by Nancy Rue
“Put your stuff on my tray,” I said. “I’ll dump it for you.”
Her blue and gold eyes got bigger. “Excuse me?”
“As long as I’m hanging out here I might as well throw your garbage away too. Put it on my tray.”
Okay, so I wasn’t actually following the golden rule. Not totally. I really just wanted her and her Pack out of there.
I could almost see the possibilities flipping through Kylie’s brain. I could be tricking her. Setting her up for a prank. Trying to make her think I wanted to be nice to her so I could surprise her with food in her face.
Oh, wait, her eyes seemed to say. I wasn’t smart enough for that. That was her specialty.
“Okay,” she said. “Here.”
She took a step forward and tilted her tray. An open carton of milk slid toward me and slipped past my balled up lunch bag and right into the front of my jacket. It was followed by two mustard-covered burger buns and a paper container full of ketchup. I was covered in the remains of Kylie’s picky-eater lunch.
“Oops,” she said. “Here. Take my tray too, why don’tcha?”
She shoved her tray under mine, which meant I had to open my fingers to grab it. When I did, the paper I’d been protecting under there got loose and made a lazy descent to the floor. It landed right side up.
The smirk vanished from Kylie’s face, and she swooped down to pick it up. My brain finally kicked into gear, and I whipped around and dumped the contents of both trays into the garbage. Just let me get rid of the trays too and then I could escape to the restroom to clean the milk and mustard off myself.
“Where did you get this?” Kylie was close to the side of my face and her mint-gum breath was hot in my ear. Just like it was before. I was about to be told I was going to be “dead” again, and I was sick of it.
“You mean your I Hate Gingerbread Club Membership form?” I said and dropped the trays into the holder.
Kylie pulled back, although the paper still hung about an inch from my nose. “You were going to throw it out, weren’t you?”
“That was my plan.”
She snatched it away, nostrils flaring like little trumpets. “I don’t know why you’re even trying because you can’t stop us.”
“Stop you from what? Being mean to people?”
That obviously wasn’t what she expected me to say. It wasn’t what I expected me to say either. So we both just stood there while people worked around us with their trays.
“Tori Taylor!”
Mr. Jett. Again. For once I was glad he was there because Kylie ducked through the crowd and disappeared.
But I stopped being glad when he said, “This is your third and last chance to decide you’re going to go with the flow around here. Next time: automatic lunch detention.”
“Kylie too?” I said. Stupidly.
Mr. Jett adjusted his glasses, nose and all. “What is it with you girls picking on Kylie?”
I wanted to say, “Are you serious?” But I wasn’t that stupid.
“Sorry,” I said instead. “Can I go now?”
“Go. You have five minutes before the bell rings.”
As soon as Mr. Jett was too busy yelling at someone else to watch me, I broke into a run. I had to get to the lockers or “Safe in a Group” was going to be a total bust.
Although I didn’t clock it, I got to the top of the stairs in record time, mostly because everybody got out of my way when they saw Kylie’s lunch plastered all over the front of me. Ginger, Winnie, and Mitch were waiting for me at the end of the lockers and just like they always were, the Pack was lounged against Ginger’s.
“Where you been?” Mitch grunted at me.
“Long story.”
“What’s that all over you?” Ginger said.
“I’ll tell you later. You ready?”
Ginger peeled her gaze from my jacket and drew herself up taller. “You’re gonna stay with me, right?”
“Right,” I said.
Mitch gave Ginger’s back a little poke, and she stumbled forward. The Pack looked up, all except Kylie who apparently couldn’t be bothered to move her eyes from her new manicure.
“What do you need from your locker, Ginger?” I said, just like we’d rehearsed it.
She didn’t say anything. That wasn’t how we rehearsed it.
“Say you need your literature book,” Winnie whispered to her.
“Lit book!”
“And Spanish?”
“Spanish!”
“Is somebody deaf?” Riannon said from her position next to Kylie. “Heidi, do you think someone’s deaf? Is that why she doesn’t hear when we say to get lost?”
“Don’t answer,” I muttered to Ginger.
She didn’t. She just kept walking, and we kept walking with her. It was like watching a movie where the car is about to hit a wall and you’re in it.
We continued moving forward, shoulders touching, until Riannon narrowed her eyes at us and said, “Hello, we’re standing here.”
“Excuse me,” Ginger said, foghorn going full blast. “I just need to get some stuff out of my locker.” It had never dawned on me until then that she only talked like that when she was really nervous.
Heidi took a tiny step sideways, and then she sort of jumped like somebody had pinched her. Probably because Kylie had.
“You don’t need to go to your locker, Gingerbread,” Heidi said. “You just think you do.”
Mitch opened her mouth, but she was on the other side of Winnie so I couldn’t stop her. Ginger beat her to it anyway.
“I’m getting my stuff out of my locker. So please move.”
We moved, two steps more. Any closer and I was going to be looking up Kylie’s nostrils again. Fortunately, she didn’t have any food to dump on me this time . . .
Wait . . . why hadn’t I thought of it sooner?
