“That’s the only section without any wolves in it,” Ava said.
It was pretty obvious that in addition to not liking her group, she didn’t like her assigned section.
Mint shrugged. “I think it’s a good part. I mean, it’s a pretty emotionally charged scene. And some of it takes place on frozen river ice.”
Other than mentioning the frozen river ice, Mint didn’t try to sell Ava too much on the Eskimo scene. Mint looked revved and ready to leave. She took a bouncy step forward with her transformational genre group in tow. It made me sad to watch Todd leave with her. What good was having a relationship with a boy if you never spent quality time with him at school?
“School is so stupid this year,” Ava said.
“It’ll be okay,” Lucia said. “That’s not a terrible section.”
“I think it has a sled in it,” Rachel offered.
“Bleh,” Ava said as she dumped her tray.
Then we walked into the hallway and heard something that almost made Ava crumple.
“That’s an amazing idea!” Jagger said. “Mint Taravel, you are so cool.”
“Too cool,” Todd added.
I didn’t know if they were talking about their project or the dwarf game or something else entirely. Then we heard Kimmie’s mousy voice chime in. “Too cool for this school!”
Ava stopped walking. I pulled on her arm to make her keep going but she wouldn’t budge.
“She’s awful,” Ava said. “She’s ruining everything.”
But she was only going to be here for a little while longer. I wish I could tell my friends. They would feel so much better knowing that.
“Why can’t Jagger see how terrible she is?” Ava mumbled so softly only I could hear. “And weird.”
“I guess their personalities just mesh,” Lucia offered.
But Ava didn’t want to hear about their personalities meshing. “No,” she said. “It’s because he doesn’t see who she really is!”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I know what I need to do!” Ava said, pointing to herself. “I need to show Jagger Evenson exactly who Angelina Mint Taravel really is. And once he sees that, he’ll want to puke.”
This didn’t sound good. I felt Ava’s arm slip through mine.
“We’ve put up with her weird, hijacking behavior long enough,” Ava said with so much force that a little bit of her spit landed on my face. “Now it’s time to destroy her.”
Lucia and Rachel both looked shocked. I just wiped it away with my sleeve.
“Um,” I said, thinking this over. “Destroy?” Did Ava really have time to finish learning her cello part for Sleeping Beauty and destroy Mint? I glanced at her index finger and spotted her callus. It was huge.
“Exactly. We need to have a three-way call and iron out our plan. You. Me. Rachel. Lucia.”
“Isn’t that a four-way call?” Rachel asked.
“Whatever,” Ava said. “Saturday afternoon, I’ll come to Lane’s house and we’ll call Rachel and Lucia and strategize from there.”
“I’ll ask my mom,” I said. But I wasn’t completely sure she’d say yes to this plan.
Then, as I was walking away with my friends, I felt somebody touch me. I was happy to see that it was Leslie. Because of all the Mint drama, I’d forgotten to look for them during lunch.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
Lucia, Rachel, and Ava waved to me. “See you in class,” Ava said.
They understood that they couldn’t hear us talk about important class captain stuff.
“I’ve got my cookies right here,” I said, handing them the Tupperware container. “Sorry I didn’t get them to you before school started.” I wanted them to know that I was totally on top of things. Even though I’d failed to deliver my cookies to them this morning.
“These are vegan?” Robin asked, peeling back the plastic lid to sneak a peek.
“They are,” I said.
“Nice job,” Leslie said. “My mom made vegan cookies once and they looked like dog crap.”
I was so happy I’d gone with the lemon-poppy-seed recipe.
“Now we have something else we need to talk to you about,” Leslie said in a very serious voice. “Your cousin.”
Robin raised her eyebrows and fixed her eyes on me in an intense way.
Great. Had Mint done something to upset the eighth graders? Robin took a break from staring at me in an intense way and glossed her lips.
“What’s her story?” Robin asked.
