by Paula Chase
Michael’s house was just like mine.
Where were the gummy rocks? The Reese’s Cup benches? The clouds of cotton candy (don’t ask why he’d have clouds in his house)?
I’m not sure, but I think I cried. I really only remember Michael showing me his room and watching Teletubbies. I was too shocked to ask him where the candy stuff was hiding.
The next day, I was all set to report that candy land did not exist. But when everyone crowded around me, anxious to know what it was like, giving up their snack if I sat by them to share my adventures, wanting to team up with me for play circle ... well, I discovered something better than candy land.
I had something everyone wanted—a glimpse into the other side—and it made me the It girl of Sunny Faces day care. It put me on the pop side or at least as popular as you can be with a crowd with very short attention spans. I think Shelly Mason was popular two days later for bringing a puppy in for Show-’n’-Tell.
No matter, my taste for popularity was born and my quest to remain ever the It girl sprouted roots.
I remember making up some story about not being able to talk about what was upstairs because it was top secret. Which was cool with them; they just wanted to be near someone who had crossed over.
I’ve never looked back.
Why would I? Being popular rocks!
When my rule of middle school came to a close, naturally, I had to hatch a plan to remain on top at Del Rio High School. Del Rio High is full of cliques.What high school isn’t? But it’s more full than most and the fate of your existence depends on where you get stuck, labeled, categorized, and otherwise boxed in by the governing clique—the Uppers.
So you see my dilemma?
Me and my crew have always been popular—but that transition from middle to high school is inevitable—and we’re about to go from Middle School Royalty to High School Ambiguity. So, you know, I’m thinking I’ve gotta handle that.
It’s not the same as starting over. Popularity carries over. So it’s not that I’ll be totally unknown. The Class of 2009 will know what’s up and some of the sophs knew me before they left middle school. It’s the junior class I’m worried about. I’ll have to scrabble my way to the middle of the pack—which is to be the most popular in your class and more popular than some sophs and juniors. But, of course, never more pop than the reigning senior class. Lesson #10 from Pop 101.
All of this and classes too!
I’m an old pro at the tricks of becoming and staying popular and I could pretend that there’s a true formula, or I can be real and let you know, it’s a lot of work. Work that started the minute my pink Nellie Timberlands left Del Rio Middle School and strutted a few blocks down to the one and only high school, in the ’burbs of the DRB. Samuel-Wellesly, Del Rio Bay’s only other high school, is another story. And we’ll get to that later. But the best laid plans of popularity can and are disrupted by real life. So let me back it on up and let you peep how plans go right, left, back and forth before they land you at your destination ... or at least somewhere really close.
From Don’t Get It Twisted
The Frenzy
“Shorty, I want you to be my entourage.”
—Omarion, “Entourage”
RU down?
Mina Mooney stood, hunched over the back of the chair at her desk, staring at the three words on her monitor. Her stomach rumbled. From hunger or anxiety, Mina wasn’t sure.
Two seconds ago, it was definitely hunger.
Sick of leftover turkey, mashed potatoes and all the other food they’d eaten on Thanksgiving and all yesterday, she’d been ravenous at the thought of sinking her teeth into something that wasn’t stuffed or covered in gravy. When her mom burst into the room and plopped down on the bed, rousing Mina from a sound sleep with a tickle to the neck and a proposal that they cook a very un-Thanksgiving family breakfast, Mina had eagerly shaken off the early—if you could call ten-thirty A.M. early—morning haze fogging her head.
That was five minutes ago. Now ...
She wanted to be sure that she understood Craig Simpson’s words correctly. He was asking her out. Wasn’t he?
Mina swiveled the chair with her knee and let her butt hover over the seat in a half-sitting, half-standing stance. She scrolled the screen and read the short exchange again.
Bluedevils33: Ay what up?
BubbliMi: Nuthin’ ready to go eat
Bluedevils33: O. U know‘bout the Frenzy?
