“I’m thinking about sending you to a psychologist.”
“What!” That shot my head up. It almost ripped right off my spinal cord and splattered against the fridge.
“We think you need professional help with”—she swallowed hard—“your problem.”
I saw Dad blush.
I gasped as both hands flew up to cover my head. “Who told you? Vanessa? That snitch. She’s been counting hairs in the brush
again, hasn’t she?”
Mom looked confused. “Told us what?”
“About my problem. About…”—my voice lowered—“my premature hair loss.”
Dad couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. Mother was not amused.
T
he next day I zoned through language arts and math. Usually I can make my mind a total blank, but today I couldn’t stop thinking.
About what Mom had said. A psychologist. A shrink. A head fed. Was I really nuts? If I was, I wanted to be cashews. Then another
thought barreled through my brain. What if the psychologist Mom picked turned out to be Lydia’s mother? I glanced over at
Lydia. At her empty desk. She was up at Mrs. Jonas’s desk, squealing (literally) on Ashley for grabbing her book and losing
her place during silent reading. Lydia was pathetic. This was my role model?
During gym, while the teams were supposed to be loosening up with calisthenics and stretching exercises, my team congregated
at the bleachers. Lydia plopped down Indian-style underneath the seats and yanked a paperback out of her pocket. Some trashy
romance novel. With a picture like that on the cover, you can bet it didn’t come from our school media center.
Max perched above Lydia on the risers, picking the scab off her elbow from an apparent stab wound. As I clomped up, Prairie
Cactus smiled demurely at me from her bleacher seat two rows below Max. I plopped on the row between them.
“So, what’s our strategy today?” I said to no one in particular.
“Huh?” Max grunted behind me.
My Mars Bar had gone gooey in my pocket. Rats. I slurped the soupy slime out of the wrapper. “Our strategy. How do we intend
to show up these losers and make the best time?”
From underneath us, a howl like a sick hyena rose up. Lydia had the most obnoxious laugh. Behind me, Max blew a puff of air
out between her lips. Prairie said, “B-b-better leave me out. I-I’m not a very good runner.”
Understatement of the century.
“Everyone runs today,” Max said. “I’ll take the first leg.”
“Great,” I said. “After you finish with it, could I gnaw on the bone?”
Prairie covered her mouth and tittered. Hey, encouragement. “Unless anyone has an objection,” I continued, “I prefer the last
leg. The anchor? I think I can drag us down. Get it? Anchor? Drag?”
“I think I sh-should run the anchor 1-leg,” Prairie said. She lifted her right pant leg to show us her fake foot.
Lydia gasped. Max snorted. A smile tugged the corners of my lips.
“What happened to your foot?” Lydia said as she sashayed around the end of the bleacher box.
Max and I both shot Lydia dead with eye bullets, even though I was curious, too.
“B-birth defect,” Prairie said. “N-no big deal. But I can’t run too good.”
“Well,
I
can run,” Lydia said. “I still hold the record in the hundred-yard dash from third grade.”
Dead silence.
“Look in the trophy case at Greenlee Elementary if you don’t believe me.”
I almost said, “There must have been an epidemic that year—a lot of kids out sick.” Maybe I did say it.
Lydia dog-eared the page of her book. “I’ll run the anchor. If no one has an objection, that is.” She looked at me.
Max made sounds like she was going to spit a loogie on Lydia. I twisted around and discouraged her with a grimace. She swallowed
it, reluctantly.
“You jocks fight it out.” Max stood. The vibrating bleachers rattled my teeth as she tromped down past me. “See you at the
starting line.”
Like sheep led to slaughter, Prairie and I followed Max. Lydia caught up to me. “Since I’m team captain, I should decide the
order we run in. Don’t you think?”
Max stopped dead in her tracks. She whirled on Lydia. A detectable tremor raced from Lydia’s limp hair bow to her Keds rubber
guards. “Why don’t you run the first leg,” she said meekly to Max.
“Wise decision,” I muttered under my breath.
“Jenny, you’re second.”
I clucked.
“What?” Lydia huffed. “I’m running the anchor. It’s our only chance.”
At what? I thought. Less than total humiliation? I clucked again. Just to be ornery. Lydia exhaled a sigh of exasperation.
“Prairie, you run third,” she said. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t anyone drop the baton again.”
“Like y-y-you did y-yesterday?” Prairie piped up.
I choked. Max smirked.
