So Not Okay

by Nancy Rue

  “If everyone in the world followed this code, Tor,” Dad said. “All of our problems would disappear.”

  “Do you really think that will ever happen?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that it definitely won’t if no one tries.” He grinned. “How about Cirino’s tonight, you and me? I don’t think we’re finished celebrating.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Don’t forget your code.”

  Dad handed me the rolled-up paper. I couldn’t wait to get to my room and unroll it again and really look at it.

  “Don’t get your slobber on it,” I told Nestlé when we were safely behind my closed door.

  He pouted in the corner, and I opened up the roll. When I did, a slip of paper floated down like a feather.

  I put the code on my desk and picked up the paper. It was only a little thicker than a Kleenex, and on the inside was a note, written just the way the code was.

  Only it wasn’t a note, exactly.

  Dear Tori, Lydia had written.

  It will be hard to maintain the code without this:

  “Dear God, You’ve made me the leader of the tribelet, and you’ve given me a big job to do. Sometimes I feel like I’m alone, even when Winnie and Mitch and Ginger are with me. Please help me find the right grown-ups to back us up. Please give me the courage to uphold the code, even when I have to lose friends to do the right thing. And please, help me know that you’re always here, God. Because after all, this was all your idea in the first place. Love, Tori.”

  “Nestlé,” I said through that tear-clog in my throat. “I know what to do now.”

  And then I bowed my head and read the prayer again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was the one with a plan when I got to school the next morning, Tuesday.

  The first part of it was to get the tribelet together so I could talk to them. That was tricky since Winnie wasn’t supposed to hang out with us, but I got around that by asking Mr. V to request her presence in the science lab.

  He also sent Mitch to get Ophelia, but she couldn’t find her. I was maybe okay with that.

  When we all gathered there, I said, “I’m going to do the presentation today. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I do.”

  “But, Tori, you hate standing up in front of people,” Winnie said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Are you scared?” Ginger said.

  “Nah,” Mitch said. “She’s not scared. She’s the toughest chick I know.”

  I didn’t know about that. Mitch probably didn’t know that many chicks. Still, that added a couple of percentage points. I’d lost track, but I must be getting pretty close to one hundred by now.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Ophelia told me the Pack has a plot that’s going to go into effect if I do this presentation.”

  Mitch gave me a dark look. “I don’t believe anything she says anymore.”

  “I’m just saying you should all not be around me for the rest of the day except in class so you don’t get caught up in it.”

  Then before anybody could say anything, I went to the restroom. I was pretty sure I was going to throw up the French toast Mom had made special for me that morning.

  I didn’t throw up, but as soon as I got to the science classroom fourth period, I asked Mr. V if I could go first. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle the sweaty palms and the churned-up stomach and the mouth that felt like the Mojave.

  Mr. V shushed everybody as I stood up with the binder, but he didn’t really have to. It was so weirdly quiet in there I was pretty sure nobody was even breathing. They’d been building up to this all day. The BBAs. The other boys you barely noticed. The soccer girls and Evelyn. Ophelia. My tribelet.

  And the Pack. They all sat back in their den section with their arms folded and their faces like masks. The only expression I saw was the glint of “bring it on,” in a pair of blue and gold eyes.

  So I did bring it on. I felt like I might faint at first, but once I got past the first page and all the statistics about bullying and the examples of meanness and the research methods we used to find out why it happened, my knees stopped hitting each other and I found some saliva. When I saw Josie in the second row letting her eyes go round and Evelyn stop looking around to see what the Pack was doing, I pushed the binder aside and went from memory.

  I told them everything we’d learned about why people are mean in middle school and what it looked like. Once I saw Izzy get squirmy until Kylie gave her a look that was meant to drop her to the floor. I couldn’t help it if Izzy heard herself in what I was talking about.

  Then I remembered the charts. Only . . . Mitch was already standing behind me holding one up when I turned around. Ciara and Brittney scooted to the fronts of their seats. Mitch held each one up while I explained it, and then she handed it to Mr. V so he could hang it from the hooks on the dry-erase board. Pretty soon the room was full of everything we knew about bullying.

  Almost.

  When I was done, a couple of people clapped. And then a foghorn voice said, “That’s not all.”

  Kylie groaned out loud, but Mr. V went straight down the aisle and just stood there looking at her until she had to stare down at her desk.

  “Isn’t their time up?” she said.

  Even Heidi winced. And Mitch thought I was a tough chick.

  “Their time will be up when they’ve had a chance to say everything that needs to be said.”

  Mr. V tapped her desk, and Kylie raised only her eyes.

  “Are we clear?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Mr. V turned back to the front of the room where Ginger was now standing beside me.

  “Did you have something to add to the report, Ginger?”

  “I think it would be wrong to just tell why kids bully and not tell what to do to help stop it. Or what to do if it happens to you.”

  “I’d have to agree,” Mr. V said.

  He nodded at Ginger. She took a deep breath and started to talk. The foghorn began loud. Okay, so loud I was sure they heard it over in the eighth-grade wing. She was that nervous. But as she talked, it got softer. By the time she pulled her set of our cards out of her jeans pocket, she was speaking like a normal person.

