The (Almost) Perfect Guide To Imperfect Boys

by Barbara Dee

  “But that’s not fair,” he argued. And right then he sounded exactly like the old Zachary, the one I remembered.

  “Okay, well, we’d better get going, then,” Maya said. “See you around, Zachary.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “See you.”

  “Bye, Finley,” he said, catching my eye.

  Maya and I started running down the hallway. My legs were twice as long as hers, but she was still half a step ahead of me. “Bye, Finley,” she repeated. “What was I, invisible?”

  “No, of course not. But you were sort of rude.”

  “How was I rude?”

  “You called him Freakazoid,” I said.

  “Everyone called him Freakazoid.”

  “And you were grilling him about getting expelled. Like you didn’t believe him.”

  By then we were almost outside Spanish, so we slowed down. “Well, sure,” she murmured. “Don’t you think it’s slightly incredible that he’s back, all of a sudden? In the middle of eighth grade?”

  “We don’t know what happened with his family,” I pointed out. “And anyhow, he might not be back. He said maybe.”

  “Fisher-Greenglass wouldn’t be meeting his mom just for girl talk, Fin.”

  “I guess.”

  I didn’t say anything for a bit. Then I blurted out, “He did seem different to you, didn’t he?”

  “You mean Froggier?”

  I laughed. “Well, yeah.”

  “What a shocker, right? Zachary the Frog. It was like he did all his Croaking in private.”

  “I know. Or maybe he jumped over the whole Croaker stage.”

  “He couldn’t have,” Maya insisted. “Croaker is when Tadpoles get legs. You can’t jump if you don’t go through the getting-legs stage.”

  “True.” I glanced over my shoulder, but the hallway was empty. “Or maybe,” I said, “he was just a totally different person.”

  By then we’d reached room 302, so we stopped.

  “What do you mean?” Maya said, laughing. “Are you saying that cute boy was an imposter?”

  “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it? He could be this normal, cute Frog boy only pretending to be Zachary Mattison.”

  Maya covered her mouth. “Interesting theory, Nancy Drew. Except for one thing: why would anyone pretend to be Freakazoid?”

  She turned the doorknob. As the door screeched open, it was obvious that the class was in quiz mode. Olivia Moss looked up at us in desperation, Chloe DeGenidis grumbled, and Jarret Lynch, well, grunted. I hated to even say that word to myself, “grunted,” because it was such typical Croaker behavior. But he really did grunt, and so loudly that Kyle Parker punched him in the arm.

  “Hola,” Señor Hansen boomed from the back of the room. “You girls are now seven minutes late for my class, which I find extremely disrespectful. But instead of reporting you both to the principal, I’ll allow you to wrestle with a little pop exercise.”

  “Fabutastic,” Maya murmured.

  Señor Hansen flashed a fiendish smile. This gave him a unibrow, one dark werewolfish fringe above his eyes. “Excuse me, Señorita Lopez, what did you say?”

  “I said sorry we’re late, Mr. Hansen,” Maya answered calmly. She always called him that, “Mister” instead of “Señor”; if he noticed, he never said anything.

  He hulked over and with his scary-hairy fingers gave us each a double-sided paper titled Quiz #15—Irregular Verbs in the Preterit.

  Help, I thought.

  I hadn’t studied for this quiz, and even if I had, this was exactly the sort of thing I was horrible at. For me to memorize something it needed to make sense—I couldn’t just mindlessly recite a list of meaningless verb variations. Whenever I was stuck studying history or science, Mom suggested memory tricks (“mnemonic devices,” she called them)—silly rhymes and acronyms, mostly, but they made the facts stay in my head like friendly ad jingles. Except you couldn’t use Mom’s tricks for cramming irregular verbs in the preterit—you just had to drill them, over and over.

  Plus the whole “preterit” business was ridiculously complicated. Why did the Spanish language need two past tenses—one for completed actions (the preterit) and another for past actions done over time (the imperfect)? It all seemed random and unfair, if you asked me.

  I peeked at Maya, whose table was in the back of the classroom over by the windows. Totally apart from the fact that she spoke Spanish at home, my best friend was a superstudent, so of course she was already busy conjugating.

