Click Here (to find out how i survived seventh grade) (5 page)

DEFCON 1

The O’Learys’ tree house at the end of the block…the ultimate horrible. Like when Serena put pudding on my chair in 4th grade and I sat in it and didn’t know it right away and walked around with chocolate smeared on my shorts and everyone said I pooped in my pants. Jerkette.

What happened today — the Puppet Incident (aka the PI) — definitely DEFCON 1…but the tree house was packed with kids. I headed for DEFCON 5…more comfortable.

So my brother comes banging on my door today and I’m thinking he’s just checking on me like he used to when I had a DEFCON thing…but get this. He starts YELLING at me about hitting Serena…I’m like, what is that all about? Well, I’ll tell you what it’s all about. He’s CRAZY. Turns out he likes Serena’s older sister, Amanda…convinced that she’ll never look at him, let alone like him, when she finds out I’m the 1 who hit Serena.

Excuse me? If she’s like Serena, he should be THANKING me…but no…he called me a loser and said I was the only person on the planet who could ruin someone’s life from a distance. Can you believe that? What a jerk.

10:00 p.m.Can’t sleep … list time.

Things That Stink

• Humiliation by She Who Doesn’t Deserve to Be Named Even Though She Has a Stupid Romance Novel Name and People Should Be Making Fun of HER.

• She Who Doesn’t Deserve to Be Named was snotty to me at lunch, B4 the PI—“Poor Erin. No Jilly, no 1 to sit with.” When I told her I was meeting someone outside, she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t, but so what? I absolutely HATE that she didn't believe me. (See below for how it turned out. I actually did meet someone outside. Poop on you, S.W.)

• Cute Boy—aka Mark Sacks—will never talk to me again cuz no 1 that cute would ever be around a large-footed puppet who hits people in the nose.

Why I’m Not Losing All Hope

• Rosie said hi back when I said hi after homeroom.

• This really quiet girl named Carla is my locker partner…seems nice.

Ok, so here’s why my not meeting anyone at lunch turned out to be meeting someone at lunch. 1st, I had to sneak outside cuz there was nowhere to sit without letting people know I had no 1 to sit with…but then a miracle happened. I met my word processing teacher, Ms. Moreno. She told me about an Intranet Club that she’s starting. I didn’t even know what an Intranet was. I guess it’s like the Internet, only private, like only in a company or school. She said it will only be faculty, students, and staff who can access the MBMS Intranet. How cool is that? A mini-Internet right in your own school!

But the coolest thing was when she went back inside with me. In the cafeteria, she handed me a piece of paper and asked me to look it over, like I was helping her out on some project or something. Lots of kids saw and looked at us—is that cool or what?

• Ms. Moreno understands my pain.

• I've got this Web Club Intranet thingie.

• Jilly is still my friend, even though she cared more about learning the map to her classes than she did about the PI.

Why is it that the things that stink are WAY bigger than the things that give me hope?

P.S. This is the longest entry in the history of blogging…I wonder if I can get in the
Guinness Book
.

chapter 4

Pinocchio Stalls

“Have you come up with a plan to get us on the same track?” I asked Jilly the next morning when I picked her up at her house.

Jilly shook her head. “Not yet. But something will come up.” She dug in her backpack and pulled out some Tic Tacs. “I got these for you.”

“Is that a hint?” I asked, fingering my own package of Tic Tacs in my pocket.

Jilly laughed. “No. Your breath never smells bad. I just got you one when I got my supply.” She unzipped her backpack further to reveal about ten boxes of Tic Tacs. “You never know when you’ll be talking face-to-face with a cute boy.”

“Right,” I said, thinking that if I was ever face-to-face with a cute boy (not to mention Cute Boy), I’d need more than a Tic Tac because I’d probably barf from fear.

Jilly kind of bounced as she walked. She looked excited, like she was going to Six Flags or the mall, not to MBMS. She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Here we go.”

Yep. Here we go. Right into the mean-kid-infested jungle.

Before we reached the bus stop, she stopped me. “Sniff test,” she whispered. I rolled my eyes but leaned over and sniffed quickly above her shoulder to make sure she didn’t smell.

“Fine,” I said.

“Other one,” Jilly commanded, twisting at the waist. Eye roll, sniff. All done. I had refused to sniff under her arm the way she had asked me to do the first time she wore deodorant in fifth grade.

