by Meg Cabot
If the Kissing Game was bad for the boys who got caught and kissed by Cheyenne (except for Patrick, who liked it), it seemed in some ways to be worse for the boys Cheyenne didn’t seem interested in catching and kissing.
And one of those boys was Joey Fields.
I don’t know what poor Joey did to make Cheyenne so uninterested in him. But she treated Joey like he had the chicken pox and poison ivy combined.
And this was bad, because Joey wanted to be kissed by Cheyenne. And badly. I knew this, because every day he bugged me about it. For some reason Joey thought I was in on the whole Kissing Game, and he kept asking me about it. Like, ‘Allie, who are they going to chase at recess today?’ and ‘Do you think they’ll chase me? I hope not! Ruff! Ruff!’
Except you could tell that underneath the I hope nots and the nervous barking, Joey really hoped they would chase him. I could tell because he started bringing mints to school and sucking them all the time.
It was about as sad as it was gross.
Plus, he actually started washing the sleep out of his eyes every morning, and combing the sticky-out parts of his black hair down.
Also, he made an effort to separate himself from the rest of the guys on the playground, so he’d make an easy target for Cheyenne if she wanted to issue the command to start chasing him. Instead of playing kickball like he usually did, Joey started sitting by himself on the swings, reading a book. Or pretending to read a book, I should say. Really, he was just opening the book, while watching the girls to see if they were going to chase him or not.
This was how I became sure that my eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me that first day I’d moved to my new desk. Joey Fields really was the other kid in Room 209 who was reading Mrs Hunter’s collection of Boxcar Children books. He was hoarding them all in his desk! I saw him with them out in the playground, and sometimes I saw him taking them home at night. I couldn’t understand how a boy as weird as Joey could love the same kind of books that I did.
Also, I couldn’t figure out how I could make him give them back. He had like ten of them in his desk. The one time I confronted him about it – ‘Joey,’ I said, in my most reasonable big sister voice (Sometimes you have to use your reasonable voice to get what you want. Especially with boys. This is a rule), ‘why do you have all Mrs Hunter’s Boxcar Children books in your desk? Those books are for everyone, you know. You’re supposed to borrow them one at a time. Please put them back so all of us can enjoy them’ – he denied that they were there, and tried to make out like I was seeing things. Liar!
Lying doesn’t solve anything. Usually. This is a rule.
I understand that a boy like Joey might be ashamed to be caught reading the same books as a girl.
But still! He didn’t have to lie about it.
I was little bit glad that Cheyenne didn’t want to kiss Joey, even though you could tell he was totally miserable about it. I wouldn’t have wanted to kiss him either (although the fact was, I didn’t want to kiss any boy).
So there I was, stuck in the back row between a boy who was miserable because the new girl in our class wouldn’t stop kissing him, and a boy who was miserable because the new girl in our class didn’t want to kiss him.
This was just living proof of what my Uncle Jay was saying a lot lately, about how there was no justice in the world.
I was pretty mad about it. Especially since I had innocently been taking a drink from the water fountain (like everything in Pine Heights Elementary School, the water fountains are old-fashioned, not the kind with a pedal that you step on or a button that you push to make the water come out, but with a star-shaped cranky thing you turned) in the hallway on our way to the choir room for music class, when Cheyenne got in line behind me (with Dominique and Marianne in line behind her), and asked, ‘Drink much?’ in a snotty voice, which I guess in Canadian meant I was taking too long or something.
So I stopped drinking and turned around, wiping my mouth with the back of my wrist before I told Cheyenne to go stinkle somewhere else.
This caused Cheyenne to go, ‘Way to drool!’
Then Dominique and Marianne laughed, exactly like they’d laughed when Cheyenne had asked, Drink much?
I just looked at Cheyenne some more, because I was thinking that, actually, the shirt she’d been wearing her first day at school had turned out not to be telling the truth. She wasn’t Talent, Not Talk. Cheyenne talked quite a lot, it turned out. She talked all the time. She was always getting caught chitchatting in class by Mrs Hunter, but never with her neighbour, Erica. She was always chit-chatting with Dominique, who sat behind her, or Marianne, who sat in front of her, or Shamira, who sat diagonally opposite her – when she wasn’t passing notes to them.
