The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Dress

by Shani Petroff

  And it was about to make its Goode Middle School debut in front of Courtney, Cole, and everyone else. Too bad the fashion police weren’t real. I would have given anything to have been dragged away and put behind bars. It had to beat the firing squad I was about to face.

  chapter 39

  “No way,” Jaydin shrieked, spotting me first, as I stepped into the gym. “You are not wearing that.”

  “Wow, Double-A,” Courtney joined in. “Didn’t think you could look worse than you normally do, but you managed to top it. Good job.”

  I’m pretty sure I saw Cole and D.L. do double takes, too, but I guess I couldn’t really blame them. The dress looked like a kindergartener—a very untalented kindergartener—had designed it.

  “Seriously,” Jaydin said. “Did you misunderstand and think this was a circus theme?”

  Courtney laughed. “She’d fit in well as the human freak show.”

  “Definitely,” Jaydin agreed. “She kind of looks like one of those chimps they dress up in clothes. Only they’re actually cute.”

  Gabi gripped my arm. “It’s okay. Ignore them.” But I couldn’t. “Aren’t you all just hysterical? Ever think I’m making a statement that dressing up for some silly dance is pretentious and totally not necessary.” Okay, that wasn’t what I was trying to do, but it seemed better than saying I put on this monstrosity because I thought it actually looked good.

  I grabbed some star cutouts and tape, turned away from them, and began slapping the decorations onto the wall. I was so tempted to teleport Courtney and company somewhere. Somewhere like the desert or to a lecture on the importance of astrophysics that goes on until eternity. Only I knew better. I wasn’t going to do it. Lou would have my head. That is, if I even got them there.

  “Whoa,” D.L. said, laughing. “Trying to flash us all, Garrett?”

  “Huh?”

  He spoke like I couldn’t understand English. “It was a joke,” he said superslowly and sarcastically. “Because of the lightning flashes on your butt.”

  “Don’t look at my butt,” I yelled, covering it with my hands. “Don’t you have decorations to hang up?” I stared him down until he got back to work. “This is torture,” I whispered to Gabi.

  She gave me a sympathetic look. At least Cole hadn’t commented on my getup.

  I worked crazy fast to hang as many decorations as I could. That way I could get out of there. After hanging my thirty-nine millionth star, I looked around the room. It actually looked pretty with all the silver cutouts on the wall, white helium balloons covering the ceiling, and red carpet leading from outside into the gym. The only thing that was downright gross-looking, other than my dress, of course, was the way Jaydin was up in Cole’s face.

  “Do you think this one should go here?” Jaydin asked him, holding a star. She was so close to him, their arms were touching.

  I couldn’t help myself. With a flick of my hand, I scooted her ten feet away.

  “What the—” she cried out.

  Gabi saw the smile creep up on my face, even though I was trying really hard to mask it. “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. Well, nothing other than practice my homework. Moving Jaydin across the room was just as easy as moving the pencil and one hundred times more fun.

  Jaydin headed back toward Cole, but I stopped her in her tracks.

  “Angel,” Gabi said disapprovingly.

  “What? Just lesson two.” I was disappointed I hadn’t figured out how to do lesson three, making the pencil go in every direction. It would have been great to send Jaydin zigzagging through the room. I thought about giving it a try and seeing if I could move her all around. But after my dress fiasco, I decided to listen to Lou’s earlier warning about not using powers I hadn’t mastered. Instead, I stuck with what I knew.

  So when Jaydin took a step toward Cole, I sent her flying backward until she was up against the wall. They weren’t going to get near each other. Not while I was watching. “What is happening?” she asked, clutching her head.

  “Quit messing around,” Courtney said. “People are going to be here any second, and I want everything perfect.”

  “I’m not doing it on purpose,” she whined.

  “Whatevs, Jaydin,” Courtney said, waving her off. “You said you would help. Now stop fooling around and hang up the stars.”

  Jaydin opened up her mouth to protest, but shut it closed. There was no use talking back to Courtney.

