“Are you okay?” he asked, peering at her with those Pacific Ocean eyes.
“Yeah. Fine,” she croaked. As discreetly as she could, she cleared her throat. “So. My dad’s a lawyer. We can ask him about Alyssa’s free speech.”
“Coolness,” he said.
He turned and headed back to the table. Tori floated after him, about three feet off the ground.
To: Alyssa
From: Emily Odoyo
Subject: “Ode to a Woman”
Dear Ms. Alyssa,
My cousin Hannah in America sent me a jpeg of your painting. I think it is really beautiful! Are you a painter by nature? I hope to become an architect one day. I go to an all-girls school. In my art class, your picture would receive many accolades, of that I am certain!
Warmly,
Emily Odoyo, Nairobi
On Wednesday afternoon, Priya and Jordan sat on their tall science lab stools as rain and thunder rattled the rafters. At the front of the lab, Ms. Romero was wearing science-y hot mitts and goggles as she held a test tube over a hissing Bunsen burner. The test tube was plugged with a stopper that had a thin tube running through it. Over that, a balloon was attached to the outside rim of the stopper.
Leslie Graff was sitting behind Priya. “The principle of hot air,” she murmured.
Jordan grinned at Priya and mouthed, “Also known as gas.”
The thunder rumbled again, and the lights in the science lab flickered. At the same time, the balloon inflated. A bunch of the students cheered and applauded.
“It’s alive!” Jordan cried. “It’s alive!”
“That’s from Frankenstein,” Priya said. “Boris Karloff. After the mad scientist zaps the monster with a gazillion watts of electricity.”
“Yes. You get ten points!” Jordan informed her. They kept scores on movie trivia. They kept scores on everything.
“Of course I do,” Priya crowed. “Let’s go for fifty. Whoever gets fifty first, the other one has to type up our science fair report.” She already had him on the proposal packet; why not go for the whole enchilada?
“I wonder if Brynn likes horror movies,” Jordan said, his eyes going all soft-focus. “Maybe I could buy her a DVD of Frankenstein for her birthday.”
“Jor-dan,” Priya said. “Did you not hear me? Science fair report?”
“On farting,” he said.
“We cannot do our report on farting,” she retorted.
“Why not?”
She thought for a moment. Then she remembered the new entries she had read this morning on the Camp Lakeview blog site.
“It would be inappropriate,” she informed him. “We would end up with D-minuses in science, or even worse.”
“We should ask,” Jordan said.
“We are not asking. Ms. Romero needs to know we are taking this seriously.”
Jordan huffed and muttered, “Oh, all right. Fifty points. Movie trivia, horror, science fiction, and fantasy.”
“You’re on.” She grinned at him.
He smiled back and said, “So do you think she’d like a DVD of a horror movie for her birthday?”
“No clue,” she replied.
Ms. Romero concluded her demonstration by letting all the air out of the balloon, with a distinctive fart sound. Jordan laid his head down on their lab table to stifle his laughter. Priya started cracking up, too. Then she remembered that Leslie was sitting behind her.
She turned around and rolled her eyes as if to say, Boys are so immature. But Leslie wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to Jordan’s spaz-out. She was gazing over at Marco Rubio with a little smile on her face.
Intrigued, Priya glanced at Marco. His eyes were glued to his notebook and he taking notes as if his life depended on it. His eyes were kind of bulging beneath his extreme-retro black square glasses. If Leslie had been trying to share the humor of fart noises with him, he was unaware of it.
Cradling his head in his arms, Jordan snorted. Priya gazed down at him and said, “Brynn would totally stop e-mailing you if she could see you right now.”
“Would not,” he said, but he looked the merest bit uncertain and sat up straight.
“May I see you two after class?” Ms. Romero asked them.
“Oh, great. Now you’ve gotten us in trouble,” Priya said.
“Me?” Jordan whispered, all indignant. “You’re the one who kept talking through the entire fart experiment!”
“Priya? Jordan?” Ms. Romero asked again.
“Yes, of course. After class. Check,” Priya said.
The bell rang soon after that. As Priya and Jordan packed up their notebooks, Leslie said to Priya, “That was a neat experiment.”
“Yeah.” Priya ignored Jordan as he started snickering again.
“I once did a science fair project on anechoic chambers,” Leslie continued as she started loading her science book into her backpack. How many books were there in there?
“How did you create the vacuum?” Marco Rubio asked, walking up to them. He sounded like he was challenging her.
Leslie flushed, raised her chin, and said, “I used a generator.”
“I didn’t know they were allowed.” Marco sounded suspicious.
“They were, back in my old school district,” Leslie coolly informed him.
“Ah. I see.” Marco adjusted his glasses. “I heard your new project is on photosynthesis.”
Leslie shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Prepare to be demolished, then.” He smiled at her and headed out the door.
Jordan said to Priya, “Maybe they should get the T-shirts. Only theirs would say, ‘Clash of the Titans of Science.’ ”
“Clash of the Titans,” Priya said. “Sir Laurence Olivier played Zeus.”
“Who is Sir Laurence Olivier?” Leslie asked Priya.
