Queen of Likes (4 page)

Student Council members take tremendous pride in their school and work hard every day to make Merton Middle School a better place.

To volunteer, come to the planning meeting after school on Monday, March 5, in room 207.

Contact Student Council Advisor Mrs. Grayson with questions.

“Cool.” Ella stares eagerly at the flier as if it's coated in chocolate.

“I know. I can't wait.” Bailey opens her mouth and out comes her high-pitched musical laugh. “This year, for the first time
ever
, seventh grade is going to win the Spirit Stick. I'm so excited. It's all I could think about all weekend.” Her hazel eyes are bright and expectant. “We're so going win. Did you guys have a good weekend?”

“Uh-huh,” says Ella in her quietest, sweetest voice. She glances at me significantly. “But not everyone did.”

Suddenly I want to kill my best friend. If people don't know about my Snappypic yet, I'd rather not go there. I busy myself licking my fingers and patting down my hair. But now everyone is looking at me like they know something is up.

Bailey studies me curiously. “What's going on, Karma?”

“My parents closed my Snappypic,” I say as fast as I can. “They also took my phone. And gave me this.” I show them my flip phone, Flippie.

Bailey clamps her small, delicate hand to her small, delicate mouth. “No way. You of all people. Wow. On Sunday, I tried to
LIKE
something of yours. But I couldn't find it. I thought it was some kind of error or something. That's crazy.”

“I know,” I say.

“I'd die,” says Megan in her sweet baby voice. “I mean it. They could just put a gravestone up right now. Because not having my phone would be like”—she pauses—“not existing at all.”

“I'm so sorry,” Janel says loudly over the chattering crowd in the hallway.

“That's awful.” Bailey gives me a hug and so does Megan. The hugs feel good. Bailey must really like me and has forgotten about the peanut-butter-in-hair incident. “It's too bad your parents did that. Because we were going to ask you to be publicity chair of Spirit Week for the seventh grade.”

What?! I can't believe this. That's probably why Bailey had been messaging me on Saturday. My stomach drops. Why would this awesome offer have to happen the
exact
time that my phone gets taken away? And my Snappypic gets shuts down? Coincidence? Bad Karma?

At the very least, there are definitely antipopularity forces conspiring against me.

Bailey sighs. “Oh, well. We'll have to ask someone else.” She neatens the rest of her stack, which I didn't think was possible since it already looked perfectly tidy. “We need someone who can get the word out with social media in all kinds of creative ways. Basically to get the seventh grade all geared up to win.”

I lock eyes with Ella. “Ella could do it,” I say.

My best friend looks at me gratefully. Her cheeks glow pink. Her eyes widen. A bunch of kids swirl around our little cluster in the hall. They're trying to overhear what we're saying as we head to class.

Ella clears her throat. Her eyes dart nervously around the group. “It's a big job,” she says in a whispery voice, “but I could probably get the word out on Snappypic.” She shrugs. “And do posters. I'm okay with drawing and hand lettering and stuff.”

“More than okay,” I say. “She's amazing. She can do script so it looks like a wedding invitation, and she can draw
anything
.”

“Well, maybe,” says Bailey.

But Bailey is still not looking at Ella, who is standing there so cutely and artistically and sweetly. Ella, who looks like a cover girl. No, Bailey—the center of everything seventh grade—is looking forlornly, regretfully, at me.

After second period, there's a ten-minute break and I go to the bathroom. I'm in the stall when I hear familiar voices enter the washroom. Voices who say “super” a lot. Bailey, Megan, and Janel, of course.

“So what do you think of Ella?” somebody says as a toilet flushes. It sounds like Janel. My ears perk up and I quiet my breathing.

“People, there's no way that Ella can chair publicity,” says Bailey.

“Well, for one thing, you can't hear her speak,” says Janel. “She's so quiet.”

“Exactly,” says Bailey, speaking in her supercrisp way.

“Hello, I'm Ella Fuentes and I speak just like”—Megan lowers her voice even more—“a mouse.”

It's true that Ella has a soft voice, but it still makes me mad to hear them making fun of her like that. I want to burst out of the stall. I want to scream at them to shut up.

But my pants are kind of down, plus I don't want to make a huge scene.

“Hey, you guys, Ella's an awesome artist,” says Janel. “I'm serious. We're going to be hearing from her someday. She's like Picasso.”

Okay, maybe they aren't all so vile.

Bailey laughs. “I'm sorry, girls, but there's no way Ella could handle chair. Karma would have been great. It was sick how many followers she had. With her, I'm sure we could have won the Spirit Stick.”

Even though my stomach is twisting, I can't help feeling a little bit happy.

“Karma's like a super Snappypic genius. We really,
really
needed her. Too bad she can't do it. Auggie Elson is in charge of publicity for the eighth grade.”

I almost choke because if Auggie does something, he does it big. Annoyingly big.

“Really?” says Megan. “That's so not good.” The faucet spurts out water as someone washes her hands.

“I know,” says Bailey. “And he has as many followers as Karma. Or had.”

“That. Is. So. Not. True!” I scream. “I had over six thousand, three hundred and forty-three more followers! Not that I'm counting.”

“Karma?” asks Bailey, knocking on my stall. “Is that you?”

Whoops. Didn't really mean to say that out loud. I get myself presentable and fling open the stall door. “In person.”

“So you heard . . . everything,” Bailey says. Her cheeks blush a pale pink. Bailey, Megan, and Janel crowd up by the mirror and a sixth grader with pigtails stands by the faucet. Pigtail Girl darts a quick nervous glance at Bailey and rushes out the door.

