by Barbara Dee
“Finnee, where are you here?” Addie asked incomprehensibly.
But Mom just said, “Not now, Addie,” in a voice that meant not now. Then she stuck on a Wiggles tape to occupy the twins’ brainlets.
“Mom,” I said. “Has the principal called you?”
“No. Should I be expecting a call?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you should.”
“About?”
I took a quick breath. “Okay. You remember the frog delivery? And the warts?”
“Ah yes. The warts.” She checked her rearview mirror. “Your science project, right?”
“It wasn’t exactly a science project. Well, it was sort of one.”
“Keep talking.”
“Okay. There’s been all this boy-versus-girl stuff at school. Really immature, I mean from the boys. And I did a prank. The whole ex-troop did, but it was my idea. As a way of retaliating for Prong.” I told her about the flypaper, but not about Maya’s independent project. Because that was Mrs. Lopez’s business, I decided. “Anyhow, Ms. Fisher-Greenglass saw the lockers this morning, and she wasn’t happy. So.”
“So,” Mom said.
“I wanted to tell you. First. Before she called you.”
Mom drove without saying a word. Then she pulled up to the school.
“You know, you can tell me anything,” she said quietly.
“I can?” I stared at her. “Then you’re not mad at me?”
“Well, sure, I’m mad. Vandalizing school property? Finley honey, that’s rotten judgment. And you deserve whatever punishment Ms. Fisher-Greenglass gives you.”
“Okay. I mean, I know that.”
“And of course there’ll also be a punishment for you at home.”
“I figured. You can take my Christmas camera. I probably failed that Spanish test anyway.”
“You did?” Mom gave the steering wheel a light slap. “Okay, that’s it, we’re getting you a tutor!”
I looked up hopefully. “My punishment is a Spanish tutor?”
“No, Finley, the tutor is a gift. Taking away your camera is the punishment.”
“Oh. No, sure, of course.”
“But I’m glad you told me,” Mom added, sighing. “I’m glad you knew you could.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’d better get to class now, Awesome Daughter.”
I got out of the car. “Thanks, Mom,” I said.
“Anytime.” Then she winked at me. “Boys are w-e-i-r-d,” she spelled, and drove off.
CHAPTER 23
I grabbed Zachary’s arm just as he was leaving the lunchroom. “Come with me,” I commanded. “Now.”
And I guess he was too shocked to refuse or to make a joke. But when he saw where we were headed, he asked, “What about Spanish?”
“I’ve got that covered,” I told him. “This is more important.”
I pushed open the door of the school library.
“Ms. Krieger,” I said. “Could I please talk to Zachary here for a second? In private?”
She perched her lime-green glasses on top of her head. “Five minutes, Finley,” she murmured. “Tops. I’ll write you guys a note, but that’s my limit.”
“Thank you.”
“De rien.”
I led Zachary to the red sofa.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “What was that stuff you put on my locker?”
“Flypaper,” I said.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that. Can I ask why?”
“It was supposed to be like a frog tongue. Sticky. To catch bugs.”
“Huh,” he said. “No offense, Finley, but it just looked like a giant orange blob.”
“Listen, we’re not here to discuss my artwork, okay? Here,” I said, thrusting the science notebook at him. “Read fast. I’m not hiding anything; it’s the whole Life Cycle. But I put sticky notes on stuff about you specifically.”
“You expect me to read all this? In five minutes?”
“Okay, so just read the sticky notes, if you want.”
“Why exactly would I want to?”
“Zachary, listen—I wasn’t insulting you; I was complimenting you. See?” I flipped through the sticky notes. “There’s more,” I added. “Those are just the main parts.”
He read a little, then looked straight at me. “What about that ‘evolving in reverse’ stuff? That was kind of an insult, Finley.”
“Well, yes. But I was upset at you when I wrote that. You were hanging with the Croakers. Which is fine, you have every right to, but.”
Zachary smiled. “They’re not so bad.”
