by Annie Bryant
“Hey, what’s that on your CHEST, Katani?” she said, noticing the stains.
She always knows exactly what I’m worried about. All the kids in the eighth-grade hall turned to look. How embarrassing! I grabbed her arm and walked as fast as I could.
All of a sudden, a bell rang right over our heads. Kelley dropped her bear and covered her ears with both hands. “Keep going, Kelley,” I urged. A crowd of kids rushed past, trampling her stuffed animal.
Once the bell stopped ringing and she could uncover her ears, she shouted, “I’ve lost Mr. Bear! IT’S A TRAGEDY!”
The tank-top twins from my homeroom were whispering to some guys with muscles and football jerseys and pointing. Figured those two had already discovered the eighth-grade boys and needed someone to make fun of to get attention. I gave them a “Get a life” glare. Where was that stupid bear?
Kelley kept yelling, “IT’S A TRAGEDY!” as packs of kids rushed at us.
“Please don’t melt down, Kelley,” I prayed.
Her tantrums are not pretty. She can wail like a siren. Once she gets started, there’s no stopping her. Kelley looked ready to lose it. Help!
Just as I reached to pick up Mr. Bear, a girl accidentally kicked him across the corridor. At least she apologized. I raced to capture him, then held the bear in the air so Kelley could see. She beamed.
“TOUCHDOWN, KATANI!” she yelled.
The muscle beach football players yelled, “Whooah!”
“Come on, Kelley,” I said, handing her the bear. I put my arm in hers, strolling down the hall as cool as I could. I couldn’t wait to get home!
When we turned the corner, Grandma was waving to us from the end of the hall. All I wanted to do was sit next to her in the Triple B and pour out my whole crazy day. She’d be able to figure out how to get the spots out of my new top and make everything right. Grandma Ruby can figure out anything.
“I’ll be right along, sweetheart,” she called. “Come on in and say hi to Ms. Sahni while I get my briefcase organized. Everyone ready to make apple crisp?”
I love Grandma’s First-Day-of-School apple crisp. So does Kelley. She galloped ahead of me and shoved open the door. “Hello, Ms. Sahni!” I heard her shout. “You look ravishing today, Ms. Sahni.”
Someone laughed and I knew it wasn’t Ms. Sahni. It was a kid’s laugh. Who was laughing at Kelley this time? All I wanted to do was get home.
HERE WE GO AGAIN…
I opened the office door and saw…the walking cafeteria catastrophe! So this is where she’d been all afternoon. Grandma must have felt sorry for her. Her eyes were red and puffy and matched the bright, red sweats she was wearing. She was sitting in a chair next to Ms. Sahni.
Grandma appeared out of her office. “Girls, I’d like you to meet my new friend Charlotte Ramsey.”
I grunted a “hi” and turned toward the door. Time to get going. I couldn’t wait to tell Grandma Ruby that that was the girl who had ruined my day.
“Hello, Charlotte Ramsey!” chirped Kelley. “Are you our new best friend?”
Boy, Kelley can be embarrassing. I wished Grandma would hurry up.
“Katani,” said Grandma. “You may have met Charlotte already. You two are in the same homeroom.”
Met her! I’d already been slimed by her!
“Er, Katani and I are in the same lunch group,” Charlotte mumbled.
Grandma looked me right in the eye. “Well. Isn’t it nice you two know each other already. I’ve invited Charlotte to come home with us and bake apple crisp this afternoon.”
Say, what? This girl had wrecked my lunch, my silk top, and now…my afternoon? I don’t think so.
But Grandma didn’t seem to get it.
“Come on, girls,” she said. “Apple crisp time!”
“Happy Birthday!” shouted Kelley. “Apple crisp time!” Kelley led the way to the parking lot as if she were marching in a parade, swinging her arms, and singing, “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Bi-i-i-rthday Apple Crisp! Happy Birthday to you.”
I couldn’t even look at Charlotte. She was probably laughing at my sister. I hated her. Not just for that—but for barging in on my family. When we got to the Triple B, Grandma offered the front seat, my seat, to “our guest.” I threw myself down on the backseat next to Kelley and slammed the door.
