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Morgan Askren is practically untouchable. She’s popular even though she doesn’t go to parties or talk to anyone in school. It’s like she floats above it somewhere. She’s supposed to be related to Angelina Jolie. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the rumor alone has made her a legend.
“Oh, and Brant, of course,” Phoebe adds. “I dropped my math book in the hall and he came over and picked it up. He’s just so nice.”
Joey says, “Get a clue, Martin.”
“Stop it, Joey. He was really sweet. I gave him a mini-stapler.”
“Your mom gave him a mini-stapler.”
Phoebe looks at Joey like she’s ready to throttle him. He’s being annoying enough right now that I’m not so sure we wouldn’t pin him down for her if asked. “For your information,” she says through tight lips, “he smiled. Like he meant it.”
“He was just smiling at how stupid you are,” Joey mumbles.
Delia jumps in. “Joey, just let her—” She sucks in her breath; it’s obvious that her words aren’t about to comfort Phoebe. “I mean, we all know—” she tries again. Finally, she says, “Just shut up, Joey.”
Phoebe looks at us all and gets up, throwing the rest of her lunch into the gaping trash can with a strong jerk of her arm. Delia runs after her.
“Wow, Joey,” I say. “That was brutal. What is up with you?”
“Well, we all know what’s going on. How can you guys just keep humoring her? She’s gonna get wrecked when it finally sinks in!” He’s practically yelling at us.
“I know, I know,” I say, hoping to quiet him. It’s strange to see Joey all worked up like this, especially about Phoebe’s feelings. Weird. “We just have to be nice about it, okay? She seriously likes him.”
He puts his head down on the stretch of table in front of him and thumps his forehead against it three times.
“Yeah, just calm down, Joey. You’re being a major smear,” Mandy tells him. He doesn’t raise his head.
No one says anything for a minute. Mandy pulls the pepperoni off my slice of pizza and eats it. I roll up the rest and eat it like a burrito.
“Now I need something sweet,” Mandy says, after she’s through with her scavenged lunch. “Joey, you got any Ho Hos left?”
This morning, Joey brought in a big box of them to use as rewards.
“No,” he says from his face-plant.
“Well, why not?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. Mandy looks at me knowingly.
“Did you eat them all, Joey?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even lift up his head, not even a little.
“I hope they were worth it,” I say, trying not to get too mad. Joey’s such a liability sometimes.
“I’m sugar-crashing now,” Joey finally says, his nose still pressing into the table.
“God, Joey,” Mandy says, and shakes her head. “From now on, nothing edible for you. You’ve got to bring in something that you can’t stuff into your mouth.”
He raises his head, finally. “Like what?” He appears to be completely stumped.
“What do you have a lot of?” I ask.
“Uh, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards?”
Mandy shakes her head. “Look, alpha dogs don’t play Yu-Gi-Oh!, okay? Let’s just get that straight. What else you got?”
He shrugs.
“What about office supplies? Can you buy some of those?”
He cocks his head as if it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. “A, I haven’t gotten allowance in two years, and B, Phoebe already cornered that market.”
Mandy looks at me. “We need something free. What costs nothing?”
“Nothing costs nothing,” I say.
Joey puts on a sickeningly sweet face, full of sarcasm. “A smile is free,” he says, reciting the line from yet another “inspirational” poster tacked up by the soda machine. We all gag out loud. And then I get an idea.
“Compliments!”
Mandy stares at me dully. Joey says, “What about them?”
“They’re free!”
“So’s your advice! No offense, but sometimes you’re such a tool,” he tells me, his face contorted with disgust and disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Seriously, Liv,” Mandy says. “You think a person like Brynne is going to care at all if she gets a compliment from someone like Joey?”
“Hey!” Joey says.
“I see your point and all, Mandy, and I don’t think anyone would admit it,” I say. “But think about it—at first they might be like,‘Who’s that stupid kid and why should I care if he thinks I’m pretty?’ But then they’ll go home and look in the mirror and think, well, if it doesn’t get any better at least I’ll have Joey Spagnoli.”