  “You okay?” Cole called out to her.

  She nodded, rolled her eyes at Courtney, and made her way back toward Cole. Jaydin didn’t deserve to be near someone like Cole. She was too nasty.

  So when Cole turned his back to her to grab some decorations, I sent Jaydin back to the wall again. She looked completely baffled. But I had to give her credit. She was determined. No matter how many times I froze her in her tracks or sent her backward, she still tried to work her way back to Cole.

  “You have to stop,” Gabi said as I continued with my new favorite game. “People are starting to show up.”

  “So?” It wasn’t like they could pin Jaydin’s weirdness on me.

  “So,” Gabi repeated after me, “Cole is going to want to dance with his date. He’s going to figure out she’s not moving away on purpose. Do you really want to watch him chase her across the auditorium all night and try and figure out what’s going on?”

  Her words made me feel just as ugly as my dress. Cole wanted to be near Jaydin. Not me. And my power games were not going to change that.

  chapter 40

  “Come on,” Gabi said. She guided me away from Cole and Jaydin and toward the ballot box for dance king and queen. A few people were already gathered around it.

  “I’m definitely voting for Courtney,” Brooke said. “And Cole.”

  “Court is going to kill you. She made it very clear we were supposed to vote for D.L.,” Bronwyn reminded her. “She wants the spotlight dance with him.”

  “She’ll never know. Besides, I like Cole better.”

  That made two of us.

  “Well, I’m voting for D.L.,” Bronwyn answered and tossed her ballot into the box.

  Miss Simmons handed me my voting slips. “No thanks,” I said. It was bad enough I was at the dance. I wasn’t taking part in any of the stupid formalities involved with it.

  “Come on,” Miss Simmons nagged me. “You’re part of the committee. Show some school spirit.”

  With a silent groan I took the slip. I quickly wrote down Gabi’s name for queen and tossed it in the box. She didn’t stand a chance at beating Courtney, but she was the only person I wanted to see get crowned. The vote for king was a lot harder. My gut said to pick Cole. I mean he was my king. But I couldn’t bare the thought of him winning and dancing with Courtney. It was bad enough he was going to be with her best friend all night. So I wrote down D.L.’s name, even though it meant giving Courtney what she wanted. It was the lesser of the two evils.

  “I’ve had enough,” I told Gabi. “I’m outta here.”

  “You should try one more time with Cole,” Gabi whispered. “Maybe there’s still a chance. Apologize. For everything—ignoring him, being rude, standing him up. All of that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, lookingdownat my nightmare of a dress. “It’s probably too late for that. That may have worked a while ago, but it seems kind of hopeless now. He already thinks I’m a freak extraordinaire.”

  “Then what do you have to lose?”

  The answer was nothing, so I decided to go for it. When I moved back to Cole, he was standing next to Jaydin at the punch bowl. “Cole,” I said, getting him to look in my direction while I sent Jaydin flying backward. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me.

  “I’m sorry for everything. I should never have ignored you or acted flaky. My life’s just been crazy.” I decided to go for the truth. Well, the semi-truth. “My dad came back into my life after being nonexis
tent for the past thirteen years. I guess it got me acting a little freaky.” I bit at my nail and waited for him to answer.

  “We should dance.”

  Only the words didn’t come from him. They came from Jaydin. I hadn’t been paying attention and she managed to sneak back up before I could stop her. Cole nodded at her.

  I felt like one of the balloons in the room. One that had the helium sucked right out of it.

  “Hey, Angel,” Max said. “Cool dress.”

  Only Max could compliment a dress like the one I was wearing and sound like he actually meant it. “Thanks.”

  I could feel Jaydin watching us. No way was she going to the dance floor until she got all the juicy gossip she could.

  “You think, maybe,” Max said, kicking a plastic cup that had fallen on the ground, “you’d want to dance with me?”

  I heard Jaydin snort. And I wanted to cry. Was this what my life was going to be like? Destined to be with the nerd while someone else walked away with my king? My whole body felt numb.

