by Meg Cabot
After what seemed like a million years, I heard the front door open and close, and Mom yell, ‘I’m home!’ Then she said, ‘Boy, that smells good. I forgot it’s taco night!’
Then there was some talking. Then there was some more creaking on the stairs, and then, finally, I heard my bedroom door close, and someone tapped on my closet door.
‘Allie?’ my mom’s voice asked softly.
For some reason the sound of my mom’s voice made me start crying all over again. I couldn’t help it. I was just so sad. Thank goodness I had Mewsie to hold on to.
‘I – I’m in h-here,’ I called to Mom from the closet, my voice all sobby. It was a good thing Cheyenne wasn’t around, because she’d really think I was a big baby if she’d heard me crying like that.
The next thing I knew, Mom was opening up the closet door. She didn’t even ask if it was OK. Moms are like that. That’s pretty much a rule, and you don’t even have to write it down to know it’s true.
‘Oh, Allie,’ Mom said when she looked down and saw me.
‘I’m not coming out,’ I said, still crying. I was holding on to Mewsie so tight, his purring was kind of sounding a little choked, like purr – mmrrph – purr – mrrrack – purr . . .
‘That’s all right,’ Mom said, tucking her skirt behind her. ‘I’ll come in with you.’
And to my surprise, she did exactly that.
Rule #12
Tacos Make Everything Better. Well, Almost Everything
It was strange, sitting with my mom in my closet. It wasn’t something we had ever done before. Sat in a closet together, I mean.
But it felt a lot better than sitting in the closet alone.
‘So what’s going on?’ Mom wanted to know. ‘Why are you sitting in your closet crying?’
‘Because,’ I said.
And the next thing I knew, the whole story had spilt out. Everything about Cheyenne, and her Talent, Not Talk shirt, and her boots, and Mrs Hunter moving my desk, and the Kissing Game, and the slumber parties, and Cheyenne going with Patrick, and Sophie going with Prince Peter, and Caroline going with Lenny Hsu (even though I was pretty sure Lenny still didn’t know he was going with Caroline), and Erica going with Stuart, and Cheyenne trying to make me go with Joey, and Joey crying on the swings, and Cheyenne telling me my new name was Big Baby Finkle, and me telling Cheyenne she wasn’t the boss of me, and Mrs Hunter looking so shocked and telling me to speak softly to my neighbour, and Uncle Jay shaving off his beard and changing for Harmony . . .
By the end, I was sobbing more than ever.
‘And now,’ I finished, hiccuping a little, ‘M-Mrs Hunter h-hates m-me!’
‘Oh, honey,’ Mom said, putting her arms around me. ‘Mrs Hunter doesn’t hate you. I’m sure Mrs Hunter doesn’t hate you.’
‘She does,’ I assured my mom. The thought of Mrs Hunter hating me made me feel as if my heart was breaking. ‘Everyone hates me! They’re all going to call me Big Baby Finkle! I can never go back to Pine Heights Elementary again!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Mom said as she rocked me a little in her arms, just like she used to when I was younger even than Kevin. ‘Let me ask you something. When this Cheyenne girl talks about you girls going with these boys . . . what does that mean exactly?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, shrugging. ‘None of us does. Cheyenne says it’s just what mature people do.’
‘I see,’ Mom said.
Being held by Mom was making me not feel so bad. I’d stopped crying just because I was smelling the Mom-y smells of her. She smelled like her perfume and, well, just like Mom. She was soft – in a different way than Mewsie, who’d finally gotten tired of being cried on and run off to go find his catnip ball and go swat it around – and comfortable and just perfect. Even if it was kind of getting cramped with the two of us in my closet.
‘Well, I don’t want you to worry about it any more,’ Mom said. ‘Because I’m going to take care of it.’
I felt so nice, like nothing bad could happen to me, sitting there in the closet with Mom, smelling her nice Mom smells and feeling her nice Mom softness.
But I didn’t understand what she was saying.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘How are you going to take care of it? You can’t take care of it. You don’t even go to Pine Heights Elementary.’
‘I know,’ Mom said. ‘But I still know how to take care of it.’
Panic seized me. And suddenly, I knew. I knew what she was going to do.
