Too Cool for This School (21 page)

Todd smiled. “Sure. You’re interested in playing? You’re so lucky. Mint is an expert. She knows the game inside and out. The video game company chose her to test the next game for bugs before it’s released.
Dwarf Massacre Four: The Reign of Pain
.”

A chill went down my spine.

“Did you say
Reign of Pain
?” I asked.

Todd nodded. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if my nightmare was coming true.

“Are you going to play it with her?” I asked.

“Totally,” Todd says. “We’ve already synced it up online so that when she goes back to Alaska we can keep playing.”

What? I’d assumed that once Mint went back to Alaska,
she’d be gone. I didn’t think she was syncing with people. I kept hoping that once she left, people would forget about her. But if they became super connected online, then she might stay in contact with them forever. The horror!

“Do you want to play right now?” Todd asked.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz
.

I looked at my phone. The text was from Ava.

I looked up at Todd.

“I have to go. Can I take a rain check?”

“Totally,” Todd said. “I love teaching people how to destroy steel dwarves.”

“Cool.”

And I loved that we were about to destroy Mint.

20

Getting Mint to agree to the mall was incredibly easy, because for some unknown reason, she was very excited to go. She even chose a specific time for Sunday. Three o’clock. And before we went, she took a stupendous amount of time braiding Ava’s ribbon pajama belt into her hair. Which I didn’t even try to discourage. If Mint wanted belt-hair, I would stand aside and let her have it.

It was weird. Before Mint arrived, I would’ve thought belt-hair made you look ridiculous. But somehow Mint made it look almost okay. Even Kimmie and Paulette had started braiding thin pieces of fabric into their hair.

“Isn’t this the cutest shirt ever?” Mint asked me as she spun around in the living room.

Mint was wearing a blue shirt that she’d painted with
big fluffy yellow birds. I don’t even know where she’d gotten this shirt. I wouldn’t have put it past her if she’d just found it on the street. It was that ugly.

“I wanted to add red birds too,” Mint said. “But I ran out of puffy paint.”

Who puts red birds on their clothes? How much puffy paint does Mint buy in a year? Isn’t that stuff bad for the environment?

I didn’t understand my cousin. Why did she want to make her clothes look weird? In the end, I decided these were useless questions. I needed to keep my hands off Mint. And let her seek her geek level. Which I suspected was hardcore dweeb.

When my mom dropped us off at the mall, she gave us the same rules she always gave me when she dropped me off with my friends.

But before she drove off, she called me over to her window and added one thing.

“If you see anything that would make a good bon
voyage gift for Mint, text me a picture and we’ll consider it,” she said. “We need to get her something meaningful. Something cool.”

“Yeah,” I said. Which wasn’t really the truth, because there was no way I was going to look for a present for Mint.

“And also consider who we should invite to her going-away party.”

I didn’t even respond. I went into a deep hole of denial and pretended my mother had not uttered those words.

Mint skipped into the mall like a very happy person. It annoyed me. Before she got here, I used to really enjoy meeting my friends at stores. We’d have the best adventures ever. And we usually bought cool earrings and stared through the glass at the tattoo store and evaluated intricate designs of koi fish and dragons and skulls and weird-looking lions we would never get. But now we didn’t have time to do that because we had to destroy Mint. So instead of having a fun mall adventure, we had to get to work.

“Let’s go to the Belt Barn,” I said. Because that was where we were meeting up with everybody.

“Let’s swing by the Diamond Zone first,” Mint said.

Why did Mint need to look at the Diamond Zone? That was where people bought wedding and engagement rings.

“Ava is probably waiting for us at the Belt Barn,” I said. In addition to destroying Mint, Ava was crazy excited to find a new ribbon belt. She wanted a pink one to replace the one Mint had taken. Ava wouldn’t even consider taking it back because she thought it was contaminated with Mint’s head oil.

“Can we text her?” Mint asked.

Hmm. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want Mint to get suspicious, so it seemed like I should give into her a little bit.

“Okay,” I said. So I texted Ava.

Then I noticed that Mint was texting somebody. But she tried to hide the phone from me. I really hated this. Because it made me worry that she was texting Todd or Jagger. “Who are you texting?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “How about I tell you after we finish shopping?”

What? That was ridiculous. She should just tell me now. I had a right to know.

“I’d rather know right now,” I said.

But she didn’t have time to answer me. As soon as we arrived at the Diamond Zone, we ran into Jagger. She had been texting him! And she’d arranged to meet him at the mall. It was almost like they were going out. Wait. Were they going out? When Ava saw this, she really was going to die.

“Hi, Mint,” Jagger said. “Thanks for meeting me here.”

And then I saw the craziest thing ever. Jagger hugged Mint and her cheek touched his cheek and I think I saw Jagger turn his head and give her a quick kiss. WHO DOES THAT? Even Todd and I didn’t kiss each other on the cheek. We just wrote notes and held hands every
couple of weeks. Cheek kissing at the mall in front of the Diamond Zone? My life felt like a soap opera. No. Mint’s life felt like a soap opera!

“Lane!” Ava said as she rushed to my side.

By the panic in her eyes, I could tell that she’d seen the cheek kiss. Plus, it was probably going to be more difficult to destroy Mint with Jagger around.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Ava said. “Will you come with me?”

