How Not To Be Popular (8 page)

“Would you be caught dead with that stuff?”

I strain to see what they’re looking at, but their designer bags act as a shield.

“Uh-uh. No way. Might as well wear a sign that says ‘major loser.’” The queen’s attendant quacks appreciatively. “Yeah, right.” As they move off toward the videotapes, I finally glimpse the objects of their scorn: a
Star Trek
backpack and a matching lunch box.

Sold.

T
IP: You must worship all that is totally and tragically unhip.

Disco is not dead.

It’s working.
Thank the Cosmic Forces, this is really working!

Just as I hoped, several of the students gathered on the front lawn of Lakewood High are pointing at me.

The Goth girl is giggling so hard her black eye makeup is streaking down her cheeks.

Luckily it’s sprinkling this morning, so in addition to my new
Star Trek
purchases, I’m carrying a green frog umbrella with two eyes on top. Plus yesterday I discovered a whole box of zippered jumpsuits—the kind car mechanics wear—in the shop’s storeroom. So I’m also sporting a gray jumper with the name Wayne stenciled below my left collarbone and a pair of plain black galoshes that are only slightly too big for me.

I must look devastatingly weird. As I walked the eight blocks from our apartment to the school, a bunch of people in cars slowed down to gawk. Some lady at the bus stop caught sight of me and promptly choked on her venti coffee.

“Hey, loser!” shouts one of the thugs at the edge of the parking lot. He says that like it’s a bad thing.

This guy just made my morning.

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I know how these things play out. Whenever a person does something highly embarrassing, anyone with style and status has to actively tease and then automatically avoid the guilty party for a couple of months.

So this should get me at least halfway through my time here.

For some reason I’m not nearly as nervous as I was on the first day I dressed strangely. In fact, this is almost fun. I’ve worked hard for this, so I take pride in every single snicker and whispered dig. In a way, I feel like some anti–Miss America taking her victory walk down the runway.
There she is…Miss Most
Hideous….

The only real challenge left is to get to the front door without being accosted by superstud sadists.

As soon as he spots me, Miles starts a hooting laugh. “Damn, girl!” he drawls as he hops off his regular perch and falls into step beside me. “Your outfits get uglier every day.” I suck in my cheeks to stop myself from saying “thank you.” It’s funny. In all the other high schools I’ve been to, I would have given anything to get noticed by a guy like this. Now I’ve got the attention, without even really trying for it, and I don’t want it at all. Everything is opposite here.

Miles looks me over, chuckling, as he accompanies me to the entrance. Through the glass I can make out a flock of short-skirted cheerleaders chatting on the other side of the door. They turn in unison, watching me approach. Then they all careen into each other, laughing hysterically.

Suddenly Miles leans in close, becoming my whole view. I can see the moisture on his lips and a faint crop of gold whiskers on his jawline. “Why do you do this?” he asks in a low voice. “Why do you hide that hot bod behind those lame clothes? You dress like crap.” This time I suck in my cheeks so hard the sides of my mouth disappear. If I’m so disgusting, why does he keep swooping in on me like this?

“You know you’re sexy,” he murmurs, inching even closer. “So why don’t you dress it?” I remain totally silent. My chest feels tightly packed—probably from all the trapped curse words.
Why
won’t this guy leave me alone?

“Oh, so you’re back to the not-speaking thing, huh? I liked it better when you talked dirty to me.” I turn and glance back at the gaggle of laughing cheerleaders, avoiding his deceptively gorgeous eyes.

Miles heaves a loud, frustrated sigh. “Man, what’s
with
you? How come you won’t even look at me?

Are you some sort of snotty bitch?”

And just like that, the flirtation turns cruel—which I suppose it always was in disguise. I decide not to give him the satisfaction of an outburst. Instead I point my frog umbrella toward him and flap it open and shut to shake off the water. Miles jumps backward with a whiny-sounding “Hey!” followed by a mumbled curse.

Shouldering my closed umbrella, I head into the student center and find the assembled cheerleaders grinning at me treacherously.

“Hey, nerd-girl. Who beamed you in here?” sneers Sharla, her overplucked eyebrows doing weird wiggles on her face. The rest of them laugh demonically.

