Meanicures (8 page)

“I just want to get this over with,” Olivia said. “It’s starting to feel kind of creepy. Like voodoo dolls. Then again, those don’t work.
This
is going to work. Right?”

“Wait a second. When did you try voodoo dolls?” Taylor asked.

“Remember that time your neck hurt really badly, and you thought it was from a new trick you did on the balance beam?” Olivia asked.

Taylor’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

Olivia giggled. “No, I’m only joking. Why would I do that to you?” She laughed again. “I actually tried it on someone else.”

“Who?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds it might incriminalize me,” said Olivia.

“Incriminate,” I corrected her.

“Whatever. I’m not saying.” Olivia smiled. “So, how’s that fire coming along?” She nudged me in the side.

I backed away from the fireplace. I’d arranged the logs and stuffed kindling underneath them, and now all I had to do was throw in a lit match. Easy, right? I lit a match. And then another and another. Each one went out instantly as soon as I laid it in the fireplace.

I grabbed some sheets of newspaper from the bin beside the fireplace and stuffed them under the kindling. I lit the newspaper on fire with a new match, then turned around. “Ready?”

Olivia waved the paper with the mean girls’ names on it in the air. “Ready.” She tossed it in the fireplace. We all stood back, waiting for the paper to catch fire. But the newspaper hadn’t ignited the kindling, which didn’t ignite the logs. The names just sat there, turning slightly tan, smoldering on a log.

Why was this taking so long? I glanced at the clock above the fireplace. It was already seven fifty-five, and we wanted to watch a movie that started at eight.

“Light already!” I cried. I looked around for something else to put in to make the fire happen. I grabbed the extra black and green pom-pom and tossed it in.

WHOOSH!
There was an instant, blazing fire.

Taylor clapped her hand over her face, covering her nose. “Ew! That stinks. Why is there so much smoke?”

“Uh-oh. I think we just polluted the entire house,” Olivia said.

Mom came running down the stairs, fanning the air.
“What happened? Is everything okay? What smells so badly?”

I shrugged, trying to look innocent. “I made a fire?”

She fiddled with something inside the fireplace. “You forgot to open the flue. How many times do I have to remind you about the flue? Then again, how often do you try to start fires on your own?” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “What’s the occasion?”

“Um, nothing. Just thought it’d be cozy,” I said.

She opened a couple of windows in the living room and a strong fall breeze rushed into the room. So much for cozy, but at least we weren’t getting poisoned by burning plastic. Mom peered into the fireplace again. “What’s
in
there, anyway?”

I couldn’t tell her that it was a pom-pom. She’d call the Environmental Protection Agency to report me. “Oh, just some, um, shredded paper I was using to get it started,” I said. “From the, um, paper shredder.” Fortunately it looked as if the paper with the mean girls’ names had already been incinerated.

“That was very smart of you, recycling something that’s already been used. Thinking of the environment. I like that. Nice job, Madison.” She smiled and then headed back upstairs.

Nice job? That was a close one
, I thought as I collapsed on the sofa. If my eco-mom found out we were tossing pom-poms into the fireplace, she’d probably send me to jail herself. “Well, that’s that. I guess we can put the mean girls out of our minds for a while. Does anyone
else feel funny? Sort of different?” I asked.

Olivia laughed. “Why would I feel different?”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed my arms. “I just got the shivers.”

“That’s because your mom opened the windows. Remember? Let’s close them and get some snacks before the movie starts!” said Taylor.

“And then let’s paint our nails,” said Olivia.

“Okay. First, I’m going to put this away, somewhere safe. I’ll be right back.” I picked up our time capsule box and brought it out to the garage, where we have tons of storage space. I set it on a shelf up high, above the boxes of surplus hair products. Then I grabbed some of our snacks and went back into the living room.

“You always hog the sofa, Olivia. A little
room
, please?” Taylor was saying, pushing at Olivia’s legs.

“What? I do not,” said Olivia, pushing back.

“Move over,” Taylor urged, pushing Olivia.

“Hey.” Olivia glared at her.

“Great, guys.” I sighed. “While you were arguing, we missed the opening. Everyone knows the opening scene is the best one in the whole movie.”

“If you hadn’t taken so long to start the fire, maybe we wouldn’t have missed it,” Taylor said.

“Come on, guys. Lighten up!” said Olivia. “We’re just supposed to be having fun, kicking back.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said. “Pass the pickles.”

We started laughing, and suddenly, everything was just fine between us. Better, even. We’d removed the mean girls from our lives. What could be better?

I didn’t
do much over the rest of the weekend. I spent a lot of time designing our Endangered Animals Club T-shirts; maybe nobody would join, but if we could sell shirts to the rest of the school, we could still raise money for the cause.

Mom had put up the money for a hundred blank tees, and we’d gotten iron-on designs and some fabric paint at the fabric store. While Taylor was at a meet in Portland, Olivia and I spent all of Saturday afternoon designing, painting, and ironing. Each shirt would be unique, a one of a kind creation. A collectible, really.

They wouldn’t be pictures of animals. Middle schoolers were way too old to go for that. Instead they were colors, random words, and patterns. They were very artistic, if I do say so myself.

By the end of the afternoon, we’d only finished twenty T-shirts, but we’d worked so hard that when Taylor’s mom called on their way back into town and invited us to meet for pizza, we jumped at the chance. We stopped by Olivia’s so she could quickly feed her bazillion pets, then Mom dropped us off at Payneston
Pizzeria, promising to be back in an hour to get us.

