Admit it. You love the merry-go-round at the south entrance. Ever since you were little, it has secretly been one of your favorite places in the mall. You and your friends always come here when you have something big to celebrate—like when Jessie finally got her braces off or when Lena won the middle school science fair. And all right, maybe you’re getting a little old for this now (the saddles definitely used to seem a lot bigger), but you’re powerless to resist the life-size white horses gliding up and down like a seesaw, the bright red and gold paint, and the bouncy carnival music blaring from the speakers. Besides, the ride is only twenty-five cents. Can’t beat that!
Then why is it you look so miserable right now? Oh, that’s right. Because this time, your so-called friends Lena and Jessie wanted to come here to celebrate winning tickets to a party that you are not going to. Oh sure, they said they wanted to celebrate your brush with modeling fame too, but who are they kidding? You already told them what a disaster that turned out to be. But Jessie just kind of shrugged it off and said, “Being asked to model by a Bebe LaRue scout is still pretty cool, no matter how it turned out.”
So now here you all are, taking your ten-minute ride. But you didn’t even have the umph to get up on a horse. Instead, you’re sitting in the boring two-seater bench that doesn’t move at all. Meanwhile, Jessie and Lena are sitting side by side on matching white horses attached to glittering golden poles, having way too much fun IYHO.
“Oh my God, this party is going to be such a good time!” Jessie gushes. “Shawna said she’s going to have a DJ and everything.”
“Not to mention the giant chocolate fountain,” Lena adds. “And did Amy say something about iPod nanos in the goody bags?”
“I doubt that’s true,” you snap, hoping they’ll catch your tone.
But Jessie either doesn’t get it or just ignores it. “Yeah, I guess not,” she says as her horse slides up toward the roof of the carousel and back down again. “It’s probably more like iTunes gift cards, but still! I can’t wait to see if there will be any celebrities there. Can you imagine if Justin Timberlake showed up and performed? That would be ginormous!”
“Hmmm,” Lena hums skeptically. “I doubt he would do a thirteen-year-old’s party. But the rest does sound pretty awesome. Hey, do you think her dad will dress up as Willy Wonka? That would be funny. Maybe he’ll have a bunch of people dress as other characters from the book. Can’t you just see Amy Choi as Violet and Mark Bukowski as Augustus?”
Jessie laughs. “Yeah, maybe. We should try to get all the guys who are going to dress up as Oompa-Loompas.”
“Some of them already look like Oompa-Loompas,” Lena jokes, which causes another round of wild giggling. You don’t even attempt to join in—not that they notice.
“This, of course, calls for a shopping trip,” Jessie insists. “Can you go tomorrow, Lena? I don’t want to wait until the last minute to find something to wear.”
Lena thinks as her horse bobs up and down. “I’ll go on one condition: no obsessing over what a twelve-year-old would wear versus what a thirteen-year-old would wear. And absolutely no further mention of that unfortunate popcorn-inspired incident. Promise?”
Jessie makes an X over her heart with her finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she agrees. “So how bout you?” she adds, finally turning your way. “Are you coming?”
You’re sitting in the bench with your arms crossed, feeling your neck heat up with anger. “What for?” you bark. “It’s not like I have anywhere special to go. While you guys are at the party, I’ll be home watching Hannah Montana reruns, remember?”
Jessie and Lena shoot each other a quick look, and Jessie bites her lip. “God, we’re such boneheads,” she says. “I’m sorry. I guess I kind of forgot you aren’t going to the party”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Lena adds guiltily. “But at least you aren’t the only one. Even Celia and Delia got shut out. Lizette got so sick of them fighting over which one of them she would take that she decided to pick neither one. Instead, she’s bringing Charlie.”
“Wow, really?” Jessie asks. “Are the two of them an item now?”
“No!” Lena exclaims a little too strongly, as if the idea of Charlie being interested in Lizette bothers her. “She just felt bad for him, since he had put so much time and effort into plotting out a strategy and everything, only to choke on Shawna’s challenge.”
