“Paint thinner,” I replied. “Yes! Because thinning paint is an important part of painting! Which is what Hope and I were doing today! Painting! Hope and I thinned plenty of paint while we were painting!”
My mother studied me carefully. Her message was clear: “I’ve got my eye on you.” She won’t need to look too carefully, though, because I’m the worst liar. Seriously. As Sara so clearly demonstrated, I’m one big tell. In a perfect world, my honesty would be a virtue. And while Pineville Junior High might have been “a perfect world” for my sister, Bethany, it will never, ever be one for me.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I applied more deodorant than absolutely necessary for a person my size. I hadn’t detected any lingering skunkiness, and I seemed to pass my mom’s sniff test at breakfast, but still, I wasn’t taking any chances. According to my sister’s (missing) IT List, no one knows anything. And yet, I do know this: It’s a universal truth that no junior-high girl wants to be known as Da Skunkbomb. Though even that might be better than being known as the girl who is crushing on Aleck, because he’s got a reputation for being this wild-haired weirdo and WHATEVER! It’s irrelevant anyway! Because that dumb TSPJHCQ question #5 tricked me into admitting I have a crush on him when I TOTALLY DON’T.
It was way too early for this aggravation. And yet I wasn’t in it alone. Bridget was pacing when I got to the bus stop. Hands clenched. Shoulders squared. Jaw set. It wasn’t even eight a.m., and Bridget had already whipped herself up into another frenzy.
“I. Am. So. Mad.”
I wasn’t expecting mad. Stressed, maybe. Or sad. But not mad.
“Mad? At who?”
With all the girlie drama going on lately, I was half expecting Bridget to say she was mad at me.
“At who? At who?” She shook her head in disbelief. “AT BURKE. OF COURSE.”
Of course. Only Burke was worthy of such an emotional outburst. And yet… mad? This was new. Bridget’s never mad at Burke. She’s usually worried that he’s mad at her for bonkers deal breakers like chewing the wrong flavor of gum or showing up at his locker too soon after the final bell. But he’s never really mad at her; it’s just her paranoid imagination. Bridget’s fury was kind of a welcome variation on the usual bus-stop breakup freak-outs. For the first time ever, she wasn’t putting all the blame on herself.
“Why are you mad at Burke?”
She stopped pacing just long enough to kick at the sidewalk in frustration.
“He won’t go to the school dance with meeeeee.”
“School dance?”
She rolled her eyes. “I know you know about the school dance,” she said. “You were the first one to sign Manda’s petition.”
“I think I signed Sara’s petition.”
“Manda, Sara, same difference,” Bridget said.
This was pretty much true.
“They both showed up at my house yesterday to get me and Dori to sign their petitions.”
I should’ve known that Manda and Sara would go door-to-door with more gritty determination than I’d ever shown as a Girl Scout during cookie-selling season. Nothing would stop them from their goal. Not even kissing up to their enemies.
“And they were all annoying about it, too. Like, ‘sign mine, no, sign mine, noooooo, siiiiiiiiign miiiiiiiiiiine.’”
Bridget’s dramatization of these events was pitch-perfect. I had to laugh. Then I had to stop laughing because Bridget’s frowny face made it clear that none of this was a laughing matter.
“Anyway, the point is there’s going to be a school dance!” She did this little skippy hop she does when she’s excited. “And that’s awesome! Right?”
“Right?”
She stopped and went stone-faced.
“Wrong.” She kicked the dirt. “Because my boyfriend is refusing to go with me.”
“Why?”
“He said he doesn’t ‘do dances.’ Can you believe that? He doesn’t ‘do dances.’ And I was like, um, you’ll ‘do dances’ when you’re my boyfriend, because ‘doing dances’ is, like, in the boyfriend bylaws.”
“Boyfriend bylaws?” I asked. “Is that, like, a real thing?”
There were IT Lists and Crushability Quizzes. Why wouldn’t there be Boyfriend Bylaws written somewhere? And you learn the secret location of this information when you become someone’s girlfriend. My question was silly enough to make Bridget laugh, even in this dark hour.
