Katie-Rose plops back into her seat. She gives Yasaman a gleeful thumbs-up.
When morning break rolls around, Yasaman lingers in the classroom as the other kids rush out to the playground. She approaches Ms. Perez’s desk. She holds on to it and tucks her foot behind the opposite calf.
Are you okay? she wants to ask. You put up a good front—a really good front—but … are you okay?
Ms. Perez gestures for Yaz to come around her desk. She scoots over on her chair, pats the smooth wood, and says, “Here, sit with me for a minute.”
Yaz perches on the far side of the seat. She doesn’t want to crowd Ms. Perez. Ms. Perez puts her arm around Yaz and gives her a squeeze.
“Are you all right, sweetie?” she says.
“Me?” Yaz says. “I’m fine.” Her gaze drifts to the The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets. “But that book …”
“Grade-A trash,” Ms. Perez proclaims. She sweeps the book into the garbage can, and it makes a satisfying clunk.
“Still, I am so so sorry,” Yaz says.
“You played no role in that ridiculous prank,” Ms. Perez says. “I was surprised Elena was involved, though.”
“Me, too.”
“Oh, well,” Ms. Perez says. She sighs. “Hopefully those girls will grow up one day, but until then? They’re kids. I can take ’em.”
“Yeah,” Yaz says. It comes out tiny, and she clears her throat. “You go, girlfriend.”
Ms. Perez laughs.
“Seriously. You’re like … a superhero.”
“If only. Maybe I should read that silly book.”
“No!” Yaz cries. “You’re beautiful, Ms. Perez. Beautiful and brave!”
Ms. Perez gazes out the window. She’s silent for such a long time that Yasaman wants to hit something, she’s so frustrated. Not that she would, because along with so many other nots, Yasaman is not a hitting sort of girl.
She is the sort of girl who can’t stand to see her teacher sad, and she doubles—quadruples—her determination to fix that problem. She will do whatever it takes to make other people see how wonderful Ms. Perez is. People like Mr. Emerson, who is surely Ms. Perez’s Mr. Right, even if he doesn’t yet know it.
“Um … Ms. Perez?” she says after the no-talking has gone on so long she can’t stand it anymore.
Ms. Perez turns back to Yasaman. Her eyes are shiny. “Thank you, sweet Yaz.”
peanut butter and jelly sandwich as Yasaman tells Katie-Rose and Milla about The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets. They’re eating in the commons because the teachers said it was too windy to eat outside, but Katie-Rose would have put up with even the loudest, windiest wind—happily!—if it meant not having to listen to this conversation.
And yet Yasaman can’t stop saying how shocked she is that out of all the people in the world, it was Elena who gave the mean prank book to Ms. Perez.
Katie-Rose doesn’t like what happened in class any more than Yasaman, although she is glad that Ms. Perez pulled a fast one and made Modessa and Elena look stupid instead. Aside from that, she has no interest in discussing the incident. It’s over and in the past, the end.
But Yasaman props her elbow on the table and her chin on her palm. “I mean, Elena?” she marvels again. “It’s just … it’s just—”
“Shocking?” Katie-Rose supplies.
“Yeah,” she says. “I just don’t understand why Elena would do that. I don’t understand why anyone would, but especially Elena. You know?”
“Totally,” Milla says. “Elena’s never been friends with Modessa and Quin.”
“No, she’s always been un-friends with them,” Yaz says. “That’s why I’m so shocked.”
Katie-Rose rolls her eyes, but mainly to herself. Yasaman always sees the best in people, which for the most part is endearing. But sometimes? It’s shockingly annoying.
Milla doesn’t respond, but instead bites neatly into the cucumber and mint sandwich her Mom Abigail made her. The bread is homemade, and the sandwich is cut into four identical triangles. It’s already crust-free. Her mom made it that way.
Yasaman exhales. “Modessa and Quin haven’t ever even been nice to Elena, have they? If anything, wouldn’t you say they’ve been deliberately un-nice to her?”
Un-friends. Un-nice. Shocking, shocking, shocking—except for the small, tiny fact that if Yaz and Milla would open their eyes, they’d see it isn’t shocking at all. It’s bizarre that Milla, especially, doesn’t see it. Unless she really is play acting?
