Too Cool for This School (18 page)

Ava was really holding things up. Couldn’t she do that in the hallway? I needed to object to my assigned moods before it looked like I’d agreed to one of them.

“How do you inspect a cello?” Robin asked.

Ava unzipped the bag and carefully removed the large wooden instrument. It was glossy, and the scroll at the top looked like a curling wave. I didn’t think it looked damaged.

“Give me a second,” Ava said, taking her bow out of its protective case. “I need to rosin the hairs of my bow and play it a little to make sure it’s okay.” Then she rubbed the bow against a cake of rosin.

“I’m pretty sure it’s okay,” Leslie said.

Ava frowned and touched the tuning pegs on her cello, then positioned the end pin on the floor and placed the instrument between her legs. “Let me play the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s
Sleeping Beauty
. And then I’m out of here. By the way, it’s a waltz.”

I thought Ava was acting like a spoiled person. She did not need to play the cello in the middle of our class-captain meeting. But she did it anyway. She laid her bow across the strings and lightly pressed her curled hand against the fingerboard. She released one continuous deep sound. Then she repositioned the bow at a sharper angle and the sound changed. After a few times drawing her bow across the strings, she lowered it and plucked the strings with her thumb. “It’s okay,” she said.

Then she carefully repacked the cello in her carrying case and zipped it back up.

“This is really starting to bug me,” Robin whispered to Leslie. “We’re losing valuable time.”

Over the years, I’d heard Ava play at roughly a dozen concerts. Usually, my mom came. My mom always said she thought the cello sounded like dark chocolate melting.

“I didn’t mean to freak on you guys. But my cello is one of the most important things in my life,” Ava said.

“It’s cool,” Derek said, answering for everybody.

“Yeah,” Robin added. “It’s fine. Bye.”

“Have a good meeting, Lane,” Ava said. Then she put her pinkie near her mouth and thumb near her ear and made the universal sign for “Call me.”

I nodded.

“She’s totally gifted,” Fiona says. “I bet she gets a scholarship to college.”

I’d never thought of that, because I didn’t spend any time thinking about college. But Fiona was probably right. Ava was gifted. She was lucky. And after Mint moved back to Alaska, I hoped Jagger could recognize this.

“I wonder who moved her cello,” I said.

“Maybe it was an accident,” Fiona said.

“Or maybe somebody wanted to mess with her,” Derek said.

I took another bite of pizza and considered that. Who would want to mess with Ava?

“What mood do you think Ava will dress up as?” Leslie asked.

That question caught me off guard. I didn’t automatically think of my friends as moods. “Um, intense?” I offered.

“Ooh!” Robin gushed. “I like that! We should add it to the list.”

“And what about you?” Leslie said. “Cerebral or organic?”

I wanted to say neither. As I mulled over how to respond, I could hear myself breathing. When I tried to imagine dressing up as a cerebral mood, all I could picture was a slimy brain. The last thing I wanted was to show up to our first big school party looking like a frontal lobe or cerebellum. Those costumes wouldn’t be cute. “Organic,” I heard myself say.

I figured it was the better of the two moods. With this much time to plan and prepare, I could use any free time I had searching online for the perfect costume. I wanted to wear something cute enough to catch Todd’s attention and make him look at me and say “Wow!”

16

The weekend after the class-captain meeting, I was looking forward to spending a day with my mom. The mother-daughter outing was her idea. To be honest, I think she felt guilty that she’d spent so much energy on Mint. But I figured that now that my cousin would be flying out of town in a week and a half, my mom was just trying to get things back to normal.

“I think I want two tacos,” I said. Normally, when we went to Mijos Tacos I just got one. But I was in the mood to indulge.

Mint sat at the table doing homework. I know it was petty of me, but I felt thrilled that we were leaving her behind with my dad.

“Do you want us to bring you back a taco?” I asked. I
was impressed with myself for being such a thoughtful person, especially in light of the current circumstances.

Mint looked up from her social studies book and shook her head. “That’s okay. I’ll probably just eat at Todd’s.”

What? Why would she be eating at Todd’s? Was she going there? Normally when she worked on her project she went to Jagger’s house. Why would that suddenly change? I narrowed my eyes. Mint was so devious. I’d been eavesdropping on her phone conversations all week and I’d heard her tell Jagger that Kimmie was going to visit her grandparents in Tucson and so they were taking the weekend off from working on their project. So why go to Todd’s?

“Why would you eat at Todd’s?” I asked.

“Um,” she said, looking up and me and tapping the eraser end of her pencil against the table. “Because we finally got him and Jagger out of the slime caves and they’re ready to board the pirate ship and conquer the remaining Iron Dwarves.”

