Totally Crushed

by Kristen Tracy

  “You guys are doing a great job,” Ms. Kenny said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  And then even though I was nervous about bringing up my email, I did it.

  “Um,” I said. “I sent you an email last night about having a clinic for the students during lunch.”

  “Right. Seeing how good you are here, I think that would work. Let me talk to Ms. Hunt about it.”

  “And we can bring cupcakes,” I added, still trying to sell my idea.

  “Perry, you have been working so hard in Yearbook. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. And don’t think I’ll forget when it comes time to pick next year’s senior photographer.”

  And that kind of blew my mind. I stood there holding my camera and feeling almost dizzy. I started to picture what it would be like when I was senior photographer. I’d set the schedule. Choose the sections. Write the captions. And pick every single photo.

  “Hi, Perry.” It was a boy’s voice. I flipped around. It was Hayes.

  I was so surprised to see him at the teacher photo shoot that I didn’t even say hello. “What are you doing here, Hayes? I’m working.”

  “Well,” he said. “I know that. But they have coconut balls for dessert in the cafeteria. And I know you like those, so I brought you one.”

  I didn’t even know what to do. Hayes was handing me a coconut ball in front of all the teachers. What was wrong with him?

  He held out the flaky white ball for me to take. But all I could do was stare at it.

  “Take the ball,” Javier said. “We’re running behind.”

  “You take it,” I told Javier.

  Hayes looked super depressed when I said that. “Oh, sorry. I thought you’d want one.”

  And then Venice did something very alarming. She butted into my business in an unhelpful way.

  “She can’t get her fingers sticky when she’s using the camera,” she said. “I’ll hold it for her. She absolutely loves coconut balls.”

  I didn’t want to look like a jerk. And I didn’t want to say anything harsh to Venice in front of Hayes. So I just said, “Thanks for the coconut ball.”

  And then I watched Hayes just sort of wander off back to the sidewalk like he was lost.

  “Okay,” Javier called, clapping his hands together. “Who’s up next?”

  Then Drea Quan popped up right in front of me. Where had she come from?

  “Hi, Perry,” Drea said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re really hard to find at lunch.”

  “Perry,” Javier scolded. “You need to tell your friends you’re working and you’ll see them later.”

  I couldn’t believe Javier had said that. I mean, Hayes was still in earshot. He could’ve heard that comment and mistook it to mean I was going to actually call him. Had Javier gone nuts? I wasn’t going to do that.

  “Drea,” I said, “I’m working. I can’t talk. I have to get these done before the sun changes position or the teachers get hungry and leave.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for agreeing to help me. All my life I’ve wanted to be popular. This is going to be so amazing.”

  And then before I could tell her that I hadn’t actually agreed to do that, she zoomed off.

  “Should I move the chair over here?” Javier asked, pointing to a weird bush that attracted bees. It was like he didn’t understand how the sun or stinging insects operated.

  “No,” I said. “We need to finish where we started.”

  Then all the teachers started passing my advice along to the next teacher. “Sit up straight.” “Tuck your tongue behind your teeth.” “Open your eyes right before she takes the picture.” “Berry-colored lip gloss makes your teeth look whiter.”

  The pictures went quickly after that. Venice was excellent at assisting me. And Javier was a pro at keeping the teachers organized and the line moving. It was moments like this when I remembered why I’d wanted to sign up for Yearbook in the first place. I loved taking pictures. I loved spending time with Venice.

  “Anya is going to die when she sees how well these turned out,” Venice said. “Everybody looks so good.”

  “Thanks!” I said.

  “Here’s your coconut ball,” she said, rolling it onto my open hand.

  But I didn’t eat it. I just stared at it.

  “What’s wrong?” Venice asked.

  “I want Hayes to stop giving me things,” I said. “It makes me feel weird.”

  Venice looked surprised. “He’s given you more than one coconut ball?”

  I bit into the ball’s soft side. It was so sweet.

  “He gives me skating tickets,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about that?”

  “Oh yeah,” Venice said. “I forgot.”

  And I thought that was a rude thing to say, because it meant she wasn’t remembering my problems.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “Ask Piper,” Venice said. “I think he really likes you.”

  I felt very panicked when Venice told me that. “No! He needs to stop!”

  Venice shrugged. “You’re totally awesome. It makes sense that he’s crushing on you.”

  That news made me feel even worse.

  “It’s part of middle school,” Venice said. “Remember how Chet liked Winnie last year? And Fletcher liked Hannah? It’s just what happens. You should enjoy it.”

  “But I don’t like Hayes,” I said. “How can I enjoy it?”

  “He’s nice. He’s giving you things. It’s not that bad,” Venice said.

  “But it makes me feel weird,” I reminded her. It was like she’d missed the most important part.

  “He’ll crush on somebody else soon,” Venice said. “I think you should eat your coconut ball, take Leo and me skating with you a couple of times, and stop freaking out.”

  And even though I thought she was missing the point, I did in fact eat my coconut ball. The lunch bell rang. It was time to go to class. I walked alongside Venice as we made our way back inside.