‘Mom,’ I cried, struggling to get out of her lap. ‘No! You can’t! You can’t call Mrs Hunter!’
‘Allie.’ Mom tried to hold on to me. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why shouldn’t I call Mrs Hunter? She told us when we first enrolled you that if we had any problems, we could call her any time. Well, I think this Cheyenne girl is a problem –’
I agreed with Mom that Cheyenne was a problem. But I didn’t want to be a telltale! A stool pigeon!
Although the thought of Mrs Hunter handling the problem of Cheyenne calling me Big Baby Finkle the way she’d handled the Kissing Game problem was deeply comforting, in a way.
Still. Everyone would know! And it wouldn’t be like how everyone had known Stuart’s mom had maybe called about the Kissing Game. Because that had happened to all the boys. The Big Baby Finkle thing had only happened to one person . . . me! I was the only girl in the entire fourth grade who wasn’t going with a boy. Well, except for Rosemary, but she didn’t count. All the boys were afraid of Rosemary.
‘Mom,’ I protested, ‘you can’t. You just can’t, OK? Everyone will know. You have to let me handle it myself. OK?’
‘OK, Allie,’ Mom said, after a second or two. ‘OK. If that’s what you really want.’
‘That’s what I really want,’ I said. Even though it wasn’t. Not even the slightest.
Mom let out a big sigh and said, ‘Fine, then. I’m going to go downstairs now. I want you to go wash your face and hands and get ready for dinner. Dad made one of your favourites: tacos.’
‘OK,’ I said. I didn’t want to go downstairs. I wanted to stay in my closet, on my mom’s lap, forever.
But I knew I couldn’t.
Mom gave me a kiss, and then got up – with a little trouble – and climbed out of my closet. On her way out of my room, she wrinkled her nose and said, ‘And don’t forget to scoop out Mewsie’s litter box. In fact, I think you should probably move it to the kids’ bathroom. I think he’s old enough now for you to can start letting him out of your room during the day.’
‘OK right,’ I said again.
After I’d scooped out Mewsie’s box, I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror. My face was all red and splotchy from crying. I looked exactly like what Cheyenne had accused me of being: A big baby. I guess because that’s what I was. A big baby who let other people boss her around.
Except I hadn’t. I hadn’t played the Kissing Game and I wasn’t going with Joey Fields.
And I hadn’t let my mom call Mrs Hunter.
Who knew what kind of torture I was going to walk into when I went to school tomorrow? Still, whatever it was, I was going to handle it on my own. Like a mature person, not a baby.
I dried my hands and went downstairs for taco night.
In spite of my nervousness about tomorrow, I was starving. I ended up eating three tacos with everything on them (except salsa). Everyone was very impressed by my appetite.
After dinner, we three kids and Uncle Jay had a burping contest, and I won. Mom said I was disgusting, but that she was glad to see I was feeling better. She also asked Dad when they had had a fourth child, because someone seemed to have slipped one into the house without telling her.
Uncle Jay knew exactly what she was talking about . . . him. He said not to worry, that he’d be leaving soon.
‘Because,’ he said proudly, ‘I got a job today.’
‘No,’ Mom said, looking astonished. ‘You did not.’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Jay said, ‘I did. You are now looki
ng at the newest delivery person for Pizza Express.’
Mom stopped looking so astonished. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You got a job delivering pizzas.’
‘Funny,’ Uncle Jay said. ‘That’s exactly the way Harmony said it. It may not be the most upwardly mobile job. But every journey starts with a single step. And I get all the free pizza I want. And I should meet a lot of interesting people. Anyway, Harmony’s going to give me a second chance. We’ll be taking things slowly. But it’s a start.’
‘Hallelujah,’ Dad said. ‘I can have my remote back.’
‘And I can have my guest-room back,’ Mom said.
‘Does this mean I’m not going to get your futon couch?’ Kevin asked.
Uncle Jay told Kevin that, sadly, he wouldn’t be getting his futon couch – a fact which Kevin accepted eventually (he got me and Mark to help him move his bed back to where it had been. I have no idea how he’d scooted it around to make room for the couch).