I squeezed myself between Winnie and Ginger so I was at the front of our little crowd. It was actually fun to watch five pairs of eyes pop, one by one. I took another step, and the Pack split right in half. Seriously. Who wanted to have Kylie’s lunch all over them too?
Ginger slipped through to her locker, and Mitch stood on one side of her, Winnie and I on the other, while she got her books out. When we turned to head for Mrs. Fickus’s class, the Pack had disappeared.
“Good job, tribelet,” I said. “We better get to class.”
I peeled my jacket off along the way and stuffed it, inside out, into my backpack. We got to the room with thirty seconds to spare.
As we slid into our seats, I couldn’t remember ever feeling that . . . satisfied. Yeah, that was the word.
I sure wanted to share it with Phee.
Chapter Fifteen
When Mitch, Winnie, Ginger and I rounded the bend on Sunrise Lane where we could see my house that afternoon, I stopped right in the middle of the road. Ophelia’s mom’s van was there, and Ophelia was getting out.
“I guess she got better,” Mitch said as the van pulled away.
I went into high gear up the hill with Winnie right on my heels so I could catch Phee before she went inside, but she waited for me on the porch. She and Winnie hugged, and then Phee said, “Win, could you go on in? I need to talk to Tori for a minute.”
Winnie did it, but not before I saw her face turn a shade paler.
“You’re better!” Ginger bellowed out when she and Mitch got to the porch. “That’s so cool!”
“I’m a little better,” Ophelia said. “I just came to give my part of the research because my mom said I have to.” Then she added, “I’m not contagious.”
I looked at her closer. She didn’t look even a little bit sick to me. Phee never did. Even when her whole family got the flu last Thanksgiving, she could still eat turkey and pumpkin pie.
My stomach churned like I’d had the tacos at lunch. Which I hadn’t.
When the door closed behind Mitch and Ginger, Ophelia said, “I can only be here as long as we’re talking about the project. My mom says I’
m not required to stay when we start talking about the Indian tribe thing because it doesn’t have anything to do with our project. I’m supposed to call her when that happens, and she’ll come get me.”
I would have argued with her if it hadn’t sounded like she was reciting lines she’d rehearsed—and not even with that much expression.
“It’s not an ‘Indian tribe thing,’ ” I said. “It’s the ‘tribelet.’ ”
“Whatever.” Her face was still all blank, like she wasn’t feeling anything. But I knew she was because (A) she was my best friend and (B) she wouldn’t look at me.
“Jeepers, Phee,” I said.
“I’m not supposed to say anything else,” she said.
And then she turned away and went into the house.
By the time I got there, Ophelia was already giving the same rehearsed speech to Lydia and the girls.
“Fine with me,” Mitch said.
It wasn’t fine with me, and I knew it wasn’t with Winnie either. Even Ginger looked like she could cry any second, although I still couldn’t figure out why. I almost didn’t want Phee there if she was going to act like this.
Lydia said we should give our reports then, so Ophelia could get back to bed.
We each told what we’d looked up and Winnie wrote it all down.
Mitch informed us that there was no gene for being mean. “No mean gene!” Ginger said. I had to admit that was kind of funny. Mitch also said there was this childhood development thing that every normal kid went through, and being hateful to other people wasn’t on it.
Ginger said she found out that since being mean was a “learned behavior,” it could also be unlearned.
Winnie gave us a list of the ways boy-mean and girl-mean were different. Boys mostly just stuffed other boys into trash cans and stole their lunches and stuff like that. Not like what the Pack did.
Ophelia leaned sideways in her chair and looked at what Winnie had written down. “Is that enough then? Are we done? We answered our question, right?”
“Which one of those three things do you want me to answer first?” Lydia said. She’d been listening really quietly through all our presentations, like she respected what we were saying. Now she was smiling at Ophelia.
But Phee didn’t smile back. “I just want to know if we have to talk about this anymore.”
“That’s up to the group,” Lydia said. “You’ve definitely answered the question about whether meanness is inborn or learned. But wasn’t the whole study supposed to be about why people become mean?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But why do we have to do that?” Ophelia said.
“Because!” Ginger wasn’t using the foghorn voice, unless a foghorn can sound desperate, like there’s no other way to get through the mist. “I want to know why they have to pick on me! I know I’m not the prettiest girl ever and I don’t have good clothes. I don’t have a mom to teach me all that stuff. But why can’t they just leave me alone? I try and try and they just keep . . . bullying me. I know you’re all trying to help, but is it ever gonna stop? I don’t know who else to be!”
Ginger was crying so hard I didn’t think any amount of Kleenex would help, but I got her the box anyway. Lydia climbed from her chair and went to stand beside Ginger, who had to look down at her.
“That Kylie person doesn’t bully you because there’s anything wrong with you. She does it because there’s something wrong with her. And what’s wrong with her is that she’s a bully. You’ve all learned that’s not normal and it’s not okay. And I’m teaching you how to stop it because it’s not okay. Not because you’re not okay.”
By then Winnie was crying too. “I like you, Ginger,” she said. Well, blubbered. “You’re smart and you never make fun of anybody and I wish I was as brave as you about speaking up.”
“You are, though,” Ginger said, also blubbering. “You should have seen her today, Lydia.”