  I wasn’t sure she’d given me the best advice. Because I didn’t even like to roller-skate or spend time with Leo. And what if Hayes never stopped liking me? What if his crush just went on and on and on? Wasn’t there a better way to handle this?

  When I got home, I suspected I was all alone. The front door was unlocked, which was helpful. But all the lights were turned off.

  “Hello?” I called into the unlit living room. “Hello?”

  I hoped my mom would pop out of the kitchen and offer me a muffin or possibly a cheese snack. But instead there was total silence. I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Nothing looked good, so I closed the refrigerator and sulked.

  When I saw a paper bag on the table I got excited that there might be something delicious inside it. Shockingly, I found Mitten Man asleep in there. I wasn’t sure sleeping inside a paper bag was good for the overall health of a cat, so I tried to drag him out. But he didn’t like that. He dug his claws deep into the folds at the bag’s bottom. Also, he meowed in a sorrowful way.

  “You’re coming out of there!” I scolded.

  But he was not coming out of there. He darted deeper inside the paper bag, sending them both in a skid off the kitchen table. This made a dramatic thud. So I screamed.

  My mom threw open the door to the garage. “What happened?”

  But Mitten Man strutted out of the bag like everything was cool, so I decided to ride his vibe.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Everything’s cool.”

  “Don’t scream like that,” my mom said. “It sounded like you’d broken something.”

  I was about to tell my mom not to judge me, but I got distracted by something on her pants.

  “What is that?” I said, pointing to dark-gray patches on the thigh area of her light jeans.

  She swatted at her legs and giant clouds of dust formed above her knees.

  “I’m making real progress on the craft corner,” my mom said. “I think I’ll be a
ble to unbury your dad’s jigsaw too. Remember when he used to make you wooden toys?”

  I blinked at her. I remembered getting a splinter once from a block of wood shaped like a whale. And that tiny shard had festered until it oozed pus and I had to go to an urgent care center.

  “Those things were dangerous,” I said. “I’m not touching anything Dad makes on the jigsaw.”

  My mom frowned at me. “You’re such a downer sometimes.”

  And that felt like a pretty rude thing to say to somebody who’d been working super hard all day at school to make all her teachers look attractive. I don’t think she noticed that she’d hurt my feelings, because instead of apologizing and asking me about my day she said, “Do you want to come help me sort some of your old art in the garage? You and Piper have four huge tubs of it.”

  I blinked at her again. I was hoping for fresh muffins. Why would I want to go into the garage?

  “Um,” I said. “I hate the garage.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve already swept all the spiders away and relocated them into the backyard.”

  My jaw dropped. That was the last place she should’ve put a bunch of spiders. I loved spending time in the backyard.

  “Come on,” my mother encouraged. “I want your approval before I throw anything away.”

  And when she put it that way, when she suggested she might be throwing away precious artwork made by Piper and me, I figured I should go investigate.

  When I entered the garage, I tried to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t smell any garage odors.

  “You know,” my mom said, “we’re lucky to have a two-car garage. Some people only have carports.”

  But standing in that dustbowl under the gloomy light of two bare bulbs, I sure didn’t feel lucky.

  “Here we go,” my mom said, grunting as she set down four giant plastic tubs.

  “Do you want to start with the preschool bin?” she asked.

  I didn’t care where we started. I just wanted to finish.

  “Okay,” she said. She popped off the white plastic lid and set it down on the floor.

  It was actually pretty exciting looking at my old artwork, because I didn’t really remember making it. But my name was written on everything. Flowers made out of crepe paper. Kites made out of ribbons. Landscape drawings accentuated with cotton-ball clouds. I wasn’t sure why my mom wanted to get rid of any of it. It made me feel warm and proud just looking at it.

  “Oops,” my mom said. “This is Piper’s. I’m not sure how her stuff got mixed up with yours.”

  My mother pulled out a photograph of Piper when she was five. I knew she was five because she was wearing a birthday crown on her head with a bright red number five perched on top of it.

  “We’re sisters,” I said. “Of course our stuff will get mixed up.”

  It bothered me that my mom didn’t understand that was what had happened. That because we were naturally so close, of course some of our things would get jumbled.

  “I can’t believe she was ever that small or wore that many jelly bracelets,” my mom said, staring at Piper’s portrait.

  “I can’t believe you were considering tossing these things in the trash,” I said. “They’re important.”

  “I’d never throw this away,” my mom said, setting it on top of our washing machine. “Let’s keep looking for more keepers.”

  That was when the true horror of what was happening really hit me. If none of the things I was holding were keepers, that meant they were dumpers. Which basically meant all my wonderful art was trash-bound.

  “Wait,” I said, picking the plastic lid up off the floor. “Let’s stop. Piper should be here for this.”

  I tried putting the lid back on the tub, but I couldn’t make it snap shut.

  “Piper hasn’t looked at this stuff in over a decade. She won’t miss any of it,” my mom said.

  But I didn’t believe that. Because Piper was very creative and she might’ve made a masterpiece or two. I grabbed my cell phone and texted her. I tried to say something that communicated how urgent things were, but without overstating the situation.