Today she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that had sparkles all over the front that formed the words Girl Power! Girl power, when it came to Cheyenne, was right. She had a little too much girl power, if you asked me.
‘Well,’ Cheyenne said to me, ‘are you going to move, or what?’
I’d started to walk away because there didn’t seem to be anything more to say, when the sound of Cheyenne’s voice stopped me.
‘Hey, Allie,’ she said. ‘How come you never want to play the Kissing Game with us at recess?’
I looked over my shoulder at her.
‘Because I think the Kissing Game is stupid,’ I said. ‘Why would I want to chase after a boy so you could kiss him? Especially any of the boys from our class. They’re gross.’
This caused Dominique and Marianne to erupt into even more giggles, as if this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard in their entire lives.
Cheyenne laughed too. ‘Oh, Allie,’ she said, ‘you’re so immature!’
I walked away when she said that, and kept walking, straight into the music room. I sat down next to Erica, Caroline and Sophie. I didn’t say anything just then about what Cheyenne had accused me of, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Was I immature? I didn’t think so. I actually thought I was quite mature for my age. Unlike some girls I know, I don’t cry at the drop of a hat just because I don’t get my way. I had nursed a premature kitten to health all by myself (practically), and I was one of the top spellers and the best girl in math and science (besides Caroline) in our entire class. I also took very good care of my little brothers (most of the time), and even of my Uncle Jay now that he had pretty much moved into our house due to his depression over his girlfriend breaking up with him. Weren’t these actually signs of great maturity? Yes, I think they were.
Cheyenne may have been from a big city in Canada, but that didn’t mean she knew what she was talking about. Just because a person didn’t want to run around the playground like a maniac, chasing boys and then kissing them, did not mean a person wasn’t mature.
Or did it?
I thought about it all day, but I couldn’t figure it out. Was Cheyenne right? Was I really immature and just didn’t know it?
Finally, I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to know.
‘Do you guys think I’m immature?’ I asked Caroline, Sophie, Erica and Rosemary as we were walking home from school that day. Normally Rosemary took the bus to and from school, but her mom was going to swing by to pick her up from my house later so she could make another Mewsie film, since the last one didn’t turn out as well as she wanted.
‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘Who told you you were immature?’
‘Cheyenne,’ I said.
‘Who cares what she thinks?’ Rosemary asked scornfully.
Sophie sucked in her breath. ‘She told me I was immature too!’
‘She did?’ I was shocked to hear this. I think Sophie is actually quite mature. She has four purses, including an imitation Dolce & Gabbana one her mother bought her in Chinatown in New York City. ‘When?’
‘The other day when she told me I should just go up to Prince Peter and tell him my true feelings for him,’ Sophie said. ‘She said if I did this, then Prince Peter would ask me to go with hi
m.’
Rosemary made a gagging noise.
‘Go where?’ Erica asked curiously.
‘That’s what I said!’ Sophie cried. ‘That’s when Cheyenne laughed and told me I was immature.’
Caroline pressed her lips together until her mouth was a flat line. She only does this when she’s very, very angry.
‘She doesn’t have any right,’ she said. ‘She can’t tell us what to do!’
‘She’s telling everyone else what to do,’ I said. ‘She’s got every girl in the class playing her stupid Kissing Game.’
‘Except us,’ Rosemary pointed out.
‘Except us,’ I corrected myself.
‘I heard Cheyenne is having a spa slumber party this weekend,’ Sophie said.
‘What’s that?’ Erica wanted to know.
‘Everyone is going to the mall to get manicures and pedicures,’ Sophie explained. ‘And then they’re going back to Cheyenne’s house to do each other’s hair and make-up, make bath bombs, sip herbal teas and watch makeover movies.’
‘Why didn’t we get invited?’ Erica wanted to know.
‘Who cares?’ Rosemary yelled. ‘Why would you even want to go? That sounds horrible! Herbal tea? Blech!’
