Project (Un)Popular Book #1

by Kristen Tracy

“Go back to your table, and start setting your photography goals,” Ms. Kenny said. “I expect you to turn in your new calendar by the end of class.”

  I walked back to my table and sat down two seats away from Venice. Because I didn’t want to crowd her.

  “Okay,” Javier said. “I’m ready to go gangbusters on this calendar.”

  I watched Anya roll her eyes and scowl at Javier. I almost felt bad for him. Because Anya was probably going to make his life miserable. I glanced at Venice. She smiled at me. I couldn’t figure out why she was smiling at me if she was also mad at me. Maybe her note wasn’t hate mail. I mean, why should I assume the worst?

  “Perry?” Javier said. “Perry?”

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “You’re not writing anything,” he said. “I’m assigning the football and basketball games. Also, we’re going to photograph the teachers Wednesday during lunch. You need to write that down.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I mean, in a perfect world, we’d shoot them this week, but, well, you guys are all in detention and I don’t think I could do it myself.”

  Anya’s mouth dropped open and she glared at Javier and then looked over at Venice and me. It did seem sort of rude to rub it in our faces that we had detention.

  Then Javier hijacked everything and started going day by day until Thanksgiving, outlining all the work he expected from us. It was sort of a nightmare. I mean, he started giving us assignments that were due on Saturdays.

  “That’s a gigantic workload,” Venice said when Javier mentioned that we should turn in all student portraits, including retakes, before Columbus Day.

  “Things will slow down after winter break,” he argued.

  “How are things going over here?” Ms. Kenny asked as she pulled up a chair.

  “We’re nailing down the data,” Javier said. “And divvying up the work.”

  But I didn’t think that was what was happening. I thought we were just being bossed around. Luckily, my eyes started to wander and I noticed Venice writing something.

  Have you read my note?

  I shook my head.

  DON’T

  But that made me really want to read it.

  Meet me in the craft corner.

  I looked up at her and smiled.

  As soon as we met in the craft corner she gave me a hug.

  “This is a nightmare,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. Javier will probably do most of the work,” I said. Because it seemed like he was willing to do that.

  “Derby looked terrible today. Even his butt,” Venice said. “It’s like he wants to be a dweeb.”

  And it was like Venice finally understood that Derby wasn’t going to change. “Derby is Derby,” I said.

  Venice gave me another hug. “When Anya showed me those texts I thought we were dunzo.”

  I stopped hugging her and looked her right in the face. “Don’t even say that word.”

  She chewed her lip a little bit and then Venice asked me a terrible question. “All that stuff Anya said about you, how much of it was true?”

  I patted Venice on the back. “Anya is psycho,” I said. “Let’s just forget about all that stuff.”

  “But the texts you sent,” Venice said. “Those were real, right?”

  And I really hated having to admit that they were. What was I thinking? How could I treat my best friend like that?

  “They were,” I said. “I’m sorry. I think I got manipulated by a psycho person.” And I wasn’t trying to dodge responsibility when I said that. I really thought that was the case.

  “Yeah,” Venice said. “We should probably avoid Anya.”

  “Totally,” I said. “Do you forgive me?”

  Then Venice said the best words ever. “Of course.” And she gave me a final hug.

  “What’s in your pockets? How come you’re making crunching sounds?” Venice asked.

  “Hate notes,” I said.

  “Don’t read them,” Venice said. “I bet Anya wrote most of them.”

  I didn’t know what to do with them. I figured I’d throw them away at home, so that nobody else would see them. Nobody’s life needed hate mail. People need the opposite.

  Detention

  As soon as I arrived at detention I felt out of place. I didn’t recognize the three boys at the back. They must’ve been eighth graders. Because they were huge and one of them either had a very dirty lip or a mustache. The only other people in the room were Anya and Venice. They sat on opposite sides of the room. I felt frozen in fear. Should I sit next to Venice? Or were there rules about that? What was she reading? Why wouldn’t she look up at me?