  It took three seconds for my mom’s phone to ring. She shook it at me. “I hate it when you two gang up on me.”

  But I didn’t think that was what was happening at all. I was just defending my property. I mean, I was an artist. Even if my early work was total crap, shouldn’t I be hanging on to it? To appreciate my journey later? I mean, if my own mother couldn’t see the logic in this, what was I supposed to do?

  “Perry is completely overstating the situation,” my mother said. She frowned at me dramatically. “This stuff will eventually grow mold.”

  I picked up a heavily glittered leprechaun that I’d apparently made in first grade. Of course it wasn’t perfect, and I’d glued his googly eyes to his chin, but it just felt wrong to call something I’d spent so much time making garbage. I waved it at my mom. Pieces of glitter fell off and twinkle-floated onto the concrete floor.

  “Okay,” my mother said into the phone, sounding exasperated. “You win. I’ll wait until you’re here before I discard anything.”

  And it was hard not to gloat and smile ferociously when my mom said that. So I did. But then something evil happened. My mom started snapping her fingers at me. Which felt really hostile. Then she started saying, “Drop that! Drop that!”

  But dropping my leprechaun onto the cold and dirty floor felt like the wrong thing to do. So I didn’t. Then my mother said something truly horrifying. “There’s a giant spider on it.”

  I froze. No. Was she telling me the truth? I scoured his orange face and green pantsuit. But all I saw was my incredibly happy leprechaun. Then the hairy monster moved. A giant black spider crawled across its hat. It was nearly on my hand. I screamed and dropped my artwork. Then I stomped on it repeatedly. Because I didn’t want that spider to hunt me down in the house later, which was something I feared spiders liked to do.

  “Bye, Piper,” my mom said. She slipped her phone into her back pocket and gently touched my arm. “Relax. You’ve triple-killed it.”

  But it was hard to relax, because its legs were twitching in a very menacing way.

  “Maybe we should take a wildlife appreciation class together,” my mom suggested. “Spiders shouldn’t cause such a catastrophic response.”

  I stared down at my heavily stomped leprechaun. I’d torn his hat off his head. It was sad to realize this.

  “Or what if we took a hiking class together. Got outdoors and interacted with nature.”

  “Like butterflies?” I asked in a mopey voice.

  “Sure, and caterpillars, and beetles, and bumblebees, and probably spiders,” my mom said, giving me a hug.

  “I’d rather spend the rest of my life in detention and never eat pie again and have a blister that gets so out of control my foot falls off,” I said. And that was a really powerful thing for me to say. Because I worshiped pie.

  My mother reached down and picked up my battered sprite. She flicked the dead spider off with her finger, but I could still see a stain of spider juice where I’d crushed it.

  “It’s ruined now,” I said. “It has dead spider fluid on it. And it’s brown!” The whole happy green feeling it gave off moments before had been destroyed. Why couldn’t we have just left it in the tub?

  “We can fix it,” my mom said.

  But I truly doubted that. Because I’d never heard of any type of detergent that could remove spider juice. I sniffled.

  “Until I entered the garage, my day had been going great,” I said.

  My mom hugged me. “We can cover this spot with more green glitter. You’ll never know the difference.”

  And that seemed like a reasonable solution. Because glitter improved almost everything.

  “Do you think we can glue his hat back on and glitter that too?” I asked.

  My mother sighed. “It’s completely fixable. Why don’t we go inside and you can tell me about your grea
t day. I can whip up some muffins.”

  Finally, it felt like my after-school nightmare was turning into something enjoyable.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

  I felt my phone buzz. I was hoping Piper was calling so I could brag about all the childhood mementos I’d saved. But it was only a text.

  That really caught me off guard. Because I didn’t even know Piper was on PopRat. When had she done that? I glanced at my mom. I was pretty sure she’d never let me get a PopRat account. Last year, after watching a news show about cell phones and teenagers and juvenile detention centers, she’d forcefully told me that I was never allowed to use any app without her approval, because all those photos and messages (which I hadn’t even taken or written or sent yet) would exist forever and destroy my life and haunt me.

  I remembered that conversation like it was yesterday. “Is that what you want?” she’d asked, wagging her own cell phone at me like it was a weapon. And because I was a normal fifth grader at the time, of course I’d told her, “Not really.”

  “Why are you making that face?” my mom asked now. “I thought we’d figured out a way to fix everything.”

  I glanced down at my leprechaun. Yes. It was salvageable. But I was still leaving my garage with one more problem than I’d had before I entered it: PopRat.

  I was smart enough to know this wasn’t the time to mention it.

  “I just need to eat something,” I said.

  “Well, I can solve that problem too,” my mom said, swinging open the door to the kitchen.

  Basically, Anya was astonished when she saw how well my pictures turned out. In class the next day, we started blocking out the section. It was like design and layout were going a thousand times faster than when she was in charge.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Anya said, “but your teacher photos are way more decent than last year’s.”

  It shocked me that she was paying me a compliment.

  “She’s a rock star,” Javier said. “You make my job so easy.”

  Venice smiled at me.

  “Okay,” Javier went on. “So where are we on tasks?”