Addie Bell's Shortcut to Growing Up

by Jessica Brody

  “You forgot to silence your phone in class? Do you like want to go to detention or something?”

  I pull it out of my bag and look at the screen. I have ten new text messages. Who are all these people texting me? I didn’t realize I had so many friends. Twenty-four hours ago, the only friend I really had was Grace, and now…

  Where is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her all day. We must have totally different schedules this year. Knowing her, she’s probably taking all the advanced classes.

  A second later, that bizarre reminder appears on my screen again.

  Don’t forget your costume!

  I quickly swipe past it to see what all these text messages are, hoping that one of them might be from Grace. But I don’t recognize any of the names.

  I click on the first one—from someone named Annabelle—and read it. Or at least, I try to read it. But it’s more confusing than Trigolosophy.

  Annabelle:

  Clementine rips the phone from my hand and gasps.

  “Ugh, she is such a kiss-up.”

  I lean over her shoulder, trying to see what she sees, but the text is still just a gibberish of pictures.

  “What did she say?” I ask, trying to sound casual. “I didn’t get a chance to read it.”

  “She wants to hang out with us tonight. She’s totally sucking up to you to try to get to me.”

  I squint at the screen. She got all that from that big mess?

  “Really?” I ask, grabbing the phone back and staring at the text in amazement, trying to match what I see with Clementine’s translation. Is this how people text? All those years without a cell phone have really set me back.

  “Don’t you dare invite her to come with us.” Clementine snatches the phone back. “Here, let me respond.”

  “Yeah,” I agree gratefully. “It’s probably better if you do.” I wouldn’t even know what to say if I could speak the language. Clementine obviously has some kind of issue with this Annabelle girl. Maybe she did something horrible to her. Maybe she stole Clementine’s boyfriend and is trying to pretend it never happened. Whatever it is, it must be bad to warrant the scowl on Clementine’s face as she quickly taps out a single-key reply and hands the phone back to me.

  I stare in bewilderment at the screen.

  Me:

  Huh?

  “Hi, guys!” someone says, and I glance up to see a girl I faintly recognize as Emma Sandoval. She always hung out with Clementine in middle school but never said much to me. “Loved your last upload!”

  “Thanks,” Clementine says with a sigh of relief. “It was such a nightmare of an episode to film. First we couldn’t decide on which nail art to do. I wanted to do butterflies and Adeline wanted to do galaxy nails. But I said everyone is doing galaxy nails.”

  Emma nods knowingly. “Everyone is doing galaxy nails.”

  Clementine nudges me with her elbow. “I know. See? So we compromised on the cupcake nails. Then there was the whole fiasco with the hair….”

  As Clementine continues to tell Emma the tragic saga about my roots not cooperating with the straightening iron, something catches my eye across the hallway.

  It’s a girl.

  She’s standing in front of an open locker, surrounded by a group of people so I can’t really see her entire face. But as they all talk and move animatedly, I catch glimpses of her over their shoulders and between their heads.

  Is that…?

  I take a step to the left and stand on my tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd of heads.

  It isn’t until someone walks away and I get a clear view through the pack that I know for sure that it’s her.

  I cover my mouth to stifle the small shriek that escapes. She’s changed so much! She’s way taller now—she must have grown like six inches—and her hair isn’t braided anymore. It hangs long and loose down her back. Also it’s darker. Almost a light brown, instead of the sandy blond it used to be. Her cheekbones are more pronounced and her eyebrows are thinner, but it’s definitely still her. It’s still my best friend.

  “Grace!” I call out excitedly and sprint across the hallway, nudging my way through all the bodies to reach her.

  I can’t believe how happy I am to see her. It feels like forever, even though I know it’s only been a day. Well, for me, anyway. But so much has happened! I can’t wait to tell her about the magic jewelry box and Mrs. Toodles’s story and the crazy morning I’ve had. And the dog! Oh my gosh! Wait until she hears about Buttercup! She’s going to freak out.

