Mission (Un)Popular

by Anna Humphrey

  There was no point hiding it. “Trying to make my bangs go straight,” I said miserably, rubbing at my forehead with a towel.

  “Oh, Margot.” She stepped toward me to survey the damage. This made me feel ten times worse. I’d kind of been hoping she’d say something like, “Hey, bangs look great on you. Who’d have guessed?” But if my mom, of all people, was at a loss for something positive to say, then it definitely looked horrible. “Did you tweeze your eyebrows too?” She was obviously trying not to wince.

  And here I’d just been starting to feel a bit better about the eyebrows. “Yes,” I said, close to tears. My mom held up her hands.

  “Wait here.” In a few minutes she was back with a baggie of bobby pins and a bottle of green hairspray I recognized from when I used to do ballet recitals. “Close your eyes.” She combed my hair down and sprayed. It reeked like chemical-coated apples. I almost gagged twice. “Okay.” She stepped back. I looked in the mirror. The bangs were parted in the middle, hippie-style, and glued flat against my head. I looked a little like a greasy used-car salesman, but there was my mom, peering over my shoulder hopefully. “Thanks,” I managed. “They’re…flatter.” She smiled, the little wrinkles around her eyes lifting.

  “How about that picture, then?”

  I ended up going out onto the front steps and letting her take it. “Actually,” she said as she turned on the porch light and handed me my schoolbag to pose with, “I like your hair pinned back like that, Margot. Now people can see more of your pretty face.” But it was way too little, and way too late, and way too untrue. I was hideous, and I knew it, and she knew that I knew it.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” she went on, putting an arm around me. “It’ll grow back. Someday you’ll look at this photo and smile.”

  She showed it to me in the display. My head was tilted weirdly to one side, and I had red-eye. Right. So photogenic. Real potential. But I didn’t ask her to take it again. Seriously, what difference would it have made?

  When I woke up the next morning, I hadn’t exactly forgotten that I’d uglified myself, but still, it was a shock to see how bad I looked. Overnight, the hairspray had dried my new bangs into two gross chunks on either side of my face, and the eyebrow gap seemed to have grown even huger, somehow.

  After showering, I tried to fix my bangs with the blow-dryer and round brush, but it was useless. Then I soaked them in leave-in conditioner and gel and used my flat iron. My hair made a sizzling sound as I pulled it through the straightening plates, but as soon as I released it, it sproinged back, only now my bangs were frizzy and crunchy—like cotton candy gone partly stale.

  “Margot, sweetie,” my mom said, knocking on the door, “it’s half past. You’d better get going.” I sighed, shoved the horrible bobby pins back in, to at least hold down the frizz/poof, and went to get dressed. Maybe, I thought, if I just tried to be perfectly quiet all day:

  I won't embarrass myself like I did the day before.

  Nobody will even notice I'm there, let alone that I have a “new look.”

  If they do notice me, they won't even recognize me. “Who is that mysterious, perfectly quiet girl with the interesting bangs?” they will wonder. (Okay, so even I knew that wasn’t going to happen.)

  Even though I was already running late, I checked my e-mail one last time. There was still no message from Little Miss Holy-Saint-of-Ditching-her-Best-Friend. So much for all of her IM promises. I’ll call you every day. We’ll hang out all the time. Lies, lies, and more big fat lies. In a fit of anger and frustration, fueled by bad hair and loneliness, I opened my e-mail and typed as fast as I could.

  Dear Erika,

  I hope you had a great first day at Sacred Heart. I hope you had a wonderful time learning superior skills in a wholesome environment. I understand why you didn’t have time to call me back. You’ve got a new friend, and you guys are probably really busy shopping for kneesocks and reading the Bible. She’s probably really smart, too. And a good influence. I’m sure she would never steal a ham.

  Whatever, Erika. I’m hurt, but life goes on. I wish you and your new friend all the best. Really, I do, because despite what you might think, I’m actually a good enough person that I still care about you, even though you have thrown me away like a moldy tangerine.