She glances over at Joey, who looks like he’s injured, and pats his arm like it helps somehow.
“Well, it’s got to be true,” I say. “If it wasn’t, would there be all this self-esteem stuff splattered all over the walls?” I gesture toward a poster of a warthog. Above the warthog are the words i’m fine… in a large bold font. Across the animal’s feet, in dreamy italics, are the words just the way i am.
“I guess you’re right,” Mandy says, and turns to Joey. “It could work.”
“I don’t do compliments,” he says, his voice a monotone. “They’re just stupid.”
“Only sometimes,” Mandy says.
“All the time,” he argues.
We both look at him. If only he was willing.
“What?” he says, raising his palms up. “It’s just that they’re so embarrassing.”
“Joey, do you want to be a Marcie all your life?” Mandy asks.
“I’m not a…” he mumbles, trailing off. Giving up.
The three of us are quiet. Joey shuffles a little in his seat and avoids looking at either one of us. He takes a deep breath. “Okay, okay, whatever. Will you guys just, I don’t know, give me a list or something?”
Mandy and I smile at each other.
“All right, Joey,” I say. “We’ll give you a few starters. Then you’re on your own, okay?”
He shuffles his feet under the table and gives us an I- surrender-but-this-is-ridiculous face.
“Look, they’re coming back,” he says. We turn around and see Delia and Phoebe heading back to our table. Delia’s arm is wrapped over Phoebe’s shoulder.
“Quick,” I say to Joey, “you’ve got to give Phoebe a compliment!”
“But why? She hasn’t done anything to earn a reward!”
“Just for the practice,” I tell him.
Mandy slaps her hands on the table excitedly. “Tell her she’s hot. Smokin’ hot.”
He looks at us like he’d rather eat a plateful of raw broccoli, which, for Joey, is worse than eating, say, live parasitic worms.
“Okay, fine,” Mandy says, as she and I laugh. “Then just tell her you like her hair like that.”
“Like what?!”
“Just say it,” Mandy tells him, practically gritting her teeth.
“You all right, Pheeb?” Mandy asks, as Phoebe and Delia sit back down at the table.
“Fine,” she says, though she doesn’t seem it.
“What did you do to your hair?” Joey asks.
“What? What’s wrong with it?” Her hands fly to her head and shake out her hair as if trying to forcibly remove a trapped spider.
“Nothing. It looks—fine,” he says. I tap my knee against his under the table. “I mean, nice. Kind of good, actually.” He is red, as if in pain from the stress of giving the compliment.
She eyes him distrustfully.
Joey sighs. “I like your hair, Martin.” And then he looks down and away, fidgeting with his hands. It’s a little uncomfortable to watch. I have to look away for a second, too.
Phoebe is trying to grasp what’s just happened. “My hair?” she’s saying, touching it, this time lightly, and looking bewildered. “Really?” She stops and gives us a questioning look. “Thanks, I guess, Joey.”
And then Phoebe does, kind of, too.
ON WEDNESDAY, I run into Mandy between first and second period. She’s so excited she is practically violating the Emo Code of Ethics. If you get past the scabbed-over eyebrow piercing and black lips, her face looks like a kid in a Disney World commercial. Her eyes are like little green Christmas lights, and she is smiling. Beaming, actually. And bouncing toward me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I try to smile, but she’s acting so different from her normal self that I’m sure I just look constipated or something.
It doesn’t seem to bother her. “It works!” she says, nearly glowing.
“What happened?”
“Okay, so I was in the bathroom putting on my lips, and I hear this flush, and Tamberlin Ziff comes out of the stall. I thought for sure she was going to start with that ‘Bubo’ thing, you know like she used to? Like bubonic?” Her head is bobbing with excitement and she is talking very fast. “So I go, ‘Cool necklace,’ you know. To distract her. And she was like, ‘Thanks.’ And then she was like, ‘Is that really a Sharpie?’” Mandy’s eyes are wide. Practically innocent.
I smile. But there’s a little part of me that holds back—the part that’s full of doubt and stuff. “Okay?”