Lydia ignored us. “All right, team. Let’s show these loggerheads how it’s done.”
Max rolled her eyes at me. I was beginning to like this girl.
“It’s not a race,” I reminded everyone.
Lydia just stared at the field, eyes narrowed. She was determined—you had to give her that.
We’d reached the track, where Max approached the starting line and did a deep knee bend. Meanwhile, I freed a fire stick from
my back pocket. Lydia glared at me. “You’re not going to eat that now, are you?”
I stared at Lydia, then down at the fire stick. With a heartsick sigh, I stuck it back in my pocket. “Guess not.” To myself
I added, Dad always said it’s not polite to eat and run.
We ran eight seconds slower than the day before. Not bad, I thought. Nobody got hurt.
Ashley Krupps approached us after the relays, no doubt to tell us we were lousy, which we already knew. “What do you want?”
Lydia snarled.
I hate Ashley Krupps. Hate her to her rotten apple core. I have my reasons. And it’s not because she’s the principal’s daughter,
or because she’s fat like me and doesn’t care. No one ever makes fun of Ashley Krupps. Probably because she has the power
to get them expelled on a whim. I thought Lydia should be careful.
Ashley said, “Our squad decided, since we’re going to keep the same teams, that we should make up team names.”
Melanie drew up alongside Ashley. She swabbed nonexistent sweat off her forehead. “Our name is the Neon Nikes,” she sang in
a singsong.
“Oh, brother,” Lydia muttered.
Really, I agreed.
Their two other team members appeared, like right off the cover of
Preteen Queen
. Rachel Cagney and Fayola K. No one with English as their native tongue could pronounce Fayola’s K.’s last name. There weren’t
any vowels in it. Fayola had a personal vendetta against me because I once referred to her as Fayola Crayola. I think she
thought it was a racial slur, but all I meant was that she used very colorful language.
“Oh, damn,” she said. “I broke a nail. Damn, damn, damn!”
See?
“James Martinez’s team is the Oakland Raiders,” Rachel said.
“Original,” I replied between licks of fire stick.
Lydia snorted.
“What’s Kevin Rooney’s name?” Melanie asked Rachel. She was in love with him, too. Which made me despise her.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “They’re still arguing about it.” We all looked over. Fisticuffs were about to break out between
the boys.
“How about the Rooney Tunes?” I hollered over.
Ashley, Melanie, Rachel, and Fayola all made the same face at me. So that’s what they did in the rest room for twelve hours
at a stretch. Fayola said, “You’re real friggin’ funny, Solano.” She didn’t say friggin’.
“Thank you.” No one ever accused me of bad manners.
“So, anyway”—Ashley started to walk away—“that’s what the
rest
of us are doing.” She addressed me personally on her way past. “Not that
you
should feel like
you’re
included.”
A retort formed on my tongue, then dribbled off. It had too much of Fayola’s colorful language to voice out loud.
Out of nowhere Lydia announced, “We’re the Snob Squad.”
The Neon Nikes skidded to a group halt. They exchanged glances like… like they wished they’d have thought of the name. We
stared at Lydia like she was lights out, long gone.
Max rolled her eyes at me. I rolled mine back.
After the Nikes left, we all turned to Lydia. Max said what we were thinking. “The Snob Squad?”
Lydia hooked a hunk of hair behind her ear. “Why not?” she said.
Max looked at me. I looked at Prairie. Prairie shrugged. “W-why not?”
A million reasons. None of which I was willing to share if they didn’t already know.
“The Snob Squad,” Max repeated. “I like it.”
Lydia beamed.
See? Others need professional help a lot more than me.
T
here’s this saying: Birds of a feather flock together. I don’t know how we qualified as birds exactly, but we started flocking.
Far as I could tell, the only thing the four of us, the Snob Squad, had in common was that we were the most unpopular people
in school.
I first noticed this flocking phenomenon at lunch the next day. My whole school life I’d always eaten lunch alone, off at
the most remote cafeteria table under a flickering fluorescent bulb. Now Max, Lydia, and Prairie joined me. It was weird.
The feel of other people, the sounds of group chewing.
Lydia blabbered on and on about how she hated Ashley Krupps. How Ashley was a stuck-up liar and a slut, a spoiled brat juvenile
delinquent, et cetera, et cetera. I relished her rage. It reaffirmed my feelings.
