My Best Frenemy

by Julie Bowe

  Brooke applauds.

  “Cute,” I say, doing my best grin. “When my dad picks out clothes for me I usually only wear them for pajamas. ”

  Stacey giggles. “I think my dad’s girlfriend helped him. Normally anything he buys me is too boyish. ”

  “Ugh, ” Brooke says.

  “What’s wrong with boyish?” Randi asks, sniffing her basketball.

  “Nothing, ” Brooke says, rolling her eyes.

  I study Brooke’s curly ponytail for a moment. “Did you get a perm or something? ” I ask.

  Brooke reaches up and unclips the springy curls from her regular hair. “Jade gave it to me,” she says, jiggling the ponytail. Jade is Brooke’s older sister. She knows a lot about hair and clothes because she’s in high school. “See? ” she says. “It’s faux. ”

  “Fur? ” Randi says.

  “Not fur, ” Brooke says back. “Faux. You know. Fake hair? ”

  “Are you sure? ” Randi asks, giving the ponytail a poke. “Because I saw a dead squirrel on the way to school that looked a lot like that. ”

  Brooke huffs and clips the ponytail back to her head.

  Randi grins and bumps the basketball against her chin.

  Just then Meeka and Jolene arrive. They take a quick tour of Brooke’s new ponytail and Stacey’s new clothes. Then they do the step-turn thing to show us their new outfits.

  I brush my bangs over my paintbrush barrettes and slide my oil pastels into my back pocket.

  “Jade also gave me this, ” Brooke says, pulling a see-through plastic case out of her backpack. Six squares of eye shadow are lined up under the lid like little pads of butter. Light blue, bright blue. Light green, bright green. Light purple, bright purple. All glittery.

  Brooke opens the lid and takes out a little sponge-tipped stick. “The applicator has two ends, one for dark colors and one for light, ” Brooke tells us, all professional. She rubs one of the sponge ends across the bright purple pad. Then she looks at herself in the little built-in mirror while she glides the color across her left eyelid. Then she does her right eyelid. “Now for light purple under my eyebrows.” Pretty soon her eyelids are very purple and glittery.

  Brooke blinks at us.

  Stacey squeals.

  So do Meeka and Jolene.

  Randi grunts.

  “My mom won’t let me wear makeup yet,” Jolene says.

  “Mine either, ” Meeka adds.

  “Well, ” Brooke says, “I’m really only allowed to wear it for dance recitals and stuff, but that is just so unfair. I mean, I am ten now. ” She flutters her purple lids.

  “I’m almost ten, ” Meeka says. “Let me try. ”

  “Me too,” Jolene adds, reaching for the sponge stick.

  Brooke pulls back. “Everyone will get a turn,” she says. She looks the group over. “You first, Meeka.”

  Meeka does an excited little jump, lifts her chin, and closes her eyes.

  Brooke makes a bright blue trail of eye shadow across Meeka’s lids. “Jade says blue makes your eyes look bigger, ” Brooke informs us.

  “What’s wrong with the size of Meeka’s eyes?” Randi asks.

  “Nothing, ” Brooke replies. “But Jade says it’s important to enhance what you have. ”

  Brooke adds another layer of blue to Meeka. She lets the sponge slip past the corners of Meeka’s eyes and swoop up like bird wings.

  “There,” Brooke says, holding the little mirror up to Meeka. “Now your eyes are really noticeable. ”

  “Yep, ” I say.

  Brooke glances at me. “Okay, Ida, you’re next. ”

  “Me? But I didn’t say I wanted to—”

  Brooke loads the sponge stick with bright green shadow. “Close your eyes, ” she says.

  I close my eyes.

  I can feel the sponge enhancing my eyelids all over the place. A minute later, Brooke steps back. “There, ” she says.

  I blink my eyes open and see Stacey. “How do I look? ”

  “Good! ” she says.

  “Better than good,” Brooke replies, holding the little mirror up to my eyes.

  I see lots of green glitter where my plain eyelids used to be.

  Randi frowns. “You look stup—”

  “Great! ” Stacey interrupts.

  “Older, ” Meeka adds.

  Jolene nods. “At least eleven. ”

  I smile and look at my reflection in the mirror again. I do look older. Even taller. Maybe even prettier.

