“Because if you ask him, he gives you his patented creepy eyeball look, and then he gets mad and writes down even more stuff,” Katie-Rose explains. “About you.”
Violet looks skeptical.
“Fine, I’ll show you,” Katie-Rose says. She raises her voice. “Hey! Cyril! What are you writing about?”
Cyril grows unnaturally still. Like, dead statue still.
“Cyril!” Katie-Rose calls again, as if there’s the slightest chance he didn’t hear her.
He lifts his head and shoots death rays at Katie-Rose. Then he hunches back over his notebook, scribbling furiously.
Katie-Rose shakes her head as if she’s seen it all before. “The scowl-and-scribble. Did I tell you, or did I tell you?”
“You don’t know it’s about you,” Violet points out.
“And he smells,” Katie-Rose says.
“He does not,” Milla protests, although sometimes he does.
“Oh, for cripe’s sake!” Katie-Rose snaps. “Why is everybody jumping all over me today?”
Milla is confused. She looks helplessly at Violet, who turns to Katie-Rose and says, “What’s going on? Who’s jumping all over you?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Forget it.” Katie-Rose pulls her eyebrows together. “He does have an odor, though. He takes a bath like once a week at the most.”
Milla has no idea how often Cyril bathes and feels no need to find out. She also doesn’t understand why Katie-Rose is acting so irritable all of a sudden. She sneaks a peek at Max, who’s much more pleasant to dwell on. He happens at the exact same moment to sneak a peek at her, and her heart flips over. Eeek!
She jerks her eyes back to Katie-Rose. She glues them there. Air is hitting parts of her eyeballs that aren’t usually exposed to the elements, which makes her suspect her eyes are open too wide, but she can’t make them go back to normal.
“Katie-Rose, don’t be mean,” she says, mainly to give the appearance of being smack in the middle of a conversation. She prays Max is no longer looking at her, and also that he is. With all that Max-ness going on, it takes her a moment to realize that Katie-Rose is close to tears.
Omigosh. Did she do that?
“Katie-Rose . . .” She touches her friend’s arm. “Wait. You’re not mean. You’re one of the nicest people on the planet!”
“Not to everyone,” Katie-Rose says.
“No one’s nice to everyone,” Violet says.
“Except Yasaman,” Katie-Rose mutters. At least, that’s what Milla thinks she says. Then Katie-Rose juts out her chin and raises her voice. “What smells worse than wet dog?” She supplies the answer herself. “Wet Cyril. And I didn’t make that joke up. Modessa did.”
Violet snorts. “Well, that is mean. Unsurprisingly.”
“Yeah, and guess what?” Katie-Rose goes on. “There are other mean people at this school, too—and not just the ones you automatically think of.”
Violet stares at Katie-Rose. So does Milla. Then Milla glances at Max, hoping he doesn’t see Katie-Rose’s red face and think that they’re fighting. Milla would hate for him to think of her as a fighting type of girl.
“Well, you’re not one of those other mean people,” she tells Katie-Rose.
“I know,” Katie-Rose says tightly.
“So! Um, let’s talk about something happy!” Milla smiles. She subtly checks to see if Max notices, but not subtly enough, because when Milla turns back, there is mischief in Violet’s eyes.
Violet slings her arm around Milla. “Milla?” she says. “I think we should take a walk.”
“Why Milla and not me?” Katie-Rose says.
“Because we’re going to go talk to Max. Right, Milla?”
Milla opens her mouth, but she has no words. When it comes to mixed-sex conversations, she is more the proceed-with-extreme-caution type, if she proceeds at all.
“Ohhhhh,” Katie-Rose says.
“Chop-chop,” Violet says briskly, and Milla tries not to hyperventilate. Her mind turns fleetingly to her mom’s friend’s lake house, which has a dock leading to the cold lake water. One day she jumped off, just to prove she could, and the memory of that moment washes over her. She’s once more in the air, knowing that the cold water will swallow her up, and that it will be terrible and wonderful, both.
to his best friend, Thomas. Two yards away, Milla grabs Violet’s arm to keep Violet from going closer.
“I can’t!” she whispers. “What would I say?”
“How about, ‘Hey there, hot stuff. How’s the old tetherball treating you?’” Violet suggests.