  But I never get to talk about any of those things. Because I never actually get to her. Right before I reach the locker, a rough hand suddenly pulls me back and starts jostling me down the hallway. “What are you doing?” Clementine hisses, looping her arm through mine again. “We’re going to be late for second period.”

  As we turn the corner, I glance back at the locker where Grace is standing. I try to meet her eye, to silently tell her that I’m sorry for rushing off like that and that I’ll definitely find her later, but the group of people has re-formed their little bubble and I can’t even find her in the crowd.

  The whole walk to class, Clementine prattles on about more ideas for themes for our next episode of the Shimmer and Shine vlog, but I’m barely listening because I can’t stop thinking about Grace and how different she looked. In only four years. I have so many questions. Like what classes is she taking now? When did she stop braiding her hair? Does she have a boyfriend?

  The thought of Grace kissing a boy makes me nearly giggle aloud. She was always squeamish about that kind of stuff. Although she used to kiss the poster of Cole from Summer Crush all the time.

  I hope we have lunch together. Or maybe even a class together. I’m dying to talk to her.

  Clementine leads me up the stairs and into room 202, which from the decorations on the wall—a picture of the Eiffel Tower, a French flag, and a movie poster for The Hunger Games in French—I’m guessing must be a French classroom.

  Gosh, if it’s really been four years, then I must be fluent by now!

  The French teacher claps twice. “Votre attention, tout le monde. On commence! Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plaît, et sortez vos cahiers de vocabulaire.”

  Okay, maybe not.

  I have no idea what that woman just said. There was nothing about a ham sandwich in there. But everyone else—Clementine included—is digging through their bags, taking out notebooks and pens, so clearly they all speak much better French than I do.

  Between the math class and the cryptic text messages, this whole morning has been a nonstop barrage of foreign languages. I’m starting to feel like high school isn’t just another building, but a whole other planet.

  “Psst,” Clementine whispers to me. I look over at the next desk, where she’s pointing adamantly at a notebook with the word vocabulaire written on the front.

  Vocabulaire. That looks a lot like vocabulary.

  “Pourquoi n’avez-vous pas votre cahier? L’avez-vous encore oublié?”

  Why is everyone suddenly looking at me? And why is the teacher practically glaring at me?

  “Mademoiselle Adeline,” she says pointedly.

  Uh-oh, that’s me.

  Clementine lets out a heavy sigh and reaches into my schoolbag by my feet, pulling out a blue notebook and slapping it on my desk.

  Has that always been in there?

  “Excusez-moi, Madame,” Clementine says in an impressive accent. “Adeline ne sent pas bien aujourd’hui.”

  I blankly stare down at the notebook on my desk. The word vocabulaire stares back at me. Dazedly, I flip through it, my mouth hanging open as I watch page after page of my own handwriting whiz by.

  And it’s all in French.

  I wrote this?

  How could I have possibly written all that if I can’t understand a single word the teacher is saying? Apart from my own name, anyway, which is technically cheating, because my name is French.

  And yet I’m clearly in this class. I have the notebook.
The teacher knows who I am.

  Except I can’t remember any of it.

  It’s like my body has fast-forwarded to age sixteen but my mind is still stuck at twelve. There’s a huge four-year gap in my memory.

  I think back to all the confusing things that have happened today: my mom going to work, a dog in my bed, an entirely new bedroom complete with an entirely new wardrobe, driving to school with Clementine Dumont. Then, at the same time, people I’ve never spoken to in my entire life are sending me text messages and waving and wanting to hang out with me after school.

  As the teacher continues to talk nonsensically in French, I pretend to be paying attention, when actually my head is spinning with questions.

  What exactly happened in the last four years?

  Why can’t I remember any of it?

  And, most important, what else is hiding in that four-year memory gap?