That night I didn’t sleep very well. I kept thinking about how Cheyenne’s face had looked after I’d told her she wasn’t the boss of me . . . like I was about to learn a lesson. The truth was . . . Cheyenne actually sort of was the boss off me. Because Cheyenne was the boss of the whole fourth grade. I don’t know how it had happened – especially considering the fact that she was the new girl, and she wasn’t very nice. But somehow Cheyenne had come along and everyone in Room 209 had let her turn into the boss of us all.
And in the morning I was going to have to pay for standing up to her.
The thought of it made my stomach hurt.
The next morning I met Erica at our door when she came by to pick me up for school, I didn’t tell her about how I’d shut myself into my closet, crying, most of the evening, or that I’d told my mom everything that had been happening in our class. I didn’t tell her that I’d been up half the night worrying, or that, more than anything, I was dreading going back to Room 209 to face Cheyenne and be called Big Baby Finkle all over again.
I could tell by Erica’s face that I didn’t have to tell her any of these things. She already knew. She gave me a big hug and said, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t be that bad.’
But Erica was just being Erica. It was absolutely going to be that bad.
And we both knew it.
On the way to school, Erica tried to give me a pep talk anyway, saying how if Cheyenne called me Big Baby Finkle she was going to call Cheyenne a name she’d come up with, and that she’d talked to Caroline and Sophie on the phone the night before, and that they’d both agreed to call Cheyenne the name too.
I didn’t ask what the name was. I was too busy thinking my own thoughts. Which were mostly thoughts about how much I wished Erica would stop talking about all this in front of Kevin, who was listening very interestedly.
Which was why, when we reached the stop sign, I hardly even noticed at first that Caroline and Sophie were both there. Just like they used to be, back in the old pre-fight days! They weren’t as chatty as before. But they weren’t trying to kill one another either, which was definitely a step in the right direction.
I don’t know what Erica had said to them, but she had gotten them talking, at least.
Erica totally had some kind of future ahead of her as a diplomat or something. Her skills as a queen didn’t lie just in lobbing evil warlords’ heads off. I guess all that trying to keep people from fighting all the time actually had taught her a thing or two.
I for one really appreciated it.
For the first time, I felt a little tremor of hope about the day ahead of me. I mean, in between the thoughts about how I was about to die.
Still, even though Caroline and Sophie weren’t at one another’s throats for a change, the closer we got to school, the twistier my insides started to feel. It had rained in the night, and then the rain had frozen over, so everything was covered with a layer of ice, making the tree branches all pretty and sparkly.
But it had also made all the old dirty snow completely treacherous and slippery, so that we couldn’t go on the baseball diamond (Mr Elkhart was out there with the salt machine).
So that meant everyone was just standing around with nothing to do.
And it also meant that Cheyenne was totally just waiting for me the minute I dropped Kevin off in the playground. I mean, she couldn’t play the Kissing Game (because that had been outlawed) or watch the boys play kickball (because it was too slippery for them to play), and it wasn’t like any of them would talk to her . . . not even her alleged boyfriend Patrick, since he was busy trying to kick the ice apart, lift up chunks of it and throw it at people. This is what boys at Pine Heights Elementary did on very icy mornings.
So of course all Cheyenne’s attention was free to focus on me the minute I set foot on school property.
‘Oh, look,’ Cheyenne called, the second I let go of Kevin’s hand at the jungle gym (which was covered in icicles. No kindergartener was allowed to climb on it). ‘Big Baby Finkle dared to show her face in school today!’
I set my jaw, even though my stomach twisted harder than ever at the sight of her miniskirt, tights and high-heeled zip-up boots. I couldn’t help noticing that Marianne, Dominique, Shamira, Rosie and even shy Elizabeth had all gotten their parents to go out and get them high-heeled zip-up boots just like Cheyenne’s. They were all wearing them. Their heels made click-clack sounds on the ice as they came towards us.
Looking down at my thick snow boots, I felt exactly like what Cheyenne had accused me of being: a little bit immature.
But if I’d been wearing boots like they had on, I wouldn’t have been able to get Kevin to school without slipping, I realized.
‘Cheyenne,’ Erica said as we came down the path towards her. ‘Why don’t you . . .’
Cheyenne raised her eyebrows at Erica. Erica rarely, if ever, said anything mean to anyone. She was too busy trying to make sure everyone got along.
