How Not To Be Popular (23 page)

Eventually I reach the parlor. I see Jack’s truck and feel a butcher knife–sized Stabby. This is going to be hard.

I pause, trembling, outside the front door. It’s like first-day jitters times one thousand. Then I push into the foyer and head into the main hall.

They’re all there—everyone except Mrs. Pratt. I expected them to be playing music and living up their success some more, but they aren’t. Instead they’re sweeping and packing and pulling down those lame cardboard Halloween cutouts with the draggy pace of a funeral march. Jack is at the far end of the room doing something with the electrical outlet.

At first no one sees me. Then Drip, who’s closest, looks up from her tablecloth-folding and lets out a yelp of surprise, followed by an angry “Oh no!”

Everyone stops and gapes at me—including Jack. No one says anything. I feel a strong, tingly rush, as if every atom in my body is getting stirred up and set on fire. I move my mouth a little, but no sound comes out. All I can do is stand there and get scorched by their stares.

Suddenly Penny walks over and frowns at me. “You look bad,” she remarks.

“Yeah,” I reply, my voice all crackly. A shudder comes over me and the sobs restart. For a moment I
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just cry while everyone watches.

Eventually I take a breath and meet Penny’s concerned gaze. “I’m sorry,” I rasp. “I didn’t mean it.

Everything that happened last night, it was all an act.” Drip seems completely unmoved, and the others just look blank. Only Penny appears to be truly listening.

“You see…I had this plan. I wasn’t supposed to make friends….” They all appear a little more interested now. I tromp over to a nearby folding chair and sit down to relieve my shaking knees. Penny follows. Then I take a deep breath and tell them everything—about my strategy and how it totally went wrong. I don’t mention Jack by name, but I describe how I started to have real feelings for people and it scared me; and how all my past relationships ended up being a whole lot of nothing and I didn’t want that to happen again; and how I thought becoming a Bippy would cancel it all out and help push them away.

The Helping Hands listen intently, their semishocked, semifascinated expressions never wavering. It feels good to confess finally, and by the time I describe how I went home and started regretting everything, I’ve completely stopped crying.

I wipe my eyes on my sleeve, waiting for them to say something. I don’t expect them to forgive me, at least not right away, but maybe now that they know the whole story, they’ll at least stop hating me.

Penny looks up at the ceiling. She seems to be mulling it over pretty hard. “So…,” she begins, “you wanted to hang out with me…because you knew you’d never think of me as a friend?”

“Um…” I don’t know what to say. That’s it, essentially. I just managed not to make it sound so awful.

“Well, yeah. I mean, that’s what I thought at first. Only because you were so…different. From me,” I say rambling. “But that’s not how I feel anymore! You
are
my friend. I mean, I hope you are. I really do like you!”

One by one the others turn away. First Drip, then Carter, then the twins. Jack is still staring, but Penny won’t even look at me. She gazes down at the flecked vinyl tiles while a ruddy tinge spreads over her face and neck. Suddenly she whirls around and starts trotting toward the girls’ restroom.

“Penny?” I stand up to follow her.

“Stop!” It’s Jack. He’s striding across the room in that superboy-on-a-mission way of his. “Just stop!” He halts right in front of me. His eyes look too soft for him to be mad, and for a second, I think he’s going to stick up for me. “What you did,” he begins, his lips quivering, “was disgusting. I can’t believe I liked you. I thought you were different, that you didn’t care about stupid things like popularity. But you do.”

“No, I don’t!” I protest. “I was trying to be
un
popular!”

“So what!” he shouts. “Obviously it matters to you or you wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. If you really liked us, you would have stuck by us, even if it meant getting hurt down the line. But you just wanted to protect yourself. You never cared how it made us feel.” I reach back to grab hold of the metal chair, reeling from his words. He’s wrong, but he’s right. I hurt
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them, because I liked them and didn’t want to lose them. I was only thinking of myself, because I assumed they’d be fine. I never thought I could make that much of a difference in anyone’s life.

“You might as well stay with Miles,” Jack goes on, his eyes hardening. “You’re just as shallow and selfish as those guys.”

