“Not if Mrs. Arafata’s still in charge,” I remind them.
“Those Spiritleaders,” Phoebe says. “It’s really only a matter of time before someone is hospitalized.” Last year, Phoebe warped her braces when she fell down half a flight of stairs trying to escape their dreaded “Spirit Snowball” move, in which they somersault down the halls in rows of three across. Usually what happens is that half the snowballers get dizzy and disoriented, roll off course, and trap the slowest runners against lockers and walls. Phoebe says it set her orthodontic plan back about eight months, which is why she’s still wearing braces today. “They’re just so reckless,” she adds.
“If I’m elected, you think I could get rid of them?” Mandy asks.
Delia perks up to say, “Oooooh. Good idea!” at the same time Phoebe says, “I doubt it,” and before the two of them can start arguing about it, I say, “If we’re going to get Mandy elected, then we’ve got to keep working on the plan.”
“Okay, fine. So what’s next?” Mandy asks.
“Cues and distractions,” I tell them. They all look at me like living question marks, even know-it-all Phoebe.
“Oh! Cues! Like you were trying to show me today,” Phoebe says suddenly.
“Exactly.” I turn to the rest of them. “You know how when a dog starts to get upset, sometimes its hair stands up on its back, or it might start to growl? And if you’re watching it closely, you can see it in its eyes. Their focus starts to change. We saw Brynne do that earlier today.”
Phoebe jumps in. “Oh, yeah! Right before she started yelling at that boy, she tilted her head back a little. And did you notice that weird thing with her mouth?” She demonstrates, bearing her teeth. Well, braces.
“Exactly,” I say. “There’s always some type of cue before an attack, and we’ve got to start noticing these signs.”
“And then what?” Mandy asks.
“A couple of things. First, stay calm. Don’t get scared.”
“Yeah. Just imagine she just cut one,” Joey advises us. Then he makes a loud farty sound with his mouth. I guess we’re still suckers for these jokes even though we are in eighth grade, because everyone except, of course, Phoebe, starts laughing so hard that Joey cuts one for real.
“Joey!” Phoebe yells, obviously upset. The rest of us are busy fanning our faces and trying not to laugh in the fumes. The tips of Phoebe’s ears are red, and her hand shields her face.
Ms. Greenwood gets up quietly and, with her usual expression of mild but persistent disgust, opens a window.
“Okay, okay,” Delia says, dabbing her eyes. “That was sick, Joey.”
“What I mean is, even though she’s a total hottie, she still goes to the bathroom.” We all open our mouths to try and shut him up, but then he says something that actually sounds smart. And not math-genius smart, just real-life smart. Wise, even. “What I’m trying to say is that she’s no better than anyone else.”
We’re all quiet for a minute. Delia looks surprised but nods in agreement. Phoebe leans back, thinking it over. Mandy and I exchange glances.
Joey looks around at us like he’s making sure he’s got our attention. Then his eyebrows lower and he starts to smirk. “In other words,” he adds, “she’s just as gross as the rest of you.”
Okay, so that wise thing? It was just a fluke.
“Joey, you just did it,” I say.
“That was like five minutes ago!” he argues.
“Not that, Einstein,” I say. “You just gave a bunch of cues before you insulted us. Did you guys see that?”
“Oh, yeah!” Delia says, excited. “The eyebrow thing!”
“Yeah, and that evil little smile,” Phoebe says. She stares at him angrily and waits for his reaction, but he just colors in the tread on the bottom of his shoe with his pen.
Mandy turns her head to the side, and her gaze floats toward the ceiling. “Now that I think of it, Corbin did this little quivery nostril thing that day he said something about my lips.” She demonstrates. “I thought it was kind of weird at the time.”
“See?” I say. “They all do something. It’s pretty cool if you think about it.”
“What’s so cool about that?” Phoebe asks.
“Because once you see the cues, you can create a distraction. It’s all part of the training.”
“What kind of distraction?” Delia asks.