‘What’s a bath bomb?’ Caroline wondered.
‘Still,’ Erica said. ‘I don’t think it’s very nice of her to invite every other girl in the class, and not us. Is that even allowed?’
‘If it’s a bomb you can use to blow up bathtubs,’ Rosemary said, ‘I want one.’
‘Maybe Cheyenne just forgot to invite us,’ Erica said. ‘Or maybe our invitations are still in the mail.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to be invited, Erica,’ Caroline said. We’d reached my house, and were going in through the utility-room door. ‘I think we’re going to have to face the fact that we’re too immature for Cheyenne and her crowd.’
‘Good,’ Rosemary declared. ‘I’m glad they think I’m immature if it means I don’t have to sit around getting nail polish put on me, sipping boring tea and making bombs for bathtubs.’
‘Whoa.’ Uncle Jay, who’d been wandering down the hall with a blanket about his shoulders (something he could be found doing most afternoons around our house, now that Harmony wasn’t his girlfriend any more), stood there staring at us. ‘Who’s going to bomb a bathtub?’
‘No one,’ I said to him. ‘At least, I don’t think so. What’s a bath bomb?’
‘It’s a thing,’ Uncle Jay said, ‘that when dropped into a hot bath it makes the water fizz and smell nice. I think it’s supposed to make your skin soft. Harmony –’ his eyes got a faraway look in them, like they always do when he mentions Harmony’s name – ‘sometimes used them.’
Caroline, Sophie, Erica, Rosemary and I all looked at each other with guilty expressions for reminding Uncle Jay of his lost love.
‘What’s this?’ My dad’s voice boomed out from the hallway, and I saw him coming towards us from the dining room, where he likes to do his paperwork when he’s home. ‘Girl Scout meeting?’
‘Da-a-ad,’ I said, embarrassed, as all my friends laughed at him, because he looked so silly with his glasses perched up on top of his head.
‘We just came over to see Mewsie, Mr Finkle,’ Rosemary said.
‘Oh,’ Dad said. ‘Well, knock yourselves out. I think your mother left some snacks in the kitchen –’
A little while later after what Dad called a ‘stampede’, but I don’t think that was fair, I think it was more like a dignified rush, for the peanut butter and crackers Mom left out – we gathered in my room so Rosemary could film Mewsie (since Mewsie is still a kitten and is only just getting to know his way around our ginormous house, he is only allowed out of my room when I’m home, and NEVER allowed outside, since it’s winter and if he got lost he could freeze to death) and we could talk about Cheyenne’s slumber party that none of us had been invited to (even though Erica kept saying our invitations were probably still in the mail, something only Erica believed).
‘It’s just because we won’t play her stupid Kissing Game,’ Sophie said as she ran the pink sparkle brush through Mewsie’s long grey and black tail fur . . . except the tip, which is white. Also, although Mewsie likes to be brushed sometimes, other times he thinks you’re playing with him and he tries to eat the brush, like he was doing now.
‘You mean, you think if we acted like big idiots and ran around the playground screaming our heads off chasing the boys,’ Caroline said, looking up from one of my Boxcar Children books, ‘we’d be invited too?’
‘Exactly,’ Sophie said. ‘Ow!’ This last statement was directed at Mewsie.
‘I don’t know why you all even care about going to that girl’s stupid slumber party,’ Rosemary said. She’d gotten a good shot of Mewsie playfully biting Sophie’s finger. ‘It sounds like a giant snoozefest to me. Manicures and pedicures and doing each other’s hair? Ugh! If you guys want to go to a slumber party so badly, why don’t we just have our own?’
Caroline, Sophie and I all looked at each other. Even Erica looked up from the Webkinz she was arranging on my window seat.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘that’s not a bad idea.’
Rule #7
If Someone Is Having a Party and Doesn’t Invite You, Just Have Your Own Party and Don’t Invite Them (and Make Your Party Better)
The Kissing Game didn’t actually end up lasting all that long – just a day before Cheyenne’s slumber party, Mrs Hunter and some other teachers realized what was happening, and put a stop to it.