Milla swats her. “Violet! I am not calling him ‘hot stuff’!”
“All right, I will,” Violet says. There are certain things Violet is wimpy about (Exhibit A: Visiting Her Mom), but in most situations, she’s pretty fearless. And as for Max, there is nothing the slightest bit scary about this solid, good-natured boy who likes hamsters and dominoes and tetherball.
She marches over. “Hi, hot stuff.”
“Violet!” Milla gasps. She joins them, her face turning the color of a cherry tomato.
“You did not just say that,” she says to Violet. She turns to Max. “She did not just say that, I swear.”
Max is confused. “Say what?”
“Hot stuff,” Violet whispers in Milla’s ear. Milla stomps on her foot, giggling all the while.
“She said ‘hi,’ and that is all,” Milla tells Max. She lifts her own hand halfway. “Um. Hi!”
Max smiles. Then the tetherball swings around the pole and whacks his face.
“Ow.” He steps back. “Ow.”
“Dude, are you okay?” Thomas says.
“Omigosh,” Milla cries. She raises her hand to the red mark rising on his skin. She touches it with the very barest tips of her fingers.
“Want me to get an ice pack?” Thomas says.
“No,” Max says, dazed. He makes his way to a metal picnic table. “But seriously, ow. Owwie ow ow.”
Aw, Violet thinks. It’s pretty adorkable for a boy to say owwie ow ow, but Violet can get behind adorkable, especially when it comes to Milla. Milla could have the studliest, slickest, jerkiest boy in the grade if she wanted. Adorkable is much better.
“I got stung by a bee once,” Milla says, holding Max’s elbow and helping him sit down. “Not on my cheek. On my ear. On my earlobe, actually.”
Thomas laughs. Violet glares at him.
“And, um . . .” Milla glances from face to face as if she’s forgotten where she was going with this. “Um . . .”
“Was it owwie ow ow?” Max says.
“Yes!” Milla says, her face brightening with relief. “My earlobe swelled up and turned purple. It was like a really ugly earring.”
Happiness settles over Violet. She likes Max for saying owwie ow ow, and she likes him even more for saving Milla when he saw she needed saving. She’s proud of herself for bringing the two of them together, even if it did mean that Max got clubbed by the tetherball.
“I don’t get why girls wear earrings,” Thomas says. “Why would you want to poke a hole in yourself?”
“My ears aren’t pierced yet,” Milla says. “My moms say I have to wait till I’m eleven, which at least is one year earlier than Yasaman, who has to wait till she’s twelve.”
Violet fingers her own ear, which is adorned with a dangling daisy. Her ears have been pierced since she was four weeks old.
“I always wanted a baby girl,” her mom used to tell her, “and I always knew I’d pierce her ears. I think baby girls are so precious with pierced ears, don’t you?” Then she’d give Violet a hug. “And you were the most precious baby ever. You’re still precious, even though—I know, I know—you’re a big girl now. But you’ll always be my baby . . . and that makes me the luckiest mama ever.”
Does she miss me? Violet wonders. Does she know how much I miss her?
Her mean voice chimes in: How could she? She probably thinks you’ve forgotten her.
Violet puts her hand on he
r stomach, because something’s gnawing at her from within. A small animal, maybe a hamster. Gross. Sometimes Violet’s thoughts are so strange they scare her.
She shakes her head to clear it and latches onto Max’s words, stringing them into a rope strong enough to hold her.
“But we stopped at the pet store,” Max is saying, “because it’s next to the gym where my mom works out. And one of the mama hamsters had a litter of babies, and they were old enough not to need her anymore.”
Not to need their mother anymore? Violet thinks. The cramping returns.
No. Focus. Sometimes a baby hamster is just a baby hamster—and anyway, look how well Milla is handling this. Hamsters freak Milla out, but is she letting that stop her? If Milla can rise to the occasion, so can Violet.
“And I looked at Stewy, and I knew he was the one,” Max finishes.
“It was meant to be,” Milla says.
“That was so nice of your mom to let you get him,” Violet says.
“Yeah, but she said about a thousand times that it was my job to take care of him. Like to make sure he’s always got food and water, and clean out his cage, and not let him die.”
