Too Cool for This School (25 page)

He stiffened and looked even more hurt. “Fine,” he said. “Peace out.”

And he was gone just like that.

“What was that about?” Lucia asked.

I didn’t know how to explain Derek’s behavior. And I certainly didn’t want to confess that I’d asked him to spy on Mint. So I dodged all her questions. “Lucia, that’s like the millionth question you’ve asked me in the last ten minutes,” I said defensively. “I don’t know the answer to everything.”

“Don’t snap at me,” Lucia said. “I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

Lucia was right. This wasn’t her fault, but I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. I didn’t want to rat on Ava for putting that list in people’s desks. And I didn’t want to rat on Mint either, even though I couldn’t stand her, because it seemed unfair to steal somebody’s personal thoughts.

“I’m not exactly sure what’s happening,” I said.

“Let’s forget Derek and focus on the list. It looks like Mint’s handwriting,” Lucia said. “Who put the list together? Was it Ava? Was it you?”

How could Lucia think I would do such a thing?

“I don’t really know what to tell you,” I said.

“People are so mad,” Lucia said. “Rachel cried.”

That sucked. Didn’t Ava think about the consequences of making an insult collage? This wasn’t just about Mint anymore. “What did the list say about Rachel?” I asked.

Lucia didn’t answer me. “The problem with the list is that it’s sort of true, but it’s stuff that nobody really says. Observationally speaking, whoever wrote these things was very accurate.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Mint said I don’t have a good sense of humor and need to go to clown school, and that’s seriously inaccurate.”

“I knew Mint wrote the quotes!” Lucia said.

I couldn’t believe Lucia tried to trick me during a time of crisis. “You should show me your sheet,” I said. Ava hadn’t given me one, and I felt I needed to know what Mint had said about everybody.

“Okay,” Lucia said. “But they’re mean.”

This insult list was just as awful as I thought it would be.

“Okay,” I said, thrusting the list back at her. “I’ve read enough.”

“But you didn’t make it through the whole thing,” Lucia said. “She mentions some people more than once.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”

I thought what Mint said about us was a little bit mean,
but not nearly as mean as what Ava had done by going through her diary and selecting the quotes.

“How can Mint keep going to school?” Lucia asked.

“She only had two more days,” I said. “She flies out on Sunday.”

“I don’t think she can make it two more days,” Lucia said. “Our whole class hates her. Even the nice kids.”

This sucked. I thought back to my dad’s words on Mint’s first day of school. “She’s your flesh and blood. Protect her.” I pictured her trapped in the classroom like a caged animal. Helpless. And also ridiculous-looking, because today she’d insisted on wearing a shirt she had bought off the Internet emblazoned with the words
NORTH DAKOTANS CAN DANCE!

I opened the door to the school. “You go back to class. I’ve got to get her out of there.”

I walked straight to the office and told the secretary that I wasn’t feeling well and that I needed to call my mom. And then, when I got my mom on the phone, I told her something that was pretty close to true. “Please come pick up me and Mint right now. We’re both sick.”

The secretary frowned at me sympathetically, as if she was sorry to learn this.

“Do you want to wait here and I’ll go get your cousin?” she asked.

That sounded like a great idea. “Yes,” I said, taking a seat in a chair beside her desk. “Angelina Mint Taravel. She’s in Ms. Fritz’s class.”

As I sat there waiting, I wondered what Mint would
say to me. Would she yell? Or maybe she’d give me the silent treatment? Maybe she’d give me a combination of those things. Or maybe she’d realize this was all Ava’s doing and not blame me at all. Then I stopped wondering about what Mint would do, because she entered the office and was standing right next to me.

“So I’m really sick, huh?” Mint whispered angrily. “Okay. I’ll wait for your mom out front. Why don’t you stay and wait right here.”

She looked furious. Didn’t she understand that I was trying to help her? I felt that I needed to let her know that I really hadn’t had anything to do with this mess. Really, we were both victims. But she didn’t want to hear it. She turned to leave.

“I didn’t do it,” I told her.

Mint flipped back around and glared at me. “I know exactly what you did, and I’ll never forgive you.” She stomped out of the office, fuming like the most furious person I’d ever seen.

So this was how she was going to react. I thought maybe I could fix things by explaining a little bit about how this had happened. “It wasn’t me,” I called after her.

“You were part of it,” Mint called back. “You had to be. And there’s no way you can deny that.”

Was I part of it? Technically I was not. If you find out about something after it’s happened, how can you be considered part of it?

Mint kept walking. Even though it would have been easier to sit in the chair and wait for my mom, I chose to
follow my cousin. I didn’t want her to hate me. I mean, I understood that she should hate Ava. But I was practically innocent. Also, it was against school policy to leave the building without a parent.