“Ha! You can be so dense sometimes! I meant that it’s just, like, understood to be something that boyfriends do.”
Duh.
“I don’t see the point in getting yourself so worked up over something that may not even happen,” I said. “Even if Manda and Sara get all the signatures—”
“They’ll get all the signatures they need,” interrupted Jazmin, the scary eighth-grade goth at our bus stop. When she isn’t avoiding sunlight or finding new parts of her body to pierce, she’s apparently eavesdropping on all our conversations.
“How do you know?” Bridget asked.
“The girls you were talking about? Manda and Sara? They stopped me on the street yesterday and begged me to sign.”
“They asked you?” I blurted out.
“Why wouldn’t they ask me?”
Jazmin was even creepier when she bared her teeth in her version of a smile.
“Um…” I stammered. “I don’t know.…”
Maybe it’s because you’re totally intimidating with your black hair, black lips, black Sharpie tattoos, black trench coat, black combat boots, black eyes, black SOUL.
I didn’t say this, because I don’t have a death wish.
“Maybe your friends aren’t so quick to stereotype people based on their appearances.…”
I stifled a snort. Manda and Sara weren’t being friendly. They just really, really wanted to win. But the bus came around the corner, and Jazmin’s civics lesson was brought to a sudden halt because she didn’t want anyone to spy her talking to us. Which is ironic, you know, considering Jazmin was just lecturing us about judginess.
Anyway. Usually the arrival of the bus brings Bridget great joy because it means she’ll be reunited with Burke in the back seats. Today was not one of those days, however, because Bridget was mad.
I took my usual seat in the middle of the bus, and Bridget caught me by surprise by stopping next to me.
“Scooch over!” she insisted. “I’m sitting with you!”
She said it loud enough to be heard by all the boys plugged in to their music in the way back of the bus—Burke included. Now, if Burke were a girl, he might have pretended not to hear her, just like Bridget was pretending not to care if Burke heard or not, which clearly wasn’t true, because she kept darting little glances in his direction to confirm that he had heard her. It was an automatic reflex she couldn’t control, like blinking or breathing. But Burke isn’t a girl. Burke is a boy, and in my limited experience, boys are more direct when it comes to conflict.
“Go to the dance with Jessica,” Burke shouted. “I DON’T DO DANCES.”
Burke fist-bumped his buddies. Bridget huffed and puffed beside me. A few rows back and across the aisle, Jazmin smiled creepily to herself. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. How was it possible that so much drama had already been caused by a school dance that wasn’t even officially happening?
Yet.
But Manda and Sara had their best people working on it; this much was clear from the moment we arrived at school. Two tables were set up on opposite sides of the school entrance, each displaying banners that could be read from across the parking lot. Manda’s read MAKE PINEVILLE JUNIOR HIGH HISTORY. Sara’s read WHO WANTS A SCHOOL DANCE? I DO! Manda’s boyfriend, Mouth, and his friends acted as human traffic cones to funnel students in her booth’s direction. Sara had recruited the cutest girls on the Spirit Squad to pass out lollipops to lure the crowd her way. It was impossible to tell which strategy was more successful. Both tables were doing brisk business.
Dori
was waiting for Bridget in her usual spot in the parking lot. My gut dropped when I saw Scotty wasn’t with her. Had he mustered up the courage to break up with Dori so he could be free to pursue his feelings for (ACK) me? Feelings he had no business confessing to me in the hallway the other day, because I’m not prepared to return those feelings for him or any other boy NO MATTER WHAT DUMB TRICK QUIZZES SAY.
“I’m SO mad,” Dori said.
Gulp.
“What does Scotty mean, ‘I don’t do dances’?”
“Ugh.” Bridget rolled her eyes. “I bet he got that from Burke.”
Whew. Their anger had nothing to do with me. And maybe, just maybe, Dori would stay mad enough at Scotty to break up with him before he had a chance to break up with her! Make no mistake: I’m not interested in Scotty in a boyfriend/girlfriend way, but my friendship status with Dori is iffy at best. If the seventh-grade golden couple is doomed, I want the split to have as little to do with me as possible.