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Well…
almost
all the rest. Standing in the back, Shanna watches me with her typically empty gaze, her big blue eyes all done up in silver glitter to match her uniform. She’s not laughing. But then, she probably didn’t get the lame joke. I have the feeling Shanna probably watches the fashion channels exclusively. In fact, the only reason I recognized the Trekkie stuff was that Les has a soft spot for ancient science fiction and let me watch reruns of the show with the community-school kids in Santa Fe.

As I continue to walk past, I realize that Shanna’s not the only silent one. Usually Caitlyn’s conducting the pack, but this time she’s not even joining in the fun. Instead she’s standing off to the side with her arms folded behind her back, making it look as if she has paper pom-pom wings. She’s staring at me hard, her face all bunched up and twitchy.

Something tells me if we were on
Star Tre
k right now, I’d have been phasered out of existence.

Fortunately, Caitlyn and her pals aren’t in homeroom today since the cheer squad is leading an optional spirit rally in the gym. After roll call Mrs. Minnow excused everyone who wished to attend, which left behind just me and a few bookworms.

In another stroke of luck, Jack is absent today—a fact made glaringly obvious when Mrs. Minnow needed a full ten minutes to take attendance.

I’m so relieved. After what happened in the theater, it’s going to be a while before I can face him. The more I think of it, though, the more I’m convinced that my little underwear-flashing episode saved me from a worse situation. Thanks to weak elastic, Jack will think twice about being sociable with me.

The whole experience also made me realize that if I want to completely avoid any friendly ties to this place, I need to step things up a bit. Although I’m hoping that a couple of accessories with 1960s space adventurers on them will do the trick, so that I don’t have to resort to stripping again.

I’m just getting into my battered copy of
Gulliver’s Travels
when I hear a mumbling sound, followed by a familiar helicopter laugh. My head instantly snaps up. Sure enough, there’s Jack talking to Mrs.

Minnow. He hands her a pink tardy slip and she keeps smiling adoringly at him, not even bothering to look at it. She mutters something I can’t hear and gestures toward the desks. That’s when Jack turns and looks straight at me.

Crap cola!
My face feels like it’s been covered in a warm, sticky glaze.

He grins and raises his brows in a how’re-we-doing sort of way. I produce a weak smile in return.

Suddenly he’s striding down the aisle toward me. In a panic, I quickly bend back over my book.

“Hi,” he says as he settles into the seat on my left and faces the front.

“Hi,” I reply. I manage not to look up and instead concentrate hard on the word “Big-Endian,” but I’m unable to stop myself from smiling.

“Have a good weekend?”

At this I bust out laughing. I try not to by pressing my lips together, but that just makes a loud snort flee
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through my nostrils. Mrs. Minnow and the other five or so students stare at us in annoyance. I clamp my hand over my mouth and try to refocus on page eighty-three.

As soon as everyone looks away, Jack tilts sideways and whispers, “Did you happen to bring my shirt?” I shake my head, the gooeyness seeping back over my face.

“That’s okay. No hurry. Feel free to use it if you need to.” My chuckles sputter to a stop. I don’t like this. We’ve got this funny secret between us. It suggests a certain…chumminess. Something I never wanted. Come to think of it, why’s he still being nice to me?

Isn’t he worried about his own reputation? Seems like he can’t afford to lose cool points.

Jack slants toward me again. “You want to meet after school?” he asks. “There’s this—”

“I can’t.”

He quickly straightens up. “Okay,” he says, sounding a little taken aback. “Maybe later we—”

“Sorry. Got plans.” I sing a silent song of praise to Penny for hooking me up with her club meeting today.

Jack nods briskly. “Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Like a good teacher’s pet, he learns quickly. For the rest of the period, he doesn’t say another word.

“I like your lunch box.”

Penny, once again, plops down across from me in the cafeteria. I’m starting to realize that she considers our sitting together to be some silently agreed-upon arrangement between us. I thought up various sneaky ways of getting rid of her (“My doctor says I’m not supposed to breathe in the vicinity of people” “I need lots of space around me because of the projectile vomiting thing” “I’m sorry, but that seat and the others around it are being saved for my imaginary friend Hubert and his eight fairy wives”), but then I realized that her presence could only help with my whole not-wanting-to-be-liked scheme. She’s obviously one of the school’s bottom-feeders. And besides, it’s not like she could ever seriously be my friend.

She slowly turns my lunch box, examining each of the pictures stamped into the vinyl. “I used to have a Harry Potter one in middle school, but it got stolen.” I make a sympathetic noise as I dig in to my Thai noodles.