“Anything to get them off track,” I say. I tell them about Kisses, and add, “You basically want to interrupt their train of thought and get them to focus on something completely different.” Then I turn to Mandy. “Let’s think about the other day. What could you have done to knock Corbin Moon off course?”
“Oh, I could have knocked him off course, all right,” she says.
“If you had hit him, not only would you have been expelled, but you would have totally made him more interested in getting revenge,” I explain. “But if you distract him, he’s confused. He doesn’t know how to react, or what to say, or really what happened at all. And best of all, he can’t seek revenge because there’s nothing to seek revenge for.”
“So what do I do? Tell him his fly’s open?”
“It’s a little obvious, but I guess it could work,” I say.
“Lame,” Joey says, but he discreetly peeks down to check his own.
“How about a jumping jack?” Phoebe asks.
We all look at her like she’s crazy.
She shrugs. “Stupid?” she asks.
We nod.
“Oh! How about a Fighting Serpent!” Joey says, and jumps to his feet. He then crouches, lifts one leg, and holds his arms in front of him, hands curved down like a praying mantis.
“Absolutely. No. Karate. Moves,” I tell him.
Joey gets back into his seat, grumbling.
“But see, none of you guys have acne,” Delia says. “How can I distract someone from this?” She points to her face.
“It’s not all luck,” Phoebe says, but Mandy cuts her off before she can start describing her own face-washing rituals. Mandy also tells Delia her acne’s not that noticeable. A lie, but sweet.
“If it’s so not that noticeable,” Delia says, “why does Carolyn Quim point it out every time I see her? And the way she does it—she’s sneaky. She always starts by, like, asking me how I did on the math quiz or something. She pretends she’s being nice. Then she says something like, ‘So, do you eat a lot of chocolate?’”
“You don’t, though, do you?” Phoebe starts. “ ’Cause I hear—”
I throw her a look, and thankfully she shuts her mouth.
“What are Carolyn’s signals?” I ask Delia.
She twists up her face and thinks for a minute. “I guess she usually stares at me for a second or so, and then she kind of clears her throat a little. It sounds like a little grunt, I think.”
“So while she’s staring, you could ask her if she wants to borrow your Scope,” Phoebe offers. We don’t remind her that she’s the only one in Hubert C. Frost Middle School who actually brings Scope with her wherever she goes.
“I don’t know. Maybe I could just ask her what time it is or something,” Delia says. Which sounds way too nice to me.
So I say, “Or tell her that you don’t care what everyone else says, she is not getting fat. Be like, ‘I have no idea what they’re thinking.’”
Mandy, Delia, and Joey burst into laughter—even Phoebe manages a smirk, which signals a huge accomplishment on my part.
“Oh, that’s so evil,” Mandy manages to say once she catches her breath, but she looks at me with something like admiration.
Joey smiles big. “Or just high-five her and say, ‘You know, my friend Joey said you’re an awesome kisser.’” Which leads to a chorus of disgusted moans, and I start to appreciate all over again how much fun my friends really are.
I get on the bus and walk, head down, through the narrow aisle. And then I hear her voice. “Oh. Em. Gee,” Brynne shrieks. The hairs on my arms start to stand up. My tongue feels hea
vy and my stomach churns, but I’m ready for this. For once.
She has this sickened look on her face. She looks at me and sniffs the air. “Do I smell—”
“Oh my God!” I find myself saying. My tongue is still heavy, but I sound only a little impaired. “What’s that?” I am looking straight at her, pointing at the space between her eyebrows.
Her hand claps over her forehead and her eyes widen. She squeals. “What? What?”
I squint my eyes and lean forward. Her head tucks back. “What!” she yells again.
“Oh,” I say. “Never mind. I think it’s just a little zit.” I even smile. Except for the tiny scar on her chin, her face is as clear as porcelain, but I’m sure I’ve touched a nerve. And then I walk on.
She turns to Carolyn, who has been watching, like everyone else, with her mouth hanging open. “You didn’t tell me I had a zit!” Brynne says to her, angry.
“What? I didn’t see a zit,” Carolyn says apologetically.