“She said she’d never really thought of using a marker.”
I’m still smiling, but I say, “Most people”—I fight the urge to add outside of the asylum—“don’t.” I remind myself that I still haven’t talked to her about the clog.
“I know it’s not exactly normal,” she says, “but, personally, and I told her this, I like the fact that it stays on and doesn’t feel greasy. She said she was going to try it, but that her mom would probably make her use the nontoxic washable kind. And that she’d probably go red. And so I gave her a treat!”
When I don’t say anything, she says, “You know, a reward. Like we talked about? Hello? What’s wrong?”
I sigh. “Are you sure it’s not just something for one of their Spiritleader Dress-Up Days? Like a Wacky-Tacky theme or something?”
“What?” Mandy looks injured. “No! I don’t—I don’t think so. You know, I’m not like Phoebe, Olivia. I can usually tell when someone’s trying to make fun of me.”
Which is why I’m surprised right now. I just say, “I know. I guess it’s just kind of hard to imagine that Tamberlin’s going to start putting marker on her lips because some Marcie—in her eyes, I mean—gave her a piece of gum in the bathroom.”
“Life Saver,” she corrects me, her mood crumbling a little. “Pep-O-Mint. Olivia, she listened to me. It worked,” she says again, and walks away.
I feel like a real dolt when I see Tamberlin at lunch later. Not only does she have bright red lips—quite possibly a primary-colored Crayola washable marker “borrowed” from the arts alcove—but when she sees me, our eyes meet, and then she just looks away. Like we were just two normal strangers who, for just a second, were accidentally caught in each other’s eye-lock. That would never have happened a week ago.
Mandy was right.
Then I think about what Mandy said when she saw me in my new clothes, how she told me she wasn’t going “mainstream.” Well, maybe she won’t have to. Maybe she is changing the definition of cool. Could we all be wearing clogs by the time this year is over?
And it gets weirder.
Because I’m almost to my fourth period classroom when I hear “ICICLE STORM!” And then the Spirit leaders are whirling through the scampering crowd, coming right smack toward me. They are jumping, twisting, kicking, and flailing, in their interpretation of a natural disaster of which I, being immobile with terror, am about to become the first victim.
But just then I become aware of a hand on my upper arm pulling me through a doorway. And then I am standing in front of a urinal, facing cute Jell-O fan and English classmate Max Marshall, who is trying to catch his breath. “You okay?” he asks, panting.
“I think so,” I say. “Are you?”
He nods. “Sorry about pulling you in here—it was the safest place.”
“No, that’s okay,” I tell him. I mean, I’m safe. I’m alive. And I’m in forbidden territory—the boy’s bathroom. I just always expected something a little more interesting than this. It’s disappointing—you can practically map out the social hierarchy of Hubert C. Frost Middle School by reading the girls’ bathroom graffiti. But in here, the most fascinating thing is the urinal. There’s a puck-looking thing sitting in the bottom of it. “What is that?”
“That’s a little something they call a urinal cake. Not edible, though.” He smiles. “Just in case you were tempted. Come on, let’s get to English before we get detention.”
We walk to our classroom together. Max takes his seat in front of me, and I look at the back of his honey-brown head and wonder if he would’ve just let me fend for myself two weeks ago, or even just two days ago.
But then he passes a little slip of paper back to me. I open it up. He’s drawn me a cartoon—a urinal cake with candles in it. Next to it he’s written, “Make a wish!”
It makes me laugh. What’s weird is that this whole thing feels like one big fat wish. And what’s even weirder is that I feel a glimmer of hope that it could actually come true.
And before I forget, I pass a stick of Freedent up to him.
There’s no more barking on the bus these days. In fact, lately, when I get on board, Brynne just turns and looks away. She doesn’t even try to insult me anymore, at least not to my face.
But today, as I pass through the aisle by her seat, I hear her quietly mumble, “Granny panties.” To which Carolyn just sighs and says, “God, Brynne, move on already.”
Yes, this wish. It could possibly be coming true.