  “Perry Hall,” Mr. Hackett said in a loud booming voice. “We have assigned seats in the classroom. You can take your sack lunch and sit in front of Daren.”

  But I sort of wanted to learn more about my punishment. I mean, what were the rules? Shouldn’t Mr. Hackett tell me what I was allowed to do while I sat in front of Daren? Also, who was Daren?

  “Um,” I said, looking around.

  “She doesn’t know who Daren is,” Anya said in a snotty voice.

  But I actually found that helpful. Because it was true. The boy with the mustache raised his hand. And so I carefully walked toward him.

  “You better not fart on me,” he said.

  Nobody had ever said anything so rude to me before. Especially not in front of a teacher. It was almost like he was expecting me to pass gas. I sat down in the chair and looked up to the front of the room.

  Poot. Poot. Poot.

  I felt my chair moving and flipped around.

  “She’s farting,” Daren said. “It smells like rotten eggs back here.”

  I wanted to die. He was acting like a bully. Was this what detention meant? Was I going to have to spend five lunches in here with these goons?

  “Stop moving her chair,” Venice snapped. “That is so old.”

  And even though we were in a terrible place surrounded by terrible people, eating soggy sandwiches, at least we were on the same team again.

  “Here are the rules,” Mr. Hackett said. “Eat your lunch in silence. No talking. No disruptive noises. You can quietly work at your desks until lunch is over. If you need something, raise your hand and wait for me to call on you. Any violation of these rules will result in additional detentions.”

  He sounded like he meant business. I opened my sack lunch and pulled out my sandwich. I needed to remember not to pack my lunch last in my backpack so it would be on top of my books, because basically my entire lunch was flatter than it should’ve been.

  I heard everybody chewing. I could even hear Daren swallow. It was that quiet in the room. It didn’t take me long to finish my lunch, because I wasn’t very hungry and I hadn’t packed much. I felt super jealous of Anya when she pulled out a package of mini doughnuts. She was so smart. Because eating those would make detention feel a thousand times better. I glanced over at Venice to see how she was handling things and noticed she was reading a comic book. It bummed me out to realize that everybody else had done a much better job planning for detention. The only thing I’d brought was what I’d already eaten. I guess I hadn’t realized how punishing sitting in silence with rule-breaking yo-yos would be. I started to fold my chip bag into very small squares.

  I heard somebody raise a hand.

  “Ryker,” Mr. Hackett said. “Do you have a problem?”

  “The new girl is folding her chip bag and it’s making a disruptive noise,” Ryker said.

  That really surprised me. Because I thought my chip bag was making a medium amount of noise.

  “Please throw out your trash,” Mr. Hackett said.

  But I didn’t even move. Because I wasn’t totally sure he was talking to me. Because didn’t we all have trash?

  “Now, Perry,” Mr. Hackett said. “If I have to ask you again, you get another day of detention.”

  I heard Anya make a happy smirking sound. It really felt awful to feel h
er rooting for my downfall. Because even though I thought she was a psycho control freak, I didn’t want her life to get stuck in detention forever. As I walked to throw my trash away, I realized that getting sent to the garbage can was actually a good thing. Because as I walked I heard a crunching sound and I remembered all the notes in my pocket. I’d never felt so lucky to have something to read. Even if some of it might be hateful messages that contained rude images.

  I hurried back to my desk and pulled out the first note.

  This note did not contain any rude images. And I was pretty sure it was from Sailor, because she dotted her i’s with clouds. And so did the author of this note.

  I pulled out the next note and it was the terrible one with the fart bubble, so I just moved on to the next note. This one was the one from Venice.

  When you lie to me over and over again and refuse to answer your phone or respond to your emails it makes me feel like our friendship is a joke. We’re DUNZO!

  And even though Venice and I had already made up, it made me a little sad to read that note. She should have never ever written the word dunzo to me. I looked up and frowned at her back.