No, she can’t be. If she is, that means she’s, like, deliberately pretending not to remember her history with Modessa, a horrible, hurtful history that happened to involve Katie-Rose in a very un-nice way. Oh, and Yaz was there, too. She witnessed it all.
Sure, Yasaman is made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and sure, Yaz always wants to think the best of people. But there will always be people, like Modessa, who are just rotten, and other people, like Elena, who do their rotten bidding. That won’t change. Or … it probably won’t change. It probably definitely won’t change. Only the idea of “change” is tricky and confusing.
Like, what if—one day—things change for the FFF’s? Not that Katie-Rose doesn’t trust her friends … but. Based on a list passed from student to student last week, Katie-Rose is dorky. In fact, based on that same stupid list, Katie-Rose is the number one most dorky girl in the whole school, to which Katie-Rose said loudly, “Fine. Dorks rule.”
She also cried, though. In the girls’ room during morning break, and at home that night under her bed. She and the dust bunnies had a good ol’ cry, and then she crawled out and brushed herself off and vowed never to think about that stupid list again.
She didn’t quite succeed at that vow, and it comes back to haunt her more often than seems fair. It’s poking at her brain right now, for example, as Yaz and Milla go blah-blah-blah about Elena (who didn’t get put on the dork list), and Modessa (who surely played a big role in creating the dork list).
Katie-Rose’s deeply buried fear, which is probably crazy, which is probably definitely crazy …
Well, what if her friends realize that the list is right, and that Modessa is right, and that Katie-Rose is a dork who will never know the cool thing to do or wear or say? What if Katie-Rose can’t change, even if she wants to, but her friends can?
She drags her hand over her face. She knows this will never happen, but just say her FFFs get it into their heads that they should change. Awful things rise from the depths of her subconscious: makeup, purses, panty hose. Boys. (And that one? The boys one? It actually has happened—just look at Milla and Max.)
But, again. Just say her FFFs go nuts, arriving at school one of these mornings in fishnet stockings and bright red lipstick. Or say it’s a Saturday, and Katie-Rose says, “Hey! Let’s go see a movie!” only to have Violet say, “Ooo, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go BRA SHOPPING!”
If her FFFs decide to change … well … what if they leave Katie-Rose behind?
“Maybe I’m overreacting,” Yasaman says, halfheartedly stabbing at her falafel. “Maybe Elena … I don’t know. Didn’t know what she was doing?”
Fat chance, Katie-Rose thinks, but doesn’t say. She agrees that Yaz is overreacting, however, and it offers her an unexpected ray of hope. If Yaz is overreacting, maybe Katie-Rose is, too. Apparently, she sometimes does that. Frankly, she doesn’t see it, but there are a fair amount of life details that she and other people view differently. For example? She honestly doesn’t mind long toenails, which everyone else seems to find disgusting. She finds potato chip sandwiches delicious, while the smell of most perfumes makes her want to barf.
She makes herself take a bite of her sandwich, the soft, yummy, inside part, and she tries to view the Modessa/ Elena situation from a more mature perspective. “Not everything is black and white,” her mom is always telling her, to which she likes to reply, “Oh, yeah? What about Oreos? Or zebras? Or zebras eating Oreos?”
“And she likes an
imals!” Yaz wails. “Remember when she brought in her photo album? And under each llama’s picture was the llama’s name and favorite type of grass or hay or whatever?”
“I’m sorry, but what does that have to do with anything?” Katie-Rose says.
“Well … because she likes animals,” Yaz repeats. “People who like animals are nice.”
“Dudes,” she says, “not to burst your bubble, but liking animals means nothing, not in this situation. Elena is Medusa’s new recruit. Okay?”
“Recruit?” Milla says. Her eyes are round and so, so blue.
Katie-Rose’s stomach hurts. Eating even that one bite of sandwich was a mistake, and it crosses her mind that there’s a negative to being mature. Stomachaches. Ulcers. Tums, which her dad takes for his heartburn.
“Could we not talk about Modessa, please?” she says at last. “I’m worried about Violet. Where is she?”
Finally, Milla and Yaz stop with their Elena-blathering. Yasaman blushes, and Milla bows her head. Training her gaze on the tidy triangles of her sandwich, she says, “Um … I asked Mr. Emerson, but he didn’t know if she was sick or not.”
