by Kirsten Rue
I can tell I have my work cut out for me in convincing the others, though. Kirk and J.D. are just quiet, their matching mouths slightly open. Glenn has turned a pretty bright shade of purple.
“But, Tim,” Samantha says, “no one would COME. We only have the people here at this table to invite. And, I hate to remind you, but people coming to a dance are going to expect GIRLS!”
“Well, we have one on the guest list already,” I joke. Samantha just fixes me with a cool stare.
“I’m serious, Tim,” she says. “You know how the other kids are going to react to our invitations? They’re going to laugh. They’re going to say that there’s no way the Geeks could ever make a dance cool. And they’ll probably even try to ruin it. We’ll actually be even worse off than we were before.”
“Yeah,” Glenn agrees, “and, also, have you thought about all the work we’d have to do? We’d have to, like, ask for permission from the teachers. And how would we get the money to have snacks? My dad is not going to let me have extra allowance this month. And also— also, what about music? And decorations?”
“Calm down, Glenn. No need to pop a blood vessel.”
Kirk and J.D. are still staring at me in disbelief. Neither has said a word.
“No, but seriously, wait a sec, guys,” I say, imitating the tone my dad takes when he explains something on the computer to me. He always takes it slow, with lots of pauses. And he always makes sure to ask if I have any questions. Right now, I need to act like I’m explaining something that seems easy to me to people who think it’s hard. “You’re getting too focused on the details. Yes, we’ll have to worry about all that stuff down the road. But think of it this way. It’s like I was saying with the phone thing. Right now we’re the lame phones that no one wants. But if we start doing stuff like we’re already cool, the rest of the school will eventually start to wonder. They’ll wonder if we’ve really been popular all along, but no one knew. Nobody’s gonna want to be left out of the cool new group—us. And the dance will be how we do it!”
“Well,” says Samantha quietly, “I do have all that music stored on my laptop.”
“And I could probably figure out how to set up speakers,” adds Glenn.
“Oooh! And, I know! We’ll keep our identities secret until the end! And build up all these rumors about the dance so that people come!” Samantha’s ideas are gaining steam.
“Awesome!” Glenn agrees. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
“We’ll call it . . .” In my head I imagine a drum roll like they have on those late night television shows that I’m not supposed to watch because they’re on so late. Tra-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da . . .
“The Mystery Ball!”
The Mystery Ball
Planning Committee
COUNTDOWN:
3 WEEKS TO GO
OVER THE NEXT FEW LUNCH HOURS, WE BEGIN TO GET our plan together. Samantha keeps track of it all on her laptop.
Tim: Ask Mrs. Zuck for help about getting the auditorium. Pick a date. (We picked April 1—April Fool’s Day, to be funny.) Fundraise for decorations (I have a highly brilliant plan for taking care of this.)
Samantha: Spread the word with our publicity campaign. Create the dance playlist to end all playlists. Help plan decorations with Glenn.
Glenn: Help Samantha with the publicity campaign. Get some of the popular kids to say they’ll go to the dance. Help plan decorations and set up speakers.
The only members of the group who have not offered to help yet are Kirk and J.D. In fact, they even missed sitting at the lunch table one or two times. I’m not sure why, but things are so busy now with planning that I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet.
I decide to tackle my own to-do list right away. After Computer Resource class one day, I wait for the other kids to leave. Mrs. Zuck has half her head buried in a crate of extension cords, digging around for something. After a bit of talking to herself, she notices I’m there.
“Oh, good. Tim. Just the person I need. Could you look in there for a firewire cord while I get these computers shut down? Thanks, dude.” That’s one of the things I like about Mrs. Zuck. She sometimes calls people “dude.”
“Sure,” I say. Even though I find the cord she’s looking for almost immediately, I pretend to look around a little more.
“Um, Mrs. Zuck?”
“Yes, Tim?”
“There’s this group of people that I know . . . and, well, they need to use the gym.”
“Well, great!” Mrs. Zuck says. I can tell she’s still distracted by the computers she’s shutting down. “They can go fill out a form with Beverly at the front desk. It’s a request form. And then the vice principal will look at it and make the decision.”