“I can’t trust you at all!” Brynne seethes. That’s all I hear out of her until we get to her stop and she leaves the bus, walking down the street ten feet in front of the pleading Carolyn.
And I think, Yay, me.
When I get home, there’s a letter from my mom waiting for me. I slide it under my mattress with the other ones I haven’t opened. And then I turn on the TV and watch a rerun of Full House, where I can enjoy the real Uncle Jesse, and don’t even have to think about what’s inside the envelope, or what my mom might be doing right now at crazy camp. Not at all.
AFTER SCHOOL on Wednesday, Moncherie practically pulls me into her office. “I’ve got something to show you,” she says, closing the door behind us with her foot. “Ta-dah!” she sings, and waves her hand in the direction of a big wooden rocking chair with a little cushion on the seat.
I smile. This is so much better than a folding chair. Maybe I’ll actually be able to relax in here with her. Maybe she can actually fix me. Maybe one day I will once again be a normal person—someone without gaping, obvious problems like social awkwardness and damaged hair.
“Hey, wait a second. Wow,” she says, stepping back to look me over. “First mascara. And now a new style. You look very—well, I don’t know what to say.”
You’d think someone who’s twenty-six years old and went to college would be able to think of something nice to say.
“My friend Delia and I went shopping for some new jeans.” And then I wait patiently for her to compliment me.
But instead she just says, “Shopping, huh?” then clasps her hands together and tells me to take a seat. Next she asks me how I felt about the “experience” in three different ways, with this little glint in her eye like she’s a cat ready to pounce on a helpless baby rodent.
Now she’s on her fourth version of the same question. “So, did the experience bring up any surprising feelings?”
I am only half joking when I say, “Well, I was pretty surprised to find some jeans that looked half decent on my weird body.”
Normally when you say something like this around an adult, they start to argue and throw all sorts of compliments at you, which—even if they are complete lies—are still kind of nice to hear. So, of course, it sort of bothers me when she just sits there and says, “Hmm.”
So I add, “It’s kind of hard when you’re as big as I am.”
And instead of telling me how I’m tall, not big, and that one day I’ll probably be happy about it, she just says, “And you feel”—tilting her head to the side and making a sweeping movement with her hands like she’s conducting a symphony—“blank about that?”
“Well, not really blank,” I explain, to my weird-and-getting-weirder therapist. “I mean, I feel like—hello, just stick me in a cornfield somewhere and you won’t have to worry about crows.”
The glint starts to fade. She sits back and sighs. She starts tapping her pen on her notepad. “I meant,” she says, sounding exhausted, “fill in the blank. You’re supposed to fill it in.”
“Oh,” I say quickly. “Sorry.” Okay, so I’m not only not funny, but I’m also a moron.
“Let’s try this another way,” she says after a few moments of uncomfortable silence during which I completely but accidentally pick away the cuticle from my right thumb. “So you have some new jeans.”
“Right.”
“And they’re different from the jeans you normally wear.”
“Yes.”
“How are they different?”
“Because they look okay—I mean, pretty good. I guess.”
She starts to sit up straight again, gaining strength. “And why don’t the jeans you normally wear look good?”
Okay, so much for any sort of compliment. I sigh.
“Because my dad buys them.”
Her eyes start to shine again. “And why does your dad buy them?”
Oh. Right. And here we are. Her right hand, holding her pen, hovers hopefully over her notepad.
But I don’t feel like dealing with anything that will bring her a check mark, not today. I’m actually feeling a little okay with myself, so why ruin it? I mean, looking decent in jeans, that’s a pretty huge thing for someone like me. So I just say, “Because that’s what he’s supposed to do?”
She deflates. I mean, literally. Her breath leaks out and she begins to slump, like a helium balloon three days after a party. Her hand falls to her side, the pen dangling between her index and middle fingers. Her eyes are closed and she has this tight little smile on her face—not really a smile, I guess, just these tensed-up face muscles that make it look like she’s living through some kind of pain, perhaps even torture.