I didn’t know what they were after. “She’s from Alaska,” I explained.
“What happened to her parents?” Robin rubbed her lips together, smearing the gloss to distribute an even shine.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Did they want me to talk about Aunt Betina’s divorce? Her deadbeat ex-husband? Her new husband, Clark? That seemed invasive.
“Why did she move here without any parents?” Leslie asked. “That’s weird.”
I nodded. I had to tell them something. But I really hated lying to their faces. “Her mom just got remarried. They couldn’t all move here at the same time. So they sent Mint first.”
That seemed to satisfy them. And it was a minor lie.
“We like her,” Leslie said.
“Oh,” I said. That surprised me. Had they ever talked? When? Why would Mint be talking to the class captains behind my back and not tell me about it?
“She’s so retro!” Robin said. “And I love how she trashes her clothes.”
I wanted to inform them that she had actually trashed some of my clothes, and it wasn’t cool.
“Well, that’s it. See you at class-captain meeting,” Leslie said. “Don’t be late.”
“I know,” I said. There was no way I was going to be late to my first official class-captain meeting. I was counting down the days. As I walked to Mr. Guzman’s class, Derek fell into step with me.
“She must be driving you nuts,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. Knowing that Leslie and Robin liked her, I didn’t want to complain about Mint to another class captain.
“If you need to vent, you should call me. All last summer we had two of my cousins visiting from Peru. It was a nightmare,” Derek said. “Complete life disruption.” Then he made a sound like a bomb was going off.
We reached Mr. Guzman’s door and I stopped. Derek’s hair still looked incredibly plastic-y.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Class captains need to stick together,” he said, tapping me on the shoulder.
“Okay,” I said. I really wanted him to leave so that Todd wouldn’t see me talking to him and get the wrong idea. And Derek really needed to stop touching me. I didn’t touch him.
“By the way,” Derek said. “Your cookies look great.”
“Um, thanks,” I said, looking over my shoulder toward my classroom.
“They deliver the cookie basket to Ms. Knapp today. Hopefully, she doesn’t back out,” Derek said.
“Back out of what?” I asked.
“Being our faculty mentor. Apparently, last year’s crew and their luau were too high maintenance or something,” Derek said, leaning toward me a little bit.
I took a small step back. “Huh,” I said. I wondered what would be the fate of the class captains if we lost our faculty mentor. “That sounds bad.”
“Oh, it would suck. If we lose our faculty mentor, the school won’t give us a budget to plan the parties. We’d basically lose our status.”
“It would be totally rude of her to drop us,” I said. I really didn’t want to lose my status.
“I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Derek said.
Standing in the hallway, I thought I could hear Todd’s voice. “Bye,” I said, trying to encourage Derek to leave.
“I’m out,” Derek said as he flashed me a peace sign, and made his way down the hall.
14
Having my best friend set out to destroy my cousin put a bunch
of pressure on my home life. Because it made me feel conflicted. I didn’t necessarily want Mint to be destroyed, I just wanted her to go back to Alaska and stay there and never have contact with me or anybody I knew, ever again.
On Saturday, I sat across the table from Mint, waiting for Ava to arrive. It was pretty awful. Mint kept going on and on about what a great time she was having at Rio Chama Middle School. But listening to her ramble about my school was only part of what was so awful about the meal. I also had to watch her put food in her undersized mouth. The meal felt like torture.
“I love the chili verde sauce!” Mint said as she inhaled another bite of breakfast burrito.
“Me too. That’s why I make a whole bowl of it,” my mom said. “I’ll put it in our pork tacos tonight.”
“Yum,” Mint said as she smacked her lips in an annoying way.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
“Phones aren’t allowed at the table,” I told Mint in a very judge-y way.
“Isn’t that your phone?” Mint asked.
Did she always have to be right?
As I pulled my phone from my pocket, I saw Todd’s name flash across my screen. I loved it when I saw his name!
“Who’s that?” Mint asked.
