Mission (Un)Popular

by Anna Humphrey

  And it turned out my room wasn’t the only thing that got a makeover. When I arrived at school the next morning, it seemed my social life was getting an overhaul too. Everyone was talking about the slips of hot pink paper that had appeared taped to the lockers of a select few.

  “It’s supposed to be some kind of world premiere for Sub-Sonic,” Tamara Smith, a chunky girl with glasses was telling her friend Meredith as I passed. “But only like, twenty people are invited.” Neither of the girls was holding a fuchsia paper, but even if they were envious, they didn’t seem especially disappointed about it—probably because they wouldn’t have expected, in a million years, to be invited. It was exactly the position I would have been in only a few weeks before.

  “Hey,” I said, approaching Em. She handed me an invitation with a flourish. “Thanks.” I took it. The background had this black-and-white faded-out photo of the band, with the lead singer wearing her trademark push-up bra and scowl.

  The Anti-Pork Party

  Hosted by Em Warner & Margot Button

  Your chance to dance to the sounds of

  SubSonic’s unreleased single, “Velocity.”

  Extra exclusive. By invite only!

  Saturday, 7 p.m. till dawn

  554 Lakeshore Drive

  “So?” Em said.

  “It looks good,” I answered.

  “Do you want to do the honors?” She motioned with her head toward Ken and Gorgeous George, who were sitting on the steps, each drinking a Big Gulp–sized Coke. I looked at her uncertainly. Even dressed in the clothes Em had given me—a pair of skinny jeans with the brown belt and the silky gray top—I didn’t feel that confident. Plus, I still hated Ken’s guts. “Here.” She put two invitations in my hand and shoved me toward the guys. “Go talk to Floppy Hair. It’s no big deal. He’s just a normal guy. You’ll thank me for this later.”

  I took small slow steps, as if I were approaching two unpredictable and possibly dangerous wild apes instead of two guys my own age, which maybe wasn’t a bad description for one of them, considering the way Ken was burping the alphabet directly into George’s face.

  “Dude, you’re so nasty!” George was saying as he leaned away. My thoughts exactly.

  “Hey,” I said, hooking one thumb into my pocket. Neither of them noticed me standing there. “Hi,” I said again. “Hello?”

  Ken got to Z and looked up. “Button,” he said. “Would you care for a serenade?”

  “It’s tempting,” I said, my voice full of sarcasm. George kind of laughed, which gave me the courage to go on. “Anyway.” I held out both invitations. “We’re having a party. You might have heard.”

  “‘Velocity’?” George said after reading the invite. “Is this for real?” His deep blue eyes were looking directly into mine, and if only my hair had suddenly gone straight and tangle-free, it would have been exactly like my fantasies. Except, of course, for the fact that Ken was staring at me too.

  “Yeah, don’t mess with George here when it comes to SubSonic,” he warned. “You’ll break his heart. Just like you’ve already broken mine.” Ken put one hand on his chest and flopped back against the step. He was making fun of me, and I felt my cheeks go hot with rage and embarrassment.

  “It’s for real,” I said. I could never break Gorgeous George’s heart. “So, I’ll see you there.” I didn’t say it like a question, and I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, Em-style, I spun around on one foot and walked away, leaving (I hoped) an invisible trail of intrigue behind me. Or at least I would have if I hadn’t accidentally tripped over a crack in the pavement. I heard Ken snort softly, but more important, I heard this: “Hey, shut up, man.” And when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that George was still reading the invite.

  Over the course of the day, the difference between the people who did get an invitation and those who didn’t became kind of obvious. Everyone who did get one was talking about it, and everyone who didn’t was talking about it too—it was just that they were saying totally different things. For example:

  “Why would I want to listen to a CD in someone’s basement when I could be out with Matt?” I overheard Sarah say to Maggie and Joyce as we did basketball practice drills in gym. “It’s stupid. Plus, it’s probably not even the real single.”

