Then she carefully repacked the cello in her carrying case and zipped it back up.
“This is really starting to bug me,” Robin whispered to Leslie. “We’re losing valuable time.”
Over the years, I’d heard Ava play at roughly a dozen concerts. Usually, my mom came. My mom always said she thought the cello sounded like dark chocolate melting.
“I didn’t mean to freak on you guys. But my cello is one of the most important things in my life,” Ava said.
“It’s cool,” Derek said, answering for everybody.
“Yeah,” Robin added. “It’s fine. Bye.”
“Have a good meeting, Lane,” Ava said. Then she put her pinkie near her mouth and thumb near her ear and made the universal sign for “Call me.”
I nodded.
“She’s totally gifted,” Fiona says. “I bet she gets a scholarship to college.”
I’d never thought of that, because I didn’t spend any time thinking about college. But Fiona was probably right. Ava was gifted. She was lucky. And after Mint moved back to Alaska, I hoped Jagger could recognize this.
“I wonder who moved her cello,” I said.
“Maybe it was an accident,” Fiona said.
“Or maybe somebody wanted to mess with her,” Derek said.
I took another bite of pizza and considered that. Who would want to mess with Ava?
“What mood do you think Ava will dress up as?” Leslie asked.
That question caught me off guard. I didn’t automatically think of my friends as moods. “Um, intense?” I offered.
“Ooh!” Robin gushed. “I like that! We should add it to the list.”
“And what about you?” Leslie said. “Cerebral or organic?”
I wanted to say neither. As I mulled over how to respond, I could hear myself breathing. When I tried to imagine dressing up as a cerebral mood, all I could picture was a slimy brain. The last thing I wanted was to show up to our first big school party looking like a frontal lobe or cerebellum. Those costumes wouldn’t be cute. “Organic,” I heard myself say.
I figured it was the better of the two moods. With this much time to plan and prepare, I could use any free time I had searching online for the perfect costume. I wanted to wear something cute enough to catch Todd’s attention and make him look at me and say “Wow!”
16
The weekend after the class-captain meeting, I was looking forward to spending a day with my mom. The mother-daughter outing was her idea. To be honest, I think she felt guilty that she’d spent so much energy on Mint. But I figured that now that my cousin would be flying out of town in a week and a half, my mom was just trying to get things back to normal.
“I think I want two tacos,” I said. Normally, when we went to Mijos Tacos I just got one. But I was in the mood to indulge.
Mint sat at the table doing homework. I know it was petty of me, but I felt thrilled that we were leaving her behind with my dad.
“Do you want us to bring you back a taco?” I asked. I was impressed with myself for being such a thoughtful person, especially in light of the current circumstances.
Mint looked up from her social studies book and shook her head. “That’s okay. I’ll probably just eat at Todd’s.”
What? Why would she be eating at Todd’s? Was she going there? Normally when she worked on her project she went to Jagger’s house. Why would that suddenly change? I narrowed my eyes. Mint was so devious. I’d been eavesdropping on her phone conversations all week and I’d heard her tell Jagger that Kimmie was going to visit her grandparents in Tucson and so they were taking the weekend off from working on their project. So why go to Todd’s?
“Why would you eat at Todd’s?” I asked.
“Um,” she said, looking up and me and tapping the eraser end of her pencil against the table. “Because we finally got him and Jagger out of the slime caves and they’re ready to board the pirate ship and conquer the remaining Iron Dwarves.”
I didn’t understand any of that. “You’re going to hang out at Todd’s and play video games?”
Mint nodded. “Once I finish my homework.”
And I just snapped. Even though I should have shown more maturity, I stomped my foot like a five-year-old. “That’s not happening!”
My mother came into the kitchen carrying a basket filled with our clean laundry. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to go to Todd’s with Mint!” I screamed.
My mother looked very surprised. “Honey, we’ve got plans to get tacos together.”
Mint was so underhanded. She’d orchestrated the whole thing. I really couldn’t stand her.
“But I want to go to Todd’s!” I said. If only I could have explained to my mother how much Todd meant to me.
“You need to stop yelling,” my mom said. “Do you want to help me fold clothes and we can talk about this?”
I shook my head. “Not really.” Because we folded clothes in the family room, so Mint would be able to hear everything we said. I wanted privacy. “I want to talk to you alone. Can we go to the garage?”
My mother looked surprised as she set down the laundry basket and joined me in the garage. I was surprised myself. Maybe this was the time to tell my mom that Todd and I were basically going out. What was the worst that could happen? I was practically a teenager now. Of course I was going to start having boyfriends. She had to understand that, right?
But then I thought back to something Ava once said concerning parents and guys and dating: “Don’t ever tell you parents you’re going out with Todd. You’ve got the kind of parents who would go into lockdown. Trust me. Keep it a secret as long as you can or your life will turn to suck.”
Once we were in the cool darkness of the garage, I felt pretty vulnerable and unsure about whether I really wanted to have a heart-to-heart with my mom about Todd. I figured I’d keep it simple. “I really want to go to Todd’s too.”