I start crying again, but this time it’s different. It’s worse. I’m not crying because I hurt. I’m crying because I hurt them. “Please…I’m so sorry,” I mumble, gasping and blubbering. I don’t care that my face is a snotty mess. I just want to make things better.

Jack’s face goes cold. “You need to leave.
Now,
” he says loudly and firmly. “You don’t belong here, and you know it.” Then he too turns away from me.

That’s it. There’s nothing I can do. Everyone hates me and I deserve it. I literally asked for it.

I leave my chair and walk shakily back outside. Even though it’s sunny and warm, it seems like I’ve just gone through a terrible storm. I feel all battered and blasted apart. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to think.

I’ve made so many mistakes. Mistakes upon mistakes. Mistakes inside mistakes. My whole stay in Austin has been nothing but one big mistakefest. And I can never make it right.

And the worst part is now we aren’t leaving. I’m going to have to live with it.

T
IP: Cry in front of two thousand people.

Tell the scary, embarrassing truth.

I’ve just had
the worst day ever. I’m talking Greek-tragedy bad. The kind that, if I went on a talk show and told the whole world about it, would make millions of people gasp and say, “Man! I’d really hate to be you.”

So after I trudge all the way back to our apartment, who’s the first person I see? Norm, of course.

I mount the last step and turn into the apartment and see him standing in the corridor outside the kitchen.

“Hello, moon child,” he says, revealing multicolored teeth as he grins. “I brought something for you.” He hands me a small package wrapped in a piece of brown grocery bag and tied up with a dingy string.

I’m too wrecked to protest, so I snatch it and say, “Thanks.” Just then, Les and Rosie step out from the kitchen and tentatively walk up beside him.

“You okay, Sugar?” Les asks.

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I can only shake my head.

“I should leave,” Norm says. “Thanks for the parfait.” I stay rooted to my spot as my parents walk Norm to the stairwell, mumbling about star charts and sustainable foods. After a while I hear the downstairs door shut, and Rosie and Les come at me from both sides.

“Sit down,” Rosie says, pulling me toward the kitchen table.

“Drink this,” Les commands, setting a lime-colored frothy liquid in front of me. Probably a green tea frappé.

For a long time they just sit close and watch me sip my liquid. They don’t ask where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing. It’s not their style anyway, but considering I ran out of here hours ago, screaming and babbling in my pajamas, I was sort of expecting a mini cross-examination.

After I left the bingo hall, I roamed the streets, thinking about everything I’d lost. The Helping Hands, Jack, Penny, probably the water-aerobics bunch too. No doubt I also lost Mrs. Pratt’s faith in me, which means no letter of recommendation and little chance of getting accepted to a top university. So I lost my future plans as well.

But the thing is I wasn’t feeling sorry for
me.
Not really. I realize that I brought this on myself. All these weeks I’ve been completely self-obsessed. I’ve used other people as part of some grand scheme, without thinking about how it would affect them. I’m just as bad as Caitlyn—worse, even. I don’t deserve any friends. Not even the Bippies.

After two hours of wandering, my feet were blistered and bleeding where the straps of the flip-flops had rubbed against the skin. So I decided to go back home.

I slurp my frappé and toy with the string of Norm’s gift, trying to figure out what to say to my parents, but I’m too drained. At least the drink seems to be helping. I can feel it seeping through me, refilling my energy stores and quenching the hunger pangs in my gut.

Oh yeah. That’s something else I lost. The Stabbies. They’re gone—only I’m not sure why or how.

Maybe they’ve disappeared for good. Or maybe they’ve just grown so much they’ve completely taken me over and I’m now one giant walking Stabby.

“Doodlebug…we need to talk to you about something,” Rosie says.

She seems tired. The corners of her smile have drooped several millimeters and that flicker of light in her eyes has switched to a lower wattage. She looks older somehow. Les too. There are lines around his eyes that I haven’t noticed before, and his hair and beard have new streaks of gray. Did that just happen today?

“We want to apologize to you,” Rosie continues. “We’re sorry we took you away from so many places when you didn’t want to go.”