  “Exactly,” Maggie agreed, dribbling the ball lazily over to Joyce and placing it in her hands instead of throwing it. Mrs. Rivera, our joke of a gym teacher, was in her office with her favorite soft rock radio station turned up loud, ignoring us. Nobody was putting much effort into the drill, except for Michelle and the volleyball girls, who were always trying to stay in shape. Even Em and I were just walking pointless circles around the gym, occasionally tossing a ball back and forth.

  “I don’t get why everyone’s making such a big deal about this party,” Maggie finished, redoing her ponytail. As she lifted her arms, her gym shirt rode up a little, revealing a roll of stomach fat. I saw Sarah J. raise her eyebrows, but I didn’t think anything of it until later, in the locker room. Maggie was in the bathroom when Sarah J. whispered to Joyce: “I’ve said it before, but now it’s serious. Maggie really needs to cut out the macchiatos with whipped cream.”

  Which, again, I didn’t really think anything of until we were in French class that day. As Mr. Patachou was busy explaining the wonders of the passé composé, Em slid a note onto my desk.

  “Pass this behind you when nobody’s looking,” she whispered. The note had Maggie’s name on it. But as you know by now, I’m nosy. I unfolded it a little. Sarah thinks you’re fat, it read in big loopy letters. There was no signature. Em looked over at me, grinning. I didn’t exactly grin back. I mean, Maggie wasn’t my number-one-all-time-favorite person, but still, the note was mean. And I’d had enough anonymous notes passed to me in my day to know how much it sucked. At the same time, I couldn’t not pass it. Em would know.

  I refolded the note along the creases, passed it back, then watched anxiously out of the corner of my eye as it made its way up the aisle beside me and over to Maggie. She opened it, frowned before glancing around the room, then quickly tucked it into her pocket.

  A minute later, she raised her hand.

  “Mr. Patachou? Puis-je aller aux toilettes?” He handed her a hall pass. She left the room and was gone a full ten minutes. But after the bell rang, I saw her hanging out at her locker with Sarah J. and Joyce, making fun of Em’s eyeliner, so I guessed she’d probably survive.

  * * *

  As I bounded across the yard after school, I couldn’t help noticing how something in the air had changed. Obviously, it was getting colder—that brisk, stick-your-nose-in-the-freezer feeling of October approaching, but that’s not really what I mean.

  Charlie Baker smiled as I passed him; Michelle waved. Even people like Simon Sable and Laura Inglestone, who weren’t invited to the party, seemed to look at me in a new way. “Smell ya later, Button,” Ken shouted from his perch on the bike rack. Well, even that wasn’t so bad, compared to the things he normally said to me.

  “Hey, Margot.” I turned at the sound of one more voice. It was Amir, walking fast to catch up to me, his thumbs hooked under the straps of his heavy backpack. “You going home?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pausing.

  “I’m meeting my family at the community center for Maida’s ballet recital.” He didn’t wait for an invitation. “I’ll walk with you.” I glanced back into the yard to see if Ken was watching, but he and George were busy looking down at his iPod. Still, I started up the sidewalk quickly. Neither Amir or I needed more rumors going around about how we were into each other.

  For a while we just walked in silence. I started counting red cars. I got up to four before he spoke. “So, you’re hosting a party or something, right?” he asked suddenly. I took a deep breath. I’d kind of been dreading this moment.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just going to be a few people at Em’s house, though.”

  “Oh. Cool, I guess.” We walked in silence a littl
e longer, then he looked straight at me. “Do you really like that girl?” he asked.

  “Em? Of course I do.”

  “Why?”

