Queen of Likes (18 page)

And that's when I break down and tell Mom and Dad everything that is going on. How I have no friends. How Ella won't speak to me and I won't speak to her and how having Snappypic made me feel special. I cry and cry and Mom strokes my hair and tells me that it will get better. Dad hugs me, and Mom and Toby hug me too. It's a quadruplet hug.

After dinner, I go upstairs to my bedroom and Toby wanders over, shifting from foot to foot like maybe he's got to pee.

“What's the matter, Tobs?”

He sits down next to me on my bed. “I should have told you.” He presses his knees to his forehead, rocking back and forth on the couch.

“Told me what?”

He kicks a balloon with his bare toes. “I know where they hid your phone.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Because”—he swallows—“I found it and used it.”

“What?!” I slam my book down. “Toby, you took my phone? Really?”

He doesn't answer and continues to bat the balloon with his feet.

“I'm not mad,” I lie. “Just tell me where you found it.” I hope my voice sounds light, sweet, and carefree.

“In Mom's sock drawer. In the very back.”

Toby grips the knotted part of the balloon with his dirty toes.

“Why didn't you tell me you found it?”

As Toby rocks back and forth, Lucky trots over and licks him.

“What did you do on my phone?”

He rolls over onto his stomach. “I figured out how to talk to people. But first I charged it up.”

“People? What people? Who did you talk to, Toby?”

He shrugs. “He sent me photos of his LEGOs. And I told him how much I liked them, only I didn't know how to send him back photos. His name is Milton P.”

“You have been texting Milton P.? Oh my gosh!”

And then I remember that last year I was in a social studies project with him and everyone in the group exchanged numbers and I put it into my phone.

I grab Toby's balloon away. So that was why Milton P. thought I loved LEGOs. He wasn't just making it up. He thought Toby was me. I stomp on the balloon so it pops in one loud burst.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” screams Toby as though he's the one who was popped.

“What's going on up there?” asks Mom.

“Nothing!” I shout. This is not something I want her to know about.

“You popped my balloon,” Toby says in a small voice.

“How could you?”

He looks at me, his eyes big and watery. “Because I wanted to be just like you.”

Like me? What? Why would he want to be like . . . and then I catch my breath and look at him with his dirty toes, staring at the pieces of red balloon on his floor. “I'm sorry,” I apologize. I give Toby a hug before he scampers out.

I pace around the room. I have to tell Milton P. that it's not me. It explains everything, of course. Milton P.'s comments about LEGOs that made
absolutely
no sense at all.

I'd tell him the truth. That it was my seven-year-old brother.

And then a funny thought occurs to me. I'm not even going to look in that sock drawer for my phone, even if a part of me really, really wants to do it.

My Stats:

1 oral history photography project

1 quadruplet hug

1 camera in a sock drawer waiting to be found

1 little brother who wants to be just like me

Mood: Like a roller coaster, up and down

On the day of the Spirit Rally, I bring my camera to school and take photos.

I snap shots of Bailey singing and Megan sharing gum and Ella sketching (she gives me a weird look) and Milton P. playing with LEGOs and anything else cool. I also take photos of some rose bushes all pruned back outside the front office with the light all lovely and filtered in the background, and the cracked cement with a dandelion growing out of it.

I seek out Milton P. “Is this Milton P.'s locker?” I ask a girl with one long braid.

“Unfortunately,” she says, twirling her combination. I wait until Milton P. arrives.

“I have something to tell you, Milton P.,” I say. “It's about the texts I've been sending you. There is something you need to know.”

Milton P.'s grin stretches across his face so wide it looks like his skin might pop. His freckles are almost dancing on his nose. “I like texting you. I think you are the only person in the seventh grade who knows almost as much as me about LEGOs.”

Then it hits me. That text the morning after my phone was taken away, when my phone was stuffed in the dresser: It was Milton P.

“We've been texting a while, huh?” I say. “For a few weeks?”

“Sounds right.” Then he smiles a gummy smile and his outer-space eyes twinkle. “That's so weird you have something to tell me. Because I have something to tell you. Well, show you. Close your eyes and count. Now say
Star Wars
three times.”

I sigh and the girl twirling her combination shrugs her shoulders and sashays down the crowded hallway. Kids begin to crowd the hallway as first break is almost ending. “Stars Wars Star Wars Star Wars,” I chant.

“Okay,” says Milton P. “Now open your eyes.”

I open them and Milton P. whips his hands into his shoe box and then pulls out something that flashes. It's shaped like a giant cell phone but it's made mostly from LEGOs. “I heard yours got taken away so I made this for you.”

It's got a panel of buttons and a little screen, and I can't help it—I gasp. “This is a-mazing, Milton P.”

“That's not all. Touch it.”

My fingers graze the buttons.

“No, really punch it.”

A light flashes. “How did you do this?”

“Special parts. I had to order it off this site I found out about and . . .”

I lean forward and hug, actually
hug,
Milton P. Daniels. This is about the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, ever.

Ella strolls toward us with Bailey and the Bees. They're only about twenty feet away. Ella stares at me. She stares at Milton P. Everyone's mouths drop open. I expect Megan to say, “This can't be happening, right?”

I expect Bailey and Janel to shake their heads and turn their backs.

I expect Ella to race away from us as if we are standing at the center of a nuclear contamination site. But nobody is doing any of that.

Instead Ella is clapping. “Way to go, Milton P.!”

Not “Snollygoster.” Not “Thing.”

Just at that moment Auggie waltzes by and whistles. “Looks like Milton P. has it going on. I'm jealous.” And then there is a chorus of
eww
s. Auggie takes a photo of us. “I'm posting this to Snappypic!”