Gulp. Of course it would be Assistant Principal McCloud who gets to decide whether or not we have our dance. Of course. I think back to him in his office saying that we shouldn’t “disturb” the school while his weird fish stared at me with her fishy eyes. There’s gotta be some way around this.
“Could a teacher submit the request?” I ask. My heart is pounding, but I try to sound highly relaxed about the whole thing. I want Mrs. Zuck to think she’s helping a group she doesn’t even know.
“Well, that depends,” she says. “If a teacher is the leader of a group, then yes, she’d be able to submit the request form.” Excellent!
“This group already has a leader.”
“Well, what about a faculty advisor, then? That’s a teacher who just meets with students but let’s them do their own activities. What IS the group anyway?” she asks.
“The Mystery Ball Planning Committee.” The words just burst from my lips.
Mrs. Zuck raises a single eyebrow. “Huh. I’ve never heard of that one.”
“They’re new. I know one of them, and I’m helping him, er, her create this, um, dance. Hopefully soon.”
“I see.” Mrs. Zuck leans back on her desk, arms
crossed. I can tell I have her full attention now. “I take it I’ll be talking to the group leader through you then?”
“Yep! He—she hasn’t moved here yet. But she’ll be here soon. So, in the meantime . . .”
“Interesting. A student that wants to throw a huge dance for Halsey students she hasn’t met yet. Very interesting. Well, I’ve got five more minutes until the next bell, Tim. Tell me about this dance and I might be able to help you with that form.”
Success! Objective Number One: Achieved.
I report back to the group at lunch, and it sounds like they’ve been making good progress, too. Samantha and Glenn show me the sketches they’ve made of how we will transform the gym. “It will be kind of like deep space,” Glenn says.
“Yeah,” Samantha agrees. “We’re going to use a projector and my older sister’s special lights to have a light show.”
“And Samantha has already made a huge playlist.”
“And then Glenn will connect my laptop to his speakers.”
I still feel like we’re missing something. We want the other students to leave happy, right?
“What about snacks?” I ask. That’s what we’re missing.
“We could use clear soda with food coloring!” Samantha says. “Everything could be a cool color! Like, um, blue cookies or red popcorn.”
I smile at the thought of our table with rows of brightly colored drinks and food. It will be like touching down in the future or something. Plus, everything will match our bright flashing lights. It’s going to be highly cool. No one will be able to dismiss us as “just geeks” again. Well, hopefully.
“What about the fundraising?” Glenn wants to know.
“That, I need your help with.”
So, here’s the thing. I knew that if we tried to collect donations as the Geeks throwing a dance, NO ONE would donate. Or even show up at all. BUT, if everyone thinks they’re donating to a mystery dance, they’ll be too curious to turn down the chance. We’ve got to spread rumors in advance about how fun the dance will be. We
have to start the other kids guessing about who’s behind it. We have to build what my Dad calls “buzz” when he’s talking about his work at Zenith. “That product succeeded because it really had a lot of buzz behind it,” he’ll say. One bee picks up an idea and buzzes it to a flower, who buzzes it to another bee, who buzzes it across the garden. From there, the buzz keeps spreading. So, um, I guess I’m calling Samantha, Glenn, and myself bees. We have to be the bees that begin the buzz about the Mystery Ball.
We start in gym, which is one of the only classes that the three of us all have together. Gym is pretty much a class designed by one of the evil warlords of Valcora to crush the spirit. Samantha is actually a pretty fast runner and Glenn is decent at dodgeball, but me? I’m terrible at everything. I know, a geek who’s bad at sports . . . that’s no surprise, right? I guess I just tried to do sports once, when I was really little, and I could tell I would never be the best at it. And in case you haven’t figured this out about me yet, I sorta like being the best. Whether it’s math or after-school drum class or computers. When I’m not the best, I get bummed out. So, I really just avoid things when I know I can’t win.
Why am I trying to create a school dance, then? Your guess is as good as mine.