  It was such a weird question. Amir liked Andrew and Mike because they shared a passion for ketchup-flavored snacks, zombie movies, and video games. When you’re a guy, it’s as simple as that. But when you’re a girl, it’s more complicated. First, there are friends like Erika-with-a-K, who you like because you have a history that spans a million sleepover parties, and includes a thousand inside jokes, plus fourteen tons of nacho cheese eaten over the years.…But there are also friends like Em, who are new, exciting, and spontaneous. They take you places you never thought you’d see, like the inside of a really cool party, just as one example…and they can make you into something you never thought you’d be. But I knew that was all stuff a guy like Amir probably wouldn’t get.

  “She’s nice,” I said instead, pulling the sleeves of my green army jacket down over my hands.

  “I don’t think she’s nice.”

  I turned to him. “You don’t even know Em. How would you know if she’s nice or not?”

  “I just noticed. She kind of tries to keep you away from Andrew. Me and Mike, too.” He picked a big stick up from under a tree and started dragging it along the ground. “Shireen had a friend like that last year. This girl Monique turned her against all her old friends, then she ended up dumping her the second she found someone else to hang out with. Girls are evil like that. They make the dragons of Elron Woods look like bunny rabbits.”

  Shireen was Amir’s older sister. She was in tenth grade at Sterling High. I didn’t know much about her except that she got a poem published in a magazine once—something that had always made me look up to her and assume she was super smart. But then again, if she’d really fallen for a friend like that, maybe she wasn’t as brilliant as I’d imagined.

  “Not all girls are like that,” I said defensively. “And Em’s definitely not.” I probably should have stopped right there, but I didn’t want him thinking such bad things about Em after she’d done so much for me. “She might even invite you to her party,” I went on, unwisely. “I mean, the guest list is really full, but if she can fit three more.”

  “Really?” Amir looked surprised.

  “Really.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t even know who that band is anyway. SubTerrain.”

  “SubSonic.”

  “SubSomething.” He ran the stick along someone’s picket fence. “But that’s nice of her, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  “Andrew will be excited.”

  I hesitated. “He will?” I couldn’t picture Andrew liking a band like SubSonic either…so, obviously, if he would be excited about getting invited to Em’s party, there had to be another reason. “Why?” I asked.

  “Just because.”

  We were approaching the community center now, and I could see Amir’s family waiting out front. Little girls in tutus, fall jackets, and running shoes were all over the sidewalk, giggling and spinning while they waited for the doors to open. I spotted Amir’s little sister, Maida, right away. She was easy to find since she was the only mini-ballerina wearing a head scarf.

  All the women in Amir’s family wore them. I spotted his mom and older sister, Shireen, in the crowd as well.

  “Just because why?” I pressed. I wish now that I hadn’t pushed Amir, but I guess I wanted to know how Andrew felt for sure.

  “Why do you think?” He put the question back to me with a meaningful look. I didn’t say anything. Thankfully, Maida ran up to us just then, coming to a jumping stop that made her tutu spring up like the petals of a rose.

  “You were almost late!” she said, grabbing Amir’s hand excitedly. “It’s time to go in! Right now!” A few people were starting to file into the community center, but Amir’s mom, older sister, brother, and father, all came over, not seeming in any rush.

  “Hello, Margot,” his mom said, giving me a wide smile.

  “Hi.” I tried to act natural, but Amir’s family made me nervous, even though they were always totally nice to me. I think it was because I couldn’t stop staring at their clothes—his mom’s and sisters’ bright head scarves, especially. It’s not that I thought they were weird or anything, but I couldn’t help wondering: what would it be like to have something so obvious like that, that made you so different from everyone else, but so the same as your family? Probably nice, in a way. Nobody would ever ask if you were adopted…not to mention the side benefit that you’d never have to worry about how bad your hair looked.…

  “How’s school going this year, huh?” Amir’s mom asked me. I knew she was politely referring to the glazed ham, and hinting that I could always come talk to her if I needed to. I still had the embarrassing lavender-scented note she’d sent to school with Amir, tucked into my top drawer. Not that I ever really planned to call her.

  “Good, thanks,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” I looked off down the sidewalk. “I babysit my sisters after school.”

