“Dad will take you,” she said.
“No, Olive’s mom is picking us up,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
They both looked relieved, like they were very happy not to worry about me, which just made me madder, especially after I’d had such a good talk with Dad last night. Olive’s mom wasn’t actually picking me up, but it wasn’t like school was very far away. I’d just jog. Anything to get out of this house.
I ran about a half mile, then had to stop because I got a cramp in my side. I stood there, clutching my waist, wishing I hadn’t eaten that banana so fast. In a minute, the cramp went away, and I started power-walking instead of jogging. I tried to pull up that warm feeling of pride I’d had on Saturday when Olive and I were admiring our work with Mrs. Abbott. I thought about asking Mrs. Sherman for a meeting so I could get a start on her room.
But no matter how much I tried to distract myself with those thoughts, I still felt nervous, knowing that a bunch of kids—including my competitors—would be looking at the office just hours from now. We’d done an incredible job. Would they see it? Would it be enough?
When I’d signed up the BFFs for the contest, I’d wanted everyone, especially Dad, and Grandma, to see that I could do something special. But maybe that was silly. Was Dad going to be super impressed if I won a middle school decorating contest? In any case, he’d already told me I was amazing. Was Rachel going to be impressed that we’d done it without her? Would my fellow students lift me up on their shoulders, like I’d seen them do in pictures of basketball championships? Did any of that matter?
I didn’t know anymore. As the school came into sight, the only thing I was sure of was that I was late meeting Olive.
Best Foot Forward
“Oh, thank goodness!” Olive shouted when she saw me. She was standing outside the front doors of the school, handing out bookmarks. She’d texted me last night to say she was making something, but I had no idea what to expect.
She held one out. “What do you think?” It said VOTE on one side, and on the other side was our BFF logo, which was three different shoes in a triangle and the words Best Foot Forward: Interior Design. She’d printed them out on some heavy paper.
“Olive, wow! They look incredible.”
She smiled, but quickly turned as some kids walked by us. “Vote for the office!” she shouted. “Vote BFF!”
“If we’re last in their minds, they’ll think of us first,” she said to me, smiling even bigger.
“Huh?”
“If we’re the only group promoting ourselves right before the voting, we’ll be fresh in everyone’s heads.”
“Ahhh, I get it. Olive, you’re—”
“A great bookmark maker?” She thrust a fistful at me. “I know, but get to work. We don’t have much time before the bell.”
I was going to say she was a genius, but that worked, too. We both held out bookmarks as students passed by. Some kids took them and stuffed them into their pockets or backpacks. Some were clearly trying not to make eye contact. Other kids took them, then threw them on the ground once they got a few steps away from us. A handful of bookmarks were scattered all around the trash can, and who knows how many were inside it. I tried to offer one to an eighth grade girl, but she just laughed and shook her head.
“Why don’t you stand over there so we’re spread out,” Olive suggested. “And smile!”
I wasn’t used to Olive being so pushy, but I dutifully moved to the other side of the walk and tried again. “Vote BFFs?” I said to the next person, and after a couple more, I’d managed to take the question mark out of my voice. “Vote BFFs!” I said, much louder now. Olive gave me a thumbs-up from across the sidewalk.
Most of the students weren’t paying any attention to us, but a few said they’d vote for us, although they may have just said that to be nice. I didn’t see any other teams outside, but then a couple teams had handed things out last Friday.
I noticed a guy from the basketball team running into the school with a big roll of white paper and a Ziploc full of markers. I couldn’t keep myself from smirking. If that was the competition, we had nothing to worry about.
As we stood out there, frantically pressing bookmarks into every open hand, I really had to give Olive a lot of credit. She’d worked harder on this project than any of our others. I’d underestimated her—big-time. Maybe she’d just needed the opportunity to show her stuff, and with Rachel out of the picture, she’d had it.
Then bus number ten rolled up, our bus, and I saw Tony get off, followed by . . . speaking of Rachel. I thought she wasn’t riding the bus anymore?
