I nodded a bunch when Pierre said this.
“I know who Bessica Lefter is. In a way, I feel like I am Bessica Lefter. And you and you and you. You are all Bessica Lefter.”
Raya Papas looked disgusted when she was called Bessica Lefter.
“Bessica was just trying to do her best. Her first game cheering, and the opposing mascot brought a cooler filled with balloons stuffed with shaving cream? Maybe some of you aren’t familiar with that tactic, but it’s called facebombing. T.J. came out onto that field fully intending to facebomb Bessica when your team scored its first goal. She’d heard of this threat, but she went out there anyway. Don’t punish her too harshly for what she did. She was standing up for her team. Her school. Remember, you too are Bessica Lefter. And you. And you. And you. Be lenient.”
“I am not Bessica Lefter,” Raya Papas said loudly.
“Thank you,” Principal Tidge said. “I have one question for Bessica before we go any further.”
This frightened me. Because just one question meant that there was probably just one right answer.
“Had T.J. threatened you prior to the game?” Principal Tidge leaned forward in her chair.
Her eyes were so powerful, they made my whole body feel hot and nervous. I looked above me at the light as it beamed down on me like the sun. Sweat formed at my hairline. One lone drop rolled down the side of my face all the way to my neck. But I knew the answer to this one. Why was I so worried?
“Yes,” I said. “He did.”
Principal Tidge leaned back in her chair. “Well, that changes things.” She stood up. “Peer review, you are all dismissed. You won’t be deciding Bessica’s punishment. I will. This isn’t a case of a mascot gone wrong. What we have here is a complex bullying situation.”
“Really?” I asked. I had suspected we had a bullying situation, but I’d had no idea it was complex.
Everybody filed out of the room, and as Dee left she whispered, “You were going to get off light anyway.”
I smiled.
But Principal Tidge wasn’t smiling, so I stopped.
“Bessica, biting is barbaric.”
“Yeah,” I said, sounding a little ashamed.
“I’m sorry to hear about the facebomb situation, but what you did was wrong.”
“I feel very bad about it,” I said.
She walked over to me and handed me a piece of paper. “Twenty hours,” she said.
“Of what?” I asked, taking the paper.
“Fire safety training for grades kindergarten through three. I’m certain you’ll be excellent.”
“Okay,” I said. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. “My mom is outside. Do you need to talk to her?”
“That’s a good idea.”
I followed Principal Tidge into the hallway, and she asked me to wait there so she could talk to my mom. As I leaned against the wall I saw somebody I really didn’t want to see: Alice Potgeiser. She looked so happy. She strutted right up to me, smiling, and handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s my address. You can drop off the bear paws at your earliest convenience.”
“Why would I give you my bear paws?”
Alice faked a sympathy frown. “I wrote a persuasive letter to the peer review asking them to suspend you from all further football games.”
I couldn’t believe that Alice had tried to get me suspended for the entire football season. She was evil!
“Take it,” Alice said, thrusting the paper at me. “Your mom will need to follow the map on the back. MapQuest always sends people the wrong way once they cross the bridge.”
I shook my head. I didn’t need a map to Alice Potgeiser’s house. “Sorry to break your heart, but I’m still half mascot. I wasn’t suspended.”
Alice looked horrified. “That’s impossible! My letter was very convincing. I outlined how you repeatedly mauled the opposing team’s mascot and are unsafe to take the field!”
I held my finger up and wagged it a little to let her know that I disagreed with that assessment. “I didn’t maul anybody. What we’ve got here is a complicated bullying situation.”
My mom stepped into the hallway and interrupted my terrible conversation with Alice.
“That went so much better than I thought it would,” my mom said.
Alice didn’t wait around to hear any more. She flipped around. “Mauler,” she mumbled as she huffed off.
My mom didn’t really notice Alice’s melodramatic exit. She walked up to me and gave me a big hug.
“I have to teach elementary school kids about fire safety for twenty hours,” I said.
“Not in a row,” my mom replied, releasing her grip on me.
As we walked to the car I realized that maybe my mom was right and I should be having more fun in middle school.
“I want to hang out with Sylvie again,” I said.
“I know,” my mom said.