“We just didn’t see it your way,” Les chimes in. “You saw it as leaving somewhere, but we always saw it as going somewhere.”

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Rosie reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “We never minded saying goodbye to a place. We felt that all we needed was each other, and you.” There’s a tremor in her voice, and a sheen of water covers her blue eyes. “We just assumed it was enough for you, too. But now we realize we were…we were…” She trails off.

“Selfish,” Les finishes. He strokes his goatee wearily and sighs down at the tabletop.

“It’s true,” Rosie says in a hushed voice. Like me, she seems totally wiped out. At first I thought she grabbed my hand to give me strength. Now I wonder if she did it to gather some. “We were still finding ourselves, still living like free spirits. We told each other it was good for you to see the country and meet so many wonderful people. We didn’t stop to think how…
unstable
it was for you.”

“To tell the truth, Shug,” Les says, jumping in, “it hasn’t been all that good for us either. At least not lately. I know we look it, but we’re not that young anymore.” He gives me a wink and a weak smile.

“We’re so sorry,” Rosie says, squeezing my hand superhard. “We should have asked you what you thought about moving. Just like we should have asked you about staying here. So…if you really want to leave Austin…we will.”

They look at each other, exchanging information in that secret way of theirs. This time, though, I feel like I can pick up some of it. I can tell that this is hard for them. I can tell that the thought of moving again makes them tired. They’ve found jobs here that they like and that they’re good at. They’re ready to start a new adventure: settling down. But they’ll give it all up for me.

Rosie and Les. My parents. At least
they
still love me.

I stare down at Norm’s shabby little package and curiosity gets the better of me. I let go of Rosie’s hand and rip it open, letting the pieces of bag fall on the floor. The gift turns out to be a piece of wood. A perfect oval framed by rough bark. And someone—Norm, I assume—has chiseled “Home Sweet Home” into the middle of it. My fingers trace the slightly crooked, burned-looking letters. It’s absolutely beautiful.

“No,” I say, laying the sign in the center of the table. I grab my parents’ hands in each of mine and grip them as tightly as I can. “We aren’t leaving. You deserve to stay, and you should make it work.”
And so should I.

Walking to school the next day, I feel strangely calm. Maybe I’ve reached that acceptance phase—like those death row inmates who smile and wave as they head to their execution. Or maybe it’s because I’m dressed the way I want to dress, in my lucky blue shirt, tiered skirt, and red galoshes (because it’s been raining, and also because who cares?).

As I cross the lawn, students run up to me, greeting me and congratulating me on the dance. A couple of them are wearing auto mechanic–style jumpsuits; a few are in galoshes. One guy even has on a fuzzy pink vest over his T-shirt. And character-themed backpacks and lunch boxes are everywhere.

At first I’m stunned that people are being nice to me after I was so horrible to my friends. But then again,
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because it was the Helping Hands and not anybody with real power, probably no one else knows about it. Or cares.

That’s so wrong.

“I’m voting for you,” someone shouts.

“You’re totally going to beat Caitlyn,” yells someone else.

At first I have no idea what they’re talking about. And then I remember: the whole homecoming-queen thingie. The elections are today.

Oh goody.

I head toward the front doors and see Miles and his pals in their usual spots. The minute he recognizes me, he comes right over and throws a possessive arm around my shoulders.

“Man, what the hell?” he says, pulling me off the walkway and onto a quiet section of the lawn. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. Do you, like, not have a phone or something? What the hell happened to you Saturday?”

“I wasn’t feeling well and went home,” I say, somewhat truthfully.

“You look better today,” he murmurs, his finger tracing the neckline of my shirt.

“Stop,” I say, pulling away. “Look, Miles. I’m sorry to be so weird, but this isn’t happening. We’re not together.”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh man. Don’t start this crap again.”

“Seriously. I’m not playing a game.” I want to be mad at him, but I can’t. Not totally. After all, I messed with him too. Besides, I feel a little sorry for him. It’s a total cliché, but it’s true what they say about being lonely at the top. People don’t see you as a real person.

