Too Cool for This School (20 page)

“That is a terrible nightmare,” my dad said. “A guy in my grounds crew lost a brother in an avalanche. Snowmobiling without a radio transmitter in Utah. Terrible way to go.”

Mint nodded as if she was truly terrified. “And then, sometimes, I would hear voices above me. People I knew. Like my mom. And they’d be calling for me, their footsteps would crunch the snow above me, but I’d be trapped too far down. So I couldn’t scream back. Pretty soon the voices would fade and I’d still be stuck there, running out of oxygen.”

“I think that’s the worst nightmare I’ve ever heard,” my mother said, wrapping a supportive arm around Mint.

Which hurt my feelings a little bit, because she once told me that I’d had the worst nightmare she’d ever heard when I told her about my dream of accidentally fastening
myself to my birthday kite and sailing into the sky and hitting electrical wires. So which was it? Whose was worse? Mine or Mint’s? I was on the verge of asking when my dad said something shocking.

“In honor of that nightmare, I think we all scratch this hole and take the six-swing penalty.”

“Absolutely,” my mom said.

Even at a stupid miniature golf course, Mint managed to get everything she wanted.

“But I want to play this hole,” I said. I pointed to the rounding tops of the Himalayas and the terrifyingly hairy legs of the Snowman.

My dad reached over and took the ball out of my hand. “Show some solidarity.”

“We’re not missing anything. The hole after this one is a sand castle with three drawbridges and several sand dragons,” my mom said.

“Yay,” Mint cheered.

Awroo! Awroo! Awroo!

A simulated wolf howl erupted from my phone. I dug it out of my pocket as quickly as I could. As a joke, Ava and I had personalized some of my ringtones. I’d forgotten all about giving Todd the sound of a gray wolf.

“Is that your phone?” my dad asked. “It sounds like an injured dog.”

“It’s a wolf howl,” Mint said.

“It means it’s an important call,” I said.

“Hello?”

But Todd wasn’t there.

“Can you get reception in here?” my dad asked. “I’m roaming.”

I needed to escape this place and call Todd back. I had a life to live, and couldn’t waste all night in a family fun center with Mint. She wasn’t fun. And I didn’t really consider her my family.

“Hey, Mom and Dad,” I asked, sounding as polite as possible. “Do you mind if I step outside and return that phone call?”

Neither my mom nor my dad looked fine about this.

“We’ve got six holes left,” my dad said. “Winner gets an ice cream sundae.”

“That’s okay,” I said. In my mind, I was trying to figure out what Todd wanted to talk about. I’d already figured out what I wanted to talk about with him.

“We need to finish what we started,” my mom said. “We came as a family and we’ll play as a family. To the end.”

The way she said this and pointed at me made me realize that I couldn’t easily excuse myself to go and talk to Todd. It was so unfair.

Awroo! Awroo! Awroo!

I couldn’t believe Todd was calling me again. “At least let me go outside and send a text,” I said.

But then my mom snatched my phone away from me. “It’s your turn to putt over the drawbridge.”

“Mom,” I said. “You made me accidentally hang up on my friend.”

Then my mom looked at my phone. And she saw that
the call was from Todd. She seemed a little surprised. I think she’d assumed it was from Ava or Lucia or Rachel.

“You can text your friend Todd when we’re finished,” my mom said. “And that’s final.”

I watched as she slid my phone into her pocket.

In the history of owning my phone this had never happened to me before. Mint had turned my life to suck. And I didn’t owe that girl anything.

19

What happened next was almost too weird for words. That night, after finishing the miniature golf game and getting trampled by Mint and texting Todd without hearing anything back, I went to sleep and had the worst nightmare of my life.

I was walking along a snowy mountain path on my way to visit Todd. And on the path coming the other way was the Abominable Snowman. He was big and hairy and sort of yellowed with age. He walked exactly how Mint had described, and it didn’t take long before his big footsteps triggered an avalanche. I swam through the snow, trying to stay on top of the big chunks of ice, but it didn’t work. I wound up pinned in total darkness, surrounded by walls of snow.

I was terrified. I tried to scream, but my mouth kept filling with snow. And then I heard footsteps. Was it my mom? My dad? Ava? No! It was Todd. I heard him calling for me.

“Lane? Lane?” he yelled. “Where are you? Why won’t you text me back?”

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t scream. The words wouldn’t come out. Then I heard a second voice. It was Mint! I knew nightmares could be terrifying, but I hadn’t realized they could also cause nausea.

“I can’t find Lane,” Todd said. “Have you seen her?”

“I’m down here,” I tried to yell. But my cries couldn’t be heard.

“No,” Mint said. “Want to come over and play
Dwarf Massacre Four
?”

“You own
Dwarf Massacre Four
?” Todd asked, sounding thrilled beyond belief. “It hasn’t been released yet.”

“I got my hands on an early copy,” Mint said. “
The Reign of Pain
. It just arrived today.”

“Cool!” Todd said.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch
.

I heard their footsteps fade into nothingness. And my heart broke.

When I finally woke up, gasping for air, I was incredibly relieved to see that it was morning and that Mint was already up and gone. Where? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I raced to look at my phone to see if Todd had texted me back. He hadn’t. This was so crazy. A relationship between two normal people who liked each other shouldn’t be this
hard. And that was when it hit me: even though it was a Saturday, Todd and I needed to talk right now. There was no reason to hide what we had. It was time to be official.