“I need to call Lola,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Does this mean I won’t be grounded?” I asked.
“Let me discuss it with your father,” my mom said.
“It would be nice if I could invite Sylvie and Lola over,” I said. “And maybe also the spud and eagle mascots.”
“You want to invite boys over?” my mom asked as she climbed into the car.
“I do,” I said. “I’m mature enough to have boys as friends.”
“Oh brother,” my mom said.
“I promise I’ll never bite another mascot ever again,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have to make that promise. That should be basic operating procedure.”
“Yeah.” Even though I was a very dedicated mascot bear, I knew my mom was right.
I was surprised that Sylvie, Lola, Duke, and Pierre got along in my living room as well as they did. It was as if we were all meant to be friends.
“Thanks again for coming over and helping me sort through my fire safety materials,” I said.
“After reading this pamphlet, I’ll never look at an electrical socket the same way again,” Duke said.
Not wearing his eagle outfit and not having a nose zit, he looked a lot cuter than he had when I first met him. But even though Duke was cute, I didn’t like him like him. Because I had already given my heart to the gorgeous and tragically cow-injured Noll Beck. Maybe Duke could become Sylvie’s boyfriend. Ooh!
“You’re going to scare all the kids into never touching a lamp if you tell them this story,” Lola said, pointing to a different pamphlet that outlined the dangers of putting flammable materials near heat sources and lightbulbs.
“Let’s face it,” I said. “My punishment is sort of a bummer.”
“You can still have fun with it,” Sylvie said. “Do you get to go dressed as a bear?”
“I think that’s the idea,” I said.
“Be careful,” Pierre said. “Your costume is extremely flammable.”
I sighed. I didn’t need to be that careful. The fire marshal was going to be standing right next to me.
“Basically, I only need to teach the kids four things,” I explained. I stood on my couch so I could be higher than everybody else while I delivered my message. “Remind your parents to change the batteries in your smoke alarm once a year. Clean your clothes dryer vent. Fireworks have the potential to blow off your fingers and cause forest fires. Make sure you know two ways to escape your house if it bursts into flames.”
“You’re going to make people cry,” Lola said.
“Maybe,” I said as I stepped off the couch. “But I’ll be very calm when I talk. And I’ll be dressed like a bear. And everything I’m telling them is excellent information.”
“How are things going in there?” my mom asked.
“Great,” I said.
But we all looked pretty gloomy.
“Do you want to show your friends how to feed the lizard?” my mom asked. “Grandma just bought new crickets.”
“That won’t work,” I said. “I have to feed the crickets essent
ial vitamins first. And that takes at least one day.”
Everybody looked disappointed to learn this, especially Duke.
“Okay,” I said. “Just this once we can do it without gut loading the crickets first.”
So we all walked in a line straight to my bedroom.
“This is so disgusting,” Lola said. “I love it!”
I opened a plastic bag and poured a little bit of calcium powder inside. Then I shook it like mad. “It fortifies Bianca’s bones,” I explained.
“How many crickets are in there?” Pierre asked.
“We buy them by the dozen,” I said.
My friends looked horrified. Then I opened Bianca’s cage and dumped the white crickets inside.
“I’ve never seen one animal eat another animal,” Pierre said.
“Even on television?” Sylvie asked.
Pierre didn’t have time to answer. Because Bianca leaped from her plastic tree and landed on the cage’s bottom and snapped up a cricket in one quick bite.
Everybody screamed.
“Look! Duke said. “Its legs are still moving. It’s not dead yet.”
But then Bianca swallowed the rest of the bug whole.
“It’s dead now,” I said.
Hanging out watching Noll Beck’s lizard eat bugs with my friends was a pretty good way to spend the day. “Noll is so lucky to have you as a neighbor,” Lola said. “Because I could never do that.”
“That thing looks like a dinosaur,” Pierre said.
“No it doesn’t,” Lola said.
“If that thing doesn’t look like a dinosaur, then what does it look like?” Pierre asked.
“A lizard,” Lola said.
I sensed a little friction between those two, but in a good way.
“I can’t watch more crickets get snapped in two,” Sylvie said. “What should we do next?”