  Sincerely,

  Margot

  I hit SEND, then glanced at my clock. I had exactly fourteen minutes to get to school. I rummaged frantically through my clothes piles for something to wear, finally deciding on a slightly too baggy blue T-shirt from the Gap and the Parasuco jeans again. (Just because Erika and I weren’t friends anymore didn’t mean the jeans had to get caught in the middle, did it?)

  I ran most of the way to school and made it through the doors just as the second bell was ringing.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Mrs. Collins said as I slid into my seat a moment later. “Margot.” She paused. “I’m glad you could join us.” Everyone turned to look at me. So much for not drawing attention to my “new look.”

  Thankfully, Mrs. Collins was feeling all eager-beaver and didn’t waste any more time embarrassing me. “Today is a special day,” she said. “It marks the beginning of our poetry unit.” Groans of joy emanated from all over the room. Poetry is like the square dance unit of English class. Only a few geeky people actually get into it. Secretly, I happen to be one of them, but I’d never admit it out loud.

  “In the words of the great American poet Robert Frost”—Mrs. Collins pointed to the board, where she’d written a quote in perfectly rounded letters—“‘Poetry makes you remember what you didn’t know you knew.’ If you’re not sure what that means, that’s okay. Just keep it mind as we move through the unit.” She started handing photocopies down the rows. “I’ve divided you into groups of five. I want you to read the poem on the handout and look up the circled vocabulary word within it that corresponds to your group’s number. Define the word, then take turns using it in a sentence. When we’re done, you’ll do a short presentation about its meaning in the poem.” She read off her list. “Group one: Emily, Sarah, George, Simon, and Margot.”

  It figured. Of course, on the day when I looked like a human poodle and I was wearing the same pants for the second day in a row, I’d end up having to do group work and a presentation with Gorgeous George and Sarah J. Why didn’t Mrs. Collins just rent a JumboTron TV, put it in the gym, project my picture onto it, and call a schoolwide assembly so everybody could see a giant close-up of my ugliness?

  I took a deep breath and gathered my courage as we pushed our desks together.

  “Hi, Em,” I said.

  She smiled at me. A good start.

  “Hi, George. I like your shirt,” I tried.

  “Oh. Thanks,” he said, then stared out the window, probably looking for interesting shoes.

  “So, Simon,” I said, “how was your summer?”

  Simon, a skinny, mostly quiet kid, looked up from his binder in surprise.

  “Oh my God, Margot,” Sarah said pointedly as she pulled her chair out and sat down.

  “What?”

  “Everyone knows he has a lisp,” she whispered loudly, “but that doesn’t mean you have to throw it in his face.” She shook her head sadly, like I was too hopeless for words. “There’s a thing called manners. You might want to learn some.”

  Even George was giving me a disapproving look.

  “I—” I started, confused, but a second later I figured it out. So, Simon, how was your summer? Could I have put any more S’s in that sentence? “I didn’t mean it like that! I was just asking if he had a good summer.”

  “Right,” Sarah said. By now Simon’s face had gone completely red.

  “I’m so sorry, Simon.” I clapped my hand over my mouth, realizing I’d done it again. Sarah J. sighed. “I honestly didn’t mean it like that.”

  He nodded once and went back to looking down at his desk like he just wanted the whole thing to be over with.

  Sarah took an aquamarine zipper-closure
binder out of her bag, then squinted at me. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did something happen to your face?”

  “No,” I said, reading the poem Mrs. Collins had handed out so I wouldn’t have to look at her. It was called “Away, Melancholy,” and our vocabulary word was right at the top. MELANCHOLY.

  “Did you burn your eyebrows off or something?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No offense, but whatever you did, it doesn’t look that good.” She wrinkled her nose and kept staring at me. “Are you sure you didn’t burn them?” I felt my cheeks getting hot.

  “Of course she didn’t burn them,” Em spoke up. “She tweezed them.” I shot her a quick, pleading look. She was only going to make it worse. “Everyone does it. And actually,” Em continued, “your brows are looking a bit bushy. You might want to think about getting them shaped.”

  The smile fell from Sarah J.’s lips. “Shut up,” she retorted.