  The day is half over and I still haven’t seen the inside of my locker. I don’t even know where it is. When lunch period rolls around, I get the genius idea to go to the head office and tell them I forgot my locker combination. I almost expect the receptionist lady to give me a dirty look like Mrs. Mansfield always does at the middle school office whenever I ask for things, but she just smiles sympathetically. “Oh, sweetie. Has it been one of those days?”

  I nod and sigh. “Yes.”

  She reaches out to pat my hand and then turns toward her computer, tapping away at the keys. “I keep telling the administration they work you kids too hard these days. With all of those honors classes and homework and testing, it’s too much!” The printer next to her hums to life and she grabs a piece of paper as it appears on the tray.

  “Here you go, my dear.” She slides the page across the desk to me. “You take it easy. Sixteen is way too early to burn out.”

  I’m not sure what she means by all that but I smile and thank her as I walk away, glancing down at the piece of paper in my hand and nearly sinking to the ground in relief. There, printed across the top, is not only my locker combination, but also my locker number.

  I fight the urge to run back to the reception desk and kiss the lady on the cheek.

  I’m about to go and seek out locker 702, when Clementine finds me and drags me to the cafeteria, sitting us both down at a table with a group of girls and boys.

  Boys!

  I haven’t eaten lunch with a boy since the third grade. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have been caught dead sitting with any of the boys in my class! But that’s probably because they were all stupid and immature like Jacob Tucker, the boy who gave me the exploding grape soda yesterday….

  Or four years ago.

  But it quickly becomes apparent that these boys are totally different. They’re all super grown-up and actually interesting. And they don’t have to tell disgusting dirty jokes or make fart noises to get us to laugh. They just say funny things.

  I search the cafeteria for Grace, but I can’t find her. I recognize some of the people she was hanging out with in the hallway earlier. They’re sitting three tables away, but she doesn’t appear to be with them. I wonder if she has a different lunch period than I do. Or maybe she had to go off to study somewhere.

  Clementine notices me glancing around the room. She leans in and whispers, “He told me he had a doctor’s appointment.”

  He? Does she think I’m looking for Cute Connor? She must.

  Then she adds, “Don’t worry, though. He’ll be there tonight.”

  A bolt of electricity instantly shoots through me at the thought of seeing him again. I want to ask Clementine what’s happening tonight—that’s now the third time that someone has mentioned something going on—but I’m afraid it will make her even more suspicious of my strange behavior than she already is. So I drop it.

  I try twice more to find my locker throughout the day but I keep getting intercepted by Clementine. Although it’s not like I can complain. She always ends up leading me to all my classes. Without her, I’d probably still be wandering the halls like a nomad, wondering where I’m supposed to be.

  But now it’s the last period of the day and I can’t wait any longer. I know I’m supposed to be in English because that’s what Clementine said right before she scurried off for her chemistry class.

  I pull the paper from the receptionist out of my pocket and follow the numbers etched into each locker until I find the one I’m looking for.

  702.

  I’m really hoping the contents of this locker will give me some much-needed clues about my new life. I carefully dial in the combination and pull up on the lever, yanking the door open. I let out a gasp and leap back as an avalanche of stuff comes tumbling out, threatening to bury me alive, just like the clothes in my closet this morning.

  Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea. Do I even use this locker? Or do I just cram it full of junk and shut the door?

  As I bend down to start scooping up things, my head knocks against something hard and I fall back onto my butt.

  “Ow!” I cry, rubbing my forehead.

  “Oh, gosh! I’m so sorry!” says a deep male voice.

  I look up to see what I’ve bumped into. Or rather, who. It’s a boy with dark brown hair—almost black—a round face, pale skin, and large, expressive brown eyes. Also, he smells kind of amazing. Like minty soap. But that’s not the first thing I notice. The first thing I notice is how cute he is. (There appears to be no shortage of cute boys in this school!) Then I notice how familiar he looks. Except I can’t figure out why.