“I talked to her yesterday before she and her dad went to pick up her mom,” Yaz offers. “She wasn’t sick then.”
“Maybe she overslept?” Milla suggests.
Natalia Totenburg, a girl Katie-Rose is trying to be nicer to, appears at their table and drops into a vacant seat, even though lunch is half over and even though none of the flower friends said, “Hey! Natalia! Come on over and sit with us, you delightful specimen of humanity!”
Natalia takes a container of weird green noodles out of her lunch box, along with a pair of chopsticks. Katie-Rose disapproves. Chopsticks? Really?
“Maybe she overslept,” Milla repeats. “And then, like, her mom couldn’t bring her, since she doesn’t know the roads and stuff yet. And her dad had already gone to work.”
“We’re talking about Violet,” Yasaman tells Natalia. “Yesterday Violet’s mom came home from”—she hesitates—“the, um, hospital.”
“Ohhhh,” Natalia says. “Right.” Most of the kids in the fifth grade know about Violet’s mom being in California Regional’s mental ward, just as they know that Becca’s parents are divorced and Milla has two moms.
Fifth graders aren’t very big on “showing discretion,” as Katie-Rose’s mom would say. Katie-Rose would put it another way: Fifth graders have big mouths. Natalia, in particular, has a big mouth, although only half of her big mouth has to do with being a gossip girl. The other half is her ginormous headgear, with all of its rubber bands and metal hooks and snappy things, and the other other half is just plain Natalia.
And fine, that brings Natalia up to one-and-a-half big mouths. Whatever. It fits. Last month she used her too-big mouth to try and claim ownership of the flower friends’ Snack Attack campaign, and she tried to claim ownership of Yasaman as well. She didn’t succeed—der—but her meddling caused problems between Katie-Rose and Yasaman.
They worked everything out eventually, but Yasaman (again, always insisting on seeing the best in everyone) made Katie-Rose promise to give Natalia a chance. According to Yasaman, Natalia is just a lonely girl who wants to have friends and be part of a group, and Katie-Rose shouldn’t call her “lint,” even though “lint” is the perfect nickname for a girl who clings and clings and refuses to let go.
Katie-Rose imagines a giant clump of lint wearing a giant headgear. She giggles.
Natalia lifts a noodle with her chopsticks. “What if Violet’th mom had a relapth?” Natalia says, meaning relapse. Her headgear makes her lisp.
Katie-Rose stops giggling. “No way,” she says. “There’s no way Violet’s mom had a relapse, because the hospital people wouldn’t have let her go if there was even the tiniest chance of that happening.”
Milla gnaws her thumbnail. She shares an anxious glance with Yaz.
“Stop,” Katie-Rose tells them. She shoots Natalia a look to say, See what you’ve done?
Natalia shrugs, and the noodle dangling from her chopsticks sways.
“We’ll talk to Violet tonight, and she’ll explain why she wasn’t here, and it’ll be something dumb and totally innocent,” Katie-Rose says.
“Like what?” Milla asks.
“Like … maybe the hospital beds had bedbugs,” she says. “And Violet’s mom’s clothes got infested, and so they had to boil every article of clothing in the whole house, and also the sheets, and Violet volunteered to stay home and help.”
Milla, Yasaman, and Natalia stare at her.
“Or maybe she just wanted some time alone with her mom,” Katie-Rose says. Her stomach feels better, enough so that she gives her PB&J another go.
“Well, why didn’t she call one of us and say so?” Milla says.
“How should I know?” Katie-Rose replies with her mouth full. She swallows and unsticks her tongue from the top of her mouth with a slurp. Natalia may have exotic green noodles with fancy chopsticks, but there is nothing like the satisfying glue-y sound of peanut butter mixed with spit mixed with mouth flesh.
Milla glances at the clock over the mural. “Lunch is over. We better get to class.”
“Okey-doke,” Katie-Rose says, happy to move on since it hasn’t been the funnest lunch. She stuffs the remains of her sandwich into her brown paper bag and crumples the bag into a ball. Oh, and there is an uneaten plum in there, too. Katie-Rose feels the hardness of it within the crumple-ball. Farewell, plum, she thinks as she lobs the bag at the trash can by the water fountain.