  “This is what we use to help us,” she said.

  She held up the one with the smiley face on it. “First, you don’t show the bully any emotion.”

  “I can’t see,” Shelby said.

  Kylie slapped her hands on the top of her desk, but Shelby kept craning her neck.

  “I’ll show mine,” said a wee voice.

  Winnie started down the first aisle, showing her cards while Ginger talked. After about five seconds, Mitch took hers down the far aisle. I got mine out and went down the center, straight toward the Pack.

  Kylie, of course, turned her head when I went by. So did Riannon. Heidi snuck a glance and then looked away. Izzy too. But Shelby was all about it. I had to stand there and show her all of them twice.

  “So I guess I’m done,” Ginger said.

  “Finally,” Kylie growled under her breath.

  But I was probably the only one who heard her, since I was standing right there. The rest of the class, except Izzy, Riannon, and Heidi, all stood up and clapped. Even the BBAs, although it was probably just an excuse for them to whistle through their teeth the way nobody ever let them do.

  “A +, ladies,” Mr. V said. “All of you.” He looked around. “Where is Ophelia?”

  I looked too. Phee was gone. And she’d taken her backpack with her.

  There was only time for one more report. Except, nobody wanted to be next, so Mr. V said that was probably enough for today and we could take a study hall. Nobody studied, of course, although the room was quieter than usual. A couple of people walked around. I myself went out for water. When I came back, there was a note on my desk.

  It wasn’t purple. And when I sniffed at it, I didn’t smell mint gum.


  Why was I even worried about that anymore? With everybody aware of what was going on now, the plot thing had probably already fizzled out.

  Besides, the note wasn’t from Kylie. It was in handwriting I didn’t recognize. You should make a pledge like the I Hate Gingerbread one, it said, only a good one, like what you were up there talking about. And we should all have to sign it.

  I looked around to see if I could figure out who wrote it, but nobody was watching me. Except Kylie. When our eyes locked together in that way they always did now, she mouthed three words. I had no trouble seeing them.

  You. Are. Dead.

  Really? I mouthed back.

  Then I turned away. Mr. V was standing at my desk.

  “Do you have any idea where Ophelia went?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Would you please go check—” He stopped and looked at Winnie. “Winnie, would you please go check the restroom? See if you can find her?”

  Winnie didn’t move for a second, until Mitch said, “I’ll go with her.”

  When they were both gone, I sat next to Ginger.

  “You did great,” I said.

  “So did you.”

  I expected her to be practically doing cartwheels, but she wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Is it over now?” she said.

  “The bullying? Yeah, I think so. Kylie still hates me, but that’s between me and her.”

  “No. I mean is the tribelet over?”

  I felt myself sag, just like she was doing.

  “I guess you and Mitch and I could hold it together. Yeah, we can do that.”

  She did look at me then, with her blueberry eyes. “But are we friends?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. That was so Ginger to just ask right out. Kind of like Lydia said we should.

  The bell rang and almost jolted me out of the seat. It was time to get ready for Kylie.

  “We can talk about this later,” I said. “You need to stay far away from me for now, remember? And then it’ll really be over.”

  “What are you gonna do?” she said.

  “I’ve got it handled,” I said.

  Then with my hand on the cards in my pocket, I went out to be a tribelet of one.

  I headed straight for the cafeteria. Mr. Jett would think someone else had taken over my body, because I was going to be one of the first ones there. I wanted to get to the Pack’s table at the same time they did.

  That was my plan. If I sat down with them, right there in their private den in the middle of the lunchroom, how could they unfold their plot?

  But the closer I got, the less sure I felt. It was the first time since Kylie declared war that I’d gone down a hall without the whole tribelet around me.

  Huh. And the whole time I thought it was just Ginger we were protecting.

  I straightened my shoulders. There was nothing to be protected from. All I had to do was Think Sharp and use the cards if I needed them.

  I was almost to the cafeteria door. Mr. Jett had his back to me. And he was talking to Izzy and Shelby. Izzy was bouncing on her toes, like any minute she was going to burst into one of her cheers. And Shelby . . .

  I slowed down because Shelby was looking past Mr. Jett, right at me. She bugged her eyes like she wanted me to look where she was looking. Then she jerked her attention back to Mr. Jett.

  That’s when everything went into slo-mo. I turned my head where Shelby had pointed with her eyes. Three splashy-haired heads rose from behind a cart full of extra chairs. Three perky bodies surrounded me and walked me down the hall the way I’d just come from. Just the way we walked Ginger.

  As people floated by us going the other way, Kylie’s voice came out in extended words. “Come with u-u-us, Vic-to-o-o-ria. We have a surprise for yo-o-o-ou!”

  We were at the corner where the hallway split when I finally snapped into real time.

  “No thanks,” I said, “I don’t like surprises.”

  I tried to pull away, but it felt like all thirty of their fingers were digging into me at the same time—along my arms, into my shoulders, on the back of my neck.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Let go.”

  They didn’t. Just as if they’d rehearsed it, they turned me around the corner, away from the sixth-grade hall, and past their den and past the office.