“I think you’re awesome,” Mitch said, punching Ginger in the arm. “Who needs clothes and all that stuff anyway? Okay, so you could wash your hair more often, but that’s no reason to not let you go to your own locker. I don’t get that.”
I kind of wanted to remove Mitch’s tongue, but Ginger was grinning at her like she’d just told her she was Miss Universe material.
There was so much crying going on, I decided to get us back on track. I also didn’t want Ophelia to leave yet, and she was looking like she wanted to. She was going to have to have her stomach pumped if she consumed any more of her hair.
“So it’s scientific,” I said. “If you have a problem, first you have to find out why it’s happening and then you can fix it. So we’re not done with our project.”
Ophelia let out a sigh big enough to blow the George Washington place mats right off the table. “How are we supposed to find that out?”
“I think it’s time to do a little field study,” Lydia said. “You’ve learned all you can from the books and the Internet. Now you need to observe what’s going on in your own environment.”
“I don’t get it,” Mitch, Phee, and Ginger all said at the same time. Winnie would have probably said it too, but she was busy writing stuff.
“While you’re taking your Baby Steps,” Lydia said, “and keeping Safe in a Group and all the rest of the things on Winnie’s wonderful cards, observe how people respond. That will tell you some of the whys.”
“You’re going to keep showing us how to do that, right?” Winnie said.
“If you want me to.”
The whole tribelet said yes. Except for Ophelia. She slipped out of her chair and headed with her jacket for the living room, where I knew she was going to call her mom.
I followed her. Nestlé came with me. It was like he knew what was about to happen because he flopped himself down right in front of the door and gave me a worried look. Not concerned. Worried.
Ophelia was already poking buttons on the phone by Dad’s chair.
“Don’t go yet, okay?” I said.
“Mom?” she said into the receiver. “It’s happening again.”
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“Yes, come now.”
She put the phone back on the table and turned to look out the window, like her mom was going to be teleported or something.
“Did your mom really say you can’t be in the tribelet?” I said.
“She says it’s silly. She said there were always bullies and there always will be, and it’ll go away if we don’t make a big deal out of it. And that’s what we’re doing.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You’re the one who keeps saying it is a big deal.”
“Unless we just leave it alone!” Ophelia still had her back to me, but I could see her reflection in the mirror. She was done trying not to look like she felt something. Now she was feeling everything. “I didn’t tell her you were forcing me to make a choice though. She’d be mad at you.”
“Me? When did I—?”
Ophelia whirled around so fast she hit her own self in the face with her braid. “You said if I didn’t join in, I’d be left out!”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Yes, it is. That’s why I was so sick I couldn’t go to school. My mom doesn’t know that either.”
“You don’t have to choose,” I said. “Because it’s working. Ginger got to go to her locker today because we went with her. And Winnie was so brave!”
“Well, I’m not brave! I can’t do this, Tori!”
“Even if it’s no big deal?”
“It is a big deal. Okay? It is! I want to believe my mom, but I don’t.”
“So faking being sick is just an excuse not to help?”
“Why do you keep hurting my feelings?”
“I don’t mean to.”
Ophelia turned back to the window. “That’s my mom. I’m going.”
“Wait,” I said. “What’s gonna happen now?”
She stopped halfway to the door, but she still didn’t look
at me. “I’ll give you my part of the report. I’m not gonna be in the tribe. And if you want me to be your best friend again, that’ll be when you’re not in it either.”
“Now who’s making somebody choose?” I said.
She didn’t answer. She just stepped over Nestlé and flew out the front door. I ran to the window and peered between the curtains to watch her. She would be back. She wouldn’t even get to the car before she ran to the porch again, threw her arms around me, and said, “I’m so sorry, Tori! I take it all back.”
But she just got into the front seat of her mom’s van and didn’t even look my way as they drove down Sunrise Lane.
Something heavy pressed my leg, and I looked down to see Nestlé leaning against me. His eyes were droopy and sad. I was sure I looked just like him.
Chapter Sixteen
After Mitch and Ginger left with Winnie’s mom, I couldn’t even move from my kitchen chair. Lydia came and sat next to me.
“You want to talk about it?” she said.
“Do I hurt people’s feelings?” that other Me said.
“I’ve never seen you do that. Did someone say you did?”
“Ophelia. All I said was that she was faking being sick as an excuse not to help and that her mom is helping her get out of it by telling her she didn’t have to be part of the tribelet to do the project.”
Lydia gave a soft, husky laugh. “You really are a smart girl, Taylor. That’s very perceptive.”
“I shouldn’t have said it to her though.”
“Why not? She needed to hear it. I told you girls in the beginning to say what you meant, or this isn’t going to work.”
“Yeah, but she’s scared. I should’ve been nicer.”
Lydia curled a piece of her hair around her finger. “Are you scared?”
“Sometimes. Some stuff those girls say is just dumb. But then Kylie gets this look in her eye, and it’s like, my palms start to sweat. Then I feel like a loser.”
“You are most definitely not a loser. Look . . .”
She waited until I actually looked at her.
“Nobody feels safe in the presence of exclusion and victimization.”