Romance of the Snob Squad (2 page)

My sister and I were both addicts. Vanessa was addicted to the clarinet, among other things. A bejillion other things, not including the one thing I was addicted to. Food. Junk food, to be specific.

I headed for Vanessa’s room. Mom called after me, “Your father and I have line dancing lessons tonight, so dinner’s in ten minutes. Tell Vanessa. And Jenny, don’t forget to write that pickle down in your food diary.”

Sure, Mom, I thought. Right above my entry for the Hostess cupcakes I have hidden in my underwear drawer and plan to enjoy as my main course.

I knocked on Vanessa’s door. No answer, as usual. Who could hear over Benny Goodman? “Van?” I cracked the door. She sat upright on a cold, steel folding chair, her music stand propped in front of her. Through chipmunk cheeks she blew into her clarinet. Thanks to Vanessa, I’d come to despise the clarinet. All band instruments, actually.

Clapping my hands over my ears, I charged in and ripped the music off her stand. She continued playing for a few seconds until her eyes deglazed. “Hey!”

I pointed to my watch. “Torture time is up.”

She held out her hand. “I’m almost through. Just four more stanzas.”

“Sorry. I can’t stanza anymore.” I hid the music behind my back. “You know the rules.”

She clucked her tongue. “I hate the rules.”

“Rules are rules. You practiced this morning for at least an hour.”

She bolted to her feet, grabbing at the music. I whipped it away. For a fat girl, I’m pretty quick.

She exhaled in disgust, then placed the clarinet in its case on the bed and sank down beside it. She drew her bony knees to her chest. “So, is dinner ready?”

“Yeah.” I leaned against her full-length mirror. “If that’s what you want to call it. Mom cooked.”

“Again?” Vanessa curled a lip. “What is it this time? Tofu turkey?”

I smiled. “That actually sounds better than what she’s making.”

Van’s eyes widened. “Maybe we could sue for cruel and unusual parents.”

I laughed. She smirked. That was the sister I knew and loved. At the door I stopped and stared back at her.

“I’m coming,” she said. Her eyes swelled out of their sunken sockets.

I closed the door, wondering, as I headed to my own room, whether my intervention was really helping Vanessa deal with her obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Sid, our psychologist, said it would. But then he chewed his nails until they bled. Who was helping him?

I wondered, too, if he was curing either of us of our real problem. No doubt he was writing us up in some medical journal: “From Out of the Same Gene Pool: Two Sisters—One Can’t Eat; One Can’t Stop.”

Removing the package of Hostess cupcakes from the bottom of my underwear drawer, I breathed in their luscious aroma. My own eyes reflected back at me in the mirror. As if in conversation, one pair pleaded. The other beckoned. The first scolded.

“Ohhh…” I clucked. “All right.” I shoved the cupcakes back under my bra, one cake per cup, and slammed the drawer. At least I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for accidentally on purpose forgetting to write them down in my diary. Speaking of which, where was that empty diary?

L
ydia ambushed me the second I stepped off the school bus. “I found out Hugh’s favorite color is brown,” she said. “His lucky number is eight, and he loves anchovy pizza.”

There was a pause, then, “Ewww,” Lydia and I both gagged in unison.

I added, “What did you do, talk to him?”

“Are you nuts?” Lydia shifted her backpack to her other shoulder. “I asked Kevin Rooney.”

My sandals stuck to the sidewalk. “Kevin Rooney?” Just hearing his name gave me gargantuan goose bumps.

Lydia twined her hair behind her ears and said, “Kevin is on Hugh’s science team. I couldn’t ask Hugh—gawd forbid. Someone might see me talking to him. So I asked Kevin.”

“How would Kevin know that Hugh likes anchovy pizza?” I asked. Kevin didn’t speak a word of nerd.

Lydia exhaled an exasperated sigh. “He doesn’t. I made up this fake survey.” She handed me a sheet of paper. At the top, printed neatly in pink ink, was the title:
Sixth-Grade End-of-School Personal Interests Survey.
Below the title were the instructions:
Answer each question to the best of your ability.

“This morning I asked Kevin to ask Hugh to fill it out,” Lydia said. “I told him it was for a social studies project and that I needed it back right away.”

My jaw unhinged. Lydia amazed me. She’d been busy. All I’d done last night was watch
Dawson’s Creek
, devour a bag of barbecued potato chips while my parents were out cowboy boogying, and go to bed. “One question,” I said. “Since when is Kevin on Hugh’s science team? I thought he was on the tornado team.”