  His mother nodded, then put her hands on Maida’s bouncing shoulders. “Okay then, Miss Ballerina. Let’s go.” Maida grinned, jumped a few more times, then started for the stairs. “Bye, Margot,” Amir’s mom said. “Take care. I hope we’ll see you again soon.” The rest of the family waved and started to follow—everyone except Amir, who was looking at me with worry.

  “You’re not going to tell Andrew I said any of that stuff, though, right?” he asked. “About him, you know”—he seemed too mortified to get the words out—“liking you,” he finally managed.

  And if I thought I’d been embarrassed talking to his mom, now my cheeks felt really flushed. “No,” I said, looking down at the ground. Obviously, I wouldn’t.

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Amir said, turning.

  “Yeah, see you,” I answered.

  Then he jogged up the community center steps behind his family, leaving me feeling weirdly scared and alone as I started to wind my way down the sidewalk, dodging small bouncing ballerinas. All I could think about was Andrew, and how on earth I was going to make things right.

  20

  I Find Myself Falling, but Not in Love…

  I THINK IT’S WEIRD HOW YOU can’t choose who you love. I mean, you can choose pretty much everything else in life. Chocolate or vanilla? Walk or take the bus? Sitcoms or the shopping network? But the really important stuff, like love—it’s totally out of your control. Also, it’s totally confusing.

  When I got to school the next morning I found Andrew sitting alone on a bench, bent over an open notebook. I knew I had to talk to him and somehow let him know I didn’t think of him like that. Not really. What happened in his basement last June had been nice, but my heart belonged to Gorgeous George—especially now that things were changing for me at school, and I might actually have a chance with him. I knew Andrew would understand in the long run. He’s the most understanding person I know.…

  “Finishing your homework?” I asked, sinking down a few feet away from him, planning to start off casual and find a way into the important stuff.

  “I wish.” He looked up, sticking his pencil behind his ear. “My mom asked me to write a letter to my grandma in Barbados. She says it will light up her life.”

  I leaned over to read what he had so far.

  Dear Grandma. I am fine. How are you? How is lawn bowling? I hope it’s fun. I grinned. “Well, I know that would light up my life.”

  Andrew gave an exaggerated sigh before sitting back. “What do you think I should write?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Tell her something exciting.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again, then I took the paper, grabbed the pencil from behind his ear, erased his last two sentences, and started to read aloud as I wrote. “How about: ‘Dear Grandma. How are you? I am fine’?”

  “I think I already had that,” he pointed out.

/>   “Shhh. Give me a sec, okay?” I cleared my throat. “‘Yesterday, my class went on a field trip to the zoo.’”

  “We didn’t go on a field trip.”

  “Like she’s going to know! Now, if you don’t mind…” I brushed some eraser bits off the paper. Or at least we tried to go to the zoo, but an alien spacecraft landed on the highway directly in front of the bus. Everyone was very frightened. Andrew was leaning in now, watching me write. But not me, because, thankfully, I spent the summer learning how to lawn bowl. I picked a giant boulder up off a nearby hill and rolled it right over the spacecraft, flattening it like a buckwheat pancake and saving the entire world. All the kids yelled “STRIKE,” and it was awesome. Yours truly, Andrew. He was laughing now. P.S., I added, I just made that all up. I hope you are fine.

  “You’re kind of weird, Margot Button, you know that, right?” he said, smiling.

  “Yeah. But at least I’m not boring.”

  “No. You’re definitely not boring.” He reached out to take his pencil back, but my hand was still on it. Our fingers overlapped, and we both looked down and froze. A second later I let go. But it was a second too late. Sarah, Maggie, and Joyce just so happened to be walking past, and Sarah stopped and stared.

  “Sorry, Andrew,” she called out. “Don’t get your hopes up. You must have heard by now that she’s a lesbian.” When I ignored her, she narrowed her eyes, adding, “And no offense, Margot, but your eyebrows still look retarded.”