Thomas chortles. “Did she say those actual words? ‘Don’t let him die’?”
Max blushes. “Well, she had two mice when she was little, and they died. Their names were Heidi and Holly. I guess she forgot to feed them for, like, a really long time, and . . . yeah.”
“That’s terrible!” Milla says, and Violet isn’t surprised when her eyes well up.
Milla’s like that when it comes to animals. Even rodents, apparently. Even insects. Last week, Milla practically burst into tears after Katie-Rose killed a fruit fly that flew out of her lunch bag as the girls were unpacking their food. Katie-Rose did it instinctively and not to be a murderer or anything. She saw the fruit fly and slapped her hands together. Then she unfolded her hands and showed the remains to the other FFFs, saying “Ew.”
“Oh, poor thing,” Milla cried. “Is it dead? For sure dead?”
Katie-Rose regarded the smushed-ness. She looked up at Milla like, Oops?
“It’s a fruit fly,” Violet told Milla. “It would have died soon anyway.”
“True,” Katie-Rose said. “Fruit flies have very short life spans. Anyway, I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Milla said. “It’s just so sad. Its life was already doomed to be short, and . . . well . . . now it’s not just short, it’s over. I know you didn’t mean to, Katie-Rose, but it’s just so tragic!”
It took Yasaman to calm her down. She gave Katie-Rose a napkin to wipe her hands with and said to Milla, “Maybe it was wounded already. Maybe Katie-Rose eased its suffering.”
Katie-Rose liked this idea. “Yeah! It was trapped all day with my apple and my juice box—I bet it got pretty banged up in there. I’m sure it did! I think I’m probably an angel of mercy, Milla.”
“Saint Katie-Rose,” Violet said, totally deadpan. Everyone except Milla had laughed, but Milla had almost laughed.
Thomas has launched into a story of a goldfish with an infected scale, but Violet can already predict the ending—dead mice, dead fruit fly, dead fish—and she doesn’t want to hear it. She glances around the playground to see what else is going on.
Katie-Rose is swinging with a girl named Ava. Mr. Emerson is telling Ms. Perez a story, and Ms. Perez laughs. She looks flushed and pretty. By the giant tire, Cyril is still writing away in that notebook of his, only—
Huh. He seems to have company: Modessa and her evil twin, Quin. They’re not really twins. They’re both equally vile, that’s all. And that’s putting it nicely.
As Violet watches, Quin darts forward, pokes Cyril, and darts back to Modessa. The two of them snicker when Cyril startles, but when he looks at them, they switch immediately to la la la, I didn’t notice anything just now, did you?
Anger flashes in Cyril’s eyes, along with something else, something that shouldn’t be seen. Like the purply guts of the mice Violet’s neighbor’s cat used to leave on Violet’s doorstep. The cat brought them as presents, but sometimes the mice weren’t always all the way dead, and those inside bits . . .
Nobody’s inside bits should be exposed like that, and especially not without permission.
Cyril hunches back over his notebook. Quin deer-hops forward and pokes him, and Cyril flinches. “Hey!” he says. “Quit it!”
Modessa claps and doubles over, and Quin’s chest puffs out with pride at pleasing Queen Modessa. Violet wants to vomit.
Just because Cyril is different, does that mean Quin’s allowed to poke him? No.
Just because he smells—if he even does—does that give Modessa the right to make jokes about him? No.
Violet’s mom sometimes forgot to shower, back when signs of her illness were just starting to show up. Sometimes she went weeks without clipping her toenails, remembering their existence only when her shoes pressed them painfully into her flesh. She’d rub the blisters, and Violet would say, “Mom, it’s your toenails. You need to cut them so they don’t do that.”
Violet’s own toes curl inside her baby-doll shoes. Then she uncurls them and heads over to give Quin and Modessa a piece of her mind.
“Violet?” Milla says.
Violet flutters her hand over her shoulder to say, Keep talking to Max, you’re doing great. Don’t mind me. She gets close enough to Quin and Modessa that she can make out their words.
“. . . worth fifty points,” Modessa is saying. “But only if you touch his head.”
“Ew!” Quin squeals. “That’s worth a hundred points at least.”
“Fine, a hundred points. If you bring back a hair.”
“Ewwww! No way am I touching his greasy hair!”