It’s time to throw her a bone. A little one. A Milk-Bone, maybe, not like one of those meaty, gristly bones from the butcher shop. “My mom?” I say/ask.
Her eyes snap open. Wide open.
“Fashion was never really her thing either. It kind of runs in the family.” Like other things, I think, but don’t say—like, oh, insanity. Or like a total inability to lead a normal, acceptable life—you know, that sort of thing. And then I give her this smile that’s supposed to tell her I’m kind of sad, and she starts to nod and give me this little sad smile back. And just before the timer dings, setting me free, her hand creeps up to make another check mark in my file.
Right before I go, she yells out one word: “Fetching!”
I guess my confusion shows on my face, because she says, “Sorry—that’s the word I was looking for. You look very fetching.”
“Uh, fetching is what dogs do,” I remind her.
She is smiling. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. It means something else in the human world. It’s a good thing—it means attractive.”
Attractive. Which is like acceptable, but even better. In fact, it’s sort of like the opposite of misfit.
I smile back. As ridiculous as her human-world compliment sounds, it almost makes her interrogation worth it.
ON THURSDAY at lunch we compare notes. I’ve been talking about the bus incident for the last two days, and now Mandy and Delia are reliving something that happened in the hall yesterday, between lunch and fourth period.
Delia is giddy. “He didn’t even know what to think,” she says, referring to their encounter with frequent Mandy-taunter Garrett “Glass Eye” Pearson, who, when he sees Mandy approaching, sometimes shouts, “Outbreak!” and asks everyone around him if they’ve been vaccinated against bubonic plague.
But yesterday, just as a twinkle of excitement was forming in his good eye, Delia and Mandy planned and carried out their distraction. It involved Delia “going long” and Mandy launching a pudding cup, sailing it just inches in front of Garrett’s nose—which caused him to duck and cover, and most importantly, scream like a nine-year-old girl.
“He was so embarrassed,” Mandy laughs. “He had no clue what happened.”
“Well, that’s nothing like my technique,” Joey gloats. We all roll our eyes, but start laughing all over again. Corbin, whose favo
rite name for Joey is simply “Nancy,” had bumped into Joey at the trash can during lunch, and opened his mouth to rail into him. But while Corbin was busy cueing—his eyes narrowing to slits, his nostrils starting to flutter—Joey, very clearly and very calmly, said something else very simple: “Balls.” That was it.
Corbin’s mouth had trembled; he grasped for something to say. But by that time, Joey had perfected his smile and walked away, slowly and straightly and just oozing confidence. It was practically beautiful.
Phoebe’s nibbling on a date bar, looking happily lost in thought.
“What about you, Phoebe? Anything to report?” I ask.
“Well, there’s Brant, of course,” she says, shrugging shyly.
“Oh, God, Martin. Let’s please not hear about Brant,” Joey groans.
Phoebe puts down her date bar and glares at him.
“Well, Pheeb, you know,” I say. “The thing with Brant, well, it happened way too early to be a result of the training—”
“And we’re still wondering why,” Joey interrupts.
“He likes me!” Phoebe yells at Joey.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Mandy says. “Just stop focusing so much on Brant and start working on the other people, who aren’t so…” She pauses and adds, even though it clearly pains her, “Nice.”
Phoebe’s face softens. She sighs and goes back to her nibbling.
Just then, Delia’s head goes low and her eyes widen. “Isn’t that the new kid? What do you think he’s doing?” she asks, her suspicious herder gene on red alert.
I follow her gaze. And there he is—Caleb, a.k.a. Young Uncle Jesse. He’s going from table to table. He’s talking to people and actually shaking hands. Doesn’t he realize this is middle school ? He stops at Peyton Randall’s table, sweeping a hand through his dark hair, nodding, talking. Peyton grins. One of the other girls scoots over like she’s offering him a place to sit. But thankfully, he just sticks out his hand again, and the girl shakes it, and he moves on to the next table.
Delia pokes me. “So what do you think he’s up to?” And that’s when I realize I haven’t taken a breath in the last three minutes.
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