“Think fast, geek!” Joe Russo yells as he whips a basketball at my face. I duck as fast as I can, though I can feel the Whiz! of the basketball as it brushes the top of my head. I don’t get Joe Russo. I really don’t. Mrs. Zuck assigned me to help him with his computer work in class at the very beginning of the year. I help him every day. I’m always patient. Sometimes I think I can almost see a smile forming on his face, or spot a ripple of expression that might mean, “Hey, I appreciate that you’ve been helping me out every day even though I’m grouchy.” I’m never sure what’s going through Joe Russo’s large head, though. I barely get more than a “nkyou” from him, which in my opinion doesn’t qualify as actual speech. And now?! It’s like all those times of being nice and helpful mean exactly zilch. As soon as we’re on HIS turf (the gym), he uses those big beefy arms to throw things right at my head.
I’m used to this—other sixth graders being okay to the Geeks in class and then mean in the halls. But still. It stings. We need Joe Russo to spread the word about the Mystery Ball, though. We need him because of his friends the Football Lardos and the Deadly Sweets. If a guy like Joe Russo says something is going to be cool, other kids listen. Our plan is pretty brilliant, if I do say so myself. In between practicing our free throws and three-point shots, Samantha, Glenn, and I talk in our group. Not loudly, but at the same time, loud enough for the other kids to hear.
“So, who are these people throwing a dance at Halsey School?” Samantha asks me.
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. I heard an eighth grader saying something about it on the bus.” (If an eighth grader says something, it’s definitely a lot cooler.) “I guess Assistant Principal McCloud doesn’t want them to have it because it might get too out of control.”
“What will the music be like?”
“I don’t KNOW!” I pretend to be irritated at Samantha. “I was honestly just listening to an eighth grader on the bus. But I guess it’s a mystery dance on April first.”
I see Joe Russo look my way a couple of times, so I’m pretty sure he’s overheard. The seed is planted!
For the rest of the week, the three of us stage these conversations in all sorts of places: in the hallways, by writing mystery notes on the chalkboard, by talking on the bus. We start fundraising, too, by leaving one box out in the lunchroom and one in the sixth-grade common area. “Mystery Dance Fund,” we wrote on the boxes. “DONATE HERE!” It takes a few days, but I do see a couple of kids slide one-dollar bills into the boxes’ slots when no one’s looking. Of course, we have to monitor the boxes closely to be sure that no one gets too attached to them.
Plus, Mrs. Zuck tells me after class one day that she has good news. She submitted the request form to the front office and it’s been approved! The school will even give us a $25 planning fund, which we can also use for decorations and supplies.
“McCloud gave me a bit of a rough time over not knowing the exact details of who was organizing the dance. But in the end, I vouched for you,” she tells me. “I told him that one of my best and most responsible students was involved.” Her eyes gleam at me a little. “I just hope my good judgment is not misplaced . . .”
“Oh, definitely not, Mrs. Zuck!” I jump in. “I know these people. I know they’ll do a great job planning the dance. They, um, she, is highly responsible.”
“Well, okay,” Mrs. Zuck says, turning to a pile of papers on her desk. “If you say so!”
I know it’s definitely a risk to use a fake identity on the request form. Both for us and for Mrs. Zuck, really. We could have gotten her in trouble, I realize, even though I didn’t think of that before. Mrs. Zuck must have known that, but she did us the favor of submitting the form in spite of the risk. I can picture McCloud now, muttering to himself and looking suspiciously at the form. Mrs. Zuck must have really worked to convince him. That’s why she’s pretty much the most awesome teacher at Halsey School.
“Seriously, they will be so grateful,” I say. Mrs. Zuck gives me a little wink in reply.
“Good luck, dude.”
From then on, every time I pass McCloud’s office, I can’t help but shudder just a little bit. One word from him and the whole dance is off. After all of our hard work! We have to be sure to keep him as far away from the planning as possible. I’m not sure if the Mystery Ball could be what he considers a “disturbance,” but I DON’T want to find that out the hard way.