  He rubs at his forehead, too. “I saw you open the locker. Murphy’s law, right?”

  I blink in confusion. “Who?”

  He chuckles. “Murphy. You know the old saying, ‘Anything that can go wrong, will.’ ” He quickly swats his hand in the air. “Never mind. Here, let me help you.”

  I watch in stunned silence as he gathers up the various papers, pens, and trash items from the floor and starts organizing them into piles. I feel my face prickle with shame. Even though I don’t remember collecting all this junk, it doesn’t mean I’m not totally embarrassed that this supercute guy is picking it up for me.

  “That’s okay,” I say quickly, taking the random items from his hands. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll just stuff it all back in.”

  He stands up and for the first time I notice how incredibly tall he is. He must be over six feet! He laughs. “That might be how you got into this mess to begin with, Addie.”

  Addie.

  He knows my name. My nickname. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard that nickname all day. Everyone has been calling me Adeline. My mom, my teachers, Clementine. Even Cute Connor.

  So why is this boy calling me Addie? It must mean we know each other well enough—or long enough—for him to use my old nickname. He does look really familiar, but I can’t for the life of me figure out who he is.

  And it’s not like I can just come right out and ask him.

  “Are you going to English?” he asks as I shove the last of the debris into my locker and slam the door, vowing never to open that thing again.

  “Oh, yeah. I am!” I say with way too much enthusiasm. I’m just excited that he’s in my class, which means he can show me where it is. And I might be able to learn his name.

  “So, how’s your sister doing?” he asks as we walk down the hallway.

  “She’s good,” I say. “She’s…” But my voice trails off. I was going to tell him that she has yet another Boyfriend of the Week or that she spends most of her time hanging out at the Human Bean with her friends, but then I realize, with a surprise flicker of sadness, that all that was four years ago. I actually don’t know anything about my sister’s life now.

  “Is she liking Rice?” he asks.

  I squint at him. “You mean like fried rice?”

  He chuckles. “You’re hilarious, Addie. No, I mean, Rice University. The college. It’s her third year there, right?”

  College?!

  My sister’s in college?r />
  I suppose that makes sense. Four years ago she was sixteen, which means now she’s…

  Oh my gosh! She’s twenty!

  My sister is not even a teenager anymore. She’s, like, a grown-up.

  I feel a small twinge of disappointment when I realize that I completely missed out on her last years of high school. Graduation, applying for colleges, watching her dress up for prom. I wonder who she went with. Henry? No, she couldn’t have still been together with Henry. She used to switch boyfriends every week.

  I have so much to ask her. So much to catch up on. Where is Rice University, anyway? Is it far? Could I go visit her this weekend? Maybe I can spend the night in her dorm room! How cool would that be?

  It’s right then I realize that we’ve stopped walking and are standing in front of a door with a name plaque that reads “Mr. Heath.” I assume this must be our English class. Minty-Soap Boy is just staring at me, waiting for an answer to his last question.

  “Oh!” I say, shaking my head. “Yes. She’s liking it.”

  I guess, I add silently in my head.

  He smiles. “That’s good. My mom was asking about her the other day.”

  His mom?

  Is he an old family friend? Do his parents hang out with my parents?

  How on earth do I know this person?

  It suddenly occurs to me how odd it is that this boy seems to know more about my life than I do. I’m about to prod him for more information, but the train of thought instantly derails as soon as we step inside our English classroom and I see who’s sitting in the very front row. My stomach does an eager flip.

  This is it. This is my chance to talk to her and finally get some answers!

  “See you later!” I say to Mystery Boy. Then I sprint to the second row and seat myself right behind Grace Harrington.

  Grace doesn’t even acknowledge me. She’s too busy reading the book in her hands, which is typical Grace. She loves reading. Sometimes I joke that when she’s absorbed in a book, the apocalypse could be going on outside her window and she’d just continue flipping pages like nothing was happening.