My mom sighed and put her arms around me. “I know. But I think it’s important that Mint spread her wings a little and have some independence during her stay with us.”
What was wrong with my mother? What made her think that? “Okay,” I said. “But I don’t understand why I can’t go too.”
My mother patted me very sympathetically. “You’ve got your friends and now Mint has hers.”
I pulled away from her patting. I was so offended. They were my friends first! And my mom was really not seeing the bigger picture: there was no reason at all for Mint to be visiting my boyfriend’s house without me. “Please?”
My mother shook her head. “I feel it’s important to let Mint have this.”
I felt differently. “Fine,” I said, stomping back inside the house. As soon as I entered the kitchen, I was stunned by what I saw. Mint was looking at my phone. I felt totally violated. “Get away from my phone!”
“I was moving it away from the water pitcher so nothing would get spilled on it,” Mint explained. She set my phone down on the counter and slowly backed away from it.
I shook my head. I didn’t believe her.
“I don’t even know your code!” Mint said.
But Mint had proven herself to be a savvy person. I bet she did know my code. “Sure you don’t!”
“I don’t!” Mint said.
“Girls, stop yelling,” my mom said.
“This is unbelievable,” I said. “I’m getting in trouble for getting mad at Mint for snooping through my phone?”
“I didn’t,” Mint said. “I promise.”
Then I realized how the Red Rock kids had learned about the disco theme. Mint had read the texts Robin had sent me. And then she’d squealed about it. She. Was. Rotten.
“You read my texts and found out about our school’s disco theme and you told the kids from Red Rock Middle School and now the other class captains think I squealed and have a blabbermouth cousin!” I had never been this mad before.
“That’s not how it happened!” Mint yelled. “You told me about it once in the middl
e of the night. We had a big conversation. I promise. I never read your texts. Have you ever considered that you might be a sleep-talker?”
What? Was she being serious? I wasn’t a sleep-talker. “Stop telling ridiculous lies!” I walked toward Mint because I wanted to take her phone away from her and read all her texts so she would see how it felt.
“I don’t know how we got here, but I am breaking this up,” my mom said, grabbing me by the wrist and leading me down the hall. “Lane, stay in your room. I’m taking Mint to Todd’s house as planned. When I come back, we’ll get tacos and talk through this.”
My mother was siding with Mint! Unbelievable. “I don’t want to get tacos anymore.” I slammed my door. But I still stayed next to it so I could hear what my mom told Mint.
“You cannot touch Lane’s phone ever again,” my mother said.
“I didn’t read her texts,” Mint said.
“I believe you, but Lane worked very hard to be class captain and she takes it seriously.”
“I know. She’s a great class captain!” Mint gushed.
And what my rotten cousin said next, I’ll never know, because the only sound I heard after that was the front door closing. She was gone. Off to Todd’s. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to call him and tell him what a lying, dishonest, sneaky person Mint was. But I held back. I knew Ava was hatching a great plan. And I also knew that she was better at conniving than I was. So, hard as it was, I decided to take a deep breath and be patient. Because I didn’t want to spoil what Mint had coming.
17
The weekend was filled with silence, because I had little interest in talking to Mint or my parents. When I finally got back to school, there was only one person I wanted to see: Derek. I found him at his locker looking into a small, square magnetic mirror. He was fluffing his hair.
“Hi,” I said.
When he turned around, he seemed pretty excited to see me.
“What’s up, Lane?”
Derek lifted his hand in the air, expecting a high five. I wasn’t the kind of person who went around high-fiving guys in the hallway, but I did it anyway.
“I’m here for an update about Jagger and my cousin,” I said.
Derek shut his locker, looked over his shoulder, and then back at me. “It was really weird.”
“It was?” I asked. That was not the report I’d been expecting. Because while I knew Mint was weird, I had no idea Jagger was too.
“I don’t have time to cover everything before class,” he said.
“Then we’ll be late,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a tardy slip. “We’re class captains. We get certain privileges. Remember?” Three weeks ago, I never would have said such a thing to Derek or anybody else. But Mint was forcing me to reorder my priorities. I was also surprised by how serious my voice sounded.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s not do this in the hallway. Let’s go to the meeting room.”
“We can do that?” I asked.
“Sure,” Derek said. “Mrs. Archibald loves me. Most secretaries do. I’ll just tell her it’s an impromptu class-captain meeting.”
Suddenly, I was on a power trip. Of course I could go with Derek to the meeting room and claim I was taking part in an impromptu class-captain meeting and gossip about my cousin instead of going to class. As soon as Derek flashed his smile, Mrs. Archibald let us have the meeting room. We shut the door and sat down, and Derek spilled all he’d learned.
“They’re not doing what you think they’re doing,” Derek said.
I didn’t know if I was prepared to hear the truth. “So they’re not working on the wolves project?”
He shook his head.
“And they’re not playing the dwarf game?” I asked.
He stopped shaking his head and looked up. “They do that a little, but they do something else a lot more.”