I really didn’t enjoy going inside the mall bathrooms. They stank. But I agreed to do it anyway. For Ava.

“Are you going to wait for us?” I asked Mint.

“How about we meet you at Saddle Express,” Mint said.

“Why?” I asked. “They sell saddles.”

“And you don’t own a horse,” Ava said in a harsh way.

“I need to buy some saddle oil for my dad’s birthday,” Jagger said.

“And Saddle Express has a great selection,” Mint said.

So Mint knew about Mr. Evenson’s birthday? Interesting.

Ava grabbed my hand and squeezed it so tight that I could tell the exact words going through her mind.
I am dying. Mint is acting like his girlfriend
. I needed to get Ava out of here before she had a total meltdown.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll meet you at Saddle Express. Bye!”

I practically tugged Ava’s arm out of its socket as I dragged her down a side corridor.

“I am dying,” she said as we approached the bathrooms.

“Wait,” I said. “Do you want to sit by this planter?”

“No,” Ava said. “It’s surrounded by people. I don’t want
people
to know about my problems.”

“But the mall bathrooms stink,” I said. Then I pinched my nose to emphasize this. “And as long as we don’t talk too loudly, it’ll be fine.”

Ava didn’t object because she was beyond upset.

So we sat at the planter and Ava started pouring out her heart.

“I have liked Jagger since second grade,” she said. “He is such an awesome person. Big heart. Cute hair. Sparkly eyes. And he runs faster than anyone in soccer
and
baseball.”

Jagger did run very fast and had sparkly eyes.

“And he wears the cutest shirts. And the most awesome shoes. And I love the way his voice sounds when he laughs.”

“Yeah,” I said. I hoped it made Ava feel better to empty out her feelings.

“No,” Ava said, sniffling. “You don’t understand. Jagger has two laughs and I love them both. He has a laugh that’s sort of fake. Like when Todd tells a joke that really isn’t that funny but Jagger laughs anyway.”

I thought Todd’s jokes were always funny. But I didn’t say anything.

“And I love his real laugh. It’s soft and easy, like he’s swallowing a smile,” Ava said tearfully.

Ava tried to imitate it, but she started to cry so hard that she mostly just released a croaking sound. She sounded so
sad. Her feelings for Jagger were much more serious than I realized.

“What am I going to do?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “Mint goes back to Alaska this week.”

“But don’t you watch movies?” Ava asked. “This is like a terrible love story. Where two people meet at a very young age. And then get separated by a million miles. But they stay in touch. And then years later they find each other on the Internet. Or maybe they wind up in the same high school. And bam! They reunite and become a couple again.”

I’d watched a lot of movies. But I hadn’t seen that one. Before I could think of something helpful to say, Rachel came over.

“Why are you crying?” Rachel asked.

Ava’s cheeks were wet. “Because I came to the mall to destroy Mint, and instead she destroyed me.”

“How were you going to do that?” Rachel asked.

The plan to destroy Mint had been a little mean, so it was almost a relief that it didn’t happen.

“I was going to slip a bracelet in Mint’s pocket and then alert mall security. She would have gotten in serious trouble. That plan made sense. I sort of felt as if Mint deserved to be in serious trouble.”

“Wow,” Rachel said.

“I know,” Ava said, releasing more sobs.

“Don’t cry,” Rachel said. “Give me your hand. Do you want me to draw a squid on it?”

“That won’t make me feel any better,” Ava said. “It will make you feel better because you like drawing squids.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “Do you want to go watch a funny movie? Do you want a snack? What do you want?”

Ava shook her head and sniffled. “I want to un-see what I saw.”

“What’s going on?” Lucia asked.

We were all so worried about Ava.

“Mint and Jagger just met in front of the Diamond Zone and basically kissed,” Ava said. “And then they went to buy Jagger’s dad a birthday present.”

Lucia gasped.

“Mint is way too young to be kissing guys at the mall,” Lucia said.

“And what about Diego?” Rachel asked.

I really wished Rachel would stop bringing up fake Diego.

“They hugged and their cheeks touched, but I don’t think they kissed,” I said.

“Wow. Sounds like they’re going out,” Lucia said.

“Well,” I said. “There’s not really anything we can do about it.”

“Sure there is,” Ava said. “We can stalk them through the mall.”

I was pretty sure Rachel and Lucia would resist this idea.

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Can we get some ice cream first?”

“Hopefully they go into the Earring Shack,” Lucia says. “It’s BOGO today.”

Then, as if we didn’t understand what BOGO meant, because sometimes Lucia did use a vocabulary that was bigger than the rest of ours, she spelled it out for us. “It’s buy one, get one free.”

“Let’s go,” Ava said. “We need to catch them at the saddle store and follow them from there. If they’re really going out, I need to witness everything with my own eyes.”

This did not seem like the best idea Ava had ever had, but we all agreed to do it.

“They’re totally just friends,” Rachel said, forming her lips to the top of her ice cream cone and taking a bite.

“Why are they spending so much time looking at vitamins?” Ava asked.

We stood on the other side of the mall’s courtyard and surveyed Mint and Jagger as they slowly wandered the bottle-packed aisles of the Nutrition Nook.