“You need to show your boyfriends who’s boss,” I said to them. “That you won’t back down from your principles. That you are committed to this great cause that will undo this great injustice of the past decade.…”
“Whoooooooooo!” cheered Bridget.
“Whoooooooooo!” cheered Dori.
I guess my speech worked.
“Imagine how much better the world could be if they channeled this much energy into, oh, I don’t know, a worthy cause,” Hope said, walking up as Bridget and Dori took off together.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I replied. “Like, um, world peace or the environment or whatever?”
Hope gave me a strange look. I was imitating my sister, but she didn’t know that.
“That was kind of an inside joke,” I explained.
“With yourself?”
“Myself.”
“Verrrrry inside.”
And with the raise of an eyebrow, Hope turned my inside joke into our inside-out joke. We burst out laughing.
“BWAHAHAHAHAHA.”
“You smell good, by the way,” Hope said as we entered the school building. “Normal.”
“Good,” I said, still wondering what “normal” smelled like. But I had more pressing questions to ask. “You ride the bus with Al—I mean, Marcus, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And you can call him Aleck if that’s how you know him. He calls you Clem.”
When does he call me Clem? And why?
It’s always weird to discover that I am, on occasion, the subject of someone else’s conversation. I don’t know why. After all, I talk about people when they’re not around, but I guess I’ve never considered myself someone worthy of being talked about. Again, I held back on asking for details because I had more important business to take care of first.
“Did he say anything about my pants?” I kept my voice low.
“No,” Hope whispered back. “Then again, I didn’t ask. You made it pretty clear yesterday that your pants were off-limits.”
“Oh,” I replied.
I really, really regretted lying to Hope, but it seemed too weird and random to suddenly confess now. And hopefully, if Aleck had done his job, TTSPJHCQ had gone up in smoke, and no one would ever think I have a crush on him because I TOTALLY DON’T.
Hope and I stopped at the intersection of our separate hallways.
“I guess you’re just going to have to ask Aleck yourself.” She playfully tugged my ponytail. “Good luck with that.”
I needed it. I could ask Aleck what he’d done with my pants, of course, but Hope knew as well as I did that there was no guarantee I’d get a straight answer. I didn’t want to wait until Woodshop last period to settle this matter, either. Maybe I could run into Aleck before homeroom? I’m D for Darling. He’s F for Flutie. I was willing to make an alphaBET that he was in the homeroom right next door to my own. The challenge, of course, was to wait for him without looking like I was waiting for him.
“Gotcha!” Manda and Sara jumped out from behind the opened door to my locker.
Both girls fanned their petition papers in front of their noses, acting awfully chummy for girls so publicly battling it out.
“Are you avoiding us?” Manda asked. “From what we smell, we should be avoiding you!”
“Omigod!” Sara pinched her nose. “You need another tomato-juice bath.”
Panicked, without thinking, I stuck my nose in my armpit. I didn’t smell anything skunky. It’s clear Sara possesses extraordinary spy senses. Did she pass some of her superior nosiness on to Manda?
Just then, Mouth came up from behind and stuck a completed petition paper in Manda’s face.
“Ten more signatures, babe,” he said.
“Ten more?” Sara gasped. “Truce over!” Then she set off down the hall.
Mouth noticed me standing there.
“You smell pretty good for someone who just got skunked.”
Manda punched him in the arm.
“Why’d you have to tell her?” Manda pouted. “We really had her going.”
The warning bell rang for homeroom, and I grabbed Mouth’s arm before he could get away.
“How did you find out?” I asked. “About the skunking?”
He shrugged. “Our mutual friend told me.”
We have only one mutual friend. And if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve sworn our mutual friend was ditching his homeroom just to avoid me.
Chapter Ten
It was almost funny how fast Sara went from making fun of me to sucking up to me.
“You’re tight with the Sampson twins, right?” Sara asked when I took my seat behind her in homeroom.