COUNTDOWN’
2 WEEKS TO GO
. . .And things are looking (pretty) good.
Betrayed
COUNTDOWN-
1 WEEK TO GO
SO FAR, OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY. NO MATTER where you go at Halsey School, someone is talking about the Mystery Ball on April 1st.
“I heard that it’s, like, the son of a famous actor from England or something. He has to come to school here because he’s, like, in hiding. Someone told his dad that they would kidnap him if he stayed in England. So he’s moving here and is throwing this party to meet new friends. Um, and also? He’s going to arrive at the dance in his own helicopter,” I hear Stella Sweet tell a whole table of Sweets in the cafeteria.
“I heard that there will be lots of girls there from other schools,” Joe Russo tells some other Lardos during gym. They’re doing stretches and trying to touch their toes. Only Joe can actually do it; the rest are stuck wiggling their fingers near their knees. “We probably won’t even know any of them. But still, I bet they’ll be way nicer than the stuck-up girls at Halsey.”
I even hear rumors about the Mystery Ball from students I don’t know. “Pssst!” a random guy in my science class says. “Do you know how I can get a ticket to the Mystery Ball next week?”
You know, they call it the “sweet taste of success” for a reason. Having the whole school excited about our dance does taste pretty great. Like a Snickers bar straight out of the fridge, or hot cocoa when the whipped cream on top has melted just right. The only bummer about the whole thing is that Kirk and J.D. haven’t helped at all. In fact, they almost seem afraid of us now. Whenever we start talking about the dance, they either roll their eyes or start fiddling with their calculators. They sit alone a lot at lunch now, whispering to each other in their own little corner of the cafeteria and looking over their shoulders. I try to go up to J.D. after class and ask him what’s going on, but he brushes me off.
“Kirk and I don’t want to get involved, okay?” he says, looking nervous. Well, fine. If they don’t want to be part of the most interesting event at Halsey School, EVER, then that’s their loss.
The dance is going to be held on a Saturday night, so we got permission (well, the Mystery Ball Planning Committee did, anyway) to set up most of our decorations the night before. Glenn was really into secret codes today. “See you at the
staging area at oh-four-hundred,” he said after we left the lunch table earlier in the afternoon to go to class.
“Glenn, you have to stop this!” Samantha said, laughing. “Nobody has any idea. We’re in the clear! But they will be suspicious if you keep trying to use secret movie code.”
“Well, all I meant,” Glenn whispered, “was that I would see you guys at four o’clock in the gym.”
“Got it. Over and out, Glenn.” Samantha walked away, still laughing. She really can be rude sometimes, but I had to laugh, too. I think, in Glenn’s mind, we’re all in a top-secret Bond movie or something.
Now, we’re in the gym with a huge pile of colored lights at our feet from Samantha’s sister, a laptop, and Glenn’s ginormous speakers. After we finish setting up, we’re going to go over to my house to make our treats with food coloring. My parents said it would be okay after I told them we were planning an extra credit event about ultraviolet light. With snacks, of course.
Not that I think my parents would blab the truth about the Mystery Ball, but Glenn does have one thing right. When you’re doing something top secret, you’ve got to make sure it stays that way.
Glenn and Samantha get to work connecting the speakers to Samantha’s laptop so that we can test the music. I drag the heavy folding tables out from behind the bleachers. After pulling out just two of the tables, I’m definitely sweating and wishing I had a little extra help. As if on cue, Kirk and J.D. walk in. I told them about our plan to help set up earlier in the day, but they both shook their heads.
“Too much homework,” J.D. said before they hurried away. Of course, we didn’t tell anyone else we’d be setting up, not even Mrs. Zuck. I do have an excuse if someone comes in, though. I will just say that we were hired by the Mystery Ball Planning Committee to decorate and do the sound for the dance. Everyone knows geeks are good at setting up a sound system, right? Sometimes you’ve gotta play that stuff to your advantage.
“Hey, guys!” I wave to Kirk and J.D. “Perfect timing! I’ve got to pull like three more of these tables out.”