But today Erica surprised me, Cheyenne and everyone else who was watching, by shouting, ‘Cheyenne, why don’t you just shut up . . . Big Mouth!’
‘Yeah,’ Sophie yelled. ‘Big Mouth O’Malley!’
‘BIG MOUTH O’MALLEY!’ Caroline shouted.
Cheyenne looked startled to be called Big Mouth O’Malley. Especially when Rosemary, who was standing nearby, starting laughing.
‘Big Mouth O’Malley,’ Rosemary said. ‘That’s exactly what she is!’
Cheyenne’s face started turning red.
‘I am not a big mouth,’ she said.
‘Uh, excuse me,’ Rosemary said. ‘But, yeah, actually, you are.’
‘If I’m a big baby, Cheyenne,’ I said, feeling a burst of love for my friends, who were helping me stand up to this girl who had been making me miserable for so long, ‘you’re a big mouth.’
‘You are a big baby,’ Cheyenne said. Her face was turning redder by the second. ‘But I’m not a big mouth!’
Wow. Why hadn’t I noticed before that Cheyenne was good at calling other people names, but she wasn’t so good at taking it when other people called her names? How genius of Erica to have figured this out!
‘Big Mouth,’ Erica sang. You could tell she was kind of enjoying herself. She had had plenty of practice at home, watching her older brother and sister tease each other (and, sometimes, her). She knew how it was done. ‘Big Mouth O’Malley.’
‘Big Mouth.’ Caroline, Sophie, Rosemary and I linked arms and joined Erica. ‘Big Mouth,’ we sang. ‘Big Mouth O’Malley!’
‘Shut up!’ Cheyenne’s face was so red now, it looked like a tomato. Tears were glistening in her eyes. ‘I hate you guys!’
Marianne and Dominique and the rest of the girls from our class didn’t know what to do. At first they’d been giggling. Because calling someone a big mouth was pretty funny.
But then when Cheyenne started crying, they stopped giggling as much.
Still, I noticed no one came to Cheyenne’s defence. No one said, ‘Hey! She’s not a big mouth!’
I guess because t
hey knew it was true. Also because they probably knew that tomorrow it could be them Cheyenne was calling a big baby, or something even worse, for no other reason than that they hadn’t done something she’d told them to.
Suddenly, from over near the flagpole, the sound of a whistle pierced the playground. We turned around, wondering what it could be. Normally Pine Heights uses a bell system.
That’s when we saw Mrs Hunter standing there in her dark green winter coat with its imitation fur trim.
‘Room Two Oh Nine,’ she cupped her gloved hands over her mouth to yell in our direction. ‘Get in your lines now!’
We all stared at her. The first bell hadn’t even rung yet. What was she talking about?
‘Right now!’ Mrs Hunter yelled. ‘Patrick Day, you put down that ice this minute and get in line!’
Patrick Day dropped the two foot chunk of ice he’d managed to pry up from the sidewalk. It shattered into a million pieces – just as he’d intended it to, although he pretended he’d dropped it by accident.
‘What’s all this about?’ Rosemary wondered as we picked our way across the iced-over playground to get into our lines.
‘You don’t think she heard us, do you?’ Erica worried. ‘And we’re in trouble? I mean, Cheyenne started it.’
‘She couldn’t have,’ Caroline said. ‘Maybe she’s worried about the ice. You saw what Patrick was doing.’
I had a sinking feeling I knew why Mrs Hunter’s class – and just Mrs Hunter’s class – was being called inside early. Had my mom gone ahead and done what I’d asked her not to?
I felt like I had swallowed a fork or something.
My mom had called Mrs Hunter. She had actually called my teacher. I knew it. I just knew it.
And Mrs Hunter was going to tell everyone!
But wait . . . Mrs Hunter wouldn’t say anything. When Stuart’s mom had called – and I was pretty sure she had – Mrs Hunter hadn’t said so. She’d just said the Kissing Game had had to stop. She hadn’t said, ‘The Kissing Game has to stop because Stuart’s mom called.’
Maybe it would be OK. Maybe I wasn’t about to get killed by every girl in this class (except my friends). Maybe . . .