“I was at the nurse’s office,” I said. “Girl stuff.”
And then I clutched my abdomen like I’d seen the other girls do when they had “girl stuff.” It must have worked because Manda made a face.
“Ew. Say no more.”
“So you missed the whole thing?” Sara pressed. “With the crazy chicken?”
“Seagull,” Hope corrected under her breath but loud enough for me to hear.
“What crazy chicken?” I asked, playing dumb.
And that’s when Bridget and Dori showed up and went off.
“THE CRAZY CHICKEN THAT STOLE ALL THE ATTENTION AWAY FROM US.”
I’ve known Bridget for twelve years and I can honestly say I’ve never seen her so mad. Not even when I gave her favorite Colonial-era American Girl doll a punk makeover. Manda and Sara were unmoved.
“Omigod! Boo hoo hoo!” And then Sara wiped away fake tears.
“We worked really hard on our routine and all anyone can talk about is that crazy chicken!” Bridget griped.
I noticed that Hope couldn’t stop herself from mouthing, “Seagull.”
Then Dori was emboldened to speak up.
“We were so mondo and no one noticed!”
Manda gave her the side eye.
“First of all, puh-leeze,” she said. “No one says mondo anymore.”
Sara did a double take. This was news to her. But she played along.
“Omigod! Everyone knows that.”
“Second of all,” Manda continued, “you’re obviously just jealous.”
This was a bold statement to be made by someone who was so jealous that she’d started a spirit war.
“Personally, I loved the mascot,” Manda went on.
“Omigod! Me too!” Sara added.
“I think the chicken showed a lot of school spirit!”
I swear Hope almost choked on her potato chips.
And so none of my closest friends suspected that I was the mascot the whole school was buzzing about. I was the most popular and most anonymous person at Pineville Junior High. As I headed to last period, it was so weird to overhear eighth graders talking about me, having no idea that it was me they were talking about.
“Burke Roy is the chicken.”
“Dude, he’s on the football team. He’s not the chicken.”
“Burke’s hi-larious. It’s got to be him.”
“He was right there in the gym wearing his football uniform. It’s not Burke.”
“BurkeBurkeBurke. You know. Like a chicken.”
“Duh.”
“Whozit then?”
“I don’t know. But whoever the chicken is, he’s hi-larious.”
“Why’s our mascot a chicken, anyway?”
I thought of Hope. I came this close to shouting “Seagull!” But I didn’t.
It’s interesting that almost everyone assumed Mighty was a boy. That only a boy could possibly act so daring and uninhibited, that no girl could take herself so unseriously and risk making a hi-larious fool out of herself in front of the whole school.…
I started getting mad about it. Why assume that all girls will act helpless and timid and—ugh—girlie-girlie when put in a stereotypical “boy” situa—
Oh. Ohhhhhh.
Hadn’t I been acting all helpless and timid and—ugh—girlie-girlie in Woodshop?
I had.
But no more. Not today! No! Today I had cheered without fear! Now I would woodshop without fear! I would make my spoon if it killed me! Though it would be much better if it didn’t kill me, right? I’d like to survive long enough to use it on a pint of cookie dough ice cream.
I was pretty psyched up when I got to eighth period. All week long, while all the boys had been making their spoons, and asking me about girls and farts and girls’ farts, I had done nothing but study the spoon-making instructions. I had all the steps memorized by now. I knew what to do.
I just had to do it.
“Woodshop without fear,” I said to myself as I selected a block of soft maple.
“Woodshop without fear,” I repeated as I traced the spoon template.
“Woodshop without fear,” I said once more as I turned the handle of the vise to get a better grip on the woodblock.
I’d been so focused on my task that I hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to anything else going on around me. Until Mr. Pudel made it impossible not to.
“WHAT IS THIS?”
Mr. Pudel was hovering over someone I couldn’t see. And yet, I knew that someone was Aleck. And I was right.
“It’s my project,” I heard Aleck’s voice say.
“THAT’S NOT A SPOON.”