“He’s an actor,” Priya told her. “Well, he was. He’s dead.”
“Oh.” Leslie nodded. “Did you catch what Marco said to me?” She looked amused. “Of course I know we can’t use generators.”
“We’re still, um, working our way through the proposal packet.”
Leslie looked surprised. “Really? I turned mine in at the start of the semester.”
“We just kind of recently found out about the fair,” Priya said.
“Oh. Well, I keep up on science fairs,” Leslie said. “There are all kinds of them, put on by lots of different organizations.”
“Imagine,” Jordan drawled.
“Yeah, well, see you.” Then Leslie hoisted up her backpack and slid her arms through the straps. She gave Priya a little smile and left the lab.
“Were you making fun of her?” Priya asked Jordan.
“No. No way,” Jordan assured her.
They walked up together to Ms. Romero’s desk. She was putting away her science stuff.
“I wanted to ask you about your progress on your project selection,” she said. “How is it going?”
“Uh, we’re narrowing it down,” Priya said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
“We just found out, no generators,” Jordan said sadly.
“But there are so many other topics to choose from,” Priya added. “It’s like this big buffet of science!”
“Well, I like that enthusiasm,” Ms. Romero said, smiling at them both. “Don’t forget that I need it by Friday.”
“Not forgetting,” Jordan said.
“In fact, we’re going to go work on it right now,” Priya assured her.
“Good,” Ms. Romero said, placing her hot mitts in a plastic container labeled BALLOON EXPERIMENT. “That’s the spirit.”
They walked home. Jordan said, “I’ll dump my books in my room and be right over.”
“Okay.” She didn’t know why he didn’t just bring his books, but it was no biggie either way.
“Hi, Mom,” she called out as she went into her house.
Her short, dark-haired mother was in the kitchen, surrounded by large cardboard boxes on the counters and the f
loors. She looked a little overwhelmed. Make that a lot overwhelmed. Make that deer-in-the-headlights panicked.
“Some more supplies arrived,” she told Priya. “There’s so much to keep track of. I have a ton of invoices, too.” The supplies were for Smoothie Town, Mrs. Shah’s smoothie bar, which was scheduled to open at the mall that very week. She crossed her arms and gazed around at the disarray that used to be her kitchen. “I wonder if I ordered too many plastic cups?”
“I’m sure it’s just the right amount,” Priya told her, giving her a hug. She was so proud of her mom. “It’s going to be great, Mom.”
“Thanks.” Mrs. Shah didn’t sound convinced.
“Jordan’s coming over,” Priya said. “We’re going to work on our science project.”
“That’s nice,” her mom replied. “Maybe Jordan can help us load all this into the SUV.” She made a face. “There’s so much of it.”
“You know he will.”
Priya went into her room and slung her backpack onto her bed. After she powered up her PC, she took the folder containing the thick wad of science fair forms out of her pack and opened it. She read the first page, which contained a list of things they could not use in their experiment: “No live animals; no flames or fires; no noxious chemicals.”
“Well, there goes our fart experiment,” she said, grinning.
She sat down at her desk and kept reading. Marco was correct on the no-generators thing. She also found out that the top three winners of the Tri-County Regional fair would go on to compete in the state science fair.
There’s no way we’d ever place first, second, or third, she thought. But that was okay. All they had to do was enter a project.
She was on the last page when it dawned on her that Jordan hadn’t shown up yet. She looked at the digital time readout on her computer screen. Half an hour had passed since they’d come home from school.
Where is he?
On a hunch, she opened up her AIM box. Sure enough, there was his IM icon. And there was Brynn’s—a girl inside a big glowing star.
Priya left his textbox unanswered as Brynn IMed her.
“I hope she doesn’t think I’m mad at her,” Priya muttered.
She heard the phone ringing in the kitchen a couple of times. On the third ring, it was picked up.
Then her mother appeared in her doorway with the portable phone in her hand.
“It’s Jordan,” she told Priya. “I thought he was coming over.”
“I don’t want to speak to him,” Priya said angrily.
On her screen, Jordan typed:
Grumpily, Priya took the phone from her mother.
“You are so dead,” she said into the phone.
“I know, I know, I suck,” he replied, his voice filled with misery.
“You went home first to see if you had e-mail from Brynn, am I right?”
“Yeah, guilty as charged. I was just going to check quickly. I swear. I lost all track of time.”
“That’s not helping,” she gritted.
“Oh, Pri, I’m sorry, I . . . it’s just, she was online and I wanted to ask her what she wanted for her birthday and we just started talking and . . .” He trailed off. “Do you forgive me?”
“Sort of,” she said. “Jordan, our topic is due on Friday and the form Ms. Romero wants us to fill out is two feet thick. You have got to come over here right now.”
“Okay, right. I know. I’m on my way.”
But fifteen minutes later . . . there was still no Jordan.
School for Wednesday was over, and so was Alyssa’s life. Or at least that was how it felt, as she sat dejectedly in the art room with her second rejected submission for Works, her Impressionistic rendition of her mother’s rose garden.
“It sucks,” she muttered.