I threw on some cute clothes and ran out to the garage. I hadn’t ridden my bike in weeks. I pushed against the tires with my thumb to check their air pressure. They felt great. I didn’t question what I was doing. I didn’t even ask my parents for permission. I strapped on my bike helmet and was off.

I didn’t start getting really nervous until after I rang the Romeros’ doorbell. When Todd opened the door, I was so ready to talk to him that my entire body felt electric.

“Lane,” he said. He looked as surprised as I felt. “Did you get my text?”

I shook my head. My reaction confused him.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

That was a good question. I thought as fast as I could for the best possible answer. “I thought we could hang out.”

He didn’t appear freaked out by this answer. I thought that was a good sign.

“Want to watch TV?” he asked.

It was incredibly exciting to walk into Todd Romero’s house. We entered his kitchen and he introduced me to his mom. Her wavy hair looked exactly like Todd’s, except longer. And she was so tall and pretty. She was standing at the counter sorting a big pile of mail. I liked how both of her wrists were lined with thick, colorful bracelets. She was such a stylish mom.

“This is Lane,” Todd said. “Mint’s cousin.”

That was a terrible way to introduce me. But I didn’t say anything.

“Mint’s cousin?” Mrs. Romero said. “I bet it’s nonstop fun living with her.”

Where had she gotten that crazy idea? I nodded. It felt so wrong that Todd’s mom associated Mint with fun. But it felt even more wrong that she could associate me with Mint. How long would it take people to forget her once she was gone? A week? A month? A year? I hoped it wasn’t a whole year.

“We’re going to watch TV,” he said.

“In the living room?” his mom asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

As we walked to the living room, it did bum me out a little bit that Todd didn’t walk right next to me. He walked ahead of me, like he was in a hurry. I felt confused. Did he want to walk ahead of me? Or did he think I wanted him to walk ahead of me? Or did he not even notice that he was walking ahead of me? Were his feelings about me changing? We’d only talked about our status one time. Before school started this year, he’d said, “It feels like we’re going out.” I’d said, “Let’s not be official yet.” He’d said, “That’s cool.” But did he still think that was cool? It seemed like now would be a good time to talk about whether or not we should take the next step and become official.

I sat down on the floor next to Todd, and he flipped on a show about alien hunters in Delaware.

“Do you ever watch this?” he asked.

I wished I could have said yes, but I had no idea that
people hunted aliens in Delaware. I watched his hand as he adjusted the volume on the remote control. Watching this, I was struck by a powerful feeling: This was Todd’s life. These were all the things he touched throughout the day. This is where he lived and slept. This is the living room where he called me on the phone. This is the television I sometimes heard in the background.

“You’ll love this show,” he said, crashing down beside me. “These hunters are nuts.”

It was really hard for me to focus on the show at all. I couldn’t stop looking around. Family pictures hung on the walls. Were those old people riding the Jet Ski his grandparents? There was a stack of magazines by the couch. Shelves lined two walls and were crammed with books.

“Do you need something?” Todd asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer that. Because I did need something. I needed him to talk to me. So I reached out and touched him. And when I did, this electric zap of static traveled through me and onto him. We both got shocked. Hard.

“Ouch,” he said as he kept watching the show.

I decided to just ignore that fact that I’d zapped him. “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” Todd said. “Do you want me to turn off the TV?”

One of the alien hunters released a blood-curdling scream.

“Maybe,” I said.

Todd clicked off the power. But before we could talk, his phone rang. “It’s Mint.”

Uh-oh. I didn’t want him to tell her I was here.

“Don’t tell her I’m here,” I blurted out.

He nodded. And they only talked for a few seconds before he hung up.

“What was that about?” I asked, even though saying that question made me feel nosy.

“She said the papier-mâché ice blocks don’t need a third coat of paint. That they look awesome.”

I was so sick of this stupid group work. “You know, the assignment is only worth a hundred points. That’s only four vocabulary tests. Don’t you think your group is going a little overboard?”

Todd shrugged. “Mint and Kimmie do most of the work. It’s sort of fun.”

“Fun?” I asked. It was as if the whole world had started defining that word differently than I did.

“Yeah. We hang out. Play my dwarf game. I store the props. No big deal,” Todd said.

“Um, right,” I said. Even though I thought it was quite a big deal.

“I’m lucky you have such a cool cousin,” he added.

And that was when I decided that not only did I need to have a talk with Todd about our status, I also needed to let him know that Mint was not who he thought she was. But I didn’t want to do this in the middle of his living room, where anybody could walk in and hear me complaining. So I made a suggestion.

“Maybe we could talk in your room,” I said. But then I realized that sounded weird. “Or your backyard.” But then I worried that that sounded just as weird.

“I don’t think we can talk in my room,” Todd said.

And then it was pretty clear that he was starting to feel uncomfortable, so I dropped it. “I know. I wasn’t being serious,” I said.

“Okay. What’s up?” Todd asked me, looking around like he was already ready for me to leave.

But when he asked me those words, I didn’t know quite where to start. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. And I also wanted us to be official. But I didn’t know how to ask for any of that.

“Would you ever teach me how to play
Dwarf Massacre
?” I asked.

Did I really want that?