  Em just shrugged. “Okay, be like that. I was just making an observation.”

  Sarah scowled. “Oh, and I guess you know everything about eyebrows, right? You probably learned all about it at modeling school.”

  Without blinking, Em said, “Yeah. But it’s pretty simple. You always want to pluck from underneath and line the arch up with the pupil. Margot had the right idea.” She looked at my eyebrows. “She just overplucked, which is better than not plucking at all, if you ask me.” She shot Sarah an appraising look.

  Oh, this was definitely not good. Did the new girl have a death wish? “We should get started,” I said loudly, trying to change the topic to poetry before any blood could be shed. “I’ll get a dictionary.” I flew across the room, grabbed a Canadian Oxford, raced back, and threw it on the desk. “Why don’t you look up the word, Em?” I suggested.

  “Sure.” She flipped through the pages. “‘Melancholy,’” she read. “‘Noun. A deep sadness or depression.’ But you can also use it as an adjective.” She slammed the dictionary shut loudly. “That’s a cheerful word. How many sentences do we need again?”

  “Five,” I answered. “One each.” We all stared blankly at our notebooks for a few seconds.

  It was Gorgeous George who finally broke the silence—and he broke it by speaking to me! “Does your look hair different?” he asked, but not in a mean way.

  “Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “No offense,” which is what she always said right before saying something really mean, “but it looks kind of retarded at the front.” And then she looked at Em. “But I guess that’s a modeling thing too?”

  “That,” Em said, looking at me, “is just a bad hair day.” Then she pointed her pen at Sarah. “Don’t pretend you don’t have them too.”

  “I use good products,” Sarah J. said. “And at least I don’t dye it some fake color and then let the roots grow out.”

  Normally, I would have been busy obsessing over the fact that Sarah J. was picking on me, yet again—and in front of George, no less—and wondering what it meant that he had noticed that my hair was different. He’d noticed my hair on other days, when it wasn’t different? But right then I was too shocked by the way Em was standing up to Sarah J. on my behalf, and too worried about how she was going to pay for it. If only I’d warned her the day before when I’d had the chance.

  “Let’s just read this, okay?” Simon spoke up, not lisping once. I think we were all so surprised to hear his voice that we were shocked into silence. Everyone looked down at the poem for a few seconds.

  “Hey, where’s Nerdette, anyway?” Sarah said, her attention span for English literature coming to an end as quickly as it had begun. She was talking about Erika-with-a-K, who always got straight A’s in everything but gym.

  “None of your business,” I mumbled. The last thing I needed was for Sarah to find out that my ham stealing had gotten her sent to Sacred Heart, or that we weren’t even friends anymore, which meant I officially had no friends at all except Andrew. “Can we please do the sentences?”

  “Fine,” Sarah snapped. “It makes me feel melancholy when people whose names start with M are so rude.” She shot me a look. “And it also makes me feel melancholy when new people show up and think they’re all that just because they’re from New York, because honestly, they’re not, and that’s the most melancholy part—because they don’t even realize it.”

  Em considered this for a few seconds, tapping her pencil calmly against her notebook. “It’s a run-on sentence,” she said, “but it’ll do. Extra points for using the word melancholy three times. You’re really smart. Okay,” she went on, not pausing long enough for Sarah to make a comeback, “here’s mine: ‘A feeling of melancholy was in the air as the girl mourned the loss of her father.’ What’s yours, Margot?”

  “How about…‘The love song on the radio made the girl feel melancholy because she wasn’t with her true love’?” I looked at Gorgeous George as I said it, but he didn’t react.

  “Sure,” Em answered, moving things along. “And you?” She looked at George.

  “He has a name,” Sarah J. snapped, but Em ignored her.

  “‘The man was melancholy’”—he stared out the window again—“‘because he lost his shoes.’”

  “Good,” Em said. She looked to Simon.

  “‘The boy that thhhat alone felt melancholy,’” Simon supplied.

  “Cool. We’re done,” Em said. “Anybody want to play hangman?” She reached into her backpack and took out a lined notepad.