“Thank you for noticing,” Aleck said, seemingly unintimidated. “It’s not a spoon. It’s a toothpick.”
“A toothpick.” Mr. Pudel said it in a way that expressed both disbelief and no duh.
“An epic toothpick! See? I personalized it!”
From where I stood, this “epic” toothpick looked no different from a regular toothpick. But Mr. Pudel held the “epic toothpick” up to the light, turning it this way and that, as if he were appraising its value like an expert on those boring shows my mom loves to watch where people try to make money off the junk in their attics by calling them antiques.
“Does this toothpick say PROPERTY OF MR. PUDEL?”
“Epic toothpick,” Aleck corrected. “And, yep!”
“How did you even do that?” Mr. Pudel sounded genuinely impressed.
I was too busy watching them to notice that I hadn’t stopped turning the handle of the vise.
“YOW!”
I totally squashed my index finger! It hurt. A lot. Then in my panic, I spun the handle even tighter in the wrong direction. It hurt even worse.
“YOOOOOWZA!!!”
Within seconds Mr. Pudel rushed over and rescued me from the clutches of the vise. I spun in crazy circles around the room, winging my hands wildly through the air.
“YOW! YOW! YOW!”
I collided into shelves, sending several classes’ worth of napkin holders and spoons crashing to the floor.
“YOW! YOW! YOWZA!”
Mr. Pudel caught me by my spinning shoulders and went into ER mode.
“Aleck! Get Clem to the nurse! I don’t trust her to make it on her own!”
I was still too busy hooting and flapping in pain to carry a conversation or to be even the least bit nervous about being alone with a boy. A boy who happened to be Aleck. The only boy in class who hadn’t bothered to ask me anything. At all. Ever.
It wasn’t until we made it all the way to the infirmary on the other side of the school—you’d think it would be closer to Woodshop’s hall considering the risk to our lives and limbs—that Aleck spoke. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me. This is what he said:
“Hellllllblurgh.”
I guess my hooting and flapping was reminiscent of the way a certain feathered mascot hooted and flapped around the gym during the pep rally. Before I could squawk in denial, he pressed his finger to his lips and shushed.
“Don’t worry, Clem,” Aleck assured me as he opened the door to the infirmary. “Your secret is safe with me.”
And for some reason, I believed him.
Chapter Nineteen
This is what it’s like to have a secret identity.
Correction: almost-secret identity, as Aleck likes to remind me in Woodshop every single day. But I’ll get to him later. Important people first. Like Bridget.
Bridget hates me. She doesn’t know she hates me, but she does.
“Grrrrrr! I hate our mascot!” she complained on the walk to the bus stop. “Dori and I just don’t understand why Miss Garcia lets that chicken cheapen the art of cheer!”
“Seagull…”
“WHATEVER. I HATE THAT UGLY CHICKEN WITH A PASSION.”
Three things struck me about this statement:
1. Bridget had never hated anything before.
2. Was I really ugly? Gaudy maybe. But ugly
?
3. WHY DID EVERYONE THINK I WAS A CHICKEN?
Anyway, I’d thought it was bad when Bridget went to CHEER TEAM!!! practice after school and I had to ride the bus home alone every day. I thought it was worse when Bridget started sitting with the CHEER TEAM!!! at lunch on Fridays. And I thought it was way, way worse when she joined Dori at the square table near the kitchen at least twice a week besides that.
But this—being the UGLY BIRD my best friend HATED WITH A PASSION—was the worst of all.
I can’t say I didn’t see this rift between me and Bridget coming. I mean, I knew there would be consequences for Bridget’s prettiness. But I didn’t think it would happen like this. I assumed that it would go the usual way. You know, she’d get a boyfriend and forget all about me. And if the flirting she does with Burke Roy is any indication, it will still happen that way. It just hasn’t happened yet.