“Hi, Rakell!” I heard Olive yell. “We’re going to do it! Vote BFFs!” Olive kept yelling manically, to no one in particular and everyone all at once. The bookmarks rained down from her hands like fall leaves from a tree as the last bus emptied out.
Tony walked up to me. “Good luck today,” he said. “You know you’ve got my vote.”
“Thanks, Tony.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing our bookcase in action,” he said with a big smile. It was good to see Tony smile.
“Oh, it looks great,” I said. “You know, the award’s yours, too, if we win.” Every time I said that, I felt like I had to throw salt over my shoulder or something, like even mentioning the voting was jinxing it.
I glanced over at Rachel, who was crouched down by the trash can, carefully picking up each bookmark from the ground.
Oh, nice, I thought, I guess she wants to make sure they all go directly into the trash.
“What do you get if you win?” Tony asked, snapping my attention back.
“Oh, uh, a trophy, and a pizza party.” I thought about the Principal for a Day thing. We’d never worked out which one of us would do it, but Olive wouldn’t want to anyway, would she?
“I’m more excited about the frozen yogurt truck,” Tony said, “and especially about the day off.”
“Yeah, do you think he’ll really give everyone a day off?”
Tony shrugged. “Dunno, but I’ll vote for you anyway.” He started toward Rachel. “Well, save me a piece of pepperoni!” he called over his shoulder.
Rachel held the stack of discarded bookmarks out to Tony. Then the two of them distributed them, actually gave them out, to kids by the door.
She was helping me? I could hardly believe it!
And then Tony stuck the rest of the bookmarks into his coat pocket and reached out and took Rachel’s hand, and they walked like that, hand in hand, into the school.
I remembered seeing Tony talking to Rachel at her locker, remembered thinking he might be trying to patch things up between us. Was that true? Or was he really just trying to be her boyfriend? And did Olive know about any of this and not tell me, like she didn’t tell me Rachel was texting her about our meetings?
When the bell rang a moment later, Olive was at my side, snapping her fingers in front of me. “Earth to Maggie,” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Not a ghost, I thought, but I did see something I definitely didn’t expect and, to be honest, it was a little scary. Olive grabbed my arm, and we ran into the school.
I was in a fog the whole day. I had a pop quiz in science on the solar system and couldn’t remember Mars. I walked right into the boys’ bathroom and had to back out, covering my eyes and yelling, “Sorry!” I even wrote the wrong year on one of my papers, like I was trying to go back in time.
Everyone around me was wearing green and brown, because today’s “theme” for Spirit Week was School Colors. I was wearing my favorite blue sweater and jeans because I felt good in them, and I wanted to feel good on judging day. Besides, I would never wear the school colors, not those particular shades of green and brown together, ever. They were a hideous combination.
During study hall, when it was time to peruse all the rooms before casting our votes, I was so nervous, I thought I’d be sick. When we got to the office, Olive said, “Come on,” but I couldn’t do it.
“You g
o ahead,” I said. “I’ll stay out here.”
“Are you sure? Don’t you want to hear what people think?”
“No,” I said. That was exactly what I was afraid to hear. I sat on the floor and leaned up against some lockers.
When Olive came back out the door with a bunch of kids, she was smiling really big.
“It was so great, Maggie!” she said. She shifted a lemon-drop-shaped lump to her other cheek. “Everyone loved it! Although . . . some kids asked where the dancing sunflower was. Remember when you had Mrs. Abbott put that away in her desk because it detracted from the new focal point?” Of course I remembered. How could they ever notice the seating area if they were looking at that goofy sunflower?
“So, they really liked it?” I asked, and we went back and forth like that for a minute, me pressing Olive for more, and Olive sharing all the praise. She held out her hand to reveal two wrapped lemon drops. “From Mrs. Abbott,” Olive said. “She said to tell you good luck, even though we don’t need it.”