“Come on,” he says impatiently. “Just drop it already and be cool.”

“You know, you were right at the coffee shop. When you said I wasn’t being real.”

“Hell, yeah. I’m always right.” He grins and steps closer, restarting his overbearing charm.

I take a step backward. “But just because I’m not who I pretended to be doesn’t mean I’m who you think I am.”

“Huh?”

Okay. Point taken. Even I can’t sort that one out.

“I mean…” I try to put it in his terms. “I’m
not cool
. I’m not your type. Don’t waste your time on me.” He runs his hands through his hair. “You know, you’re really starting to piss me off with this game of yours. If you keep it up, I just might decide you’re not worth it and blow you off for good.”
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“Yes!” I’ve never been so happy to have a great-looking guy reject me. “You got it. Go with that thought!”

“But…” Miles is so shocked that I called his bluff he goes speechless.

“See you around.” I give him a semicondescending pat on the arm and head into school, ready for whatever’s next.

Instead of going to homeroom, everyone is supposed to report to the auditorium first for a special assembly.

As I’m carried along with the tide of students in the hall, Shanna suddenly appears beside me.

“Aren’t you excited?” she asks, her big round eyes even bigger and rounder than usual.

“I guess. What is this thing, anyway?”

“The homecoming rally!” She gives a little toss of her head as if she can’t believe my ignorance.

“Okay. So…what exactly happens?”

“Nothing really,” she replies. “You just sit on the stage and smile and they introduce all the nominees for queen. That’s all.”

Oh. So this is why she looks extra-fluffy-and-fashionable today.

As we plod down the corridor, I see Hank and Frank just a few heads over. I instinctively raise my hand in a wave, but they look away. Meanwhile several nameless others are calling my name and wishing me luck.

“I bet you’re going to win,” Shanna says a little stiffly.

As we pass through the auditorium’s open doors, I suddenly spot Jack. He’s only a few yards away, near the stage, talking to Mrs. Pratt. He sees me and quickly looks away, shifting positions slightly so that his back is to me.

I feel a sudden tightness. Not the Stabbies—this is higher, more of a heart-and-lungs pain than a stomach pain. It occurs to me that I could describe the different sensations to Penny and see if she might have some explanation. Then I remember: she’s probably not talking to me either.

Shanna, on the other hand, clearly thinks we’re best buds. She grabs my arm and pulls me toward the stage. “Come on. We’re supposed to be up there.”

Sure enough, Caitlyn and the other girls are already present, perched as prettily as possible atop folding chairs. Caitlyn sees us approach and makes a little scoffing noise. Then she does her version of the hair-toss maneuver and exchanges glances with someone in the audience.

It’s Sharla. She’s sitting in the front row, looking red-faced and pouty. As Shanna and I take our seats,
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she folds her arms across her chest, crosses her right leg over her left, and starts jiggling angrily.

I feel a little sorry for her and Caitlyn, just like I did for Miles. They’re also dealing with a bunch of unwanted change. Besides, Sharla is right that I don’t belong on the homecoming court. It’s like I’m here under false pretenses.

If only she knew that I really don’t want to be here. I’m tired of being in the spotlight. All these years and in all those schools, I’ve always tried hard to be one of the superpopular people. I thought they had it so easy. But in at least one way, they don’t. They’re always being watched. And if you know you’re being watched, how can you be you?

Dr. Wohman steps up to the microphone and taps on it. “Please take your seats,” he drones.

The noise falls to a dull roar and I hear a few shushing noises like gusts of steam. Someone in the back yells, “Go, Mag-
gie
!” and several people laugh. The squeezy feeling in my chest grows stronger.

“Today you will be voting on the queen of our homecoming celebrations,” Dr. Wohman says as if he’s reading off a card. “I would like to formally introduce each one of these young ladies and tell you a bit about them. First, we have Tenisha Lewis.”

The crowd claps as a supercute girl with short black hair rises from her chair. She does a bouncy walk to the front of the stage and stands there, waving. Along with her short-skirt-and-sweater ensemble, she’s wearing a pair of yellow duckie galoshes.