I should look to Bridget for flirty inspiration because I’m supposed to move on to IT List #3: Pick your first boyfriend wisely. But I’m way more clueless about boys than I ever was about clothes or the CHEER TEAM!!!, which is really saying something because I still know NEXT TO NOTHING about either one of those subjects.
The only boy in school who seems to know I exist is Aleck, but he doesn’t count. I’ve noticed him messing around in the halls in between classes and it seems to me that annoying girls is his hobby. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know if he’s trying to be annoying. I mean, Aleck doesn’t act all that different from Burke Roy. Only when Burke Roy shoves a baseball cap over girls’ eyes or pulls on girls’ ponytails or snaps girls’ bra straps, the girls generally—and Bridget specifically—get all googly-eyed and giggly. When Aleck does those same exact things, they just get annoyed.
I don’t know whether he’s trying to annoy girls or if he’s just naturally gifted at the art of annoyance. Whatever the reason, for the first few weeks of school I guess Aleck didn’t notice there was a girl in Woodshop—me!—he could annoy. I mean, before he guessed my secret identity, he never talked to me at all. Now he talks to me all the time! Let’s put it this way: If I put the same energy into passing Woodshop as he did in annoying me during Woodshop, I could have hand-carved a yacht out of a redwood by now.
“Clementine, that is the ugliest piece of flatware I’ve ever seen,” he said, pointing to my lumpy, crooked spoon.
It was true. The spoon was ugly. It was the first C minus I’d ever gotten. A C minus in any of my other subjects would’ve been a major academic tragedy. But I’ve never been so proud of such a mediocre grade. I earned that C minus! Besides, Mr. Pudel said that with my perfect scores on all the written tests and the improvement I’m already showing on my second project—a napkin holder—I shouldn’t worry too much about his class bringing down my whole grade point average.
Aleck started playing percussion with my ugly spoon and a less ugly spoon made by one of his friends. It suddenly dawned on me that he was waiting. He had started a conversation and it was now up to me to continue it.
“Um, so what happened with your epic toothpick?” I asked.
“Oh, that,” Aleck said. “Mr. Pudel gave me an F plus.”
I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly over the buzz of the saws.
“An F plus?”
“The first one he’s ever given,” Aleck said, looking positively psyched.
A shadow cast over us. There was only one man who could make that kind of shade.
“LISTEN UP,” Mr. Pudel bellowed.
As if Aleck and I had a choice in the matter.
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should,” he said. “And just because you can’t do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”
Our teacher walked away and Aleck said, “That was deep.”
Then Aleck stopped drumming and deliberately balanced one spoon on the top of his head. His hair was crazier than ever, and the utensil got lost in it.
“Maybe you should use that spoon to comb your hair,” I said. “You might actually see some improvement.”
Aleck stared at me, stone-faced. Oh no! I’d hurt his feelings.…
Then he opened his mouth, tipped back his head, and laughed. A loud HA! HA! HA! kind of laugh. The spoon didn’t move.
“You’re funny, Clem,” Aleck said when he finally settled down. Then he took my ugly spoon and very deliberately balanced it on my head, which was much harder to do without the benefit of curls to get lost in.
He looked at me very seriously, which was funny because we both had spoons on our heads. Aleck’s eyes are brown, but not a boring brown like mine. They’re… I don’t know… interesting. I was trying to figure out the difference between his kind of brown eyes and mine when he spoke up.
“I’m a failure.”
And even though it was sort of true, I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. But before I could say anything, he hopped on top of his stool.
“With flair!”
Then Aleck jumped off. He landed lightly on his feet, but the spoon slipped and hit the floor with a clunk.
I laughed, but I tried not to laugh too hard because I was determined to keep my ugly spoon balanced on my head. Aleck and I didn’t speak the rest of the class period. We worked on our napkin holders. When the dismissal bell rang, I victoriously removed the spoon from where Aleck had placed it forty minutes earlier. I made a point to prod him with it as we herded out the door.
“I win!” I said.
And I really felt like I had won something. Though what it was, I still couldn’t tell you.
“You won,” Aleck replied. “This time.”