  “Let. Go!”

  But I was sure no one heard me. The secretaries were inside the office, and there wasn’t anybody out in the hallway—because we were headed for the seventh-grade wing, and it wasn’t time for them to go to lunch yet.

  All I could think of as the three of them carried me toward the double doors that separated our side of the school from the upper grades was that Lydia was right. I was a sheep in a wolf pack.

  And I was about to get eaten alive.

  “If they go over to the seventh- and eighth-grade wings, they’re toast,” Mitch had said.

  One of the wolves let go of me and rushed ahead. It was Kylie. She leaned against the door and watched as Heidi and Riannon dragged me those final steps.

  “Surprise!” Kylie hissed.

  She pushed open the door, and ahead I saw freedom. As soon as they flung me through, I would take the first set of stairs I found and get back to our wing. I’d drawn a map of the whole school. I knew how to do that.

  But Heidi and Riannon didn’t let go. They stayed on either side of me like the identical bookends they were, and just barely over the sound of my own breathing, I heard Kylie whisper, “Wait. Let me go ahead.”

  As she darted past us and fast-walked down the hall, I thought about screaming. But (A) I wasn’t sure anything would come out because no one had ever handled me like this my whole life and I was freaking out and (B) we were in the seventh-grade wing where nobody knew they were bullies . . . where nobody would believe these pretty girls were doing anything wrong. All they had to do was smile.

  “Okay,” Kylie whispered from the end of the hall.

  All the doors we passed were closed. The lights through their windows flicked past as Heidi and Riannon pulled me toward Kylie. I tried to get away again, but they were stronger than they looked.

  Must be all that cheerleading, I thought crazily.

  Wait. I could still think. I was smarter than they were. I could Think Sharp. Even if I was a sheep.

  Kylie pushed through another set of doors. Now we were in a space at the bottom of the steps where some tall lockers lined the walls. There was a door that led outside.

  Think Sharp.

  “Please don’t throw me outside,” I said. “It’s cold.”

  “What am I, stupid?” Kylie said. “You want us to throw you out there.”

  That was true. I was the worst actress ever, so I tried not to even look at the steps, which was the next best escape. I could probably get away from them going—

  A bell rang in the distance. The warning bell for the end of sixth-grade lunch.

  “Hurry,” Kylie said. “We only have five minutes.”

  She pulled open one of the long lockers. For the first time, I realized they were tall enough to stand up in.

  “In you go,” Kylie said. “I told you—you’re dead.”

  I fought, and I fought hard. I even yelled. But they were too strong. They shoved me into the locker and clanged the door shut on me.

  “Night night, Victoria, my pet,” Kylie said.

  And then they didn’t make a sound, except for the sighing shut of the double doors.

  I wasn’t dead. Of course I wasn’t dead. But I felt like I was. It was absolutely dark. I couldn’t turn around to try to get the door open. How long was I going to be able to breathe?

  Panic clawed its way up my throat, and I yelled. At least, I thought I yelled. The sound didn’t seem to go any farther than my lips. I pushed my back against the door, but I could hardly move so it didn’t budge.

  “Help! Somebody help!” I yelled again. And then I started to cry. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I should have listened to O
phelia, and none of this ever would have happened. My crying got so loud I almost didn’t hear the voice that whispered, “Tori! Which one are you in?”

  I must be hallucinating already. Didn’t you do that just before you died?

  If I was, I was hearing other locker doors opening, and I was hearing a voice that said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out.”

  “Phee?” I said.

  “Oh my gosh, Tori!”

  The locker vibrated. Then I heard some banging.

  “Phee, get me out of here!” I cried.

  “I can’t! The door won’t open! I have to go get help!”

  “Go, Phee! I’m scared in here!”

  “Don’t worry—”

  “Phee!”

  “What?”

  “Hurry!”

  I heard the double doors to the hallway sigh shut again. There was no point in yelling now. She’d bring somebody back.

  But that didn’t mean I wasn’t panicking again. Think. I didn’t need to freak out. I just needed to think—because that’s what I did the best. Right?

  Think. The Pack must have been planning this for a while, because it was as if they’d practiced it. Only, how did Phee know? Was that why she ate lunch with them? And hid in the bathroom? So she could find out what they were planning? But why would they talk in front of her when she wasn’t one of them? When she was my friend?

  Or used to be.

  I went cold all over. Was she in on it? Was saying she would get somebody to help me to keep me from yelling?

  No. Nononononono. I couldn’t think that.

  But what else could I think? Maybe I wasn’t that good at it after all.

  I took a deep breath. Did it really feel like there wasn’t enough air? No, this locker had those vent things, didn’t it? But those were meant for keeping gym sneakers from growing fungus. They weren’t made for keeping people alive. Why would they be? Who stuffed a person in a locker?

  And who left her there?

  The fear surged into my brain again. No. Think. Think of another question.

  How did Kylie figure the Pack was going to get away with this? Didn’t she know as soon as I got out of here I was going to tell the first teacher I saw? If there was ever a “Report Alert” situation, this was it.