“I never said they were bad. All I ever said—I mean, wrote—was that you were better.” There, I’d admitted it. Something I’d never said to any boy, in the history of Finley Davis. “So can we please stop this stupid war?”
“Sure,” Zachary said quietly.
“Good.” I took a breath. “Because Maya is in trouble. And I think it might help if we went to Fisher-Greenglass together and explained all this amphibian business, but that we’ve worked it out. I mean maturely, like we’re all ready for high school.”
“But isn’t Maya in trouble with Hairy Hands?”
“Yeah, she is. But we can’t help her with that. We can help her with the locker business if we all take responsibility, tell the principal we’re sorry, swear it won’t happen again. I mean, I’m hoping we can.”
“So am I,” Zachary said. In this light you could see shadows under his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping very well lately. Although neither was I, so it wasn’t too surprising. Anyhow, he’d been back in Fulton long enough to get the sort of winter skin we all had—shadowy, tired-looking, the kind of complexion that looks its worst under school fluorescent lighting.
Which was a shame, really, considering how tan he’d been when he’d arrived from Florida. And that was when? Like two weeks ago? Time had gotten so strange lately, I thought. It was getting hard to keep track.
He handed me back the Life Cycle. And maybe it was because his sweatshirt arms were a little short, or they’d shrunk in the wash, or something, but all of a sudden I spotted the ink on his wrist.
“So now can I ask you a question?” I said, as I slipped the binder into my backpack.
“Sure, I guess.”
“Your wrist says ‘lunch,’ doesn’t it?”
“No,” he said, frowning. “I already told you that once. Remember?”
Of course I remembered. But he’d lied then, out on the snowy field, and we were being honest now. I mean, I’d showed him the complete Life Cycle, and practically confessed to him that I had a crush. In the past tense.
“Well, I know it says something like ‘lunch,’ because I saw it,” I said. And I don’t know what came over me then, but all of a sudden I grabbed his wrist and pulled up the sleeve.
The black letters didn’t say LUNCH.
They said CINCH.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What’s a cinch?”
“Nothing.” He was blushing hard.
And I could feel my own cheeks blushing. You know how you can catch yawns from other people? I’m pretty sure you can catch blushes, too.
“Zachary,” I said, “I showed you my Life Cycle. Now it’s your turn to tell the truth, okay? What’s a cinch?”
He didn’t answer.
“What’s a cinch?”
“Girls,” he blurted.
“Girls?” I repeated. “Girls?”
“That’s not what I think,” Zach added quickly. “It’s what Kieran says, my stepbrother in Florida, remember? And it’s just like a memory trick.”
“You mean a mnemonic device?”
“Yeah. To help me remember.”
“Remember what?” I stared at him. “You have amnesia?”
“No, no. It’s just a few tips Kieran gave me about social things. No loud laughing, no dumb jokes about boogers, grow my hair over my ears, stuff like that.”
“And he also said stuff about girls?”
“
Yeah.”
“Like what?”
He looked away. “Finley, forget it, all right?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Too late. I’m not forgetting anything.”
I peeked at Ms. Krieger. She tapped on her wristwatch and mouthed the words One more minute. I nodded back at her, and mouthed the words I know.
“All right,” Zachary said finally. “Here it is. When I went down to Florida last spring, I felt like a loser. I don’t know, like Freakazoid. So Kieran gave me five rules to follow, but I couldn’t always remember them, so he turned the first letters into an acronym: CINCH.”
“So CINCH stands for something.”
“Yeah. Like HOMES or ROY G BIV.”
“Yes, I got that,” I said impatiently. “What do the letters stand for?”
“It’s kind of private. You’re sure you really want to—”
“Tell me, Zachary!”
“Whatever, fine.” He shrugged. “C is for ‘contact,’ especially eye contact. Kieran said people like it if you look them right in the eye.”
“Especially girls?”
“Uh-huh.”
Especially if your irises are almost purple. “Keep going,” I encouraged.