  “Except for one thing, ” Brooke says.

  “What? ” I ask.

  “Your eyes are perfect, but the rest of you is too . . . I don’t know . . . plain. ”

  “What’s wrong with being plain? ” Randi asks.

  Brooke gives Randi a glance. “Nothing, ” she says. “Unless you count everything. ” She studies me again. Then her eyes brighten. “I know what’s missing, ” she says. “Earrings! ” Brooke gives her sparkly earlobe a flick. “You need glittery earrings to match your glittery eyes! ”

  “But I don’t have pierced ears, ” I say.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Brooke asks. “I’ve had my ears pierced since I was three.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Ida, ” Randi says, poking a thumb at Brooke. “She’s got too many holes in her head. ”

  I glance at Randi’s ears. They are bare. But all the other girls’ earlobes glitter with earrings. The kind of earrings I would be wearing if my parents would let me. And if I wasn’t afraid of getting poked.

  Brooke gives Randi a squint and then gets busy with Jolene’s eyelids. “All I’m saying is that Ida would look better with earrings. But if she doesn’t want pierced ears, that’s her choice. ”

  “Um... it’s not that I don’t want them, exactly,” I say. “It’s just that my parents won’t let me. ” I leave out the part about not feeling very brave when it comes to sharp objects.

  Brooke snorts. “All you have to do is make your parents feel bad about not giving you what your friends have. Jade taught me that ages ago. ”

  Jenna walks up to us just as Brooke finishes with Jolene.

  “Purple, please,” Stacey says, stepping up to Brooke and closing her eyes.

  “Copycat, ” Brooke says, all teasey. She flutters her purple eyelids and giggles. Stacey giggles back. Then Brooke rubs the sponge stick across the little pad of purple eye shadow. Pretty soon Stacey’s eyes match Brooke’s eyes perfectly.

  “What’s going on? ” Jenna asks.

  “Brooke got eye shadow for Christmas, ” I explain.

  Jenna studies all of our glittery eyelids. Then she lifts her chin. “That’s nothing,” she says. “Wait until you see what I got. ”

  “You got makeup? ” Brooke says. “I didn’t think your mom would let you wear anything that didn’t come from an organic farm.” Brooke gives Jenna a tilted smile. “In fact, the last time I was at your house she wouldn’t even let us paint our nails. She said the fumes might cause brain damage. Ha. ”

  Jenna crosses her arms and squints. “Ancient history, ” she says. “See? ”

  Jenna holds up her hands. Each fingernail is painted bright orange.

  “Um, hello?” Brooke says back. “It was right before Thanksgiving. I remember because your mom was making a tofu turkey. She spazzed when she smelled the polish and chased us out of the kitchen. Then she opened all the windows even though it was at least below zero outside. ”

  “She was just worried about the fumes hurting the bay—the . . . the tofu turkey, ” Jenna says.

  “Ew,” Stacey says. “Tofu turkey sounds kind of gross. Did you actually eat it? ”

  “Well, duh, of course, ” Jenna says. “We eat it all the time. Too much animal protein makes you moody. ”

  Brooke snorts. “That explains why you never are. ”

  Brooke doesn’t say it like a compliment. She says it in a mean way. A not best friend way.

  “So what did you get for Christmas?” Jolene asks, blinking her bright b
lue eyelids at Jenna.

  “I bet I know, ” I say to Jenna. “Your new toboggan, right? ”

  Jenna shakes her head. “Even better than that. You’ll see. ” She turns to the others. “You all will. ”

  “When? ” we ask.

  Jenna squints at Brooke. “When I decide to bring it. ”

  Brooke rolls her eyes.

  Jenna does a step-turn and marches into class.

  Chapter 4

  It takes me longer than usual to find my desk, partly because I’m trying to blink very slowly so I won’t smudge my eyelids and partly because Mr. Crow has rearranged our desks again. He likes to change things around so we don’t get too bored with school.

  Today the desks are in one big square all facing the center of the room. A bright rug covers the middle of the floor. It’s got lots of different shapes woven into it. Rectangles. Circles. Triangles. Squares. Like if you looked into a giant kaleidoscope, the rug is what you would see.