  All right, Finley, get to work, I scolded myself. I took my chewed-up pencil out of the other pocket, the one without the camera. Somehow I made it through the first three conjugations, but by numero quatro, all I could think about was Zachary Mattison.

  Not the one I’d just seen. I mean the Tadpole-egg version, the skinny, doofy little kid with the chirpy voice and the sticking-out ears, who wore rugby shirts in primary colors, and who was always telling the world’s stupidest jokes. Jokes about boogers. Also about smelly armpits, fat butts, farts, burps, and other assorted body functions. Not to mention his specialty: jokes about people’s names.

  I remembered how crazed he made Chloe DeGenidis, insisting her name sounded like a disease. One time in the middle of the cafeteria, she yelled, “Zachary, I’ve had it, you are such a total loser!” Then she threw her cell at his head, and when it hit his forehead, he actually laughed.

  Oh, and when he laughed, he usually fell on the floor, so a lot of the time he was dusty. Or smeary or full of crumbs. Which didn’t do much for his Total Loser status, especially with the girls.

  And of course neither did his obsession with gummies. Zachary had this thing for the grossest ones: worms, squid, octopi, slugs. (Did they even make gummy slugs? Whatever, you get the idea.) He’d chew them a little, get them soft and semiliquidy, then dangle them out of his mouth until people (specifically, female people) screamed, “Eww, Zachary, stop!”

  Obnoxious, right?

  And beyond-Tadpole immature.

  One time he almost kissed me like that.

  Well, okay, it wasn’t intentional; he had leftover gummy spit on his face and he kind of bumped into me at the lockers. And when I turned my head to see who was stepping on my heel, Zachary’s sticky lips were right there.

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Wash your face,” I snapped. “And watch where you’re going!”

  Which probably sounded like his mom or something, because he turned bright red.

  “Zachary’s kissing Finley,” Jarret sang. “Zachary’s kissing—”

  “Your butt,” Kyle announced, and everybody started laughing.

  In seventh grade, our third year at Fulton Middle, Zachary finally stopped the dangling-gummy routine, but not the obnoxious jokes. Or the general social cluelessness. Chloe started having these huge-ormous parties in her basement (which is like half the size of the Fulton Middle School gym) and Zachary would just show up. Uninvited. People ignored him the first few times, but by the fourth party Chloe was furious. She waited until he was standing by the pizza; then she came over and said loudly, in front of like a dozen people, “Um, Zachary? Did someone ask you here? Because you know, I didn’t.”

  “But I did,” Maya lied. Not because she felt sorry for him, she told me afterward, but because she hated how all of a sudden Chloe was acting like Miss Seventh Grade.

  Except Zachary didn’t even get that he was being saved. He didn’t look at Maya, or thank her, he just took a huge gulp of Fanta, burped loudly, and commented, “Nice party for someone with deginitis.” Then he stood there guffawing like it was the most hilarious joke in the world.

  So naturally everyone kept thinking: Total Loser.

  Because let’s face it, he was. I mean, even by seventh-grade Tadpole standards.

  But the exact way he went from Total Loser to Freakazoid was something I never really knew, mainly because I’d stopped paying attention. That was because for some warped reason I still can’t figure out, I was sudd
enly madly, hopelessly in crush with Kyle Parker. (It didn’t even bother me that he was a Croaker with skin issues, or that he talked about nothing except boring football.) The crush was absolutely over by spring break last year, but it kept me from noticing other boys there for a while.

  Anyway, my point is, for most of last year pretty much all that registered about Zachary was the Official Gossip. Namely, that he’d “freaked out” during some kind of fight with Jarret (as in, throwing things, throwing punches, generally “acting freaky”). During that fight, Jarret started calling him Freakazoid, and everyone else immediately followed. And according to the Official Gossip, Jarret’s parents showed up at school the next day, demanding that Fisher-Greenglass kick Zachary out.

  So she did.

  At least, that’s what everybody said.

  After that no one saw him. Somebody’s mom (I think maybe Kyle’s) talked to Zachary’s mom in the A&P and found out there were “family difficulties,” which sounded like a polite way of saying “divorce.” Somebody mean (I’m pretty sure Jarret) said that maybe when Zachary’s parents split up, they flipped a coin to see who’d get stuck with Zachary. And Zachary’s dad lost, so Zachary went off to live with him somewhere. Or maybe they’d shipped him off to Loser School, Chloe said. Like on another planet.