Unfortunately, she misses, and instead of landing in the trash can, her lunch bag makes contact with the head of an extremely annoying boy named Preston, whose favorite pastime is throwing erasers at Katie-Rose. Or scraps of paper or carrot sticks or anything. One time? He threw a stinky, disgusting, balled-up sock at her! And it was his sock, which he found when Ms. Perez made them clean out their desks one day!
So while Katie-Rose is embarrassed that she missed the trash can, it is delightful payback that she got in such a clean shot at Preston’s head.
“Hey!” Preston cries. He feels the back of his head. He looks down and sees the lunch blob. Katie-Rose follows his gaze and sees that the plum seems to have burst. Preston’s eyes widen. So do Katie-Rose’s.
“Uh-oh,” Milla says.
“Oopsy daisy,” Katie-Rose says, not meaning it a bit.
Preston turns. He spots Katie-Rose.
“Maybe you should run,” Yaz says.
“Never,” Katie-Rose says. This is what being a kid is about. This is the beauty of not being mature.
Preston sets his jaw, wipes his hand on his jeans, and strides her way. Katie-Rose presses her lips together to keep them from twitching or smiling or wobbling in some weird way.
“You threw your lunch at me,” he accuses, standing above her and appearing quite tall.
“No, you blocked my shot,” Katie-Rose responds.
“You hit me in the head,” Preston says.
“You stuck your head in the way of my lunch.”
“My hair is all sticky.”
“My lunch is all hairy. How am I supposed to eat it now?”
His brow furrows. “You threw it away.”
“I tried to throw it away, sure. But you ruined that, didn’t you?”
“Well … well … you owe me a new bottle of shampoo!” Preston says.
Oh, please. As if boys like Preston even wash their hair.
Then her brain pulls a fast one on her, dredging up a long-forgotten memory of taking a seat behind Preston one day and noticing, before she realized it was Preston, that his hair looked clean and shiny and soft enough to pet. Blegh. She shoves the memory back into the cage where it belongs.
“I am not buying you new shampoo,” she pronounces. She rises from her seat. “If anything, you owe me a new lunch. And before you ask, I prefer strawberry. Jam, not jelly. And now if you’ll excuse me, some of us have places to be. So good-bye.”
Chin hel
d high, she takes off for Ms. Perez’s classroom, forgetting in the heat of the moment that Preston is in Ms. Perez’s class, too. She remembers ten seconds later, when he saunters in with his plum-juice-spiked hair.
She feigns indifference. She clasps her hands on her desk and pretends to listen as Ms. Perez starts in on some boring something-or-other. It has to do with homework, so it’s not like it matters. Katie-Rose knows she can get all As even if she spaces out occasionally.
Katie-Rose tunes in when Ms. Perez utters the word trapeze, however. And not just trapeze, but trapeze lessons. She sits up straight. Did Ms. Perez really just mention trapeze lessons? Here, at Rivendell, involving an actual flesh-and-blood trapeze, which will be set up in the PE room???
Ms. Perez turns toward the door of the classroom. She steps halfway out and says, “Oh good, you found us.” She ushers in a slim girl with freckles and red hair. The girl is older than fifth grade. She’s probably in high school, even. She’s holding a sheaf of papers.
“Come on in, Josie,” Ms. Perez says. “Class, this is Josie Sanders. Josie is a junior at Oakdale, is that right, Josie?”
Josie nods. Katie-Rose bounces in her seat, because her favorite babysitter in the world goes to Oakdale High School. Her name is Chrissy, and she’s a freshman, and she does things like paint her fingernails bright orange. In fact, she’s the perfect example of how to grow up without growing up, and Katie-Rose wants to be just like her when she’s in high school. Last weekend Chrissy dyed her blond hair “vampire red,” and supposedly her mom had a cow.
“Hi,” Josie says, waving at the class.
Katie-Rose beams and waves back. She wonders if Josie and Chrissy know each other.
“Well, from what I heard, I think your teacher pretty much explained everything,” Josie says. She holds up the stack of papers. “The information slips are right here, so if you want to take the class, write down your name, your parents’ names, and your telephone number. Tear that part off and leave it with your teacher. The top part has all the details about class safety and what my credentials are and stuff like that, so take that part home and show your parents.”