  A small table sits at the center of the rug. It has white cardboard shapes on it. Cube. Cylinder. Pyramid. Cone. I know that’s what they are because I have a drawing book at home that talks about them.

  All of our desks have name tags. The tags are different shapes too. Mine is a circle. Tom is sitting on my left. Quinn is on my right. I’m in the middle of a boy sandwich.

  I look across the room and see Stacey Merriweather. I give her an I-wish-I-could-sit-by-you look and she gives me one back.

  Mr. Crow steps into the center of our desk square. “Welcome back to class! ” he says.

  Nobody exactly cheers, even though we like Mr. Crow a lot.

  “I hope you had a nice break,” he continues, “and that you’re ready for a great winter quarter.”

  Nobody exactly cheers again.

  “What’s with all the shapes?” Joey Carpenter asks, pointing to the little table.

  Mr. Crow picks up the cardboard cube. “I’m glad you asked,” he says. “We’re starting a new math unit today and so I wanted to get us in shape right away. ” Mr. Crow does a little chuckle.

  We all wait for more information.

  Mr. Crow walks over to a new poster that’s hanging on the wall. It has lots of geometric shapes on it. He points to each shape and we read off their names.

  “Square!

  “Oval!

  “Pentagon!

  “Hexagon!

  “Octagon!

  “Cylinder! ”

  “Good job! ” Mr. Crow says after we finish doing the whole chart. “Now let’s see how many of these shapes we can find in our classroom. ”

  Mr. Crow gets Dominic and one of the Dylans to hand out worksheets that have Shapes Hunt printed across the top. All the shapes that are on the chart are on the worksheet.

  “Get with a partner and hunt for each shape, ” Mr. Crow says. “For example, our chalkboard is shaped like a rectangle, so you can write chalkboard next to the rectangle shape on your worksheet. Some shapes will be easier to find than others, so look carefully and think creatively! ”

  Thinking creatively is one of Mr. Crow’s favorite things to make us do.

  Mr. Crow lets us pick our own partners, so of course me and Stacey pick each other. I’m glad, because we don’t have an even number of girls in our class. One girl always gets stuck being the leftover. Mr. Crow makes her join one of the pairs, unless he forgets. Then she either has to find a pair on her own or just pretend she has a partner and do the worksheet by herself.

  Until Stacey started being my best friend, I got to be the leftover a lot.

  Everyone starts seeing the easy shapes right away. Square floor tiles. Rectangle windows. The world globe for a sphere. But we’re stuck on the harder shapes, like pentagon and hexagon.

  Then Jolene says, “Hey, what about snowflakes?” She points out the window at the falling snow. “Aren’t they hexagons? ” Jolene is good at shapes and math.

  “That’s right, ” Mr. Crow says. “All snowflakes have six sides, so they are all hexagons. ”

  “Only no two snowflakes are exactly alike,” Tom adds. Tom is good at answering questions no one even asked.

  “Right again, ” Mr. Crow replies.

  “They can’t all be different, ” Jenna says.

  “Um . . . y-yes they can,” Tom replies. He’s not so good at telling Jenna she’s wrong. “They all have six sides, but they come in lots of different designs. ”

  “An infinite number,” Mr. Crow adds. “Just like people. ”

  “Still,” Jenna says, tapping her pencil against the edge of her clipboard. Jenna likes to work on a hard surface. “Snowflakes aren’t inside our classroom, so they shouldn’t count. ”

  Mr. Crow smiles. “I’ll make an exception for snowflakes, ” he says.

  Everyone writes snowflakes by the hexagon shape. Then we get busy looking for pentagons.

  Pretty soon I realize the more you look, the more shapes you see. Our wastebasket looks like an upside-down cone. Meeka’s headband has diamond-shaped rhinestones. When Joey crawls across the floor to get Zane his dropped eraser, the treads on the bottom of his shoes look like octagons. And Zane’s eraser is shaped like an oval. Mr. Crow’s glasses are shaped like squares. Dominic’s are circles. When Mr. Benson walks past our classroom doorway, I see the mop bucket he’s pushing looks like a yellow cube.

  It isn’t until Jenna makes a big deal about Mr. Crow’s teacup being a cylinder that I notice something else.

  Mr. Crow forgot about the leftover girl today.