She was so snoopy. And tricky. I suspected that Mint knew it was Todd and wanted me to admit that I had a relationship with him right in front of my parents. But I wasn’t about to do that.
“Can you hand me another napkin?” I asked, ignoring her question.
Then I answered Todd’s call. But I was already thinking of ways to speak to him without using his actual name.
ME: Hello there.
“Here’s your napkin,” Mint said.
My dad looked at me as if he expected me to take it. So I did, but when I took it, Mint tried to give it to my hand that was holding the phone, and I ended up dropping my phone. And it fell. And bounced. Into the chili verde!
“Augh!” I yelled.
Mint swooped in like a bird of prey and pulled my phone out of the sauce.
“I think it will be okay,” Mint said, shaking the bigger pieces of green chili off it.
“Can you hear me?” I said into my phone. “Does my phone still work? Are you there?”
But when I pressed it to my ear, I couldn’t hear Todd’s voice, I just got a bunch of chili verde on my face.
“Power it off!” my dad yelled. He snatched my phone from me and turned it off. “You can’t turn it on for a day. You need to make sure the circuit board is dry or you’ll fry it.”
“I think you caught it in time,” my mom said. “And it didn’t get totally submerged. Good job, Mint.”
Good job, Mint? This whole thing was her fault. I felt so doomed. Not only had I hung up on Todd, but I couldn’t call him back. Or anybody else. For at least a day.
“You can use my phone to call Ava back,” Mint said. “Was it Ava?”
Man, I couldn’t believe how obnoxious she was. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”
“Let’s not overreact,” my mom said. “It was just a phone. It will be fine.”
“Mint was saying you were assigned a wolf exercise in school,” my dad said.
“I believe it’s called a transformational genre exercise,” my mom said. “This would be the perfect opportunity for Mint to wear her wolf T-shirt.”
Mint shot me an accusatory glance. But I shot her one right back. Then Mint took things one step further.
“I can’t wear that shirt,” Mint said. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“What?” my mom asked in a very concerned voice. “Did you leave it somewhere?”
I could not believe Mint was trying to get me into trouble. I thought back to the moment where I’d plunked that shirt in the trash can. It had felt so right. But now, with both of my parents staring at me, it felt so wrong.
“Where did you leave it?” my mom asked.
Did I really have to admit what I’d done? She ruined my shirt, so I threw hers away. We were even. Plus, her shirt was ugly.
“I left it at school and now it’s just gone,” Mint said, answering before me.
I didn’t know how to feel about any of this. I mean, we shouldn’t have even been talking about it.
“Well, we’ll get you a brand-new one,” my mom said.
“Absolutely,” my dad added.
What a mistake!
“You are so thoughtful,” Mint said sweetly. She was practically on the verge of tearing up.
“Forget about it,” my dad said. “Tell me more about your assignment.”
“Okay,” Mint said. And then explained the assignment in a way that made it sound way cooler than it actually was.
Apparently, when it came to my school life, I could never be the first person to tell my parents anything anymore.
“Sounds neat,” my dad said.
It was hard not to stare at my phone on the counter. I missed it already.
“I find it incredibly well-timed that your class has been assigned a novel so appropriate for Mint,” my mom said.
Mint nodded. “It is so much fun being the expert.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Too bad Ava doesn’t like her part,” Mint said.
“Oh, Ava doesn’t like her part?” my mom asked.
I did not want to gossip about Ava with my parents. “Can’t we talk about something else?”
There was a little bit of silence while we ate and tried to think of something else to talk about. Then the doorbell rang and I was relieved, because it meant that Ava was early. I jumped out of my chair.
“I’ll get it!” I said.
I noticed that Mint got up too. Which was weird. She didn’t need to help me answer the door. It was my house. My life. My doorknob. I jerked open the front door and nearly died. It wasn’t Ava. It was Todd. Why was he ringing my doorbell? Maybe that was why he’d called me. To tell me he was stopping by. A flood of happiness tumbled through me.