As I went around visiting the other rooms, a lemon drop poking from both my cheeks, I started to feel better and better. The gym hallway? Well, the boy I saw that morning with the roll of paper and markers must have been their entire decorating team. The only thing they’d done was tape paper to the walls with messages scribbled on it like “Go Long Branch!” Preschoolers could have done a better job.
Olive poked me when we walked by it. “This is not fantabulous,” she whispered, and we giggled.
“Yup,” I whispered back. “Amateur hour.”
The music room was better. The math team had decorated it, and they had a theme, which helped, although it wasn’t exactly an original idea. Cardboard music notes hung from the ceiling, and along the back wall they’d cut a music staff out of construction paper and written the football players’ names inside the notes. Sure, they’d put glitter on them, but as Grandma always said, you couldn’t put lipstick on a pig. It was so juvenile. I mean, you didn’t see any glitter in House Beautiful.
I’d already seen the science room during class. It also had glittery objects hanging from the ceiling; in this case, planets. And the student council—the student council itself!—wasn’t even finished with their area, which was the hallway that led to the pick-up loop. When we went to check it out, we found a sixth-grade boy desperately painting a papier-mâché thing that sort of, if you squinted, looked like our school’s wildcat mascot.
That left the main hallway, the cheerleaders’ hallway, which we’d walked through several times that day. I’d already gotten an eyeful of the hot mess of green and brown crepe paper. It was everywhere. If the colors looked bad in small doses, well . . .
They’d looped the paper from the ceiling, twisted it above the lockers, wrapped it around poles. There were signs, too, in the same clashing colors, with sayings that all made the same point, that Long Branch was supposed to crush Centerville in the football game, although the words were written in bubble font, which made the threats of domination seem way less serious. The signs were all over the wall, and some were even duct-taped to the floor.
“This hallway is giving me a headache,” I said to Olive.
“Yeah, same,” Olive said. “What’s that you always say, about the eyes getting tired?”
“The eye needs a place to rest,” I said. “You’re exactly right. It’s negative space, white space. If there’s too much stuff, your eyes don’t know where to focus, and it just gets overwhelming. It’s why your bookmarks look so awesome, Olive. They have just the right balance.”
Olive and I leaned against the lockers while the other kids were jumping from sign to sign like they were playing hopscotch. A piece of crepe paper came loose from the ceiling and landed right on my shoulder. Olive pointed, rolling her eyes.
“Typical,” I said, laughing. I was feeling so pleased. I didn’t want to jinx anything, but . . . I flicked the paper off and watched it float the rest of the way to the ground.
Katelyn was there, pointing out the posters on the floor to a group of kids. She was wearing her cheerleader uniform, and her lips were even shinier and pinker than usual. Clearly she’d just reapplied her gloss. She pointed. “See here, how it says to ‘Stomp Out the Rockets,’ and the sign is on the floor. Get it?”
“Yeah, cool,” the kids said.
Now I rolled my eyes. What was next? Backflips?
Olive was listening to Katelyn’s sales pitch. “Well, I guess that’s kind of creative,” Olive said, but I glared at her, and she didn’t say anything else.
At the end of the day, just before the dismissal bell, Mr. Villanueva’s voice came over the speaker. I was beginning to wonder if he’d ever announce the winners.
“I have the results of our Spirit Week Decorating Contest!” he announced. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, Mr. V.
He started going on and on: “. . . congratulate all the teams . . . examples of school spirit . . . hard work . . .”
Oh, get to the point!
“In sixth place . . .”
Great, he’s going backward.
“Is the basketball team for their decoration of the gym hallway.”
I felt my body relax, just a bit. Of course the basketball team got last place. They had put in zero effort. It was only fair.
“In fifth place is the student council. . . . ”
That stupid papier-mâché wildcat. You can’t put all your effort into one piece. It would be like buying a killer couch and sticking it in an empty living room. I mean, nice couch, but where are you going to set your popcorn on movie night?
“Science club takes fourth place. . . .” Now, that was a bit of a surprise. I thought they might take second. The planets were actually really cool, much better than the music notes. . . .