“How was your first day, Katani?” asked my grandmother.
“OK,” I mumbled.
“What did you do?”
“I dunno.”
“Did you like Ms. Rodriguez?”
“She’s OK.” I wasn’t going to talk. I was going to punish Grandma. If she wanted conversation, she’d have to talk to her new friend, the rat sitting in my seat. “Charlotte tells me she lived on a houseboat in Paris all last year and Australia and Africa before that. Her father writes books.”
Show off, I thought. Why don’t you just move back to Parisaustraliaafrica? I was silent for the rest of the ride.
At home, Grandma asked me to give Charlotte a tour of the house while she got the ingredients ready. Why would this girl care about a two-family house? She’d lived all over the world. She’d probably lived in palaces. All I had to do was stand in the kitchen and point. Some tour.
Grandma invited Charlotte to sit on my special stool, the one I always pull up to watch her bake. “Katani, honey, get some chairs for you and Kelley, would you?”
“Fine,” I said in my grouchiest voice. Could it get any worse?
“I’m hooooome!”
Yes, it could.
“Hello, Patrice. How was your day?” asked my grandmother, giving her a hug.
“Soooo much better than junior high,” she said. “They give us so much more independence!”
I swear Patrice says things like that just to annoy me.
“Meet our new best friend Charlotte Ramsey!” announced Kelley.
“Hi Charlotte. I’m Patrice.”
Charlotte had the same awestruck look on her face all my friends do when they first meet Patrice or Candice. Like they’re the coolest things on earth. At least Candice was away at college.
The better Charlotte got along with Patrice, Kelley, and my grandmother, the madder it made me. By the time the apple crisp was ready, everyone was having a fabulous time, and I was ready to stomp off to the bedroom. I would have, too, if I hadn’t known Kelley would follow me. That’s the trouble with this place. There’s nowhere to be alone.
Patrice handed me a bowl and the electric beater. “Katani, since you obviously don’t want to talk, why don’t you make yourself useful?”
“I am being useful,” I answered.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “As what, a seat warmer?”
That cracked Kelley up and I caught Charlotte smiling. That did it! I switched the beater on high and pretended they were all in the mixing bowl. Lucky for me Grandma was busy with the next batch of crisp and didn’t see my attack on the whipped cream. If she had, she would have given me the “Anything done without love is a waste of time” lecture.
“Where’s my whipped cream?” called Grandma, walking over to check the bowl. “Oh dear,” she said, clucking her tongue. “I’m afraid you’ve turned it into butter.”
Of course, Patrice had to look and comment, “And you only had one thing to do, too,” she said.
“IT’S A TRAGEDY!” yelled Kelley.
“It will be all right,” said my grandmother, putting her arm around me. “You’ll see. We’ll make apple butter.”
I tried hard not to cry.
“But Grandma Ruby,” Kelley interrupted. “What if our new best friend doesn’t like apple butter?”
That’s when I completely lost it. “She is not our new best friend, Kelley. We only met her today. We don’t even know her. And she managed to ruin the top that I worked on all summer long! This girl has got to go!”
Grandma looked like she was the one I had insulted. I felt mean, and I hated Charlotte Ramsey for making me feel mean. I ran to the bathroom an
d locked the door.
CHAPTER 4
CHARLOTTE
Ice Queen, Giggle Fit, and Attention Hog
Horrendous day equals really bad night. I got Truffles down again, put on Mom’s old jacket, flopped onto my bed, and pulled the comforter over my head.
I cried for the friends I had left behind in France, especially Sophie. I cried for my lost cat, Orangina. Most of all, I cried because the place I hoped would be better than anywhere else in the world had turned out to be worse…much worse. The First-Day-Disaster Curse was unbreakable. When only hoarse, little gulps came out, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I will always be grateful Dad didn’t ask lots of questions. He sat next to me, patiently waiting until I could talk.
“I’ve wrecked everything,” I sniffed.
“Tell me all about it,” he said, patting my head.
I buried my face in the pillow.
“Things don’t seem so bad when you share them with someone else.”