  The next message looked very dark on the outside. When I unfolded it I realized that it was a picture. I got worried that somebody had image-edited a photo of me to look ridiculous or freakishly ugly. But it wasn’t a picture of me at all. It was a picture of Derby. What I saw totally blew me away. It was a terrible picture of him. I mean, his face looked all twisty with fear. And one of his shoulders was out of focus because it looked like he was turning to run. And Anya was standing right next to him laughing. And there was a giant snake in it. And at the bottom I could see it was printed from a Split Pic account. And that it had over three hundred hits. And somebody had written on it.

  I flipped around in my chair and glared at Anya. She’d done this. She’d recognized that Derby was actually becoming a tiny bit more popular and she couldn’t take it. She realized that a bunch of people might actually vote for him to be the What’s Hot sixth grader and she got extra mean. I wanted to confront her with the photo right then and there. But I didn’t want to break any detention rules and end up with more detention.

  “Perry,” Mr. Hackett said with his booming voice. “Turn back around.”

  And I was so startled that I almost fell on the floor. I could hear Anya snicker again and it just crushed me. Because why did she care so much about making unpopular kids stay unpopular? Couldn’t she relax and let Derby have a moment of glory?

  I kept flipping through the notes. And I actually think Sailor wrote more than one. Anya probably told her to. But I didn’t even care anymore. I kept thinking about that awful picture I’d taken of Derby. What an unlucky person. He looked so awkward. It was almost like he was a cartoon. I kept looking at the picture. It was amazingly bad. I couldn’t even believe I’d taken it.

  When I had two notes left I felt pretty relieved I hadn’t gotten more offensive images. Then I read them.

  I can get you more skate passes if you want them.

  And my mom moved to a house near yours.

  I practically follow you home every day.

  If you want to walk together we could.

  That was so crazy for Hayes to write me that. Because if I hadn’t used any of the skate passes he’d given me, why should he be giving me more? And he basically confessed to stalking me. I was totally going to run this by Piper. Because I had no idea what to do when it came to guys. Especially when they wrote me notes.

  When I got to the last note I almost thought it was a joke.

  I need your help. Do for me what you did for Derby. People like him now. I want to know what that feels like. I know you’re trying to get a great picture of him in the yearbook. I want that too. Please. Drea Quan

  It was nuts that Drea had written to me. Because I’d probably made Derby’s life worse. Yes, maybe a few more people liked him. But thousands of people were looking at a terrible picture and laughing right at his scaredy-cat face. I folded up all the notes. I needed to start accepting that nerds were nerds for a reason. And there was no way to change that. And Drea needed to accept that too. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t help anyone.

  Sixth grade was so much harder than I thought it would be. And now that Javier was part of the photography team and setting the schedule it was only going to get harder. When the bell finally rang I didn’t even move. I just felt so sad and stunned by everything. It was like no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t change anything. No matter how hard I tried, Anya always got what she wanted.

  What If

  “You are in so much trouble,” Piper said when I swung open the front door after school. She walked toward me in her wedge sandals, yoga pants, and flowy blue shirt.

  “Hasn’t Mom calmed down?” I asked. Because I thought her meeting with the principal had been in the morning.

  “She did, and then the principal emailed her this. She’s on the phone with her now.” Piper lifted her own phone and showed me the dreaded Derby snake photo. It was up to five thousand hits.

  Piper looked at me like she felt sorry for me. “How was detention?”

  But I thought that was a pretty terrible subject to talk about.

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “My world is crumbling.”

  “Yeah. I tried to explain things to Mom so she’d understand what you were trying to do,” Piper said. “That you wanted to rescue that nerdy kid.”

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Getting that photo was a game changer,” she said. “Now Mom thinks you’re mean.”