  Sarah J. glanced at George and raised one eyebrow like, hangman? I had to admit, I hadn’t played hangman since fourth grade. I would have thought that, being from New York, Em might have known a cooler, more current game. Hangman was older than my mom.

  “Dirty hangman,” she added.

  Gorgeous George grinned. “I’m in,” he said.

  “Me too,” I added quickly, eager for any chance to redeem myself in his eyes after the whole accidentally insulting Simon thing.

  “Have fun with your game.” Sarah waved one hand at us in this floppy-wristed way, like she was dismissing us from her royal throne room. “I’m going to write a note to Matt.”

  “Simon?” Em said, ignoring Sarah completely, but he just shook his head. “Okay, then. Go.”

  “E,” I tried.

  Em flashed me a Vanna White smile as she filled the letters in. We went back and forth picking letters until we had this.

  M _ _ _ E _ _ U C _ E _

  “All right, groups. You should be almost ready to present by now,” Mrs. Collins called, holding up her hand for silence. Suddenly, in a flash, I could see it.

  “Oh!” I slapped the desk. At that exact moment, two things happened: the room went completely quiet and I shouted the word—the bad word—the very bad word—the one that rhymes with BROTHER TRUCKER.

  In the hush that followed, the sound of my swear word echoed off the walls.

  “Margot Button,” Mrs. Collins said in a soft, scary voice. “To the office.”

  8

  Em Warner Is an Ultra-Mysterious Hair Genius

  I KNOW I SOMETIMES SAY THE the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that I don’t always “focus on the task at hand,” but the truth was, besides the glazed ham, I’d never really been in serious trouble. So as I sat in the principal’s office, staring at my warped reflection in the supermodern stainless steel counter the secretary sat behind, many questions were racing through my mind. Questions like:

  Do normal people shout swear words at the top of their lungs in English class? And do guys like George think it’s hot? (Somehow, I doubt it.)

  Can you get expelled for something like that?

  Do I really look as bad as I do in my reflection?

  Needless to say, when the secretary finally told me to go in, I was freaked out. I ended up getting lucky, though. Mrs. Vandanhoover was on her way out to some kind of principal’s jamboree with the school board, and didn’t have much time to talk to me. She also completely bought it when, in a stroke of genius, I told her the bad
word slipped out when I stubbed my toe on my desk.

  “Oh. Well. That can happen. But you know, Margot, it’s important to watch your language—especially at school.” She was packing things into her sleek black laptop case. I nodded like I shared her concern.

  “Do you know what I say when I’m frustrated, or when I’ve hurt myself?”

  I knew I wasn’t supposed to answer, so I waited, looking interested.

  “Fish sticks.”

  “Oh.” I nodded as if this were an extra-wise and original piece of advice.

  “I just scrunch up my fists and I say…FISH STICKS!” she shouted, and banged her open palm on the metal desk, which made this awful, hollow, clanging noise. She smiled calmly. “And then I feel so much better. I’d like you to try that, Margot.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will.”

  “Right here, with me.”

  “Okay…” I answered. “Fish sticks?”

  “A little louder.”

  “Fish sticks.”

  “As though you’ve just stubbed your toe.”

  “FISH STICKS!” I yelled. I hoped to God that nobody could hear me in the hallway.

  “That’s it!” Mrs. Vandanhoover shouted, as though I’d accomplished something big. “Off you go.”

  Armed with my new inoffensive swear word, I was in my next class before Mr. Tannen even had time to start our introduction to fractions. Of course, it was the last place on earth I actually wanted to be. Everyone seemed to be staring and whispering.

  While Mr. Tannen was busy helping Cameron Ruling with a problem, Ken walked past my desk to sharpen his pencil. “What did you say, Button?” he asked. I hadn’t said anything. He cupped one hand around his ear and pretended to listen. “Button! I’m outraged at your inappropriateness. My virgin ears will never be the same!”

  Charlie Baker, Maggie, Joyce, and the volleyball girls snickered.

  “What?” He leaned in again. I still hadn’t said anything. “Margot, honestly. You’re offending us all with your potty mouth.” The same people laughed.