“I is for ‘interest.’ Kieran said if you want people to like you, show an interest in what they’re interested in.”
“Like photography?”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Ask them questions, compliment them, tell them it’s a cool hobby.”
“And they’ll believe it, right? What’s N?”
“N is ‘names.’ Kieran says to say people’s names when you’re talking to them.”
“By people you mean girls?”
He nodded. “According to Kieran, girls like it when you use their names in a sentence.”
“Do they. How profound.”
“He knows a lot of girls, actually. Although he has a girlfriend.”
“Lucky her. What’s the other C?”
“Um.”
“You forgot? It’s not much of a mnemonic, if you can’t even—”
“No, I remember.” He started tapping his foot. “The other C is for ‘chance.’ He said to admit I screwed up last year, and to ask for a second chance.”
“Which you do, by the way. Constantly.” It was funny, but my mouth was feeling dusty. “What’s H?”
“Okay. So you know how much I grew this past year? I feel kind of weird about it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s freakish. I used to be incredibly short, and now suddenly I’m incredibly tall. But I don’t feel any different; I’m still majorly uncoordinated. And people expect boys to be athletic, especially when they’re big, so Kieran said to say I’m working on my hook shot.”
“H is for ‘hook shot’?”
“Yeah,” Zachary said.
So that explained why he wouldn’t shoot hoops with Maya and me in the gym. “Hook shot” was just a thing to say. It wasn’t true; he still couldn’t play basketball.
I took a deep, shaky breath. “And the idea is that if you do all this, if you follow Kieran’s five easy rules, girls will be a quote-unquote cinch?”
“Well, theoretically. According to Kieran.”
“Well, thank you for these valuable insights,” I said, standing. “You two have clearly solved the mystery of middle school girls.”
“And now you’re mad at me?” Zachary asked.
“Uh. Yeah?”
“Why? For CINCH? But it was just a dumb mnemonic!”
“Oh please,” I sputtered. “You followed those stupid rules. You believed them. You wrote CINCH on your wrist, didn’t you? And you obviously think all girls are the same, just this giant generic blob.”
“No, no.” He looked up at me with round, surprised eyes. “The CINCH stuff wasn’t about insulting anyone. It was just supposed to organize things in my mind. Exactly like the Life Cycle.”
“You know what?” I snapped. “I’m sorry I even showed you the Life Cycle. You don’t deserve all the stupid sticky notes.”
“Wait. Finley—”
“I’ll meet you at the principal’s office today after school. You’d better show up. And don’t say my name, either, all right?”
Then I ran out of the library.
I went to the bathroom instead of Spanish.
And I turned on the hand dryer to drown out my thoughts.
CHAPTER 24
“Fin, I really think we should go in there with you,” Olivia said. School had just ended, and we were standing in front of the principal’s office. “Because we were just as involved as you and Maya.”
“Well, not just,” Hanna reminded her. But she didn’t add, I warned you it was vandalism. And all I did was act as lookout, remember?
“Thanks,” I told them. “But if you guys come in with Zachary and me, it might seem unfair to the boys, like it’s all of us girls ganging up. And the whole point is to tell Fisher-Greenglass that we had a war going on, but it’s totally over now, it’s past tense, so she doesn’t think Maya might do something else.”
“You think it’ll work?” Olivia asked, wrinkling her nose. “Because with Hairy Hands involved—”
“Maya can’t get in trouble again. So we need to try.”
We watched Zachary coming down the hall with Drew and Ben walking closely behind him.
“Hey,” Zachary said. His face was pale, and his eyes didn’t meet mine, like he thought I was mad at him. Well, if he thought that, he was right. Because I was.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said quietly.
“Okay, but what are they doing here?” I said, pointing at Drew and Ben.
“We heard Maya might get kicked out of school,” Drew said. “So if you need us to say something . . .” He shrugged.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said scornfully. “No one’s getting expelled over a blob of flypaper!”