Lydia was still steaming from the incident that morning. After we were all settled in class and ready for roll call, Lydia
opened her desk and screamed. Inside was a dead bull snake. Fresh roadkill; the floppy body was still warm. You should’ve
seen Lydia. Major conniption. Anyway, since Ashley was laughing at Lydia the loudest, Lydia assumed she’d done it. She probably
did. She was always tormenting Lydia. Doing things just to make her scream. Naturally everyone thought it was a hoot. I would’ve
too, if someone other than Ashley had been responsible.
We all tried to console Lydia. Except Max. She said, “Could I have the snake?”
Lydia just looked at her. “I don’t have it. I don’t know what happened to it.” She shuddered.
Max clucked her tongue. Major disappointment.
After lunch Prairie had to go finish some kind of IQ test. Lydia, Max, and I wandered back to the clown target behind the
baseball field. The clown target was the PTA’s pet project last year. It was supposed to stop kids from throwing snowballs
at each other by eliminating the temptation. Yeah, right. Winter was a heavy referral season at Montrose.
Max scooped up a dirt clod from the outfield and slung it through Bozo’s gaping mouth. Lydia and I balanced on the chain-link
fence in front of the dugout to watch. Okay, Lydia balanced. I buttressed.
“She’s weird,” Lydia whispered to me.
Look who’s talking, I thought. I replied, “Who isn’t? You want a Smarties?”
“Sure.”
I handed her a roll. We unwrapped our candy in unison. While we sucked on the pellets, we continued to watch Max. She was
gathering a crowd. Mostly guys who secretly admired her arm, I suspected.
“Here comes Prairie,” Lydia said, pointing. “She must’ve finished her test early.”
Prairie was limping out the A wing door. She scanned the playground. When she saw us, she waved and started over. To get to
where we were, she had to walk through the crowd watching Max. Just like always, it happened. Whenever Prairie Cactus passed
by a group, especially boys, she became a target. She was fingered and poked, pushed and prodded. Teased with cries of “Ow!
Ooh! Prickly!”
As she hobbled by the onlookers in the field, it started up. “Ow, ooh, ouch, ooch.” Max paused mid-sling. She spun on the
crowd. There was one final “Ouch” as Prairie emerged. Max charged forward and grabbed the shirtfront of the boy who’d last
poked Prairie. “What’d you say?” she asked him.
He sneered. “I said ouch.” He looked to the kid beside him for support. The kid backed off. Funny how your best friend in
the world will desert you in a moment of crisis.
“You must have ESP,” Max said. She hauled off and punched him in the stomach. He squealed and staggered backward. “Who else
said ouch?” Max held up a fist.
No other confessions were forthcoming. The crowd dispersed, fast.
My palms drew together. In slow syncopation I clapped, paused, clapped, paused…
Lydia picked up the rhythm. Wheeling toward us, Max’s face registered… nothing. Or something; something impossible to read.
If she’d had an Uzi, she might have gunned us down, like the dumb smart-offs we were. After a minute, one corner of her lip
curled up and she bowed. Now that’s class.
When Mr. Dietz called the Snob Squad to the starting line that afternoon, Max led the way. From the sidelines we cheered.
Our hero.
The Nikes just looked at us. Everyone did. It made us cheer louder. I even whistled through the gap in my two front teeth.
Funny how you’ll do stupid stuff in a group you’d never do alone. Mr. Dietz blew his whistle to start the time trials.
Max was breathing hard as she rounded the track to hand the baton off to Prairie. For an instant we were ahead of yesterday’s
time. Lydia’s new strategy for the day was to switch me and Prairie. Prairie ran second; I was third. Don’t ask me why. Lydia
was captain.
Prairie limped around as best she could, but by the time she crossed the finish line three days later, we were behind again.
If Lydia thought I was going to improve our time, she was denser than I figured.
“Good try,” I heard Max say to Prairie as I took off like an earthquake. When I thundered over the finish line, sweating like
a roast pig, Max said, “Good race, Solano.”
I sneered at the insult. Funny though, Max seemed sincere. I felt better. Less like Flubber burning rubber. A few feet behind
us the Nikes’ heads were drawn together. They were plotting something—you could smell it. Mostly what I smelled was Melanie’s
perfume. P.U. How could Kevin Rooney stand to be within sniffing distance of her without hyperventilating? Myself, I’ve always
considered the fragrance of deep, dark chocolate to be irresistibly appealing.