“Oh, you mean kind of like the way I crashed and burned at the photo shoot?”
Again your friends exchange a look, this time seeming a little puzzled.
“Hey, you know that’s not what we meant,” Lena says.
“Whatever.” You are in full-on pout mode now.
“Okay, maybe we should just change the subject,” Lena says wisely.
“Good idea,” agrees Jessie. “So … can you believe summer vacation is already almost over? I can’t stand that I already have to put away all my cute summer dresses and tank tops and buy some warm sweaters.”
Lena shakes her head. “I know. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.”
“What fun was that?” you ask. “We spent most of the summer here in this boring mall. Lame …”
Now Jessie turns bright red and gets off her horse. “Oh, so now you’re calling us lame?”
“So what if I am, huh?” you challenge.
Lena gets off her horse too and stands in front of you, holding on to a pole so she won’t go flying as the carousel whirls around in circles. “What’s your problem, anyway?”
“I don’t have a problem,” you say, standing up too. “I just hate this mall. This whole day blew big-time. I wish you guys had never dragged me here.”
“Oh yeah? Well, don’t worry. It won’t happen again. I’ll just leave now so you don’t have to hang out with someone as lame as me!” With that, Jessie hops off the carousel, even though it’s still moving.
“Well, that was really immature,” Lena says calmly, following Jessie. “I think I’ll leave this out of my blog too.” The carousel keeps spinning, and by the time it circles around to where Lena and Jessie were, they’re gone and the happy carnival music now just seems to be mocking you.
Between the merry-go-round and the whirlwind argument, you’re dizzy! What just happened here?
Lena said it best: that was really immature. In your heart of hearts, you know it’s not their fault that things didn’t go well for you today. If you had rocked the photo shoot and become a big star, those two girls would have been your biggest fans. And if you had asked Jimmy out on a date, they would have been thrilled for you. So why can’t you be happy for them? Looks like you’ve got some soul-searching to do.
QUIZ TIME!
You were still expecting a quiz? What are you, crazy? There’s only one choice from here: Go to chapter 24 apologize to your friends!
How do you do it? You are one cool cucumber, no matter how stressful the situation. Not even a drill sergeant would be able to shake you. Because you can stay calm when the pressure is on, you’re great at taking tests, you never panic when things go wrong, and you’d be awesome in an emergency. But be careful: Just because you’re good at overcoming stress doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting you.
Outside the back entrance of the mall, it’s even brighter than you remember it being this morning. Shawna, with her hazel eyes twinkling, is standing in front of you, holding up a piece of white chalk. Just behind her a crowd of curious onlookers has gathered, most of them kids from school who already have their golden tickets—Lizette (along with Celia and Delia, who are back by her side and still bickering over which one of them she should take), Mark and some guys from the baseball team, Amy (who is filming the whole scene with her phone), Jasmine, Charlie, and of course Jessie and Lena. You wonder briefly if Jimmy is anywhere around too, but you can’t let yourself get distracted now.
“Good luck!” Lena yells out, hopping from one foot to the other as if she has to use the bathroom. She bites her nails and looks around ne
rvously. That’s kind of how you feel inside—if the normally calm and collected Lena is this scared, you probably should be too—but you refuse to let it show. You’re a little worried, though, that the chalk means Shawna is about to produce a chalkboard and you’re going to have to solve some fraction problems or something. Now, how do you get the common denominator again? Or will she ask you to find the final sale price of a top that’s 20 percent off? Numbers start swirling around in your head.
“I have one golden ticket left. Are you ready to go for it?” Shawna asks you.
You shrug. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
“All right, then,” she says. “Assistants … please reveal her challenge.”
Her friends Dionne and Hannah step forward to part the crowd and reveal (drumroll, please) … a freshly drawn pattern of boxes with numbers in them. No way! Shawna is challenging you to a game of hopscotch.