  “But I’m not,” I said. “I know the snake photo sucks. I didn’t send that out. I tried to take an awesome photo of Derby. I mean, he looked pretty good. And if the janitor hadn’t interrupted us, he’d have looked totally awesome.”

  “Ladders. Chains. Janitor. Nerds. Detention. Your life sounds hard,” Piper said. “Sixth grade wasn’t like this for me at all.”

  I just stared at Piper. I couldn’t believe she’d come all this way to insult me. My life was bad enough.

  “We dressed Derby in cool clothes. And we had amazing props,” I tried to explain. “We were really close to making this whole thing work.”

  Piper pointed to a picture of her wearing her track uniform hanging on the wall. They’d won the state championship that year and she was standing next to a giant gold trophy.

  “How come you don’t want to be in track?” she asked. “Those girls were awesome. You need to drop Yearbook.”

  I stared at the photo of my thin-legged sister in her yellow shorts. “But running makes me feel like I’m going to die,” I explained.

  “Yeah, it always feels like that until the endorphins kick in. You just need to run more,” Piper said. “Seriously, Yearbook is killing you.”

  And I sort of knew that Piper was right. But I wasn’t a quitter. Was I? I couldn’t drop Yearbook. Could I?

  I took Piper’s phone and really studied the picture. It was pretty clear that Derby was going to be a nerd forever. And this picture sealed that fate. And it wasn’t just a terrible picture of Derby. It was a terrible picture in general. I mean, in addition to Derby’s knobby shoulder, the diamond design on the snake was completely out of focus.

  “I know that psycho Anya probably sent it,” Piper added.

  I looked at Piper. It felt really amazing to have her standing in the living room with me. I had no idea that Piper could be such a supportive and awesome sister.

  “As soon as Mom gets off the phone, I need to pick up my soup and hit the road,” Piper said.

  Which was sad to hear because I wanted her to stay and help me fix my life.

  “We’re voting for What’s Hot on Friday,” I said. “Do you think I should try to take another picture of Derby and put that on a Split Pic account and see if that helps anything?”

  Piper looked horrified. “You need to stop taking pictures of Derby immediately. Seriously. This kid lacks all photogenic qualities. And all
your meddling has only made his life worse.”

  That was a harsh reality check.

  “I guess I need to ride it out,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Piper said. “And call Venice. I mean, now is the time where you should be leaning on your friends.”

  “Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “We can’t talk. We’re grounded from our phones.”

  “Use a landline,” Piper said with a shrug.

  And that seemed pretty brilliant. Even if it meant I’d have to find Venice’s home phone number.

  When my mom came into the living room after finishing her phone call with Principal Hunt, she looked a little dazed. “I am so glad middle school only lasts three years,” she said.

  “College is way worse than middle school,” Piper said. “It costs a ton and you have to pay your own electric bills.”

  My mother looked at me in a very disappointed way. “What you’re doing. You need to stop doing it.”

  But that didn’t make total sense. Because I was sitting on the couch.

  “It’s not all her fault,” Piper said. “You never should have bought her that terrible orange hoodie. Ever since she wore it her life has gone downhill. It’s cursed.”

  And then I realized I was wearing it again and had had a pretty miserable day, and it was easier to talk about that hoodie than everything else that was wrong in my life, so I added, “Yeah. We should burn this.”

  “We’re not burning your school clothes,” my mom said.

  “That’s a mistake,” Piper added. “Because that thing might start cursing the rest of her clothes. Where was it even made?” Piper rooted around near my neck until she found the tag. “Bangladesh!”

  “Stop it, Piper,” my mother said. “We’re not having another debate about working conditions in foreign factories.”

  “All I’m saying is that’s an unlucky orange hoodie,” Piper said. “And Perry’s popularity has plummeted since she wore it.”

  And even though I was pretty sure that Piper was trying to distract my mom from what the principal had said with this conversation, I was starting to believe what Piper was saying. Because it seemed true. A cursed hoodie from Bangladesh could have destroyed my popularity.