Although as I said this, it occurred to me I had no idea what people got expelled over. Up until last week, Maya and I had thought Zachary had been expelled for fighting with Jarret. It was funny—if you could use a word like “funny” in these circumstances—how things had changed since Zachary had arrived. Returned.
And of course, if flypapering Señor Hansen’s room didn’t get Maya expelled, it would get her yanked from gymnastics. Which was almost as horrible.
“We should go in,” Zachary murmured. Still not looking at me.
“Just wait out here, okay?” I said to Drew, Ben, Olivia, and Hanna. “Don’t leave, in case she wants to talk to you. Um, and thanks,” I added to Drew and Ben.
They nodded seriously.
And then Zachary followed me over to Ms. Hanrahan, the principal’s secretary, who for some bizarre reason had decorated her desk with assorted trolls.
She pursed her lips at us, like she had just sucked on a big lemon. “Yes?”
“We’d like to talk to Ms. Fisher-Greenglass,” I said. “Please.”
“What about?” Mrs. Hanrahan tapped on her mouse with a bubble-gum-colored fingernail.
“Crimes against humanity,” Zachary said.
Oh no, was he getting weird now? I jabbed his back with my thumb.
“An incident,” I said. “Behavioral.”
Mrs. Hanrahan’s perfectly tweezed eyebrows rose.
“Involving school property,” I added.
She aimed a fingernail at the door. “Go ahead in.”
My stomach knotted.
Ms. Fisher-Greenglass was on her cell when we walked into her office, so she pointed to two seats in front of her desk. Her office was surprisingly messy—stacks of papers on the floor, an overfull garbage can, a few overgrown plants tangling up her windowsill. But somehow the mess made me feel a teeny bit calmer. A person who tolerated messes would tolerate youthful hijinks, wouldn’t they?
“Let’s assume we can reschedule,” she said into her phone. “I’ll be in touch in the a.m.”
On the other hand, I thought, using “a.m.” for “morning”
sounded too businesslike. Not youthful-hijinks-friendly. Possibly a bad sign, actually.
“Yes?” she said, finally, making her face go neutral, which was probably a skill they taught you in principal school. “And what brings you two here this fine afternoon?”
“Flypaper,” I said.
“Ah, yes.” She folded her hands.
“Which was actually my fault, not Maya’s. But I was just trying to make a sticky frog tongue—”
“To get back at me for the pizza box,” Zachary said. “And the croaking and the water.”
“Which was obnoxious. But it was all payback for the Life Cycle—”
“Which was also obnoxious. Although it was private. Until it wasn’t.”
“Okay,” Ms. Fisher-Greenglass cut in. “Can we please back up here for a minute?”
But Zachary ignored her. He was looking at me, blinking. “What I mean,” he said, “is that we both did a bunch of stupid things, okay? But I still think of you as a friend, Finley—not as a generic blob or a dumb mnemonic, but as a person. Because truthfully, who cares what you wrote in that Life Cycle? What matters is how you acted. And you never treated me like Freakazoid, even when I was Freakazoid. So if you’re in trouble now, or Maya is—”
“Zachary,” Ms. Fisher-Greenglass said sternly. “I’m having a hard time following all this. And I thought we were discussing the flypaper.”
“We are,” Zachary answered. “But just punish me, not Maya or Finley, okay? I’m not even staying at this school, anyhow.”
“What?” I gaped at him. My cheeks flushed hot, and at the same time my hands went cold. It was weird, like my body was in two different time zones. “You’re not?”
He shook his head. “My dad wants me back in Florida next week, to finish the school year down there. My mom has these, whatever, work commitments. A bunch of travel overseas, I don’t know.”
“Oh.” I swallowed.
“There’s this whole custody thing they’re working out.” Zachary was staring at the principal’s tangled plants, which were suddenly lit up by the pale winter sunshine. “I thought they’d agreed on me staying here permanently, but apparently not.”
“That isn’t right,” I managed to say. “To change their minds on you like that.”