  “So . . .” Max asked, waiting for my answer.

  I felt lower than low. I didn’t want to dance. Not with Max. But, I said yes. At least I could do one good thing that night. Just because I was miserable didn’t mean I had to mess up his evening, too. No one liked to get rejected. I knew that way too well.

  “Cool,” Max said, his whole face breaking into a smile. He leaned back, putting his hand on the table. He ended up knocking over a cup of juice.

  “Watch it, you idiot,” Jaydin spat. “You almost got my shoes.”

  Max dropped down and started wiping up the spill. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “No,” I said. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to her. She should apologize to you.” Then I looked right at Jaydin. “Max is one of the nicest people in this stupid school. You don’t even deserve to be in the same room as him. Let’s go Max. She’s making me sick.”

  I took his arm and pulled him toward the dance floor.

  chapter 41

  Max put his arms around my waist, and I forced myself not to let on how uncomfortable it made me. Even when I saw a drop of sweat roll down the side of his face.

  “Thanks for dancing with me,” Max said, temporarily moving his arm from around me to wipe his head. Then he put it right back. I’m sure there was a big sweat stain on my dress from where his arm was. Not that it mattered. Nothing could make this dress look any worse.

  “Sure,” I said, and prayed that he didn’t stomp on my foot. It was like dancing with Frankenstein. He moved me round and round in stiff, jolting steps. Why couldn’t it have been a fast song?

  “This dance rocks,” he said, turning me so I was looking right at Cole and Jaydin. She had her hands around his neck, while he had his on her hips. They were looking at each other intensely and talking about something. Probably how much they loved each other and were so happy to be hanging out together and other gag-worthy stuff.

  “Yeah, it really rocks all right,” I managed to answer, my voice a little shaky. How could Cole like someone like me and then go for someone like Jaydin? We were nothing alike. Cole must have never really been into me at all. His synagogue probably made him do a bunch of good deeds before his bar mitzvah, and I was just one of his charity cases. “It rocks all right,” I muttered again, feeling uglier than my dress. “Everything rocks.”

  Max’s arms stiffened around me and we were no longer moving. “You okay?”

  He didn’t answer me. He couldn’t answer me. He was frozen in place like a human statue. I had turned him into a rock! He still looked like himself, but a marbleized version. My eyes darted around the room. It wasn’t just Max. Everyone in the whole room was that way. I had turned everything, everyone to be more exact, into rocks.

  Totally freaky to look at—like I was in a wax museum that starred the students of Goode Middle School. I probably would have fallen over from the sight if Max’s grip wasn’t holding me upright.

  I needed some space to think. I tried to step back, but I had a stone prison surrounding me. Worming my way out of Max’s hold was going to be a challenge. I couldn’t just bust out with all my might. That would mean breaking Max’s arms, and he did not deserve that. I tried shimmying my way through the small space between his hands, only I wasn’t tiny enough, and pushing was definitely going to cause Max to lose a finger.

  Nothing was working. Then I thought of lifting my arms and sliding out. It worked when Gabi’s sister, Rori, crammed herself into her stuffed bear’s miniskirt when she was five. She stood there with her arms up while Gabi and I yanked the skirt over her head. The same principal could work for my predicament, only I would slide down and out from Max’s hold.

  Sucking in my breath, with my hands straight up, I lowered myself. Only I couldn’t get myself out. I needed more force. Someone to pull me. Or maybe not! The opposite could work, too. I put my hands back on Max’s shoulders, and pushed as hard as I could. I got myself pretty high up off the ground. And then I slid back down again. My upper body strength wasn’t exactly anything to brag about. But I didn’t give up. I hoisted myself as high up as I could and managed to get one of my legs out, then the other. I was free.

  “Yes!” I shouted, but quickly froze in place. Reid and Lana had just walked in. I didn’t want them to see me moving around. They needed to think I was just like everyone else.

  “What’s going on?” Reid asked.