“No, it doesn’t suck,” Mr. Prescott assured her. He was sitting catty-corner from her at her art table, his hands folded as he regarded her watercolor. Upside down. “Roses at Dawn is very . . . nice. It just doesn’t have the verve of your first piece. The energy.”
“Then . . .” She took a deep breath. “Why can’t I submit Ode to a Woman?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Alyssa. It’s just too controversial.”
“But isn’t art supposed to be controversial? Shake people up?” She was quoting one of his lectures, and she could tell he recognized it.
Before he could say anything, she added, “I can make her clothes more obvious.”
He took a moment, looking down at all the light-speckled roses. “It’s not that. I don’t know how to explain this to you. Ode to a Woman is just . . . too mature for a middle school art show.”
“It’s R-rated?” she asked, trying to understand.
“More like PG-13,” he replied.
“So we’re back to Roses at Dawn,” she said.
“I won’t forbid you from entering Roses at Dawn into the contest, but I have to tell you, I don’t think it will win. It’s just not your best work.”
“Okay,” Alyssa said, picking up her picture and inserting it into her black leather portfolio.
But it wasn’t okay. Not one bit.
chapter FOUR
Tori and Kallista were celebrating the fact that the school week was halfway through with a quick jaunt to the Galleria. Kallista had permission to come home with Tori after school to do homework, and they hardly had any.
They were laughing over the two T-shirts they had made at the T-shirt kiosk in the middle of the mall. They were black with the words “FREE ALYSSA!” lettered in white. They had put them on in the bathroom at Needless Markup—aka Nieman Marcus—with the added bonus of a chance to drool over the cool shoes on their way back out to the mall.
Even cooler, they had totally scored at Suncoast Video, finding two of Cameron Stevenson’s early films in the DVD remainder bin. Tori wanted to be up on every aspect of Michael’s life, including his dad’s movies.
With a plastic sack containing Club Weirdo and I Know Who You Killed Last Summer slung over Tori’s shoulder, the two friends were about to swing out the exit. But just as they reached the big double doors, Kallista grabbed Tori’s arm.
“You are not going to believe who is coming up behind you,” she whispered into Tori’s ear. “Your leading man in My Big Fat Sushi Wedding.”
“No way,” Tori breathed.
“Way. Here he comes. In three, two, one . . . action!”
“Hey,” Michael said, as Kallista oh-so-casually moved away from Tori to give her some space.
Tori’s legs turned to Tofu Lite as she turned around. The blond hair. The blue eyes. He was wearing khaki cargo shorts and a dark blue T-shirt.
Ducking his head slightly, he put his hands in his pockets and came up to her, so closely that she could smell his shampoo.
“Hi,” Tori managed. “Well. Fancy meeting you here.” God, that is so lame!
He smiled as if she had just said the wittiest thing he had ever heard. Butterflies started to party in her stomach.
He’s just a guy, she reminded herself. A person my age, who happens to be the adorable-est . . . cutest . . . Michael-est!
He grinned and said, “I like your T-shirts. Alyssa’s your friend in New Jersey, right?”
“Free Alyssa!” Kallista cried. “These shirts are going to be the next Hollywood trend. We’re going to take a pic of ourselves at Tori’s house and put it up on her camp blog.”
“Sweet,” he said, chuckling.
> “We could get you one, too,” Tori said, feeling a little shy. Maybe he wouldn’t want one. Maybe that was something only for Camp Lakeview girls and their girlfriends.
“That’d be kind of cool,” he said.
“We can go do it now,” she replied, trying not to sound too eager even though she was, well, eager.
“Rock,” he said. “I’m in.”
“The kiosk is at the other end of the mall. And you have to wait for about twenty minutes while they make it,” she added, just in case he didn’t realize that getting a shirt would involve some quality time.
“It’s all good,” he assured her. “My dad’s on a shoot and my mom’s not home. So I’m on my own.”
“Then you can come to Tori’s house with us and get your pic on the blog, too,” Kallista said.
He nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
They started walking down the center of the mall, Tori in the middle. She was walking with Michael Stevenson. And he was coming to her house!
She was floating again!
About an hour later, Tori, Michael, and Kallista breezed into Tori’s house, flinging school backpacks and shopping bags onto the black leather sofa. They sailed into the family’s private screening room in their matching FREE ALYSSA T-shirts.
“You guys put the first movie in,” Tori told Michael and Kallista. “I’ll go get some snacks.”
“You got it,” Michael said, as he took his father’s old movies out of the Suncoast Video bag. “Let’s see, let’s start with Club Weirdo. My father was nineteen in this movie. I’m practically nineteen.” He blinked at the disbelieving looks of his two fellow middle-schoolers.
“Okay, I’m almost thirteen,” he admitted.
“Ooh, an older man,” Kallista cooed. “Tori and I have just turned twelve. Watch out for this guy, Tori. He’s super-sophisticated.”
Michael held up the DVD container for Club Weirdo, which featured a publicity still of his father in a very bad orange wig and green makeup. “Like father, like son,” he said.
Giggling, Tori trotted out of the screening room and into the French-style black and white kitchen. Her father was seated in the breakfast nook, drinking a bottle of Perrier and reading a contract.
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