I took a deep breath and slowly poured out the story of another first-day disaster. This one, the worst. Dad nodded in all the right places.
“No one’s going to like me now,” I sobbed. “I’ll always be known as the spaz with the tablecloth caught in her pants. I wish Sophie was here. I wish Orangina hadn’t run away. I wish I could start all over.
“Dad?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Do you think I could get another cat in a few weeks, if Sophie doesn’t find Orangina?”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte, but you know, no pets. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what we were going to do with Orangina anyway. I was about to call your cousins to take her.”
“No wonder she ran away,” I said.
“Oh, come on, your cousins aren’t that bad,” Dad said, pulling one of my braids.
“Easy for you to say. You never spent three weeks with Alana, ‘the human pin cushion,’ asking you which part of her body she should pierce next.”
Dad laughed.
“Glad to see you’ve got your sense of humor back. Since you didn’t get much lunch,” he said, “how about us whipping up a couple Croque Monsieurs; those were your and Sophie’s favorite sandwiches, right?”
“Croque Monsieurs,” I said, wiping my eyes.
“Perfect,” said Dad. “We’ll have a picnic on your balcony.”
UNDER THE STARS…
Dinner with Dad, watching the full moon rise over the city, helped me forget my troubles. As the stars appeared, he taught me a new constellation, the Seven Sisters. “Seven bright stars, all born about the same time, traveling the universe together.”
Wish I were one of them, I thought.
“Any homework yet?” he asked.
“Dad,” I answered, “it’s day one!”
“Well, just so you don’t fall behind.”
“Very funny,” I said. “Have I ever fallen behind?”
“No, sweetheart,” he answered, giving me a hug. “No matter where we’ve lived, you’ve always been a great student. Your mother would be proud.”
Just before bed I e-mailed Sophie. I was still dreading tomorrow, but turning my disaster into something that would make Sophie laugh made me feel a lot better.
Dad yawned. “Time for me to turn in. I’m still not used to these early morning hours.”
To: Sophie
From: Charlotte
Subject: help!
hey sophie! i hate, hate, hate time differences. i don’t want your away message. i need to talk. where ARE you? today i landed in the lunch group from hell. one girl is as cold as iced coffee. another starts trying to get attention as soon as boys are within twenty feet. the third goes into giggle fits if you do something dumb. and i sure did some dumb things today. most of it’s too horrible to repeat and you wouldn’t believe me anyway. hint…i ended up in the principal’s office in someone else’s pants. she (Mrs. fields, the principal) turned out to be really nice and unscary. she didn’t make me go back to class. ok, i admit it. i was crying my eyes out. it’s just that when she asked me where home was, i had no answer. NOWHERE! i blubbered. that’s when she invited me over after school to make apple crisp with her granddaughters. sounds fun, right? guess again. one of her granddaughters is the ice queen in my lunch group. think of the nastiest gargoyle on the roof of notre dame, multiply by ten, and you’ve got Katani’s expression when she heard i was coming over for the afternoon. One nice boy in my class—Nick. He is interested in travel. i miss you, sophie.
Hugs, charlotte
P.S. could you go back to the dock one more time to look for Orangina just in case?
P.P.S. guess what I made dad for dinner? our specialty: croque monsieurs!
CHAPTER 5
CHARLOTTE
Jocks and Whisperers
The air was crisp and the sky over Corey Hill was clear and blue. Sun shone through the leaves as I headed down the sidewalk, but I couldn’t have felt worse. How could I face those kids?
When I rounded the corner onto Harvard Street, Yuri called, “Hey! Girl from other country! You look more worried than Yuri. No one is allowed to look worrieder than Yuri.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“Come here. I tell you why my day is worse than yours.” After polishing an apple on his apron, he handed it to me and raised a thick finger.
“So,” he began. “The delivery company, they mess up my order. Why they do this to me? I have no peanut butter and no paper towels to sell today. My day is ruined. Americans cannot live without peanut butter and paper towels. Why is this?”
I didn’t know about the paper towels, and I’ve always wondered about peanut butter myself.
