Always, Abigail (15 page)

Dear Abigail,

You and Gabby seem to have become fast friends. How simply delightful that an assignment meant to improve proper letter writing techniques has accomplished so much more.

Mrs. Carwell, our lead kindergarten teacher, requested that I recommend a couple of sixth-grade students to be guest readers for the classrooms in her wing. You and Gabby would be perfect for the job!

If all goes well, you would be given permission to skip homeroom once a week. In addition, it would enable you to earn points toward your middle school service requirement.

Please come to see me about it by the end of the week. I look forward to talking with you!

Sincerely,

Miss Hendrick

1.
Missing homeroom once a week would be great!

2.
I used to babysit for a couple of kindergarten-aged kids, and I loved them. They were so cute!

3.
Gabby and I could practice the stories after school, and that would give me something to do.

4.
Getting service points for reading to little kids was
way
better than visiting a smelly nursing home or picking up trash at the park.

5.
THERE'S NO WAY I CAN DO IT!

1.
I might as well tattoo the word “LOSER” on my forehead if I volunteered for this job with Gabby.

2.
I could just hear J&M when they found out. “Abigail's hanging out with Gabby Marco? Maybe we need to find an alternate for our alternate.”

Dear Abigail,

Can you believe Old Hawk wants us to read to the kindergartners? We could be like the storyteller guy that came to first grade. (Only we wouldn't scare the kids half to death.) Pretty easy way to earn service points, huh?

Gabby

Gabby,

Reading to a bunch of bratty five-year-olds sounds lame. I've got better things to do. Forget it.

Abigail

“I am A BIG FAT JERK!” I wrote it in my neatest, fanciest handwriting.

Abigail,

That's cool. Little kids aren't for everyone. I should know. I babysit a lot. The extra money is great, but sometimes the kids are a real pain.

We got our extra credit points, relived the whole
Three Billy Goats Gruff
nightmare, and had a few troll laughs. What more can you want?

Later,

Gabby

I am the
BIGGEST
FATTEST
JERK!!!!!!!! In the world!!!!! (Now it didn't look so neat and fancy, but it didn't look nearly as ugly and messy as I felt.)

In LA we played Spelling 500—Speedway for Super Spellers, a game
only
Old Hawk could dream up. I ended up on a team with Jackson Dawber, Brent Undervale, Melissa Stanson, and Gabby Marco.

As usual everyone on the team was ignoring Gabby. A couple weeks ago, that wouldn't have bothered me. But now it made my head throb. She'd covered for me when I tackled her. We'd sort of had fun helping Old Hawk with the books. And she'd helped me out of the puddle. I couldn't stop thinking about her mom being dead, and I didn't even want to know what the story was with her dad.

And what had I done? Totally blown her off. The least she could do was be mean to me. But she never was. It was enough to make a person gag.

We were on our final lap of Spelling 500. I needed to spell my word correctly to get our team over the finish line first. Lately my brain was so filled up with guilt, humiliation, and shame, I was having trouble concentrating. I was lucky to spell my name correctly. So of course, I missed the word, even though it was an easy one.

Jackson Dawber, troll boy that he is, said to Brent, “Falling in that puddle the other day must've knocked the sense right out of her.”

Normally I would've been able to blow off something Jackson said, especially if he said it to someone like Brent,
and
especially if I deserved it for missing such an easy word. But because of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place I was in, my lava erupted.

I jumped up. I wanted to strangle the stupidity right out of him.

Gabby yelled, “Remember the troll!”

Her voice stopped me in midair, and I fell on the floor before I even touched Jackson. Gabby ran over and crouched down next to me and whispered, “Troll nose. Troll chin. Troll hair. It's all there.”

The whole class gathered around Gabby and me like we were a car wreck on the side of the road.

“Miss Hendrick,” Jackson said, pretending to be all concerned, “I think our team needs some help from the pit crew.”

Old Hawk rushed over when she saw us on the floor. “Good heavens! What is going on here, ladies?”

Gabby flashed me one of her lemons-into-lemonade business cards, and before I knew it, I was lying on the floor laughing in Gabby's bizarro way until I started to cry.