Mina knew. It was all JZ had talked about the last two weeks since football season had ended. It was the big bash Coach Banner held for the varsity football team at his McMansion in Folger’s Way, Del Rio Bay’s ritziest neighborhood, to celebrate the season.
BubbliMi: yeah. heard they had strippers last year
Bluedevils33: LOL. whatever. people b x-ageratin! It’s not that bad
BubbliMi: I figured ... but u never know! Y’all ballers can get out of control—ha ha
Bluedevils33: tru dat. But naw it ain’t nothin’ like that. BubbliMi: I’ll have 2 take ur word 4 it
Bluedevils33: No u can see 4 urself. u want 2 go w/me to the party?
And that was when Mina had shut down, unable to move, type, blink or breathe. It was while she was trying to come back to her senses that the last message came in ...
Bluedevils33: R U down?
Mina stared at the screen, letting the words sink in. She wanted to type “seriously?” but figured that sounded stupid.
She rested a knee on the chair, a big grin on her brown sugar face. Craig was finally asking her out. Exactly four weeks ago they had spent the night bumping, grinding and getting their dance on at a party Mina had given for her best friend, Lizzie. Since then she and Craig talked more at school than they had before and IM’ed when they were on-line at the same time, but nothing drastic had changed between them.
Now, he was asking her out. And not just any date—no movies or grabbing a slice at Rio’s ’Ria, the hot hangout spot in Del Rio Bay. Craig was asking her to go with him to the annual Blue Devils’ Football Frenzy. She ignored the images the word “frenzy” brought to mind and instead tried to picture the forty-member football team playing rowdy rounds of spades, Madden football or checkers.
Yeah, right.
JZ had already given her and the clique an earful about the Frenzy. Board games and Playstation were never mentioned.
JZ and a few other select junior varsity football players, those who were definitely making varsity next year, were invited to the Frenzy. JZ was the main reason the JV football team had gone on to win the county championship. The invite to the Frenzy was a not so subtle acknowledgment that next year’s tryouts were only a formality. JZ’s future place on the varsity food chain was set.
The only reason JZ wasn’t on varsity football this season, as a freshman, was because of his father. He wanted sports second on JZ’s priority list. But JZ was a die-hard athlete—football in the fall, basketball in the winter and track in spring to stay in shape. He trained like a pro, running several miles a day and lifting weights several times a week. Even if sports were second on JZ’s schedule because Mr. Zimms said so, football and basketball were first in his every thought.
And being on JV had actually brightened JZ’s star, not dulled it. The minute he’d stepped on the field in September, it was obvious to the coaches he was varsity material. They’d been drooling over the thought of having him move up ever since.
Now the varsity basketball coaches were going to get the chance the football team hadn’t had, because when football season ended, JZ’s dad had relented and agreed to let him try out for varsity. JZ made the team easily. The only “catch,” if JZ’s grades suffered even a little, his father was going hardcore and making JZ cut out the sports until next season. So all JZ talked about, lately, were basketball and the Frenzy.
According to JZ, the Frenzy was wild. Coach Banner basically let his “boys” have the run of the house for the night, no chaperons. JZ also mentioned nude foolishness i
n the hot tub and drinking, Real World high school edition.
Other than pointing out to JZ that she thought the details of the party were probably rumors or overexaggerated, Mina hadn’t given the Frenzy much thought. Until now. Now she had an invitation from a varsity football hottie.
Was she down?
Mina wanted to type YES, all caps just so Craig would know how down she was.
She couldn’t believe that only three letters stood between her and her first date with the guy she’d crushed on for months. Her first date, period.
It wasn’t even eleven A.M. and this day was quickly moving toward best-day-ever status.
And to think, in her haste to throw down on some pancakes and bacon, she’d almost walked right by her computer without as much as a glance.
Thank goodness she’d logged on to see if Kelly had sent a message confirming whether she could come over later and hang over at JZ’s with the rest of the clique. Mina was anxious for the six of them to get together. They’d squeezed in only a few IMs and phone calls over the weeklong break. Mina didn’t mind family time, but five straight days of it was enough. She was ready to kick it with her friends, especially now that she had something more interesting to share than an account of her family’s insanely competitive game of Trivial Pursuit on Thanksgiving night.
