Project (Un)Popular Book #1

by Kristen Tracy

  I actually like Derby now. His mom came to my house to make sure we weren’t going to make him look ridiculous or do anything terrible to his photo. She brought up what happened to Rose and her front teeth. (That’s rotten.) I just want you to know that I would never do that. I am a serious artist. My photos matter. All I want is for Derby to look like his true self. (But with cuter hair and no weird clothes.) Derby deserves a second chance. He doesn’t have to stay a geek forever. I hope he doesn’t get punished. He just wanted his picture taken. He’s basically innocent.

  —

  I was pretty sure I’d reached a stopping point, but I wasn’t completely sure. I wanted to read back over it again, but I also needed to use the bathroom. Was that allowed? I wondered.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “Yes?” Ms. Boz said, turning away from her computer.

  “Am I allowed to go to the bathroom?” I asked.

  If she said I wasn’t, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  “Here’s a hall pass,” Ms. Boz said. “Come right back.”

  I grabbed the hall pass, which was actually a long wooden ruler, and also took my answers with me. I didn’t want Principal Hunt to come across my pages and read them thinking I was done.

  I felt nervous walking the empty halls. I thought everybody was looking at me again. I focused on getting to the bathroom and not making eye contact with anybody. I hadn’t even made it into the stall when I heard a voice that made me flip around with lightning speed.

  “Don’t say too much,” the voice whispered.

  It was Anya! What was she doing here? How did she know I was in the bathroom?

  “If you’re wondering how I knew you were in here, you walked right by my class,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. I probably should have guessed that.

  “I’ve already talked to Leo and Venice,” Anya said. “Leo is taking full responsibility for the chain. So just say that.”

  But I knew that Anya hated me. So I didn’t really think I could believe anything she said to me in this bathroom. I tried to tell her this in a tactful way. “You are probably being evil and lying to me right now. I know you hate me.”

  Anya flipped her bob and groaned. “I’m not an idiot. Even though I’m mad at you, I can’t let you get in trouble. If you get in trouble, all of Yearbook gets in trouble. I’m trying to save everybody.”

  I looked down at my papers. What Anya was saying actually sounded pretty reasonable. She glanced down at my papers too and she looked really alarmed. “Stop writing. Seriously. Everybody else wrote three or four sentences and they’re back in class. What are you doing? And why did you bring it into the bathroom?”

  I looked down at the many pages I’d filled. “I’m writing the exact truth.”

  Anya covered her mouth in horror. “Stop doing that!”

  But I shook my head. Because it felt really freeing to be doing that.

  “Here’s the deal,” Anya said. “The less they know, the smaller the punishment. The more you give them, the worse it gets.”

  But I didn’t even know if I should trust Anya. Because the longer I stood in the bathroom looking at her, the more I’d started thinking that she had ratted on us about the ladder. And that she’d never been my friend. And that she’d been using me ever since she met me. Because all she wanted was to make a yearbook with her friends and people she liked in it. And then it hit me. In addition to writing the exact truth, I started saying the exact truth.

  “Anya, I’m beginning to think that a big part of why I’m in this situation is because I listened to you,” I said.

  Anya looked over her shoulder really nervously. “I can’t stay here too long. If I get caught talking to you, I’ll get in trouble.”

  But it really annoyed me to hear that, because I was already in trouble.

  “Did you tell Mr. Zeller we had his ladder?” I asked. “Leo said you did.”

  Anya looked really horrified when I said that. And that was when I realized it was true. Anya had set us up. Leo wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. He just understood how terrible Anya could be.

  “You are so awful,” I said. “I’m going to include that in my answer.” I turned and hurried into the stall.

  “Wait,” Anya said, slipping into the stall behind me and closing the door. “I never confessed that I did. You can’t include that.”

  But I turned my back to her and faced the toilet. “I can include my suspicions.”

  And then Anya gasped. “How many pages have you written? Have you gone insane?”

  But I hadn’t gone insane. I was coming clean.

  “You should leave,” I said. “It’s weird that you’re in here with me.”

  “I think you’re having a weird moment,” Anya said. “Seriously. I’m worried about you. Because you think you’re fixing things. But actually you’re just making a bigger mess. You should really throw everything away and start over. And keep it simpler.”

  I couldn’t believe that Anya O’Shea had tracked me down in the bathroom to lecture me on how to answer my three questions. I could feel her reading over my shoulder.

  “Hey,” she said. “Is that my name?”

  Duh. Of course it was her name. “Yes,” I said. “Because you’re part of this.” I finally turned around to face her. We were standing so close I could feel Anya’s breath. And it made me feel really brave to do this. Because Anya wasn’t acting totally bossy and mean now. She was acting nervous.

  “You’re a snitch?” she asked. “Great. That’s going to really help us gel in Yearbook.”

  “Just stop it,” I said, moving past her and exiting the stall. “You can’t keep bossing me around. I bet Leo was right. You picked sixth graders to work with because you thought we’d be sheep.”

  “You need to stop listening to Leo and go back to the principal’s office and pick up a pen and start crossing out my name.”