You glance up at Jessie, who looks a little confused. No doubt she would have put hopscotch firmly in the Things a Twelve-Year-Old Would Like column, so now she’ll have to rethink her whole list. But the only thing going through your mind is Sweet! True, it’s been a long time since you’ve played, and your feet have definitely gotten bigger since then, but you’re pretty sure you’ve still got the moves. All you have to do is be careful not to step on any of the lines, and aim your pieces well so they land inside the right square. No sweat. “Oh, it’s so on!” you cry. Shawna has taken care of providing the game pieces you’ll need to use: You each get a bottle cap. Yours is red, which you think is a lucky color. You toss a coin to see who goes first and Shawna wins.
Everybody from school forms a tight circle around the hopscotch board, clapping and cheering as Shawna begins by throwing her bottle cap down into the first square and hopping her way to the big 7 and 8 at the other end, then back to the 2, where she carefully balances on one leg and picks up her piece. Okay, so the girl’s got skills. But she’ll be no match for you. You throw your piece down and hop through the board in record time.
“Way to go!” you hear Lena yell.
The first few squares go by quickly. Then it gets a little harder when you get to 6 and have to toss your bottle cap into that square without it landing on any of the lines. But luckily, your nerves are made of steel. Even though your heart is beating a mile a minute, your hands are tremor free. You toss the cap and everyone hushes as they watch it land just a fraction of an inch inside the line. Whoa! That was close. There are oohs and aahs from the crowd as you leap over the 6 and land safely on the other side.
“Relax, people,” you call out, feeling a little cocky now. “I’m a pro.”
At long last, it’s time for the final square. So far, Shawna hasn’t so much as batted an eyelash, smiling confidently the whole time. But now she faces the board, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
“Come on, Shawna! You can do it!” Hannah whoops while Dionne claps from the sidelines. After what seems like forever, Shawna tosses her bottle cap, and it seems to move in slow motion. It flies past the 4 and 5, and right past the 6, heading straight for the big 8 in the left-hand corner. It looks like it’ll be a perfect landing. But at the last second, it turns. It falls on its side and slowly rolls right out of the square. The crowd gasps.
You can’t believe it. Shawna made a mistake! Now all you have to do is complete the last run-through perfectly and you win.
You stand over the board, visualizing your last throw. Finally you swing your arm forward and toss the cap, trying to be gentle but not come up short. You can’t bear to look, though. So you squeeze your eyes shut and cross all ten of your fingers. It isn’t until you hear the crowd erupt into cheers that you know you made it. When you open your eyes, you see your small red bottle cap lying right in the middle of the square, almost as if you had just walked over and placed it there. Unbelievable! Now all that’s left is to hop over there and pick up your piece. With each square, the cheering for you gets louder, until you jump off the hopscotch board with your game piece in hand. You’ve won!
In seconds, everyone is surrounding you, slapping you on the back and cheering. Jessie breaks through the pack and gives you a high five. “Awesome job!” she yells. “That was even better than Britney’s comeback tour. Now we can all go to the party together!”
Shawna walks coolly over to you, offering you her hand to shake. “You were a worthy opponent,” she says, “and you won fair and square. Here’s your golden ticket.”
You smile and take the ticket from Shawna, then wave it in the air. “Wooohoo!” This must be how Charlie felt when Mr. Wonka told him he was giving him the whole chocolate factory.
“But wait,” Lena says, joining you and Jessie. “Your ticket is good for two. So who are you gonna take?”
Jessie nudges your side with her elbow and whispers in your ear. “I hear Jimmy called off the date with Mona today. You should totally ask him!”
You have to admit that that thought has occurred to you. And you know you promised to invite Jimmy out today. But you already have someone else in mind for your ticket.
“Hey Lizette,” you call, waving her over. “How bout I take Celia or Delia so you don’t have to choose between them?”
Lizette breaks out into a huge smile. “Are you serious?”
“Sure, why not?” you say with a shrug.