Lydia clucked. “Where have you been? There were too many people on the tornado team, so Mr. Biekmund made them split up. Since Kevin’s into computers, he asked him if he’d mind working with Hugh. Naturally Melanie went over with Kevin. She’s sooo obvious.” Lydia rolled her eyes.

“Tell me about it,” I muttered.

“Ashley couldn’t be left behind without her groupie, so she followed Melanie. Don’t you remember the little snit she had? How she wanted to be in charge? How she hated Hugh’s idea and wanted to do something else? You were there.”

“Guess I was busy.” Guess I was sleeping.

“Anyway,” Lydia went on, “look at the last question.”

I scanned down the survey and read aloud, “ ‘Have you asked anyone to the spring fling?’ ” My eyes widened. “Lydia!”

She smiled. “He answered no.”

“Kevin did?”

“No, Hugh.” She gave me a funny look.

Hastily I hustled toward class. Lydia followed on my flopping heels. “So, did Kevin fill out a survey, too?” I said nonchalantly.

“I didn’t ask him to,” Lydia replied.

Rats. I’d give a month of Milk Duds to know his answer to the last question. To any of the questions. “Didn’t Kevin wonder why you wanted Hugh to fill out the survey and not him?” My fingers curled around the door handle.

“Yeah, he wondered.” As she passed by me on her way in, she smiled over her shoulder. “Let him wonder.”

Oh, boy, was Lydia coy. About as coy as the brick wall she smacked into.

Eight. Brown. Anchovies
. I wrote the words in my reading journal. I reread them. They sounded like the start of a poem.

Eight brown anchovies

On a pizza pie.

I took one bite

And thought that I would die.

Mrs. Jonas paused at my desk. She had her grade book open and, in her left hand, jiggled a red Flair pen. “Jenny, you have a spelling test to make up from last week and the daily oral language sentences to redo. Unless you want me to record the D plus.” When I didn’t reply right away, she arched both eyebrows.

“I’m thinking.”

She pursed her lips. You know the look: That wasn’t really a choice. Her wristwatch beeped, postponing my indecision. “Time for science,” Mrs. Jonas announced to the class. “Mr. Biekmund asked me to remind you that your science fair project plans are due today.”

Uh-oh, I thought. That’s what we forgot to talk about yesterday in the Peacemobile. I knew there was a reason we’d gotten together, other than delving into our deepest, darkest secrets.

Like a lumbering herd of buffalo, our class transferred to the science room. On the way Lydia had to say it: “We didn’t talk about the project, Jenny.”

“No duh,” I said.

“What are we going to tell Mr. Biekmund?”

Max and Prairie looked at me, too. Sometimes being the leader is a major burden. “Leave it to me,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”

Mr. Biekmund was his usual sniffly self. The Beak Man, we called him, because he had a nose like a garden hose. Terminal postnasal drip. He was always snuffling and blowing his snot out into a wadded-up handkerchief, too. Disgusting. You try to listen to a flat trombone for an hour every day—after an hour and a half of clarinet. No wonder I hated band instruments.

As soon as the dust settled, the Beak Man began picking up science fair plans. He couldn’t wait until the end of class, could he? I mean, what’s the rush? He hovered over our table, sniffing. “Ladies, do you have your project plans for the science fair?” he asked.

“Huh?” I said.

“Your science fair plans,” he repeated.

I gave him my most shocked expression. “You mean now?”

“They’re due today.” His expression didn’t change.

He was good, I had to give him that. “Um, well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Biekmund, my new puppy sort of had an accident on the plans.”

“You have a new puppy?” Lydia piped up. “You didn’t tell us. What’s his name?”

I pummeled her with eye pellets. Max groaned.

“I’ll have to give you all F’s,” the Beak Man said flatly. He started to saunter away.

“Wait,” I called.

He stopped and swiveled back.

“Could I tell you about it, at least? I mean, I’m in the middle of recopying the plans, and I’ll have them to you by the end of the day. You said due today, so I thought that meant by three-thirty. It wouldn’t be fair to give everybody else an F just because my puppy peed on the plans.”

He held my eyes.

I could feel the rest of the Squad arching pathetic eyebrows.

The Beak Man exhaled a long, weary breath.

I exhaled one myself. “Geez,” I said, smiling, “I thought for a minute that you thought we didn’t even
do
it.” I gave a short laugh.

Max, Prairie, and Lydia laughed, too.