“Stop following me,” Mint said.

“We have to wait inside,” I said. “School rule.”

“This isn’t my school anymore,” she said. “I don’t care.” She dropped her backpack on the ground and sat next to it.

“Mint,” I said. “Don’t overreact.” I could only imagine what this day must have felt like for her. First she was sailing the highest of highs from being made famous by a roller-skating flash mob. Then she was slogging through the lowest of lows from having her secret journal full of rude comments distributed to the class. “Please calm down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Mint said. “As soon as I get to your house, I’m emptying out all my drawers and packing my bag. You can have your stupid room back.”

She put her head in her hands and stared at the ground. During her whole stay here, I was so eager to have her gone from my life. But I hadn’t wanted it to happen this way.

Before I could coax Mint back inside or the secretary could come out to request that we wait inside, my mother pulled up. Mint leaped to her feet and raced to the car.

“Where’s your jacket?” my mom asked me.

That was in my locker along with my backpack and homework and phone. But I did not want to go back inside that building.

“I left it in my locker,” I admitted. “With my backpack.”

“Do you need it?” she asked.

As much as I didn’t want to go back inside that building, I also couldn’t imagine not having my phone with me during this time of crisis.

“Wait one minute,” I said. “I’ll go get it.”

Then I raced back into my school as fast as I could and took a turn so fast that I almost skidded into my classroom door. Lucia saw me through the window and jumped up. I hurried to get my things.

“I’m going to check on Lane and give her our Algebra homework,” I heard Lucia tell Ms. Fritz. Then she slipped out into the hallway while I was at my locker.

“This just keeps getting bigger,” Lucia said.

“Ugh,” I said. It seemed like not that much could have happened since I’d been gone.

“Okay. I don’t know if you know this, but your mom sent emails inviting everybody to Mint’s going-away party at your house. Tuma just got his,” Lucia explained.

That made sense. Tuma always snuck his phone into class.

“That party is going to be tense,” Lucia said. “If people show up.”

My mom had asked me if we should invite people from other grades to the party, but I’d sort of blown her off because I didn’t want to draft Mint’s invitation list. But now I wished I’d played a greater role in it. Who was supposed to be coming to this thing?

“That party is probably going to suck,” I said.

“People hate her,” Lucia added.

“
I
might not even go to that party,” I said. Why should I put myself in such a painful situation?

“Yeah,” Lucia answered. “I predict that’s going to be a very lonely place.”

I took my backpack and raced to the car. When I climbed in, Mint already had her eyes closed.

“Mint says she thinks you got food poisoning,” my mom said as she pulled out onto the road.

That was a terrible sickness to try to pretend to have. Because it went away in a few hours. We needed an illness we could fake for the rest of the week. Or maybe our lives.

“Or it could be the flu,” I suggested.

Because that was a condition I could try to fake until Mint left town and beyond.

24

Mint never told my parents about the list. And neither did I. When Mint relocated to the living room, they assumed that we’d finally reached our limits with each other. Which was sort of true. And while I wouldn’t have put it past them to try to drag us to play mini golf together one more time before she left, they used better judgment and did not try to force a friendship-building exercise upon us during our final days together.

I knew that for the next two days school was going to be a world of suck. And I knew Mint knew that too. Everybody in the sixth grade knew that. I was dreading it more than I’d ever dreaded anything. And I was pretty sure Mint was too.

Waiting in silence at the bus stop, she paced in the dirt.
What do you tell somebody who has to face a classroom filled with people she has publicly insulted?

We got on the bus and sat in separate seats. Not that many kids from our class rode this bus, but there were a couple. Tuma plopped down next to me even though he usually sat toward the back.

“Did your cousin write that list?” he asked.

I couldn’t believe Tuma was even talking to me. He never talked to me. He was usually too busy skateboarding or talking about skateboarding or texting one of his skateboarding friends. I couldn’t believe Tuma even cared about the list.

“I don’t know anything,” I said.

He knocked his shoulder against me in a forceful way. “You need to practice lying.”

Then I watched Tuma walk down the aisle and sit next to Mint. I don’t know what he whispered in her ear. I just saw a bunch of head shaking. Then she turned and shoved him. It was shocking. Mint shoved Tuma! And he landed on his butt in the aisle. It was tense. But when Tuma got up, he was laughing. Was Mint laughing? Maybe people would think the list was funny? Mint turned and I caught a glimpse of her face. She wasn’t laughing. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
Everything will be okay
, I told myself.
Two more days of school
. I chose not to think about the going-away party.

As soon as I stepped off the bus, I saw a line of people waiting for me: Leslie Fuentes, Robin Galindo, and Derek.

“We need to speak with you immediately,” Robin said.