“Oh my God, you’re the best!” And with that, Lizette, Celia, and Delia all close in on you and give you a rib-crushing bear hug while Lena and Jessie stand by and laugh. You can’t help laughing yourself. It feels good to do the right thing and have something work out for a change. You feel like your good karma has been restored. You aren’t leaving the mall with a date, and you may not have gotten to be a big-time model, but who needs that when you have good friends and a ticket to the greatest bash of the year?
Nervous much? High-stress situations leave you feeling pretty frazzled, and being cool under pressure isn’t exactly your strong suit. You try to avoid being put on the spot when you can, but like zits and bad-hair days, sometimes it is unavoidable. Instead of turning into your usual pile of nerves, take a deep breath! You may not realize it, but everybody gets jitters from time to time. The trick is not to let them get the best of you.
Standing just outside the back entrance of the mall, you suddenly realize how the animals at the zoo must feel. Apparently Amy found out that Shawna was about to give away her final golden ticket, and she immediately texted everybody to tell them to come outside—and come they did. She must have told the whole universe. You’re not even exaggerating. You wouldn’t be at all surprised if some aliens showed up. Just taking a quick glance around, you see Lizette and her two cousins; Mark and his baseball-team friends; Eli; Jasmine; Mary and Holly the gloom-and-doom twosome (one of them holding a golden ticket); Charlie; Amy; and Jessie and Lena. You even spot Jimmy in the crowd. Suddenly you’re feeling a little claustrophobic. Everyone has formed a tight little circle around you, and they’re just standing there, staring. It’s as if there is some invisible force field around you and they are powerless to penetrate it.
Of course, the force field could have something to do with your sweating bullets. They’re all keeping their distance from you for the sake of their own nostrils. And is it your imagination or did the sun just get a little hotter?
“You have got to chill out,” Jessie advises. “This is not good for your image. You look a little … nervous.” That is Jessie’s polite way of telling you that you’re starting to look (and smell) like a wet dog. She’s right, of course. You have to get it together! It’s either that or make a break for it and move to Timbuktu.
But before you have a chance to contemplate how exactly you would get to Timbuktu, Shawna comes through the crowd, her hazel eyes sparkling in the sun.
“Thanks for waiting, everybody,” she says, waving to the crowd. Then she turns to you. “If you pass this challenge, you will receive my final golden ticket. You only get one chance, and there are absolutely no do-overs. Are you re
ady?”
Gulp. The best you can offer are a shrug and a weak nod.
“All right. Then for the very last challenge, you will be facing … the Wheel of Doom!”
She pulls out a small cardboard wheel with a spinning arrow on it that you’re pretty sure she got from a board game. Only now each slice of the pie has a category on it: Math, Riddles, Pop Culture, Sports, Music, or History. The crowd oohs and aahs.
“I will spin the wheel three times and wherever the arrow lands, you have to answer a question in that category. Answer all three correctly and the golden ticket is yours! Get even one of them wrong and …” She draws an invisible line across her neck with her index finger. “Got it?”
You nod again, looking over at your friends helplessly. What you wouldn’t give to have one of them doing this instead of you. All day you knew that running into Shawna and landing in the hot seat was a possibility. You just never thought it would actually happen. But here you are and there’s no backing out now. So you take a few deep breaths and try to get your heart to stop beating so loudly in your ears. A girl could go deaf listening to that!
“Here we go… .” Shawna spins the arrow and it whirls around the board until it finally stops on Math. Her friend Hannah steps out of the crowd, holding a box of cards. She hands one to Shawna and steps back into the circle.
“Your first question is: what is one over two plus two over four?”
“Do I get paper and a pencil?” you ask.
Shawna shakes her head. “Nope.”
You take a deep breath. That problem really isn’t hard. You know how to add fractions. You just have to think it through. You picture the equation in your head: 1/2 + 2/4. All right, first things first. You have to find the common denominator. In this case it’s four. And what you do to the top, you must do to the bottom, so you multiply one by two and get two over four plus two over four, and that equals four over four, which means …
Your Life, but Better Page 18