“Yeah, I heard everything. I have way more followers than Auggie. Well, had. Anyway, he cheats to get his.

“If I were publicity chair,” I continue, “it'd be an all-out war between two people: Karma Cooper versus Auggie Elson.”

“And don't forget the sixth grade,” says Janel, waving a lip gloss in the air.

“Rookies don't count,” says Megan in her babyish voice, which makes even mean things sound nice.

“True,” I say. “They're still working on memorizing their locker combinations.” Everyone laughs. I raise my arm over my head and pump my fist into the air.

Suddenly an idea hits me.

I look straight at Bailey. “I think I can be publicity chair, even without my phone.”

“But what about not having a real phone?” asks Megan, popping a piece of gum into her mouth.

“Or your Snappypic,” says Janel.

I clear my throat. “Well, Ella has Snappypic. Just make her my cochair.” I fold my arms in front of my chest.

“We've never had cochairs before,” says Megan, who raises her very plucked eyebrows. She glances significantly at Bailey. “Am I right?”

Bailey presses her hands together to make a little steeple. She purses her lips. “We've never done it before.”

“Don't worry. I'll really be the chair. I can use Ella's phone. And Ella can do some art.”

Bailey winces as if the thought of doing something different might be painful. Suddenly her long, dark eyelashes flutter. Her eyes are shining. “I think that”—she straightens her scarf—“I think that it's a solid idea.”

“Awesome,” I say, my heart skipping a beat.

“I know.” Bailey high-fives me. “It'll be super. Right, girls?”

“Right,” echo both Megan and Janel.

Bailey stares at me intently. “So you'll both need to go to all of the meetings.”

“Sure. No problem,” I promise.

“We can meet during lunch and Thursday afternoons at my house after school,” says Bailey.

“Cool,” I say.

Bailey high-fives me. “Super!” Her musical laugh echoes in the bathroom.

“Super! Super!” Janel and Megan echo as one twirls in front of the mirror and the other high-fives me.

We walk into the hall together, and Bailey is gazing at me like I'm her personal hero, and so is Megan and so is Janel, and everyone in the seventh grade is passing by watching Bailey and the Bees staring at me like I'm the smartest person ever. Well, Snappypic smart. And you know what? I'm feeling kind of super!

It all started last year at the end of sixth grade, when I posted a photo of this gopher popping out of a hole in our yard right between our Douglas fir tree and the blackberry bush. Lucky, my dog, was licking the gopher's head. Since Lucky looks like a giant four-legged Wookie, the gopher was too terrified to move. If you didn't know that, it looked as if Lucky and the gopher were BFFs. I posted to Snappypic with the caption,
Everyone needs a friend.

And I was famous!

Soon I had a ton of followers, mostly kids from my middle school, synagogue youth group, and summer camp. Of course some of those followers weren't even real since I had opened up fifteen different accounts under different names so I could
LIKE
my own posts.

But my real followers
loved
that gopher photo. It landed on the popular page on Snappypic. Soon
everyone
started following me. I got 492
LIKES
. And I kept on posting photos with inspiring quotes. By August I had more than 10,000 followers. And when I started school a month ago, the
whole
seventh grade was noticing me and talking about how I had so many followers and asking my opinion on everything from the best photo-editing apps to what I thought of our math teacher's hair.

Me, Karma Cooper, the girl who all throughout fourth, fifth, and most of sixth grade was officially known as Bad Karma because I was too tall and awkward to even be a teensy bit popular. But all of that has changed. Big time.

A moment later Ella strolls down the hallway. “Hey,” she says softly. She stops and stares at all of us. My arms are linked to Bailey's and Bailey's arms are linked to the rest of the Bees and we're crazily skipping down the hall to third period.

“What's going on?” asks Ella. Her eyebrows squish together. After all, it's not every day that you see me, Megan, Bailey, and Janel skip arm-in-arm down the hall like we're about to belt out “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Like there's a spotlight shining in a bright circle around us, announcing we're all superclose friends.

“Well, for one thing, we're going to win the Spirit Stick. Aren't we, girls?” says Bailey. She nudges me with her elbow.

I'm feeling light and airy, as if I might lift off the ground. Ella will be so happy when she hears the news about getting to cochair publicity.

I am a supergenius.

I, supergenius, gaze at my best friend and realize she still looks confused. “You and I have been picked to be the publicity chairs,” I squeal.

“Really?” Her eyes grow emoji-big and her skin practically sparkles.

Everyone nods. Janel gives a big thumbs-up.

Ella jumps up and down and claps her hands and then hugs me. I'm feeling like an awesome best friend right now because I have made her dreams come true.

And mine, too.

My Stats:

2 cochairs of the publicity committee

1 real chair, but I won't tell Ella

3 Bees who think I'm a goddess, even though I don't have my Snappypic

6,343 more followers than Auggie

1 seventh-grade class that will love me when we win the Spirit Stick

Mood: Superexcited!

As soon as Bailey and the Bees swish around the corner to their class, Ella clutches my arm. “I'm so excited that they picked us,” she says.

“Me too,” I say, biting my lip. She would feel awful if she knew how much they didn't want her. “It'll be fun. We can do everything together. I mean, that's what best friends are for, right?”

“Definitely,” she says. We probably have three minutes until the bell rings and we have to be in social studies.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask. “We need to begin our Spirit Week plan.”

Ella's eyes nervously dart around the hall. “Quickly.” She hands me the phone.

“I'm going to start the seventh-grade Spirit account on Snappypic. Just think of me as your”—I pause for the right word—“your assistant.” I navigate over to the place where you can put up new pages and get to work.