But I don't look up. I don't care. I'm just staring at the LEGO phone. “It's awesome, really.”

Milton P. peers at me through his darkened glasses. “And what was it that you wanted to tell me? About the text messages. I mean, they were a little weird. Sometimes you sounded like a little kid. I thought you might have been sneaking your phone and didn't have enough time to type.

“Oh, the messages. Right. I want to tell you that . . . I meant everything I said to you. That you're an amazing LEGO builder and don't ever stop building. Ever!”

In the gym after fifth period everyone sits on the bleachers with their grades. Lots of boys and a few girls have painted their faces half blue and half orange. It's a sea of colors.

I sit in the bleachers by myself in the back. Bailey and the Bees and Ella sit in the front of the seventh-grade section. Across the way, the eighth graders sit. The sixth graders all congregate in a group to our left but on the same side of the gym. Lots of kids wear school T-shirts. There's a yellow shirt with a dolphin that says
PROUD TO BE A MERTON DOLPHIN
. Milton P. sits in the second row with his friends. He turns around and waves at me. I wave back.

Mrs. Grayson gets up to speak and talks about how wonderful this week is and starts reading quotes about Spirit Week. “We asked the question, What does Spirit Week mean to you? Here are some of the responses.” Mrs. Grayson clears her throat. “Lexi Granger wrote, ‘Spirit Week means middle-school spirit.' So true!”

Well, obviously, since this is a middle school and not an elementary school or high school or nursery school.

Everyone claps for the quote. Lexi Granger blushes and waves her hands at everyone like she's a princess at a parade.

“Jordan Garcia says ‘It's a whole week of fun!' I certainly agree!” adds Mrs. Grayson.

Fun for some people.

The more I think about fun, the more I look at the clock.

Two twenty. Ten more minutes. Then I can walk home with my camera, taking more pictures.

“The purpose of Spirit Week is to get everyone enthused and supportive of our school.” Mrs. Grayson gazes at the bleachers and shields her eyes like the sun is in them. Only it's inside a gym and it's drizzling outside. “Who's got spirit? Can't hear you, Dolphins. Who's got spirit?”

“We do!” shout some kids.

Mrs. Grayson lifts her arms like a conductor. “Can't hear you!”

“We do!” Everyone screams in a deafening roar. And that's when Janel hops down onto the gym floor and cues the seventh grade to do their dance move. A hop and a wiggle. Only half the class does it.

Ten more minutes. The clock is slowing down. Or maybe there has been a power outage because I'm sure that five minutes have gone by and not just one minute. “Now some words from Merton's principal, Mrs. Wallace.” Mrs. Grayson steps away from the mic.

“This week serves to get people involved, working cooperatively and united in a common goal of promoting our school,” says Mrs. Wallace. “And this is when one of the grades will win the Spirit Stick!”

I glance toward Bailey and watch her hug Ella, and Ella hugs her back and they're all eagerly waiting. I am too.

As if she can read my mind, Mrs. Wallace says, “We'll find out who wins the Spirit Stick in a moment, but first let's have our fall sports teams down here.”

I'm back to looking at the clock as the football team and the tennis team and the volleyball team and the cross-country team make it to the gym floor.

Everyone hollers.

And then Mrs. Wallace says, “Let's hear it, sixth grade.” She holds up something that looks like a stake wrapped in blue-and-orange tape.

The sixth grade cheers and bangs their feet on the bleachers.

“Not bad,” shouts Mrs. Wallace at the top of her lungs into the microphone. “Can you outdo that, seventh grade?”

The seventh grade holds up even more signs, and shouts and pounds on the bleachers so its sounds like thunder.

“Pretty good. Eighth grade, can you top that?” She points the Spirit Stick at the eighth grade. Auggie has a horn and it's so loud that it hurts my ears, but there's not as much clapping. Still Mrs. Wallace goes, “I think the eighth graders might have it.” The sixth graders and the seventh graders boo. Lily Pommard turns to Auggie and starts high-fiving him.

The eighth graders have once again won the Spirit Stick. No. Please. No.

“However, I can't be sure,” says Mrs. Wallace. “Let's do it one more time. But all at once.”

So because of the thunderous stomping feet and screams and whistles, there's no way to really tell who's making the most noise, but Mrs. Wallace keeps on pointing. She goes from the seventh to the eighth grade and then points at the sixth and then back to the eighth, where Auggie is yelling through his megaphone.

“Okay.” Mrs. Wallace motions for us to keep quiet.

She takes the Spirit Stick and points not at the eighth grade, not to the seventh grade . . . but at the sixth grade.

What? This is a snapshot in my mind I do not want to take. The sixth graders are going crazy. They are running on the gym floor. Gina, the sixth-grade leader, is throwing candy. The kids are jumping up and down. Some are even doing handstands and shouting, “Pizza! Ice cream! Pizza! Ice cream!”

Meanwhile, the seventh graders around me gasp and moan. Janel, Bailey, Megan, and Ella all console each other with a giant hug. Across the gym, the eighth graders whisper to each other furiously. Some shake their heads or put their arms in front of their chests in a we-were-robbed posture. Lily Pommard looks like she's crying.

I know exactly how she feels.

Clapping, Mrs. Wallace says, “First I want to commend all the grades for their participation. And a special recognition to Auggie Elson for personally collecting three hundred and thirty-two cans for the food bank. And I also want to especially thank the seventh grade for sponsoring the dance this year. Together, all of you have contributed to an outstanding Spirit Week!”

In the front row, the Bees give each other a significant look. Really. Sixth graders!