “And we hate you!”

  “Yeah,” Cale said, trying to cross his arms but getting confused. “Wooooooooo!”

  “We hate you too,” one girl said. “Want to play with the lab rats?”

  “Yes!” my brothers said, and they all dashed inside the house.

  The rest of us were left at the open front door.

  “That was weird,” Georgie said.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted from above.

  We backed up until we could see the person hanging out the window. It was Max.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say Sylvie Scruggs. Sylvie Scruggs was nobody. “We’re hockey players!” I shouted.

  “Excellent!” Max cried. “Come on up. I’m in the middle of an energy drink experiment.” His head disappeared.

  “Well, I guess I’ll go in,” I said in my boringest voice. “You guys can go home now.”

  “I want to see an experiment,” Miranda said.

  “I want to try an energy drink,” Georgie said.

  “I don’t think any of us should go in there,” Josh said.

  Miranda walked past me and straight up the stairs like she knew exactly where to go. Georgie, Josh, and I caught up to her in the upstairs hallway. Someone had written Max’s Laboratory in glitter pen on a white door.

  The door opened and Max stood to the side, waving us in. We entered a room stuffed with scientific things: inventions made with crepe paper and elastics and tinfoil, sculptures made with gears and pipes and tissue paper, a neon-green microscope, and beakers full of colorful liquids, bubbling gently.

  In the center of the small room was a table, and in the center of the table was a glass bottle filled with red liquid. Right next to the bottle was a fat white rat with bright pink eyes sitting in a glass tank. It turned its head to look at us. Then it ran straight forward, bonking its nose on the glass. It kept running around in circles while Max whipped out a stopwatch.

  “Excellent,” he said. “It took two minutes for the energy juice to take effect.”

  “What are the drink’s primary ingredients?” Miranda asked in her scientific-est voice.

  “Mostly sugar,” Max said. Then he launched into a description of his plan to sell the juice for a million dollars. “It will give athletes extra strength,” he said. “So their bodies will do what they’re supposed to do.”

  I stared at that glass bottle with the red liquid. That’s exactly what I needed. A drink to tell my arms and hands how to hit the puck. “Can I have some?” I said, reaching out to touch the bottle.

  Max pulled it away. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not even a taste?” Georgie said. Georgie really likes sugar.

  But Max was firm. “It’s not ready yet. There might be side effects. I have to do some human trials.”

  “Which would be totally inappropriate on children,” Miranda said.

  “Exactly,” Max said. “Unless they are related to you. Now, I’m assuming you’re here for hockey advice?”

  I gasped in wonder. “How did you know?”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal. “That’s the only advice I give. People usually don’t want to know about science, and I’m no good at relationship questions.”

  “Relationship questions?” Georgie said in absolute disgust.

  “I can’t get the puck into the net,” I said.

  “She can’t hit the puck at all,” Georgie said.

  I put my fists on my hips. “That’s not true. I can hit the puck. Just not when I want to.”

  “Interesting,” Max said. “Hitting the puck takes lots of practice, and I can’t help you with that, because it’s something you just have to do. But I will tell you the secret that helps me no matter what I’m struggling with.”

  I held my breath and nodded. A secret!

  “You should pretend you are a torpedo,” Max said.

  I let out my breath. “A torpedo?” I said.

  “A torpedo?” Georgie repeated, like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

  Max nodded as if he’d expected doubt. “A torpedo is a really fast bomb that zooms through water to blow up other ships. It’s made of steel and it’s practically unstoppable. You’ve got to tell yourself that you are made of steel, just like a torpedo. That you are unstoppable. That even the ice is afraid of you.”

  “The ice should be afraid of us?” Josh said.

  “Oh yes,” Max said. “The ice should be very afraid of you. That’s what you need to remember. You are the dangerous thing. You are the awesomeness. You may want to meditate about that — you are the awesomeness.”

  “I am the awesomeness,” I whispered. No one — not even Jamie — could stop me.

  But it would help if I had some secret power juice.

  “Where’d the brown one go?” Cale shouted from somewhere down the hall.

  “I see a tail,” Tate cried. “Rats are even faster than ferrets. This is epic!”

  “At last!” a girl yelled. “They’re free!”