“Hi,” Todd said, waving at me. “Is Mint here?”
“My study partner!” Mint exclaimed. “You’re early!”
“Huh?” I asked. And all that happiness disappeared. Todd’s coat brushed my arm as he entered my house.
Then my mom appeared and she was smiling, which I didn’t like at all. Because she didn’t even understand what was happening. One of the people I cared most about in the whole world had just entered my foyer and she didn’t even know his value to me.
“My mom let me bring an old shower curtain for our tundra,” Todd said.
Our tundra? They were seriously going to replicate Alaskan tundra together. Then I saw a familiar head appear out of the corner of my eye. It was Jagger.
“Jagger?” I asked. “You came to work on the project too?” They still had weeks before they performed it. I mean, Mint wasn’t even going to be here. Didn’t she feel bad about that? Knowing that she was going to abandon her group?
“Mint wanted to practice with her group,” my mom said. “Didn’t she tell you? I was under the impression that was why Ava was coming over too.”
Something smelled fishy. Why would Mint invite my friends to my house and not tell me? Why wouldn’t Todd tell me? I shook my head very slowly from one side to the other, trying to figure things out. “Ava isn’t even in Mint’s group. She’s in a group with Paulette, Tuma, and Bobby.”
“Oh,” my mom said.
“You are going to nail that opening scene,” Todd said. “So Mint, Jagger told me that you have a codebook to help us get out of the slime caves.”
“It’s not really a codebook,” Mint said, twirling her hair in a flirty way. “Just a notebook I kept of secret passageways and hidden potions.”
“We’ve only found, like, three potions,” Jagger said.
“And one of them melted our armor and turned us purple,” Todd said.
“Oh,” Mint said. “You found a bag of poison.”
“Is this a video game?” my mom asked.
“Yeah,” Jagger said.
“It was basically my life all summer but now I’m stuck in a cave.”
The doorbell chimed again. It was Kimmie. “I brought instructions and ingredients to make papier-mâché ice blocks.”
Mint really, really should have told me this was happening.
“If you go with the no-bake papier-mâché paste recipe, we need to add salt to help prevent mold,” Kimmie said.
“Awesome!” Mint said, giving her a high five. “We’ve got plenty of salt!”
“And I brought Dwarf Massacre,” Jagger said. “If we want to take a break and play it.”
“Totally,” Mint said.
Then I watched Todd and Jagger and Kimmie and Mint all tromp into my kitchen. My house felt so invaded. Under normal circumstances, it would have felt awesome to have Todd in my kitchen. But under these circumstances, it did not feel awesome.
I kept standing by the door. Waiting for my life to feel normal.
“Is something wrong?”
I turned. Ava was standing on my front steps. Before I could answer her, laughter tumbled out of my kitchen.
“Who is that?” she asked.
Then Kimmie’s voice boomed out of the kitchen. “You are so funny, Jagger!”
Ava’s mouth dropped open. “Is Jagger in your kitchen?”
It wasn’t as if I could hide what was happening. So I just leveled with her. “Yes. With Kimmie, Todd, and Mint. They just got here.”
Ava looked like somebody had punched her in the gut.
“Why are they in your kitchen?” she asked.
“Good question. They claim they’re making ice blocks out of a no-bake paste,” I explained. “But I think their visit is Dwarf Massacre Three–related.”
She lowered her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me Jagger would be here? I would have worn a different outfit.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Mint didn’t even tell me.”
“This is one more reason to destroy her,” Ava said, her mouth settling into a hard line. “Let’s go to your room.”
“Don’t you want to go in the kitchen and say anything to Jagger?” I asked. “Like, hello?”
Ava’s eyes got big. “No way. I didn’t wear lip gloss and my shirt has a giraffe on it. I didn’t know I was supposed to look cute.”
Too Cool for This School Page 11