I didn’t understand any of that. “You’re going to hang out at Todd’s and play video games?”

Mint nodded. “Once I finish my homework.”

And I just snapped. Even though I should have shown more maturity, I stomped my foot like a five-year-old. “That’s not happening!”

My mother came into the kitchen carrying a basket filled with our clean laundry. “What’s wrong?”

“I want to go to Todd’s with Mint!” I screamed.

My mother looked very surprised. “Honey, we’ve got plans to get tacos together.”

Mint was so underhanded. She’d orchestrated the whole thing. I really couldn’t stand her.

“But I want to go to Todd’s!” I said. If only I could have explained to my mother how much Todd meant to me.

“You need to stop yelling,” my mom said. “Do you want to help me fold clothes and we can talk about this?”

I shook my head. “Not really.” Because we folded clothes in the family room, so Mint would be able to hear everything we said. I wanted privacy. “I want to talk to you
alone
. Can we go to the garage?”

My mother looked surprised as she set down the laundry basket and joined me in the garage. I was surprised myself. Maybe this
was
the time to tell my mom that Todd and I were basically going out. What was the worst that could happen? I was practically a teenager now. Of course I was going to start having boyfriends. She had to understand that, right?

But then I thought back to something Ava once said concerning parents and guys and dating: “Don’t ever tell you parents you’re going out with Todd. You’ve got the kind of parents who would go into lockdown. Trust me. Keep it a secret as long as you can or your life will turn to suck.”

Once we were in the cool darkness of the garage, I felt pretty vulnerable and unsure about whether I really wanted to have a heart-to-heart with my mom about Todd.
I figured I’d keep it simple. “I really want to go to Todd’s too.”

My mom sighed and put her arms around me. “I know. But I think it’s important that Mint spread her wings a little and have some independence during her stay with us.”

What was wrong with my mother? What made her think that? “Okay,” I said. “But I don’t understand why I can’t go too.”

My mother patted me very sympathetically. “You’ve got your friends and now Mint has hers.”

I pulled away from her patting. I was so offended. They were my friends first! And my mom was really not seeing the bigger picture: there was no reason at all for Mint to be visiting my boyfriend’s house without me. “Please?”

My mother shook her head. “I feel it’s important to let Mint have this.”

I felt differently. “Fine,” I said, stomping back inside the house. As soon as I entered the kitchen, I was stunned by what I saw. Mint was looking at my phone. I felt totally violated. “Get away from my phone!”

“I was moving it away from the water pitcher so nothing would get spilled on it,” Mint explained. She set my phone down on the counter and slowly backed away from it.

I shook my head. I didn’t believe her.

“I don’t even know your code!” Mint said.

But Mint had proven herself to be a savvy person. I bet she did know my code. “Sure you don’t!”

“I don’t!” Mint said.

“Girls, stop yelling,” my mom said.

“This is unbelievable,” I said. “I’m getting in trouble for getting mad at Mint for snooping through my phone?”

“I didn’t,” Mint said. “I promise.”

Then I realized how the Red Rock kids had learned about the disco theme. Mint had read the texts Robin had sent me. And then she’d squealed about it. She. Was. Rotten.

“You read my texts and found out about our school’s disco theme and you told the kids from Red Rock Middle School and now the other class captains think I squealed and have a blabbermouth cousin!” I had never been this mad before.

“That’s not how it happened!” Mint yelled. “You told me about it once in the middle of the night. We had a big conversation. I promise. I never read your texts. Have you ever considered that you might be a sleep-talker?”

What? Was she being serious? I wasn’t a sleep-talker. “Stop telling ridiculous lies!” I walked toward Mint because I wanted to take her phone away from her and read all her texts so she would see how it felt.

“I don’t know how we got here, but I am breaking this up,” my mom said, grabbing me by the wrist and leading me down the hall. “Lane, stay in your room. I’m taking Mint to Todd’s house as planned. When I come back, we’ll get tacos and talk through this.”

My mother was siding with Mint! Unbelievable. “I don’t want to get tacos anymore.” I slammed my door. But I still stayed next to it so I could hear what my mom told Mint.

“You cannot touch Lane’s phone ever again,” my mother said.

“I didn’t read her texts,” Mint said.

“I believe you, but Lane worked very hard to be class captain and she takes it seriously.”

“I know. She’s a great class captain!” Mint gushed.

And what my rotten cousin said next, I’ll never know, because the only sound I heard after that was the front door closing. She was gone. Off to Todd’s. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to call him and tell him what a lying, dishonest, sneaky person Mint was. But I held back. I knew Ava was hatching a great plan. And I also knew that she was better at conniving than I was. So, hard as it was, I decided to take a deep breath and be patient. Because I didn’t want to spoil what Mint had coming.

17