  “Not again!” Max shouted. Then he darted from the room.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Josh said. “Come on, Sylvie.”

  “I’m coming,” I said, taking one last look at Max’s special drink, so red and so powerful. I’d do anything to get some of that juice.

  Just be a torpedo, I told myself. Be a torpedo, and nothing will stop you.

  I was the busiest person in the universe on Wednesday and Thursday. I had to practice unifying the team in the mirror. I had to practice being a torpedo in my backyard with my stick and my bouncy balls. And I had to think up revenge on Jamie for the pranks.

  By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was ready. I was going to prove to Coach Diaz at this practice — the last practice before he would announce team captain — that I was his number-one hockey player.

  When I got to the rink, I walked straight to the benches where I found Alvinair, or whatever his name was, sitting, swinging his legs.

  He jumped to his feet when he saw me. “I didn’t do anything!” he said.

  I frowned with my eyebrows. “Good,” I said. “You should probably never do things. Now, I am going to meditate, so please don’t speak to me.”

  His eyes widened as if he’d never heard of anyone meditating before a hockey practice. I knew all about meditating because Miranda’s mom used to have a boyfriend who meditated and we spied on him once. I sat on the ground, legs crossed, hands resting palms-up on my knees. I closed my eyes. “This is how you meditate,” I told him. “Fourth graders do it all the time. No talking.”

  I began to lightly hum. I thought about torpedoes. I imagined a purple torpedo with my face at one end. I imagined the torpedo had arms, and it held a hockey stick in its hands. It sailed around with the puck in its stick, knocking over faceless opponents. Okay, maybe one player had a face and okay, maybe she was on my team. And okay, maybe her name was Jamie.

  Then my purple torpedo-self hit the puck into the net with one perfect swing. I imagined this ten times. Then I pictured my whole team as a rainbow of torpedoes. Okay, except for Jamie. We floated around the rink until we became one giant torpedo ring, which was perfect because rings are unified and they remind me of doughnuts. I pictured my torpedo-self eating a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles. Then I pictured my torpedo-self hitting a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles into the net. Then I ate that too. (The doughnut, not the net.)

  Alvinair tapped me on the shoulder. “I brought this for you,” he said.

  I opened my eyes. “Where did you get that?” I whispered. It was Max’s bottle of secret juice.

  “Just someplace,” he said. “It will help you score for sure. You’d better drink it fast.”

  He was right. Miranda or Georgie or Josh might t
ry to stop me.

  I grabbed the bottle and pulled out the cork. Eyes closed, I took one big gulp. My mouth burned as the sugary redness slunk down my throat. I rubbed at my neck. It hurt to swallow. I needed something to wash it down, so I drank some more. I finished the entire bottle.

  A headache burst into my forehead. My throat felt like a panther was scratching it with its claws.

  I grabbed my water bottle, checked the lid before opening it, and gulped down the whole thing.

  When I was done, I dropped the bottle and clutched my stomach with both hands. An angry whirlpool of red juice and water churned inside of me, trying to find a way out.

  Just wait, I told myself. In minutes, you will feel powerful. You will feel like a torpedo.

  The whistle blew and everyone skated onto the ice. I moved woozily behind them, the liquid sloshing around in my belly. “Do you feel like a torpedo?” I asked Michael, trying to unify him.

  He looked at me like I was a panther and skated away.

  Coach began talking about puck work. He talked and talked until his words spun around, making me dizzy. My skin felt strange, and my lips tingled. I raised my hand.

  “Sylvie?” Coach said. “Sylvie? Are you all right?”

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Oh no,” Josh said.

  Miranda gasped. “You look like you’re going to faint!”

  “What’s that red stuff on your face?” Jamie Redmond said.

  “It’s lipstick,” one of her munions said, laughing historically.

  My stomach lurched. A wave of coldness hit me like an ocean plunging over my head.

  “She looks green,” Georgie said.

  “Oh no!” Jamie shouted. “She’s going to barf!”

  My hands were on my stomach. I fought to keep my mouth shut.

  “She’ll ruin the ice!” Jamie said. “Quick, get her off!”

  “No!” I tried to say, because team captains do not throw up.

  “I’ll help her.” I looked down and there was Aristotle, tugging on my sleeve.