“You’re disgusting,” I had told her.

“You’re my friend,” she’d replied, pouting.

“Will you sniff under my arm?” I lifted it high and leaned toward her.

“Well, no.” She pulled back. “All right, all right. You don’t have to do under the arm. But above my shoulder, okay? I just can’t tell by myself.”

I never made her sniff above my shoulders. I trusted Secret to keep my BO secrets a secret. Of course, when I got on the bus, my pores opened wide and not even the Hoover Dam could have stopped the flood.

“Hey, look. It’s Pinocchio!” someone shouted.

“How’s that right hook?” said a boy in the back.

“I can’t believe you’re famous after one day,” Jilly said as we plopped down in the very front seat, behind the bus driver.

“Famous for being a puppet.” Before Jilly could respond, a boy across the aisle leaned over.

“You must be Geppetto,” he said.

Jilly rolled her eyes, but I could tell she liked the attention. “My name is Jillian,” she said. “Not Geppetto.”

“Okay, Jillian-not-Geppetto.” The boy grinned at her and she smiled back before turning to give me Big Eyes, which meant
Can you believe this guy?
She was loving it.

Jilly talked a mile a minute beside me, which helped me ignore the name calling. When we got to school, I dropped Jilly off at her locker and ran to the other side of the school to my locker. The first thing I noticed when I got there was Mark Sacks, aka Cute Boy, pointing at something on the wall. My eyes followed his finger. It was a picture of Pinocchio with a face glued over Pinocchio’s and a very long foot in the place of Pinocchio’s nose. It wasn’t my foot, but it was my face. From the elementary school yearbook. Jilly had wanted to see what I’d look like with a beard, so she painted my chin with chocolate ice cream. Of course the photo made it into the yearbook. And now someone had enlarged it and plastered it on the wall of Molly Brown Middle School.

I stood there with my mouth hanging open. Then Rosie stopped next to Mark. They both looked at the picture. Rosie glanced my way, but I turned before our eyes met.

“Swift!” It was Mark. I turned and hurried down the hall. I didn’t want to hear his jokes.

When I got to my locker, it had another picture taped to it, along with Silly String covering the entire front. I ripped the picture down and pulled off the Silly String as I opened the locker door. String was everywhere inside, too, thanks to the locker vents. Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away as I peeled the string off my stuff. Then I started on my locker partner’s.

“Don’t worry about it.” Carla’s voice startled me. “I can get it.” “I’m sorry,” I said, turning my face so she couldn’t see how close I was to crying. I hustled to class, passing another Pinocchio picture on the way. Someone had written a message across the huge foot: FEET APPEAR SMALLER THAN ACTUAL SIZE. I grimaced. Ripping down the picture, I stuffed it into a trash can, imagining I was stuffing Serena’s face into the candy wrappers, sticky ABC gum, and, with any luck, a half-eaten Twinkie with the cream nice and moldy and ready for wearing.

When I got to my word processing class, Ms. Moreno smiled encouragingly at me. She seated us in alphabetical order, and when Mark sat down in front of me, he tried to catch my eye. I pretended my mouse needed cleaning.

Suddenly his face appeared above my monitor.

“Don’t say a word,” I hissed.

“I wasn’t —”

“That’s two words,” I said. “Three if you want to get technical about the contraction.”

Mark sighed, shook his head, and faced front. I could only imagine the puppet jokes I had just saved myself from.

Hurrying from class to class, I endured constant shouts of “Pinocchio!” “Hey, Pinoke!” but I ignored them. I’d been teased about my feet. I could handle this.

At least I thought I could.

After lunch someone attached string to my back, which I didn’t notice until a girl I didn’t know pulled on it, talking in a fakey doll-like voice. “My name is Erin. I have big feet. I want to be a real boy.” What I wanted was to scream in her face. Instead, I ripped the string off and ran into the girls’ bathroom, locking myself in a stall. I fought back tears as I leaned against one wall, breathing in the sharp scent of ammonia as I wondered how in the world I was going to survive the rest of the week, let alone seventh grade, with a start like this.

Moaning, I sat down on the toilet, clutching Jilly’s pin in my hand as the door to the bathroom smacked open.

“Poor Serena,” said one girl. Leaning over, I looked through the crack in the stall. It was two girls Poopendena hung out with.