IT’S FRIDAY after school, and we’re setting up for Monopoly. Joey has gone to, quote-unquote, “puke his lungs out” because he complimented Corinne d’Abo on her small nostrils. “It was either that or her bra size, and I panicked and didn’t want to get expelled,” he’d told us, before suffering an attack of dry heaves. Ms. Greenwood had taken the opportunity to make it perfectly clear that there would be no vomiting permitted in her room.
Phoebe unfolds the board and eyes the game pieces. “I think I deserve the shoe today,” she announces. “Especially after what I had to endure.”
“Yeah, maybe you do,” Joey says, coming back into the room. And then he smirks and adds, “To the back of your pants!”
“Shut up, Joey,” she says.
“Your mom shuts up!”
The rest of us look at each other and sigh.
“So, Phoebe,” I say. “I vote you get the shoe if you tell us what happened.”
She looks down at the table. “Okay, so I was standing in line at the vision screenings, and Brynne and Danny Pritchard were behind me. And Brynne said, ‘I’m getting an attack of the Phoebe-Jeebies.’” She gives me a slightly tortured glance. “The Phoebe-Jeebies! I thought that was behind us. Especially after all the mini-staplers I’ve gone through.”
My heart drops. “I’m sorry, Pheeb. Maybe it’s just a minor setback.”
“And don’t forget—it’s Brynne we’re talking about. She’s the worst, so she’s going to be the hardest,” Delia adds.
It’s true. I wish there was some special supplemental training just for her.
Mandy adds, “And Danny. Jeez. What a butt-crack he is.”
“Actually, Danny wasn’t awful. In a way, he stuck up for me,” Phoebe says.
“Oh, first Brant’s in love with you, now Danny,” Joey says in a mocking tone.
“I didn’t say that—not about Danny!” Phoebe says, her pale skin turning pink.
“Pheeb,” I say, trying to get her to refocus. “Explain. How did he stick up for you?”
“Well, first he groaned, and then he rolled his eyes. And then”—she looks at me—“he shushed her!”
“Big deal,”
Joey says.
“Actually, Joey, it is a big deal,” I say. “For him to be shushing her is huge.”
“Yeah,” Mandy adds. “Danny’s like her slave boy.”
Then an idea hits me. “Okay, listen, you guys,” I tell them. “Next time something like that happens—next time one of Brynne’s minions stands up to her or says or does something mean to her—you’re giving them some sort of reward.”
They all sort of stare at me. “I don’t get it,” Phoebe said. “I thought we were rewarding good behavior.”
Delia looks uneasy. “Yeah, so now we’re supposed to reward mean things?”
“It’s more like we reward anti-Brynne behavior. Look, Delia already said that Brynne’s the hardest to train. And Mandy—you just called Danny her slave boy, right?”
They both nod slowly.
“So we’re just going to help a little with the revolt. Think of yourselves as abolitionists,” I say. “Freedom fighters.”
Delia looks at me sideways.
“Like Sojourner Truth,” I add.
“Sojourner Truth was a hero,” Delia says. “I don’t know, Liv. That might be a stretch.”
“Or like, what was that lady’s name? The one who wrote that book about Uncle Somebody’s cabin?” Mandy says.
“Harriet Beecher Stowe,” Phoebe says. “But as far as abolitionists go, I much prefer Francis Ellen Watkins Harper.”
“And I much prefer your mom,” Joey says. Then his smug face morphs into a blotchy panicked one, and he starts apologizing. Apologizing! I mean, this is Joey we’re talking about! “Uh, sorry, guys, but—” he stammers. It’s awkward—and not the funny kind of awkward, just the squirmy, uncomfortable kind.
Mandy tries to put him out of his misery. “That’s okay, Joey. You say stupid things all the time.”
“Oh,” he says. “I’m not sorry for that. I’m sorry because I’m about to cut one.”
Ms. Greenwood yells out in disgust. Mandy quickly jumps up and pulls Joey out of his seat. She pushes him out into the hall and closes the door. A minute later we hear a gaggle of laughs and a guy’s voice saying, “Nice one, Spagnoli.”