  “No!” I yelled. “That’s not what needs to happen. I’m going to tell you what needs to happen.”

  Then Anya puffed herself up and got huffy and said, “Fine. Tell me.”

  And then I didn’t know what to say. Because I’d never yelled at anybody before.

  “I’m waiting,” Anya said.

  And then I just said how I felt. “Shut up and leave,” I said. “I need to pee.” And I knew I was being rude. But I was also really sick of being tricked and bullied. It sort of felt like Anya was ruining my life. Also, I really couldn’t hold it much longer.

  “You’re telling me to shut up?” Anya asked. She sounded very surprised.

  “Yes,” I said. “Because I need to finish here and go back and finish these,” I said, waving the papers around. “Also, I’d really appreciate it if I could have my nickname back. I don’t think Javier even looks like a Party. I should be Party.”

  Anya started backing up toward the door. “Okay,” Anya said. “I’ll grant your wish and I’ll shut up and leave. I’ll even let you be Party again. But you’re making your own punishment way worse. It might feel better now to think you’re being honest. But that’s not how Principal Hunt is going to feel. You’re going to look like a sneaky little backstabber. And she’ll see that. People value loyalty. And you haven’t been loyal to anyone. Not Venice. Not Derby. Not me. Not even yourself.”

  I stayed really tense the whole time she was talking so her words would bounce off me. But after Anya left I started to cry. Because even though she was being mean, she was saying somewhat true things. I had backstabbed Venice. And I’d backstabbed Leo, even though he deserved it. And I’d backstabbed Anya a little bit too. But I didn’t think I’d backstabbed Derby. Because I told him I was going to get him in What’s Hot. And I was doing everything I could to deliver on that promise. Sure, I might have initially picked him because I thought he couldn’t make it into the section, but after spending time with him and his mom I’d come to feel differently about Derby. He didn’t deserve the life he had. I wanted him to have a better one.

&nb
sp; After I was done in the bathroom, I walked back down the hall and grabbed some tissues from a box on Principal Hunt’s desk. Was I making a mistake? Had I said too much? I didn’t know. But I also didn’t care. Sixth grade was killing me. I couldn’t keep this up. I needed a normal life again. After I blew my nose I stared at the papers. Tears dripped onto them and started to smear the ink. I folded them in half.

  I don’t know how long I spent in that room melting down and pulling myself back together. I just know when Principal Hunt finally came back in she looked totally surprised to see me.

  “Have you been in here the whole time?” she asked. “Did you miss lunch?”

  And I didn’t even try to read back through all the pages I’d written. I just handed her the fresh, inky, tear-stained stack of them. “I did miss lunch. Because I needed to finish.”

  She took the papers from me and her eyes got really big when she saw that I’d written five and a half pages.

  “Is this part of your homework?” she asked.

  But I shook my head. I felt so proud of what I’d done.

  “I’ve answered your three questions,” I said. “There was a lot of stuff you needed to know.”

  “I see,” she said, reaching for her stapler. “I’ll read these as soon as I can. Until then please return to class. We’ll meet soon to discuss the outcome.”

  “Okay,” I said. Because that sounded reasonable, because she’d used the word outcome and not punishment.

  And I don’t know if I can explain how good I felt leaving Principal Hunt’s office. Finally, all that lying and planning was behind me. All I needed to do was go to class, do my homework, hang out with Venice, and enjoy Yearbook. Yes, it was possible that I’d get my lanyard suspended for a little while. But I figured I probably deserved some punishment. I mean, I’d been totally dishonest for weeks.

  I finished school that day feeling as light as a puffy cloud. In Science, when I learned about animal vision, my mind didn’t wander and start thinking about my problems at all. Because by writing them all down it was like I’d gotten them out of me. I stayed totally focused when I learned about how a horse had one terrible blind spot but amazing peripheral vision. And how Mitten Man probably had red-green color blindness, but could see great in dim light. And the rest of the day continued to feel that way too. I was in a stress-free learning zone. And I stayed in the zone even when I got to Idaho History and Mr. Falconer told us he wasn’t through grading our brutal quizzes from last week. Plus, I didn’t freak out when he reminded me about my topographic map that I hadn’t officially started. I was done feeling panicked and awful all the time. It was time to chill out and learn. That was right. My life had turned a corner. It was time for me to start having a much better time.

  Stuck

  When I got home, I thought my mom was going to know all about what had happened at school. But she didn’t seem to know anything. Because she was sitting at the kitchen table totally focused on a box of rice.

  “You’re never going to guess what happened today,” she said.

  And rather than try to guess, I tried to keep being honest. “You’re right. I can’t.”

  “I dropped my phone,” she said.

  That was terrible news. Because my dad didn’t believe in buying the protection plan, so this was probably going to cost her a ton of money.

  “Did your screen break?” I asked. “Because that doesn’t make it ruined.” And then I was prepared to tell my mom about a lot of kids at school who had broken screens but still used their phones with hardly any problem. As long as it wasn’t so broken that you got broken glass on your face.

  “I didn’t drop it on the ground,” she said. “I dropped it in water.”