“Good, I’m glad we agree,” Violet says.
Modessa and Quin spin around. Quin’s mouth falls open, and even Modessa turns a little pink.
“You’re being jerks,” Violet says. “Why do you keep poking him like it’s some sort of game?”
Modessa recovers first. “Because it is a game. It’s called Poke the Psycho.”
Well. That was the wrong thing to say.
“Leave him alone,” Violet warns.
Modessa touches her chin and stares at the sky. Then she drops her finger and says, “Um . . . nah.” She turns to Quin. “Quin? A hundred points?”
Quin steps toward Cyril, but Violet grabs her wrist.
“What’s your problem?” Quin says. She tries to twist free. “Let go!”
“No,” Violet says. She glances at Cyril, expecting him to help her out. Or if not that, expecting him to at least look grateful.
But, no. His eyes are dark and stormy, and his jaw is set at an ugly angle. He glares at all of them, Modessa, Quin, and Violet, before curving over his notebook and unleashing a torrent of cramped words.
Whiteness—too bright—flares in Violet’s brain. Quin squirms free.
“Poke him,” Modessa commands. “I’ll give you five hundred points.”
Quin snickers and strides toward Cyril. Violet feels physically ill. She steps backward and bumps smack into Mr. Emerson, who has appeared without her noticing.
He steadies her. To Modessa and Quin, he says, “Girls, I’m appalled. I want you to apologize to Cyril now.”
Quin grows pale, and Modessa immediately loses her smirk. Relief courses through Violet’s veins. Order is possible. Violet isn’t crazy for sticking up for Cyril.
“Sorry,” Quin mutters.
Cyril doesn’t respond.
“Modessa?” Mr. Emerson prods.
Modessa pretends to be confused. She looks at Mr. Emerson from under her eyelashes and says, “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to apologize for. Is joking around not allowed anymore?”
“Poking someone isn’t a joke,” Mr. Emerson says.
“But . . . Quin pokes me all the time, and I poke her, too,” Modessa says. “It’s a game. Right, Quin?”
Quin fidgets, until Modessa slips her hand int
o Quin’s. Then Quin grows still. She nods.
“Does Cyril know it’s a game?” Mr. Emerson says.
“Of course!” Modessa says, sounding wounded. She turns to Cyril and slathers on the charm. “You know we’re just playing, right, Cyril?”
Violet is disgusted, but she’s pretty sure Mr. Emerson sees through Modessa’s act, and she’s positive Cyril does. Go on, she coaches him silently. Tell him the truth.
But Cyril says nothing. His face is expressionless.
“Cyril?” Mr. Emerson says.
Time stretches out. The playground blurs. Cyril isn’t going to defend himself, and Modessa isn’t going to apologize. Order isn’t order after all.
Mr. Emerson keeps talking. Modessa keeps being Modessa. Violet pulls numbly inside of herself, until Mr. Emerson’s tone changes, bringing her back.
“Cyril, wait,” he says. He raises his voice. “Cyril!”
Violet blinks. Cyril is gone.
asks during lunch. Violet has shared the dark tale of the Cyril-poking game, and Yasaman is struggling to wrap her head around it. How can someone not apologize when she (a) needs to apologize, and (b) has even been ordered by her teacher to apologize?
“Where is she now?” Milla asks, looking around the lunchroom.
“Hiding out, probably,” Katie-Rose says. “She probably came up with some fake help-a-teacher job she absolutely had to do.” She doesn’t make eye contact with Yasaman. She hasn’t since they sat down, which is not very Katie-Rose-like. Is it possible Katie-Rose is ignoring her because of what happened this morning, with Natalia and the police tape?
“Maybe she’s helping Angie organize the bookshelves,” Yasaman says.
“Helping Angie eat cookies, you mean,” Katie-Rose says bitterly.
Angie, the parent volunteer who’s in charge of Rivendell’s small media center, is famous for her cookies. She brings them to her student mentors every Monday. Katie-Rose wanted to be a media center mentor, but she wasn’t selected. Modessa was.
“Well, she’ll have to come out eventually,” Violet says. She’s still angry, but her voice is strong and assured. “When she does, Mr. Emerson will find her, and he’ll make her apologize. End of story.”