Mina’s head turned toward the loud clanging of pots and pans coming from downstairs, her attention slipping, just for a second, from the three words on the screen. She tipped over to her bedroom door, leaned her head out of the room and waited on her mother’s call asking for (requiring) help cooking breakfast. When it didn’t come, Mina scurried back over to the desk and sat down, her heart pounding and her hunger completely forgotten.
The loud tinkle of another IM from Craig rang out.
Bluedevils33: Yo, Mina u there?
BubbliMi: Sorry! Listening out 4 my mom ... I’m supposed to be downstairs cooking
Bluedevils33: Word. I let u go if u answer me. U down w/the Frenzy?
This time Mina didn’t think. She typed, quickly.
BubbliMi: Mos’ def!!
Bluedevils33: Cool. U be @ the Ria tonite?
BubbliMi: Trying to be. Not sure tho’ Bluedevils33: I can give u a ride if u want
The thought of being in the car with Craig made Mina’s heart race. Everything was moving so fast.
BubbliMi: Naw I’m cool. If I go it’ll be w/my girls. I see u there if we go.
Bluedevils33: Aight. Later
BubbliMi: CU
Mina stared at the conversation on the screen, reading over it quickly again and again. It felt like a dream. If her heart wasn’t practically beating out of her chest, she would swear she was still sleeping.
“Mi-naaa!” her mother called from downstairs. “What’s taking you so long?”
“Coming, Ma!”
Smiling like an idiot, Mina closed out the IM box and signed off. She stood up and jogged down the hall to the bathroom. If Craig could see her now, bed head and stank morning breath, he’d run screaming in the other direction. She laughed out loud at her fuzzy-headed image in the bathroom mirror.
Stank breath and all, she had a date!
She had a DATE ... and one problem. Her parents didn’t allow her to date yet.
From That’s What’s Up!
Waking the Sleeping Giant
“They hate to see you doing better than them.”
—Field Mob ft. Ciara, “So What”
Jessica Johnson glowered.
She stood mannequin-still in the school’s long hallway at the floor-to-ceiling glass panes surrounding the fishbowl—the café, Del Rio Bay High’s outdoor Beautiful People Only section of the cafeteria. Her eyes, focused like hazel laser beams, glared catlike in her coffee-bean complexioned face.
She couldn’t take them off the scene outside.
About forty people milled around the square, no larger than two average-sized bedrooms. Some huddled around the five tall bistro tables—sometimes six people deep. Others stood atop the sandy-colored concrete benches that anchored the corners, while still others were content leaning against one of the two brick walls that enclosed the area. So used to being gawked at from the hall or cafeteria windows, no one paid her much mind. Everyone was enjoying the budding warmth of the early spring—many going jacketless in the fifty-degree Maryland day.
Winter had been short but fierce. Two ice storms had walloped the area, closing school for a total of seven days in February and nearly sending everyone stir crazy from cabin fever. Fifty degrees was almost hot in comparison, the open air addicting.
The thick glass made it impossible for Jess to distinguish any conversations, but she could almost feel the buzz of the various rowdy discussions. Now and then a loud laugh or exclamation would erupt from one of the hubs. Jess assumed it was loud—it had to be if she could hear it from inside. She imagined that the talk was of the Extreme Beach Nationals, the big cheerleading competition taking place in a week, who was heading down to Ocean City with who, which hotel people were staying at and what madness they could get into with their parents lingering nearby.
Typical day in the café, the school’s powers discussing who and what was important in DRB High land, in their own version of politicking and strategizing.
The café, twenty feet wide, twenty feet across, and accessible by a single door at the far end of the cafeteria, was nothing more than an island of concrete surrounded by a patch of grass just wide enough to be a pain for the maintenance crew to cut. But it was the students’ slice of heaven. No teachers patrolled it. And nobodies stayed away from its door, choosing instead to a) act like the café didn’t exist or matter, or b) gaze inside from the windows, like Jess was doing now.