Or maybe someone’s mother called in and complained or something. I don’t know.
All I know is, on Friday before morning recess Mrs Hunter slipped on to her stool where she normally reads to us (we were doing A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which sequels to A Wrinkle in Time and one of my favourites, besides the Boxcar Children, of course, although it’s actually a completely different kind of story), and said, ‘Class, I’ve been hearing that there’s a new game some of you have been playing at recess – a kind of kissing game, where girls chase boys or boys chase girls until they catch and kiss them . . . I don’t know the details, and frankly I don’t want to know. What I do know is, it’s going to stop now. I’m not going to say anything more about it. Except that if I see anyone playing it again, everyone involved is going to get their recess taken away for the rest of the week. Is that understood?’
Everyone in class got very quiet. Except for me and Rosemary. We both scooted out our chairs and leaned back so we could look past Stuart Maxwell at each other. Then we gave each other great big smiles.
To the vast majority of girls in Room 209, what Mrs Hunter had just said was very bad news. From where I sat, I could see that Marianne in particular looked as if she was about to cry with disappointment.
But to Rosemary, whose kickball games were always getting interrupted by hordes of screaming girls chasing down their prey, this was really, really good news.
And to me, who was always having to listen to Joey Fields go on about how come no girls would ever chase him, it was even better.
‘High-five,’ Rosemary whispered to me, holding up her hand behind Stuart Maxwell’s back.
I high-fived her. I had to admit, I was feeling pretty good. If I’d known whose mom had maybe called in, I’d have given that kid a great big hug. Even if it had been Patrick Day’s mom. Heck, even it had been Joey Fields’s.
Joey looked like he could have used a hug too. He looked so upset, he was practically crying.
‘I d-don’t understand,’ he whispered. ‘Does this mean you guys aren’t going to play that game any more?’
‘We never played it,’ I whispered back, pointing to me and Rosemary. ‘Those guys did.’ I pointed to Cheyenne, who had a pretty crabby look on her face. You could tell she was mad about Mrs Hunter making her stop playing her favourite recess game. What was she going to play now?
Oh, I forgot. Nothing. Cheyenne doesn’t play at recess. She’s too mature.
�
�But.’ Joey seriously looked upset. He’d combed his hair that day and everything. ‘Nobody’s going to chase me now?’
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Boys. Seriously.
‘No, Joey,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s going to chase you.’
‘I’ll chase you, Joey,’ Rosemary volunteered helpfully. ‘I’ll chase you and knock you down and even rub some snow in your face, if you want.’
Joey blinked a few times. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s OK. Thanks.’
At recess, Cheyenne and all the other fourth-grade girls who’d been forbidden from participating in their favourite school activity gathered in a tight cluster by the swings. We couldn’t tell what they were doing, but we guessed they were probably talking about what they were going to start doing at recess now that Cheyenne couldn’t spread her disgusting germs everywhere.
Since it seemed obvious they might come up with an even worse activity, I suggested we send a spy over to listen in. The spy I recommended was Sophie, because she was the prettiest and also the best at acting like she fitted in.
‘Aw,’ Sophie said, fluttering her eyelashes, a skill she’d learned from Jill in The Silver Chair of The Chronicles of Narnia, ‘thanks.’
‘No spying,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘If we send a spy over, they’ll figure out what we’re doing, and then they’ll think we care what they think, which we don’t.’
‘I care what they think,’ Erica volunteered.
‘Well, I don’t,’ Rosemary said. ‘I’m going to go play kickball. Goodbye.’ And she left to do just that.
‘They probably think we’re the ones who told on them,’ I said, looking over at the group of girls by the swings. ‘The reason I can tell is, they keep looking over here.’
One way you can tell that people are talking about you is if they look over at you a lot while they are talking to other people. This is a rule.
‘Just ignore them,’ Caroline said. ‘Come on, let’s go to our secret place.’
‘It’s not really a secret any more,’ Sophie pointed out as we crossed the playground, resolutely not looking in the direction of Cheyenne and her friends, ‘if everybody else knows about it.’