“Beats me,” I said. “No one eats it except Americans. I tried to make my friend in Australia eat some. She took one whiff and told me I was out of my mind.”
I thought I caught the tiniest upturn of Yuri’s mouth. Was that a smile?
“Why you look so down when you so full of stories?” he asked. “What is big problem?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
He threw his hands in the air. “You see. What I tell you? You have no problem. It is Yuri who have all the problems. So go away.” He waved me toward school.
I was starting to like this guy. He was like some Russian Oscar the Grouch.
I hurried down the rest of the block without looking into the bakery. I did not want to run into Nick. Just thinking about him catching my tooth-picking and tablecloth acts made me cringe. The schoolyard was full of kids. I stayed as far as I could from the eighth and ninth graders, running up the middle stone steps and into the building.
There are certain types of kids who pop up in every country I’ve ever lived in. They’re as common as McDonald’s or Starbucks. One type are “The Jocks” and the other are “The Whisperers.” That morning, I had to get past both groups to make it to our classroom. The Trentini twins, Nick, and of course, Avery were hanging right by my locker. They wore baseball caps and pulled, poked, and jostled each other just like they do everywhere else on the planet. As I bent down, Avery shoved Billy Trentini, and he fell into me. My bag flew off and skidded across the hall, scattering my books everywhere as it went.
“Geesh, Avery!” Billy said, laughing. “You almost knocked us both over.”
I hurried to pick up my things as Avery giggled and said, “Sorry…Oh, by the way. That was sooo cool yesterday when you took out our table.”
I knew I had to get away from her. Now she was throwing fake punches at Nick, and I really didn’t want him backing into me as I scooped things back into my bag. I’d already had enough embarrassing moments in front of him.
The Whisperers were huddled by the classroom door. As much as I hated to walk toward them, I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. Whisperers come in all languages, but you don’t need to understand what they’re saying. They all whisper private “in-jokes,” point, and laugh really loud. Their purpose is to make everyone else feel left out. In Brookline, their names were Anna a
nd Joline.
I walked as quickly as I could and hoped for the best. They moved even closer together, whispered, and pointed.
“Hey Joline,” asked Anna. “What has four eyes, two braids, and a tablecloth sticking out of its pants?” Joline and two assistant Whisperers screeched with laughter.
There was a rapid clicking of heels as Ms. Rodriguez came to the door of the classroom. “Good morning,” she said. “Since you’re all here and it’s time to get started, why don’t you come in.” Once we were in our seats, Ms. Rodriguez looked right at Anna and Joline with piercing eyes. “This wasn’t in the lesson plan but I’ve had a great idea. Let’s spend some time writing in your journals. The assignment is ‘My Most Embarrassing Moment.’ Let me know if the assignment isn’t clear and I’ll call on a couple of people to come to the front of the room and share examples.”
Joline shifted in her seat.
“Busted,” said Nick in a low voice.
“Oh, man,” griped Robert. “Bigmouth Anna strikes again and we all end up paying for it.”
CHAPTER 6
AVERY
Take One
Junior high stunk big time—another journal assignment today. No snacks. No recess. Too much work. And bo-ring, except for the major crash at my lunch table.
Total yard sale! Charlotte, the girl in my lunch group, was awesome. If yesterday was a sneak preview, I couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next.
My other lunch partners, Katani and Maeve, are too girly. And now, thanks to Anna and her loser friend Joline, we have to write another lousy journal assignment.
I turned around and made a face at Anna. I couldn’t believe they were both in my class again this year. I thought the teacher said we were only supposed to know ONE other kid in the homeroom. So how did I get doubly pond-scummed? Yesterday, they wore twin tank tops. Must have taken them all summer to plan that one.
I’ve played on travel teams against bony, blonde “Anna Banana” since I was seven. The only thing she has over me is her height. If it weren’t for that, I’d beat her in everything. Joline is an Anna groupie. They’re always on the same sports teams. Joline isn’t as good as Anna but she makes up for it in nastiness. She’s always getting red cards for tripping kids or unnecessary roughness. Beats me how she even sees the ball through all that eye makeup.