  Yikes. That was terrible news. Because everybody knew that doing that was the worst thing you could ever do to it.

  “Bummer,” I said. “Did it fall in the sink?”

  Because my mom was always soaking pots.

  “Not exactly,” my mom said.

  “Did you drop it in your lemon water?” I asked. Because ever since my mom had quit drinking diet soda she’d started drinking giant glasses of fizzy water with lemon, and I could see a phone fitting inside one of those.

  She looked sort of embarrassed. She nestled her phone in a plastic container filled with dry rice.

  “Where did you drop it?” I asked. Because I started to worry that maybe she’d gone to the public swimming pool without me.

  “It fell in the toilet,” she said as she popped the lid on the container.

  “Gross,” I said. Because I couldn’t believe my mom had reached into the toilet to get it back. “You should probably throw it away now.”

  My mother looked shocked when I said this. But she shouldn’t have. Once I dropped a five-dollar bill in the toilet and I flushed it. Because my other choice was saving toilet money. And that felt very unsanitary.

  “I powered it off and took out the SIM card,” my mom said. “So there’s still a chance. I’m going to leave it in rice for forty-eight hours and see what happens.”

  “You better remember to throw that rice away,” I said. “Because that’s disgusting.”

  “Don’t worry,” my mom said.

  But that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear her promise to throw out the rice.

  “Did this happen in our toilet?” I asked. Because suddenly that felt like important information.

  “No,” she said. “It happened at the mall.”

  And then my eyes got really big. Because dropping your phone in a mall toilet seemed a million times worse than dropping it in your personal toilet.

  “You should really toss it, Mom,” I said. “Seriously. Have you ever stopped and looked closely at a mall toilet?”

  My mom sort of glared at me when I said that. “As a matter of fact, I have,” she said. “Just this afternoon.”

  She picked up the plastic container filled with rice and her toilet phone and put it on top of the refrigerator. She seemed totally stressed out and overwhelmed. I felt bad for her. Because I hadn’t felt that way in hours.

  “Don’t you have a map to work on?” she asked.

  And I didn’t even get offended that she was so snippy with me. Because losing your phone in a mall toilet was a true tragedy. Because even if you saved it, it would never feel the same. It would feel like a phone that had fallen into a public toilet.

  When I got to my room I decided that instead of starting my map, I’d rather call Piper. Because I hadn’t heard from her in forever. And I really wanted to tell her all about what I’d done today. Because I thought she would be pretty impressed with my spunk and honesty.

  Me: I feel like a totally new person.

  Piper: Is this Perry?

  Me: It is. But it’s like I’m new and improved.

  Piper: Have you been eating a bunch of sugar? You sound funny.

  Me: It’s because I did something amazing today.

  Piper: Victor said he saw you at the gym. Did you join a gym?

  Me: No. When did you see Victor?

  Piper: We cross at parties and stuff. Hey. So what’s your news? Bobby is coming over to make me waffles.

  Piper was so lucky to have a waffle-making boyfriend. I sat down on my bed and took a deep breath. Because I had so much to tell my sister. “So what’s the last thing I told you about Anya?”

  “The girl who wears the crocodile belt?” Piper asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, if that’s the same girl Victor is training, you need to totally avoid her. She’s psycho.”

  I was a little surprised to hear that. Because it had taken me forever to figure that out. And I had class with her every day. “Did Victor tell you that?” I asked. He was one of those people who had giant muscles and brains.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I hate spreading gossip. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

  “Um,” I said. “She’s the photography editor for Yearbook. She’s going to be in my life for
a long time.”

  “Yeah,” Piper said. “Have you thought about dropping out of Yearbook?”

  This conversation was making me feel pretty horrible. “No,” I said, very firmly. “Yearbook is important to me.”

  “Is this what you called to tell me?” Piper asked.

  “No,” I said. “I wanted to catch you up with what’s going on with me. You’ll never believe what’s happened.” And then I spent the next five minutes telling Piper about my week. Leo. Venice. Derby. Derby’s mom. The Fletcher photo. The ladder. Mr. Zeller. The chain. Principal Hunt’s deer head. My confessions. Anya’s rage. Being dunzo. Saying everything as fast as I did in one quick story made the drama seem very intense. Then I waited for Piper’s response. And I waited. And I finally said, “Piper? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Okay,” Piper said. “You never told me Anya was super psycho.”

  “It’s like I just figured it out,” I said.

  “Well, if you’re not dropping out of Yearbook, the best thing you can do is avoid being alone with her and ride it out.”

  “Is that code for something?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “But I need your expert advice. Help me,” I said. “After somebody says you’re dunzo but then stays in your life, what do you do?”

  “Perry,” Piper said. “I can’t tell you what to do. Only you can solve your problems. That’s how life works.”

  And I gasped when Piper said that. Because she should have told me that weeks ago, before I counted on her guidance to destroy Leo and save myself.

  “Okay,” Piper said. “You sound totally freaked out.”

  “I am,” I said. “I need you to be more helpful. A super-psycho person has said we’re dunzo, but she isn’t acting like we’re dunzo and it’s a total nightmare. And I still need to make Derby popular.”