I opened the door of the pizzeria just as someone else was coming out. “Oh!” she gasped, nearly falling over as she juggled the large pizza box in her hands.

I noticed her black boots right away. It was Poinsettia. “Um, hi,” I said.

“Hey!” She smiled. “How’s it going?”

I wanted to tell her about the ceremony the night before, but it just wasn’t the time or place. Especially not when I noticed Kayley’s mom sitting right next to Taylor’s mom. We weren’t the only ones meeting at the pizzeria.

“Great,” I said, smiling.

“Have a good night!” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared down the street.

“Who was that?” asked Olivia as the door closed behind us.

“Poinsettia,” I whispered. “The stylist who cut and colored my hair.”

“Why are you whispering?” Olivia whispered back.

I laughed. “I don’t know!”

We hurried over to Taylor, who was waiting for us at a table near her mom’s. We asked her about the meet, and told her about our T-shirt-making afternoon.

Meanwhile, Cassidy, Alexis, and Kayley were sitting in a circle of three at their own table, talking and gossiping. They didn’t even turn around or acknowledge our presence. So much for ceremonies.

The moms were spilling over, mingling from table
to table, talking. Our table and Cassidy’s obviously weren’t going to blend.

“Pizzas are on the way,” said Taylor’s mom, giving us a sympathetic glance. “Here are some quarters.”

Taylor, Olivia, and I made a beeline for the Star Wars pinball machine. We took turns playing, laughing at each other and scoring bonus points.

Within minutes, Cassidy, Kayley, and Alexis were standing beside the machine, watching us.

Funny thing, they didn’t want to talk to us. They just had to butt in whenever we tried to do something different than them.

“Really. You’re still playing that,” said Cassidy.

“Actually, I’m still
winning
at it,” I said, hoping this would remind her that not that long ago she used to compete right beside me. We’d kept a running tally all through fourth grade.

“I’m so bored,” said Alexis, leaning her elbows on the machine and resting her chin in her hands.

“You’re blocking my view!” Olivia complained, leaning over her and trying to push her aside.

“I’m just saying, this is so boring compared to last night,” Alexis went on.

My eyes widened in surprise. “Why? What was last night?” Did they know about
our
night, what we’d done? But how could they?

“The eighth-grade dance,” Kayley said meaningfully.

“Oh,
that.”
I tried to act like it was no big deal to us. “How was it?”

“Oh. My. God. It was so much fun,” said Cassidy. “We were there until, like, ten. We danced the entire time.”

“How did you get to go?” asked Taylor.

“Everyone on cheer got to,” Alexis explained, “because we’re, like, important to the football team winning.”

Olivia frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“No,” I agreed. “Not really.”

Cassidy shrugged. “You shouldn’t have quit, I guess,” she said to me.

I just looked at her, trying to figure out what she really meant. “Whatever.” She’d never once seemed upset about my quitting before. Maybe she wasn’t upset, though; she was too busy gloating. Was I supposed to stay on cheer just so I could go to eighth-grade dances?

“Then how did
you
get in?” Taylor asked Kayley.

“Didn’t I tell you? Um, I’m doing some stuff with the cheer squad now. Handsprings and stuff,” Kayley explained. “They needed more athletics in their routines.”

“Why didn’t anyone ask me?” Taylor wondered out loud, which was odd, because I didn’t think she’d actually be interested. Still, it’s nice to be asked, I guess.

Kayley slipped some quarters into the machine and gently made room for herself, where Olivia had been playing. “It’s who you know.”

I glanced over at our tables, glad to see the pizza
had arrived. The sooner we could eat and not hang out with our former friends, the better. No matter how good we felt, they always found a way to make us feel bad about ourselves.

So far, all we’d gotten out of our Friday night ceremony was new toenail polish.

On Monday
morning, I locked my bike next to Taylor’s, and we started walking toward the crowd gathered in front of school, looking for Olivia. For some reason I was spacing out, and at first I didn’t notice Bethany Peck, a girl from my homeroom, who was walking beside me.

“Fine,
don’t
say hi,” she muttered as she passed me—in the kind of way that a person
has
to notice.

“What? Sorry! Hi!” I called after her.

“Whatever!” Bethany called over her shoulder.

“What was that about?” Taylor asked as we looked around for Olivia.

“I spaced and forgot to say hi,” I explained. “She took it really personally.”

Taylor shrugged. “She’s sensitive.”

“Not usually,” I said. Then again, not only did I sit next to her in homeroom, we were also lab partners in science, so I guess me not saying hi did seem pretty rude.

Olivia ran up to us, panting and out of breath. “So, talk to anyone yet?” she gasped.

“Just Bethany. Why? And what happened, did you run here instead of catching the bus?” I asked.

“No, I’m just—you won’t believe it. You will not believe it,” she said.

“Especially not if you never tell us what it is!” Taylor said.

“Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone,” Olivia said. “At the dance Friday night, there was a smoke bomb. A stink bomb. Whatever you call it. The building had to be evacuated at, like, eight o’clock. The dance was basically canceled.” She stopped to take a breath. “You know what that means?”

I felt my heart start beating faster. “Cassidy didn’t mention that on Saturday night. That means she didn’t actually go to the dance. She was faking it!” I cried. In a weird way, that made me very happy.