  “I don’t know, but this is creepy,” Lana answered, weaving through our classmates. “Jaydin,” she said, poking her friend. “Quit it. Will you say something?”

  Reid tried shaking Cole. “They’re like statues.”

  “Ohhhkayyyy,” Lana shouted. “Cut it out everyone. This is not funny.”

  Why did they have to be late?! I didn’t know how much longer I could stand there without moving. I always stunk at freeze tag. My nose would get all itchy whenever I tried to stay motionless.

  Perfect. That thought was all it took for my nose to act up, and the more I thought about not scratching it, the itchier it got. It was like someone was sticking a needle in and out of my nose. The feeling was becoming unbearable, so as Lana and Reid studied their friends, I had no choice but to scratch. I tried to be as sly as I could, but the CIA wasn’t going to be calling me anytime soon.

  “I think she moved,” Reid said, moving over to me.

  Shoot! I knew he had seen me.

  Lana rushed over and poked me. Hard.

  “Oww,” I said, not even bothering to pretend anymore. Obviously she had figured out that I wasn’t a rock, and there was no way to keep them from seeing me blink.

  “What is going on?” she shrieked at me. “How come you can move but no one else can?”

  “Beats me,” I lied, my voice wobbling. “They were all like this when I got here.”

  Reid grasped his neck and Lana bit her lip as she studied my face. “Then why didn’t you say anything when we walked in?” she questioned me.

  Because I stupidly hadn’t thought to play it that way. “Um, because I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I better act like everyone else, just in case. Who knows, maybe some thief came in and told them to freeze.”

  “That makes no sense,” she yelled. I wasn’t sure if she was going to throw a hissy fit or break down in tears. But she was definitely on the brink of exploding. “A thief can’t make them freeze for real.”

  “Well, I don’t know. You explain it then,” I said, trying to turn it around on her.

  “Can’t,” Reid said. All the color had drained from his face. He pulled out his cell phone. “I’m going to call the police.”

  “No.” I grabbed the phone from him. There were already enough people involved in my mess.

  “Why not?” he demanded, looking from me to his cell.

  “Because,” I said, handing it back to him. “I already called. They’re on their way.” Giving him the sweetest smile I could muster, I added, “No need to bother them again.”

&nb
sp; Reid took Lana’s hand. They grasped so hard, their knuckles were white. It was like they were holding on to each other to keep their sanity, as if letting go would suck them into this bizarre stone world.

  “There’s probably a completely normal explanation for everything going on,” I tried to reassure them.

  But there wasn’t.

  Not unless you considered the devil, his daughter, and out of control powers normal.

  chapter 42

  “I’m going to wait by the front for the cops,” I told Lana and Reid. They didn’t need to hear me trying to reactivate my powers. They were already spooked enough, throw in me practicing voodoo, and they probably would have tied me up and burned me at the stakes.

  Bring everybody back to life, bring everybody back to life, I thought as I moved to the door. I surveyed the room. No motion—except for Lana and Reid. “Come on,” I said under my breath. “Work! I need everyone to start moving again, to breathe, to become animated. Please!”

  Ever so slowly, life started creeping back into the room. My classmates’ expressions softened, their chests moved in and out with each breath, and they actually began to move!

  “They’re back,” Reid yelled. But there was a problem. A major one. When he said it, his eyes bugged out. And I don’t mean they got wide. They literally bugged out. Like twelve inches, maybe more.

  “Yes,” Lana exclaimed, and took off around the room. She made it around the whole gymnasium three times in thirty seconds, breaking every speed limit known to man.

  I had made them animated all right. Like something straight out of Looney Tunes. I was in a room full of cartoon people.

  “Angel?” Max questioned, noticing I was no longer dancing with him. He spotted me near the door and reached out. “There you are.” His arm extended like someone was stretching out silly putty and pulled me back to him. “How did you get over there?”

  That was his only question? Not how did he turn into Rubber Man? Or how did the Cartoon Network overtake the students of Goode Middle School? But he didn’t seem to question it. No one did. They all acted like everything was normal.