“Do you like Harry Potter?” she asks.

I nod. Even though I haven’t seen the films, I have read most of the books.

“It’s my favorite story,” Penny says, becoming kind of quiet and wistful. “Do you believe in magic?” I consider the question as I continue chewing my noodles. Do I? Rosie is a big advocate of all things psychic and miraculous, which I guess fall into the realm of magic. Les, on the other hand, exists on
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planet Earth a little more than my mother. Although he does believe in the healing powers of rocks, gemstones, and magnets, and he swears he once conversed with a dog.

But me? I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s all wishful thinking—just crazy imaginations going under a new name. And yet I’ve seen too many bizarre things in my life to totally write it off as hogwash.

“Maybe,” I say after swallowing. “I guess I believe in everything a little bit. Nothing totally.”

“Yeah. There’s no such thing as witches,” she says, sounding disappointed.

“Actually, there is. I’ve met some.”

Penny’s eyes grow so wide her lids almost disappear. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. But it’s nothing like Harry Potter,” I explain. “They don’t wear pointy hats or ride brooms or anything.”

“What do they do?”

I chew another bite while trying to put it all into simple terms. “Mainly they watch the moon cycles a lot and carry around crystals. And they wear really cool ponchos.”

“Oh.” Penny goes back to studying my lunch box. She has this annoying habit of breathing through her mouth when she’s deep in thought. “Do you think he’s cute?” My eyebrows mash against each other. “Who?” I ask, afraid she might have seen me with Jack or heard something from someone else.

Penny nods toward the lunch box, where Mr. Spock is making his weird peace sign at us.

“You mean…
Mr. Spock
?” I practically screech.

Penny’s back goes rigid and she starts frantically hoeing her taco salad with her spork. Her cheeks look like they’re suddenly sunburned.

I instantly feel horrible. Here I am sounding just like those perky prima donnas at the thrift store. I’m not popular here, so there’s no need to act snarky. Besides,
I’m
the one toting his image around.

“Of course he’s cute,” I add. “That’s why I bought it.”

“Right.” She slips into another openmouthed reverie, gazing at the front panel of my lunch kit. “You can tell just by looking at him,” she says softly. “You just know he’s nice. And really smart.”

“Uh…yeah. Great guy.”
Except for his being fictional.

Over Penny’s shoulder I notice Miles perched on top of his table, staring our way. Not a slimy leer, just a really intent gaze—as if he’s been told to draw a picture of me for a major test.

I’m about to turn away when I realize he’s not the only one looking at me. Sitting at the same table—the one populated by the popular—is Caitlyn. She’s just a few bodies down from Miles, flanked by Shanna and Sharla. Shanna is pondering her manicure and Sharla is chatting away, but Caitlyn doesn’t seem to
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be listening. She’s too busy giving me her patented bitch glare.

What the hell did I do to her?

“Do you know that girl Caitlyn? The cheerleader?” I ask Penny, who’s still moony-eyed over the Mr.

Spock picture.

“Caitlyn Ward?” She looks up and frowns. “Yeah. Everyone knows her. Why?” I shrug. “I don’t know. I think she’s mad at me or something.”

“She’s a big meanie. In middle school she took one of my Ho Hos. And she was always making fun of my bad leg.”

“You have a bad leg?”

Penny nods. “My right one. That’s why I do water aerobics.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

Her mouth makes a small U shape, and another faint blush tints the tops of her cheeks. “Thanks. It’s getting stronger. Now I only limp when I’m really tired.” I take a big bite of noodles and think back to my first sight of her in a swimsuit. I’d made fun of her too—only in the privacy of my own head.

“Caitlyn’s probably just jealous of you,” she says matter-of-factly.

I almost suck ramen down my windpipe. “What?” I croak. I cough a few times and sputter, “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s because Miles likes you,” Penny goes on. “And she’s been in love with him since ninth grade. Every year they’re boyfriend and girlfriend for a little while, and then they stop. Right now they’re broken up, but I can tell she’s trying real hard to get back with him.” I sneak a glance at the Bippy table. My view of Miles is obstructed by a burly football player, but I can still see Caitlyn. She really is pretty, in spite of her cornea-frying expression and all the Vegas-showgirl makeup. In fact, all the girls at that table are beautiful—the products of salon merchandise and the select breeding of trophy people. Plus they just act like they’re better—an attitude I usually try to copy.