Poor Ava. If Mint and Jagger were super serious, Ava would die. My stomach would not stop flipping. “Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
“They’re roller-skating,” Derek said. “Like maniacs.”
“Huh?” Why would they be doing that? I didn’t even know Mint owned roller skates. What was going on?
“They’re pretty serious about it,” Derek said. “Other people join them. It looks like they have choreographed moves.”
“Are you sure you’re spying on the right people?” I asked. “You have witnessed Jagger Evenson group roller-skating with my cousin?”
“Yeah,” Derek said. “And this last weekend, they were at your friend Todd’s.”
My heart started beating so much faster. “You saw them at Todd’s?”
He nodded.
“And they were roller-skating there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, they were playing that dwarf game. I think they won. There was a lot of celebrating.”
This was so much information to process, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was useful.
“Is that everything?” I asked.
“No,” Derek said. “I’ve got one more thing to tell you.”
I wasn’t sure I could handle one more thing. “What?”
After I asked that question, I noticed that Derek looked nervous. His eyes darted around the room and then finally settled on me. “Never mind.”
What was wrong with Derek? Why wouldn’t he just tell me?
Ring. Ring. Ring.
When the bell rang, I jumped a little. “We should go,” he said.
“But what else do you need to tell me?” I asked.
Derek got up and didn’t answer me.
“Derek?” I said. “It’s rude to say that you’ve got something to tell a person and then not do it.”
He made his way to the door in silence and I followed behind him. What a perturbing turn of events. Guys were so frustrating. Derek opened the door to the hallway and looked back at me.
“You’re a lot cuter than your cousin,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
I froze. Even after Derek started to walk away, I just stood there. Did Derek like me? Did I want Derek to like me? I wasn’t totally sure. But I didn’t think so. This was nuts. When did Derek start liking me? Should I say something? If I don’t, will the next time I see him be super awkward?
“Wait!” I said.
Derek turned back around. “What?” he asked. “Do you need me to get more inside information for you?”
This moment felt so bizarre. I didn’t know how I’d missed the signs that Derek had liked me, and I also didn’t know how I’d turned a fellow class captain into my cousin-spy.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For trailing your cousin?” he asked.
“For that and for what you just said. It was nice.” I smiled at him. I figured that was what you did in situations like this.
“So do you want me to stop gathering information?” he asked.
Derek was so good at info gathering that it didn’t make sense for him to stop.
“Just be careful,” I said. “Don’t let them know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t worry,” Derek said. “I was born careful.”
And then the bell rang again and I raced down the hallway to Mr. Guzman’s classroom and my desk, which sat kitty-corner from Todd’s. Which was where I belonged.
18
Basically, I stopped talking to Mint at school and so did Ava. Lucia and Rachel were still polite, which made me feel a little bit betrayed. But I couldn’t control what they did. And I couldn’t control what they thought of Mint. All I could control was what I thought of Mint. And I thought she sucked.
It took days, but Ava finally figured out a punishment. She wouldn’t tell me the details. All I knew was that it was my job to get Mint to the mall without any adults around. It seemed like something I could manage. Ava assured me that Mint wouldn’t be physically harmed but that she would learn a very important lesson about loyalty and honesty and kindness. And she wanted the police to be involved. When she first
told me this over the phone, I was pretty hesitant.
I said, “No police.”
She said, “Some police.”
I said, “Absolutely no police.”
“One police officer. Maybe not on duty.”
I yelled, “Ava, involving the police is taking things too far!”
She yelled back, “We at least need mall security!”
I tried to calm down and consider this.
“Fine,” I finally agreed.
“Cool,” Ava said in a happy voice. “But keep in mind that I can’t control whether mall security calls the police for backup.”
I felt like such a sucker.
Before we had a chance to implement our mall attack, my parents made the tragic and foolish decision that Mint and I should end our feud. And in a show of complete cluelessness about how this should happen, they took us to play miniature golf at a super family fun center. My parents didn’t understand how sixth graders operated at all.
“My ball is never going to make it through that windmill,” I said. The blades kept knocking my golf ball at the exact wrong moment, sending it into a pile of woodchips.
“Aim for the blade,” my dad said.
That seemed like a terrible strategy.
“I can’t believe you go back to Alaska in less than a week,” my mom said to Mint.
But I could totally believe that. I was thrilled.
“We’ll all miss you so much,” my dad said.
This was so lame I inadvertently made a gagging sound. Luckily, that was the putt that sent my ball through the windmill.
“I’ll miss you a lot too,” Mint said. “My life back in Alaska is going to be so different.”
That idea made me happy. Because my life was going to be so different too. It was going to be Mint-less. And I couldn’t wait.
“I’m not even going to live in the same house,” Mint said.
“Really?” my mother asked. “I didn’t realize you were moving in with Clark.”
“Yeah,” Mint said. “At first, the plan was that he’d move in with us. But somewhere between Rome and Tuscany, they decided it made more sense to move in with him. My mom told me the other day.”
Too Cool for This School Page 13