The Sampson twins and I are friendly from our time together on the cross-country team. But the season is over now, and they’ve moved on to basketball.
“Sort of.” I hesitated. “I guess.”
“Omigod! I’ll totally have the edge over Manda when you get this thing circulating among the eighth-grade Hots.”
“I don’t know, Sara.”
Whenever we pass in the halls, the Sampson twins still wave and call out “Yo, Notso!” (It’s a family nickname: Jessica “Notso” Darling. They’d heard my dad yelling it at our races.) But I didn’t feel comfortable claiming to be “tight” with two of the most popular girls in eighth grade. I’m just a little seventh grader. The fact that they’re nice to me says a lot about their all-around awesomeness as human beings.
But Sara wasn’t taking no for an answer. I kind of admired her tenacity—that is, when I wasn’t the one paying for it. She handed me a petition page with her name at the top.
“Get me their signatures, and I’ll give you anything you want,” Sara promised.
There was only one thing I wanted from Sara: for her to always be as nice to me as she was when she wanted something. But that was as preposterous as asking her to care about the rain forest or the homeless.
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said.
“Even better!”
She held out her hand for me to shake. And against my better judgment, I shook. It felt easier than not shaking.
“Omigod! My hero! And feel free to get a few dozen more names while you’re out there.”
And just like that, I was an essential member of Team Sara. I almost worried about how Manda would react to me “choosing” a side that wasn’t hers, but I soon came to my senses. No doubt Manda was just as actively drafting soldiers to do her dirty work. Sara had simply gotten to me first because she happens to sit right in front of me in homeroom.
After the bell, I lingered long enough in the doorway to catch all the Fs-through-Js file out of the homeroom next door. When I didn’t see Aleck, I assumed he was absent. I trudged to first period, resigned to not knowing the fate of my pants or TTSPJHCQ for another day, at least.
“Did the Sampson twins sign?” Sara asked when I got to Language Arts.
“Um, no.”
“Well, how many names did you get, then?”
“None.??
?
“NONE?”
I sighed. “We just got out of homeroom together, like, ninety seconds ago.”
“That hasn’t stopped me from getting eight signatures in that time.…”
She lost all interest in me when Scotty entered the room.
“Scotty!” she shouted. “Sign this!”
Scotty gave her a weary look. “Manda already asked. And I’ll tell her the same thing I told you. I don’t do dances. No exceptions.”
Sara threw up her hands and moved on to her next target.
So there we were, me and Scotty, face-to-face for the first time since he unexpectedly confessed to having a crush on me.…
Heeeeey. Hold on a second. Wasn’t it possible I’d been mistaken about Scotty’s affections? Just as Aleck would get the wrong idea if he saw his name written down as the answer to that dumb trick TSPJHCQ question? Maybe, just maybe, I had misinterpreted Scotty’s message. As someone who had come so close herself to being falsely accused of crushing, I was certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Hey, Jess,” Scotty said.
“Hey, Scotty,” I said.
“Did you hear what I said about not doing dances?” he asked. “No exceptions?”
“Um, yeah, I was right here,” I replied.
I did not like where this was going. For a millisecond I’d hoped everything would be normal and totally not awkward between us. But my optimism shut down in the blink of a single eye.
“One exception,” he said quietly.
AND THEN HE WINKED AT ME, AND I TOTALLY ACKED OUT.
“No,” I said firmly.
“Yes.”
“NO.”
“YES.”
Nooooooooo! I am not crushable! I don’t know the meaning of crushable, which is why I took that dumb quiz in the first place!
Obviously Scotty was—is—mistaken. Maybe he took too many hits to the head during football season. Speaking from experience, there’s only so much traumatic impact a developing brain can take before things get a little bonkers in there. How could I prove to him that I’m not the crushable type so he’d get back to the business of being Dori’s devoted boyfriend and stop ACKing me out with these ambush declarations of crush? Without any evidence to back me up, all I could do was try to talk him out of it. But too many students were filing into the classroom, and it was not the time nor the place for a conversation like that.