And I smiled in spite of myself, happy to hear the hint of a next time.
Maybe too happy.
I was at my locker, idly spinning the combination but without much success. If I didn’t hurry up, I’d miss the bus home. But that didn’t seem important at the time.
“EARTH TO JESSICA!”
I jolted to attention.
Bridget was suddenly in front of me, though I hadn’t taken any notice of where she’d come from or when. Dori was standing right behind her, as she usually did these days.
“Uh, sorry,” I apologized.
“What’s up with you lately?” she asked. “You’re acting weird.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like you’re keeping something from me.” She narrowed her aquamarine eyes. “And don’t tell me you’re stuffing your bra!”
She got really close to my face. I could smell the bubble gum on her breath.
“I’m just gonna, like, ask you straight out.”
She paused and I braced myself for the dreaded question: You’re the mascot, aren’t you?
“Do. You. Like. Him. Or. Not?”
She spoke slowly and deliberately so there was no mistaking what she had asked. And yet, I had no idea what she had just asked. Or why. I was genuinely and totally confused.
“Me? Who? Wha…?”
Bridget glanced at Dori, like she needed assistance. Dori gave her a “go on” nudge.
“You know who.”
Did I? Was Bridget talking about me and…?
Aleck?
Wait! There was no “me and Aleck.” How could Bridget know about something that wasn’t even a thing?
“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about,” I said.
Bridget flinched but recovered quickly. Her mouth loosened up into something that sort of resembled a smile. I couldn’t help but think, When in doubt, Jess, just smile, smile, smile!
“Okay,” Bridget said. “I guess I believe you.”
I knew she didn’t believe me. And she knew I knew she didn’t believe me because best friends know these things about each other.
But that knowingness didn’t make either of us feel any better as we took off in opposite directions down the hall.
Chapter Twenty
That afternoon was Mighty the Seagull’s debut at a real game.
My beginning.
<
br /> My end.
And maybe a new beginning.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
So things were really, really awkward with Bridget. These days we only saw each other on the bus in the morning, and even then she spent more time flirting with Burke than talking to me. I didn’t blame Bridget for being annoyed with me. She knew I was keeping a secret—she just didn’t know what it was. And because I couldn’t stand the tension between us anymore, I’d decided to tell her the truth about my secret identity after the game. I knew this would upset Miss Garcia, but she wasn’t nearly as important to me as my best friend.
Make that ex–best friend.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Despite the nonstop gossip and speculation, no one else had figured out that I was the one inside the bird suit. And the one person who did know the truth about my identity had unexpectedly kept that information to himself.
Sort of.
Right at the end of eighth period today, Aleck went out of his way to give me a wooden token the size of a quarter.
“For luck,” he said before rushing out the door with his buddies.
He had used the woodworking iron to draw a picture of Mighty the Seagull on one side and CHEER WITHOUT FEAR on the other.
How did Aleck even know that was my motto?
But I didn’t have time to wonder about Aleck or what he knew about me. I had to get my game face on. Literally. You know, the bird head.
It was our football team’s opening game against the Baygate Bears. (Apparently they are our rivals and we’re supposed to hate them because… uh… why?) Bridget and Dori were making their halftime debut as new members of the Pineville Junior High CHEER TEAM!!! And if that weren’t enough, it was also the first public appearance by the Pineville Junior High Spirit Squad: Manda and Sara and the select few seventh-grade girls who they had decided were almost as cool as they were. All eight girls wore snug SPIRIT SQUAD tees and waved SPIRIT SQUAD signs and whistled and WHOOOOOOED and generally called a lot of attention to themselves.
So anyway. The game was a big deal. It was a gorgeous afternoon for football, even if you weren’t really into football. The sun was shining, but the air was cool and crisp and made me want to put on a sweater and snuggle up to share a Styrofoam cup of cocoa with… uh… someone. The bleachers were packed with students, teachers, and parents who apparently felt the same way.
The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Popularity, Prettiness & Perfection Page 11