  I know because I see Jenna write teacup next to the cylinder on her worksheet. Only nobody else is writing it with her.

  “Jenna, ” I whisper. “You can be with me and Stacey if you want. ”

  Stacey looks up from her worksheet. “Sure, Jenna, you can be with us. ”

  “Oh, isn’t that sweet?” Brooke says as she and Randi walk by. “Stacey and Ida are taking in a stray puppy. ” She gives Jenna a smirk.

  Jenna gives her one back.

  “What’s with you two lately?” Randi asks, looking at Brooke and Jenna. “It’s like the Ice Capades around here. ”

  Brooke’s face goes all innocent.

  Jenna just goes. To the other side of the room.

  Dear Stella,

  Today I Learned that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around that one.

  Brooke snuck eye shadow to school. I spent the whole day trying not to rub my eyelids, which used up a Lot of my concentration. That’s probably why I got four wrong on my social studies worksheet.

  I wiped the eye shadow off before I got home. I don’t think my mom and dad would be as excited about glittery eyelids as I am.

  Everyone else wiped it off too. Except for Randi, because she wasn’t wearing any. And Jenna, because she wasn’t there when Brooke showed us how to put it on. But I don’t think Jenna would have worn it anyway. Because of the mean way Brooke was talking to her. Like her words were covered in prickles.

  Jenna has always been the boss of us, but now Brooke is acting Like she got voted our new boss. Only Jenna didn’t get to vote.

  It reminds me of a nature show about wolves my dad and me watched a couple of weeks ago. One wolf was in charge of the pack, but then a new wolf wanted to be the boss. So the new wolf kept nipping and nipping at the other wolf until it finally got tired of all that nipping and Let the new wolf have its way.

  I think Brooke wants to be in charge of us now.

  And Jenna is getting nipped.

  I set down my journal and slide off my bed. A long mirror hangs behind my door. I study my eyelids in it. Then I study the rest of me. I sigh because I look exactly like myself again.

  My oil pastels are still in my backpack, so I dig them out and find the dark green stick.

  I rub it across my eyelids and look at myself in the mirror again, tilting and blinking.

  “You look at least eleven, ” I say to my reflection.

  I catch a glimpse of
George in the mirror. He’s leaning against my fish tank, watching me.

  “What do you think? ” I ask him, blinking fast.

  George glances away.

  “Well, I like it,” I say, closing my box of oil pastels.

  I walk over to George and slide him aside. I look at my fish. “Hi . . . Elmo? ”

  My fish darts behind the dentures. The pirate lifts his jug.

  “I guess that’s not your name either, ” I say.

  The water pump gurgles and I think about the filter inside. “Looks good to me. ”

  I grab a tissue and wipe off my eyes.

  Then I walk over to my bed and pick up my journal again.

  Me and Stacey went to the Purdee Good after she got done with dance class today. We shared a giant cookie Like always. Plus, we talked about what we did over our holiday break and all the presents we got and everything. I told Stacey all about my fish and she said I should name him Elmo. I told her I Liked it, even though it sounded a little furry for a fish.

  Then I finally showed Stacey my box of oil pastels. She Loved them just Like I hoped she would. Right away we started drawing pictures on paper place mats. Kelli was doing her waitress job and when she saw our drawings she said they were good enough to be in a museum. She made us autograph them and then she hung them up for everyone to see.

  Then Stacey took out her ponytail because it was giving her a hairache. I Let her wear my paintbrush barrettes and she Let me try on her jingle bell boots.

  They almost fit me.

  Jenna has a big secret she’s bringing to school tomorrow. She won’t tell us what it is, even though she keeps reminding us how much we’re going to Love it.

  We’LL see.

  Bye,

  Ida

  Chapter 5

  Jenna doesn’t say a word to me about her big secret at the bus stop on Friday morning, even though her lips look like they are starting to crack from keeping it in.

  When we get to school, she won’t tell anyone else either. Not until all seven of us arrive. We’re still waiting for Randi.

  Brooke gets out her eye shadow and hands it to me. “Chop, chop, Ida, ” she says. “Put some on and pass it around. ”

  I do one of my eyelids blue and one of them purple. Stacey takes the sponge stick from me and does her eyes the same way.