Only she wasn’t a nobody. Jess was a café regular, an Upper whose right it was to lounge in the café at her leisure during lunch.
And until that very second, the café had been Jessica’s safe haven from wannabes and nobodies, specifically the one wannabe nobody who annoyed her more than anyone in the world ... Mina Mooney.
Jessica’s eyes squeezed into slits, piercing Mina from the shadows of the hall as Mina’s head bobbed up and down excitedly, deep in conversation with Kim, the varsity cheer captain, and Sara, Jessica’s twin.
Seeing Mina there, all smiles and grins enjoying life in the fishbowl, shouldn’t have jolted Jessica. But the flash of heat she felt boiling in her chest was anger—pure and powerful. It grew as she remembered how lightly Sara had mentioned Mina’s new “status.”
“I was telling Mina that we’re gonna kill it at the Extreme,” Sara had said, bubbling with a mix of anxiety and excitement at the thought of Nationals.
“Look, I know you two cheer together now, but I’m over hearing you talk about her,” Jessica snapped. She tossed her hair, a well-kept straight weave that hung just below her shoulders, a ludicrous auburn that almost shimmered next to Jess’s dark face, and fixed her twin with a defiant stare.
Sara’s light cocoa-complexioned cheeks darkened slightly as the crimson spread through her face. But her voice was neutral as she answered, “I know you guys don’t get along.” She hesitated for a second, then swallowed a sigh before finishing. “Nothing I say will matter, will it? You love to hate Mina.”
Jessica laughed, her dark face brightening at Sara’s truthful declaration. “Yup. I do.”
“Well ... you know Kim and I invited her to sit in the café, right?” Sara cleared her throat as if admitting it out loud had dried her mouth.
Jessica’s smile quickly turned into a sour-lemon scowl and this time Sara’s mouth did dry out. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she quickly added, “We have a lot of cheer strategy to go over. So you know ... I mean, you knew Mina was going to get the call to the café eventually, Jess. She’s the JV cheer captain ... she ...”
“Is a total wannabe, Sara,” Jessica huffed. Her finger wagged in Sara’s face like she was lecturing a young child, something she did often to her twin when it came to
social etiquette. “I know you like hanging out with any and everybody. But Mina is ... the way she rolls with her ...” Jessica rolled her eyes and sneered, “clique.” She shook her head as if warding off some sort of bad word cooties. “Like they’re running things at DRB High.” Her next words were thick with venom. “I hate how she thinks her little Miss Nice-Nice act is going to make everyone like her.”
Sara giggled. “So let me get this right.You hate her because she’s nice?” hadn’t bothered Jess. She knew that sitting in the café didn’t mean much to Sara. Neither did DRB High’s whole social hierarchy thing. So it was easy for Sara to dismiss it all as silly or ridiculous. But it wasn’t silly to Jess. She rolled with the Glams, the snotty, mostly rich kids, and took her status as a member of the ruling class serious, deadly serious. It hit Jessica where it hurt that Mina—neither rich nor snotty—had always managed to sniggle her way in with the right circles.
Jess had tried, God knows she had, to keep her out. She’d even tried to get her schedule switched around so she’d have the same lunch as Mina this semester, solely to keep Mina on the outside of the fishbowl. None of it made any sense to Sara, who considered Mina a friend. She’d once told Jess, all she wanted was for Jess and Mina to peacefully coexist in the same circles at DRB High.
Peacefully coexist, huh? Jess thought, already nurturing the seed into an idea.
She stared through the thick glass, registering back to the present just as Brian James walked over to the table where Mina sat. He was cute with a capital C, his toffee complexion smooth, eyebrows thick, soft brown eyes accented by thick lashes and a head full of hair so black and curly it made Jess’s fingers squirm at the thought of touching it. He stood behind Mina’s chair, his six-foot-three frame towering easily over the three-foot high wrought-iron bar chairs, and wrapped his arms around her waist.