  But whatever happened, here he was again now, back at Fulton Middle, as if he thought all would be forgiven. Or forgotten. Which, I’m sorry, was just insane.

  I mean, if he wasn’t crazy before, and he really thought he could just show up a few months before graduation, and everyone would be all, Hey there, Zachary, long time no see, he had to be crazy now. Because the thing about this school was, people remembered everything.

  For example: Those dorky I Our Planet valentines I e-mailed to the whole class in fifth grade? Just a week ago Micayla Hoffman asked to borrow some loose-leaf paper, “or you could e-mail me some to heart our planet, ha ha.”

  Or the time in sixth grade when I trimmed my own bangs and ended up with a crooked fringe two inches above my eyebrows? Ben Santino still does this snipping-scissors motion when he passes me in the hall. I’m totally not exaggerating.

  And if you compare those stupid things to what Zachary did, or anyway to the Official Gossip version of what he did—

  “Time,” Señor Hansen called. “Pencils down.”

  Olivia looked up. She was teeny, with beautiful cocoa-colored skin and almond-shaped eyes. Everything about her was adorable—she wore lots of pink, had a thing for Hello Kitty, and her voice chirped. “Oh, pleeeeease, Mr. Hansen, can’t we have a little longer? The period’s not even over yet.”

  “Tests are full period; quizzes aren’t,” he replied, as if he were reciting a rule from the Official Teacher’s Handbook. “You just need to pace yourself better next time.”

  “I did pace myself. There were just too many conjugations!”

  “Oh, come on, Señor Hansen,” Chloe called out in this fake-sweet voice. “Why can’t you give us five more minutes? We won’t tell.”

  Jarret started laughing. Uncontrollably. In an embarrassing way that was almost Tadpole, actually.

  Señor Hansen didn’t answer. He snatched Chloe’s quiz, then Jarret’s, and then hulked up and down the rows, snatching everybody else’s. When he got to mine, he flipped it over to the mostly blank side.

  “Was there a problem, Finley?” he asked, much too loudly for it to be private.

  “Not really,” I said. “I guess it’s kind of a pacing thing.”

  “So if you knew time management was an issue, why were you late for class?”

  “Um,” I answered. Instead of: Well, you see, we were kind of stalking Zachary Mattison. Who’s a Frog but possibly also an imposter, because how else could he have skipped over Croaker? It doesn’t make sense.

  Señor Hansen was staring at me. Waiting for my brain to click on.

  Still waiting.

  Still waiting.

  “Mr. Hansen, it’s all my fault,” Maya announced. “I asked Finley to take my yearbook photo, and we lost track of the time.”

  “Finley’s taking yearbook photos?” Olivia asked excitedly.

  “Retakes,” Maya answered. “Why? You want her to do yours?”

  “Yes! Have you seen my picture? I look hideous.”

  “Olivia, dearest, you always look hideous,” Chloe said. She yanked out her lobster-claw hair clip, shook her shiny, medium-brown hair, then gave herself a new messy bun/ponytail exactly like the one she’d just undone. What was bizarre was that everyone watched, like it was the coolest, most fascinating thing ever.

  “Shut up,” Olivia said, sticking out her tongue at Chloe. “I hate you, Chloe.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, because I love you.”

  Maya flashed me a look like, Excuse me while I barf.

  “Girls,” Señor Hansen warned in a scary-quiet voice. “That. Is. Enough.”

  Olivia turned to me with begging hands. “Would you take my picture, Finley? Pleeease?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Although I just got the camera. And I’m not really—”

  “She’s amazing,” Maya insisted. “Don’t worry, it’ll be great.”

  “Excuse me,” Señor Hansen bellowed. “But does anyone here realize they happen to be sitting in my classroom?”

  “Sorry,” Maya said quickly. She gave him her radiant smile, the one she usually saved for the end of her gymnastic routines. “I guess we thought, you know, Mr. Hansen, since there were only a few minutes left anyway—”

  “That you could waste our precious class time discussing yearbook photos?” Señor Hansen dropped the quizzes on his desk with a thud. “You know what I think? I think maybe we should have a full-period test tomorrow. Because it seems that’s the only way to get you people to focus on Spanish.”