And then the bell rang, and everyone scattered out to the lockers. The bells were automated, so it was Mr. V’s fault for being long-winded, but it was still a bummer, like when someone sneezed during an important line at a movie.
I strained to listen as I stood clutching my combination lock. I couldn’t make my fingers work. I wasn’t even sure I could remember the combination.
Mr. Villanueva said, “With their super musical decorations, the math team comes in third place.”
I felt my breath whoosh out of me in one long exhale. That only left the BFFs and the terrible, no-good, crepe paper disaster. My head was spinning. I rested it against my still unopened locker.
There were kids all around me, slamming their locker doors, stuffing books into backpacks, not even listening. How could they not be listening? But even in all the chaos, it was like it was just me and Mr. Villanueva’s voice floating out of the speaker in a corner of the hallway. I couldn’t see or hear anything else. Nothing else mattered. I remembered Tony teaching me to shoot free throws. It’s just you and the hoop, he’d say. You and the hoop.
Kids were running out to the buses. If I missed my bus, so what? I’d walk home. I’d run! I’d run through the door and announce the awesome news to my parents, and my dad would twirl me around and tell me again how amazing I was, and they would promise to never fight again. I’d run to Grandma’s room, and she’d call me by my name and say how proud she was of me.
I’d treat Olive, and Tony, and Rakell, yes, even Rakell, to hot fudge sundaes because we were all in this together and it was so silly to fight over petty little things. How could I ever have thought about sending Tony back to Bircher? How could I have been so angry at Rakell? Who had time for that?
Not me. I had things to do, big things, now that the BFFs were going to be on the map. Now that Maggie Owens had officially arrived. I was imagining where I’d put the trophy, thinking of how I should start writing my acceptance speech, thinking of colors for Mrs. Sherman’s office, for Tony’s room. I was tasting that cheesy, ooey, gooey pizza. I was waiting for Mr. Villanueva to say the magic words.
Crepe Paper Disaster
It was Katelyn’s scream that I’d remember most, that shrieking �
�OH MY GOD!” that would ring in my ears far longer than Mr. Villanueva’s flat, calm voice saying, “And in second place . . . is the BFFs, which means the Long Branch cheerleading squad takes the prize. Congratulations to all the teams.”
It felt like Katelyn’s voice was reverberating up and down the tiled hallways, but it might have just been echoing in my head.
Mr. Villanueva continued, “And because everyone in attendance today cast a vote, stay tuned for information on that frozen yogurt truck!”
All the kids in the hall started cheering at that, which made it so much worse, and then it was like I dove underwater. All I could hear was the pounding of the surf above me. I’d felt the same way when Dad first told me about Tony, first told me I had a brother.
My breathing was amped up, my heart in my throat, which was a saying I’d never really understood until that moment. All around me, the hallway was filled with kids, dashing to get their stuff and run for the exits, then to the buses, or to a waiting car, or just to the freedom of the rest of the world, outside this school, where their own two legs would carry them home.
My legs felt stiff and awkward, like they belonged to someone else. And I was not going home. Not yet. My eyes narrowed to take in just the few feet ahead of me, enough of a sight line to keep walking, but not enough to keep from clipping people left and right with my elbows.
“Ouch!”
“Hey!”
“Watch it!”
I looked for someone, anyone, for some friendly face, but I suddenly felt very alone. Rachel preferred Katelyn and Olive and, now, Tony; and Olive preferred Rachel; and Tony preferred Rachel, and nobody liked me and I wasn’t a designer and I couldn’t win anything and and and . . .
Up ahead, I saw Katelyn and her crew, hugging and jumping around and acting like complete idiots.
Then I saw something else, and I zeroed in on it. One end of a crepe paper loop was already on the ground. All I had to do was reach up, pinch it, and yank it the rest of the way. Crepe paper was so delicate and so . . . so useless. It wouldn’t even stand up to most five-year-olds’ birthday parties, so who could expect it to survive in a majorly busy hallway with hundreds of kids passing through every hour of the day?
The Rule of Threes Page 17