“So,” the Beak Man said, “what’s your project?”

“Our project.” My mouth felt like I’d been sucking chalk. “Our project is…”

“An experiment,” Max muttered.

“Right,” I said. “An experiment. Like… how many M&M’s are there in a bite-size bag as compared to the full pounder.”

The Beak Man frowned.

“We’re going to see if M&M’s actually do melt in your hands, which everyone knows they do. Then we’re going to sue M&M’s for false advertising and make a million dollars for the school. To buy new science equipment, of course.”

By his expression I could tell I’d exhausted the Beak Man’s humor quotient. Which was zero to begin with.

“Just kidding,” I said. “I’ll have the plan to you by the end of the day.”

After he left, the Squad gave me the thumbs-up. Sometimes school was like that. Dodge one disaster after another.

At lunch, after we’d settled at our table in the far corner, I said, “About the science fair—”

Lydia cut me off: “His favorite subject is math. Well, computers really, and his favorite sport is bowling.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Hugh.”

“Who?” Max repeated.

“Hugh.”

“Hugh’s on first,” I said. “What’s on second. I don’t know’s on third.” They stared at me like I had a dead cow on my head. “Never mind. One of my father’s Abbott and Costello routines.” It usually got the same response from Vanessa and me. So why had I repeated it?

Lydia reread the survey, shaking her head. “I don’t know how we’re going to use this information. Hmmm.” She tapped her chin. The first part of Lydia’s plan was to gather data on Hugh, since he was an unknown entity. I was coming to realize that people are unknown entities for a reason.

“What did Prairie say about the survey?” I asked.

Lydia replied, “I haven’t shown it to her yet.” A smile curled her lips. “She’ll just die when she sees it.”

“Or you will,” Max muttered.

Lydia said, “Oh, good. Here she comes.”

Prairie usually came to lunch a little later than us. After science she had special classes in the resource room, which we used to call the retard room before we knew Prairie.

“Hi, Prairie. Sit next to me.” Lydia scootched over on the table bench to let Prairie slide in.

“I l-love spaghetti day.” Prairie smiled. “D-don’t you just love spaghetti day?” She wound a wad of day-old pasta around her fork and chomped into it.

While we ate, Lydia explained her plan and showed Prairie the survey. Prairie’s eyes bugged out. She sucked in spaghetti while she sucked up Hugh’s responses.

“If no one wants their brownie, I’ll take it off your hands,” I said. There was more pleading in my voice than I meant to betray. Slurping pasta, Prairie handed hers over. Max, even though she’d eaten half, surrendered hers. Lydia hesitated. Clucking her tongue, she added her brownie to the stack.

I smiled meekly. “I owe you one.”

“Forget it,” she said. “Although I feel like I should be helping you stay on your diet.”

“It’s not a diet. It’s a nutrition plan. As long as I write down everything I eat, I can eat anything I want.” That was my interpretation.

Lydia looked skeptical. “I guess your dietician figures if you’re busy writing, you can’t eat.”

My fingers formed a fist to slug her. Max beat me to it. “Ouch.” Lydia rubbed her arm. A blob of spaghetti sauce dribbled out of her mouth. Dabbing her lips with a napkin, she said, “Well, I should know. My mother’s a—”

“Child psychologist,” we finished for her. We heard this so often, we could recite it in a coma.

All of a sudden the air grew stale. A shadow enveloped us. “What’s this I hear about a sixth-grade survey?” Ashley Krupps said. She loomed over Lydia, her bulk blocking what little light there was. Ashley was fat, like me. Only she didn’t care. Next to Ashley stood Melanie. She flipped a spray of long blond hair over her shoulder. I tried that once in the mirror. Almost dislocated my sternum.

“It doesn’t concern you,” Lydia said.

Ashley replied, “You mean it’s only for sixth-grade boys? That’s discrimination.”

Lydia clucked. “It’s not just for boys.”

Melanie flipped her hair again. “Then it must just be for Hugh. He’s the only one who’s mentioned it.”

Ashley widened her eyes at Melanie, then narrowed them knowingly at Lydia. “So,” she said, “someone’s got the hots for Hugh.”

Lydia sneered. “Get real.”

“Get lost,” Max mumbled.

Ashley turned to Melanie. “I guess I should tell them about Hugh asking me to the spring fling. I wasn’t going to go, of course, but maybe now I will. Since you’re going with Kevin. We could double.”

Melanie smiled at me, like she knew my secret.