“Ooh,” I said. “I know. Have you guys ever seen a narwhal?”
Sylvie, Lola, Pierre, and Duke all just stared at me. “It’s a whale with a nine-foot horn tooth. Willy bought me a DVD of one. And there’s also polar bears. It’s a little bloody.”
After I liked the one he rented so much, he had bought a copy for me. It was a pretty nice thing to do.
“That sounds cool,” Duke said.
“Let’s watch it,” Pierre said.
“How much blood?” Sylvie asked.
I put my arm around her. “There’s only two blood-gushing scenes.”
Lola kept staring at Bianca. “Have you sent Noll a picture of her lately?”
I shook my head.
“You should hold Bianca and I’ll send him a picture of that. It’s a good idea to send people you like your picture.”
“Shhh,” I said. I didn’t want Pierre and Duke to know that I liked Noll.
“Isn’t Noll Beck in high school?” Duke asked.
“We’re just really good friends. I watch his lizard when he’s out of town. And he does stuff for me.”
“Like what?” Duke asked.
What did Noll Beck do for me?
“He’s an awesome listener,” I said. Because when I spoke he usually remembered what I said.
“Okay,” Lola said. “I’m ready.”
I reached into the aquarium and grabbed Bianca behind the head so she couldn’t bite me. I didn’t use the yellow gloves, because I thought that might look weird.
“Can I touch it?” Duke asked.
“After the picture,” I said.
I held Bianca up to my cheek and she licked me. “So gross. I have lizard spit on my face.”
“So cool,” Pierre said.
Right as Lola snapped the picture, the lizard clamped her mouth shut on my nose.
“Ack!” I said.
“The lizard facebombed you,” Duke said, laughing.
“That’s actually a funny subject line,” I said. “Noll appreciates my sense of humor.”
So while I was surrounded by my middle school friends, I sent Noll Beck a picture of me and his lizard.
I hope you’re feeling better. FYI your lizard facebombed me!
And Noll Beck wrote back right away. He said:
I’m getting there. Thanks for the update!
“Ooh. He gave me an exclamation point. And he just sent me a picture,” I said.
I clicked to enlarge it and saw something very sad: Noll Beck in what looked like a hospital bed, wearing what looked like a sling, next to what looked like his ex-girlfriend.
“Cute nurse,” Pierre said.
But Sylvie understood that we were not looking at Noll’s nurse.
“Life is long,” Sylvie said. “That picture doesn’t mean anything.”
But it meant something to me. Because Noll Beck’s ex-girlfriend was hugging him.
“Let’s start the DVD,” Lola said. “Follow me.”
Lola led Pierre and Duke out to my living room. I kept looking at the picture. I wasn’t crushed. Just surprised. And a little bit sad.
“You’re still the mascot. And people at your school think you’re awesome. They can’t wait to watch you cheer at the next game,” Sylvie said. “You did it. You wanted to be popular and now you are.”
I nodded. Then I closed the picture.
“Are you sad?” Sylvie asked.
“Not really,” I said. “I have a pretty good life. Great friends. Grandma is back. According to Vicki Docker I possess a very powerful inner cheer beast.”
“You’re forgetting the most important thing,” Sylvie said.
“I’m getting good grades in all my classes?” I asked.
“No.”
“I’m not grounded?”
“No.”
“My birthday is coming up?”
“No.”
“What?” I asked. I was tired of guessing.
“You’re awesome!” Sylvie yelled.
I didn’t think Sylvie had ever told me that I was awesome before. It made me smile.
“Come watch the movie and be awesome in the living room!” Lola called.
I walked down the hallway, feeling better and better with each step. Maybe middle school was going to be a lot more fun than I’d thought. Now that I’d defeated T.J. and become popular, maybe things were going to be amazing for me. Maybe Grandma had been right all along.
Happiness isn’t something you chase. It’s just the way you feel.
KRISTEN TRACY grew up in a small town in Idaho, where she learned a lot about bears. She now lives in San Francisco, where she volunteers as a gardener on Alcatraz. She has written many books for teens and tweens and people younger than that, including Lost It, Crimes of the Sarahs, A Field Guide for Heartbreakers, Sharks & Boys, Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus, and The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter.
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