  Everyone groaned.

  Chloe did a fake-cheery smile. “Well, thanks a lot, Maya,” she said sarcastically.

  “It’s not her fault,” I murmured.

  “Right, Finley, it never is.”

  I glanced at Maya, but she was pretending to copy the homework assignment. And turning a shade of red that was not fabutastic.

  And I thought: Zachary wanted to come back to this?

  I mean, seriously, you would have to be crazy.

  CHAPTER 4

  At dismissal, Olivia was sucking in her cheeks runway-style, which made her look like she was trying to whistle. Then she pushed her hair so that it fell over one eye. The other eye looked hurt. Like someone was stepping on her foot.

  “Um,” I said, as I looked up from the camera. “Actually, I think it’s better if the photo is candid.”

  “You mean casual?” Her forehead puckered. “That could work. You have to do it soon, though. Because Sabrina says the yearbook deadline is Friday.”

  Sabrina Leftwich was yearbook editor. She was also starting center on the girls’ basketball team. I was on the team too, but mostly I played bench.

  “We can do it tomorrow,” I promised Olivia. “But maybe you should just ask someone else.”

  “No, no. You have to take my picture, Finley. Please, I’m begging you.”

  We were standing on the steps in front of school, the way we sometimes did at dismissal. Don’t ask why. It was one of those leftover rituals from when we were all best friends—Maya, me, Olivia, Hanna MacPherson. The four of us hadn’t really hung out together since the days when we belonged to Green Girls, and played soccer every weekend, and spent Saturday nights in sleeping bags on each other’s floors. It was weird—we’d never had a fight or anything dramatic like that, but we weren’t a troop anymore, or a bunch of friends, either, really. It was mostly like every other day or so we four needed to check in with each other: You still there? Cool. Okay, see you around sometime. Bye.

  Now Maya was walking over to us with Hanna, who sometime last year fell madly in love with her viola. On weekends she was in maybe three different orchestras, and on weekdays she was either taking lessons or practicing a
fter school. It was a bit scary intense, if you asked me, but then, I’d personally never been all extracurricular.

  “Omigosh,” Hanna was groaning. “How do you guys stand it?”

  “Hansen,” Maya explained to Olivia and me. “I just told her about today.”

  “I am so glad I’m in the other Spanish class,” Hanna exclaimed. “Señora Phillips made us guacamole. Then she taught us to rumba.”

  Olivia slapped the side of her head. “Are you serious? She’s giving you guys food, while Hairy Hands is giving us—”

  “Torture,” I finished.

  “ ‘Pop exercises,’ ” Maya said. “Irregular-verb lists. Ack, Finley, can you believe I opened my big mouth?”

  “You were incredibly brave,” I said, patting her back.

  “I was incredibly stupid. Now he’s giving us a full-period test tomorrow, thanks to me,” she informed Hanna.

  “Sick sick sick,” Hanna said. She flipped her long blond hair over one shoulder, and then stroked it, a kind of mermaid move. But she wasn’t showing off her gorgeous hair; even though Hanna was pretty, she wasn’t stuck-up about it. I mean, as far as I knew; I barely saw her these days, so I didn’t feel comfortable having an opinion.

  Maya caught my eye. “Speaking of sick.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Didn’t you tell O yet?”

  “Tell me what?” Olivia’s face lit up. She lived for gossip, I swear.

  “It’s not even something we know for sure,” I said quickly.

  “It’s probably true,” Maya corrected me. “I mean, obviously, right? Because of that meeting at lunch? With Fisher-Greenglass?”

  “What meeting?” Olivia asked, fluttering her hands. “Pleeease tell us, you guys!”

  Maya wound her purple wool scarf around her neck. Then she shifted her book bag from one shoulder to the other. She was waiting for me to say it, apparently. Fine, I thought. I will.

  “Zachary Mattison is coming back,” I announced.

  “Who?” Hanna asked, glancing at her cell.

  “Freakazoid,” Maya said.

  Olivia gaped. “Are you serious?”