Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life (18 page)

But the absolute, most mind-blowing thing about all of this is that Chloe, Zoey, and I started the school day as LSA DORKS and ended it as CCP DIVAS!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!
!!

This tattoo craze has really caught on at WCD! I did eleven more during lunch, and most of the CCPs sat at our table to watch. It was pretty cool hanging out with them, and they were not mean or snotty like we thought they’d be. I guess it was just a matter of getting to know them better.

Surprisingly, I ended up doing another six tattoos while I was on LSA duty. It seemed like everyone and their mother was getting library passes during fifth-hour homeroom and pestering me.

But Mrs. Peach said she didn’t mind me not shelving books, since I was working on our group project.

So far, we’ve collected a total of forty-three books for charity, which is fantastic. But it was mainly because Chloe decided to start charging two books
per tattoo instead of one. Zoey and I thought one book was perfectly fine, and we told her so.

But Chloe said that, since she was the director of book procurement, it was her decision, not ours, so it didn’t matter what we thought. Now, how RUDE was THAT?!

I was like, “Okay, Chloe! We’re
supposed
to be doing this as a group project! Who DIED and made you QUEEN?!”

CHLOE THE GREAT, QUEEN OF BOOKS

But I just said it in my head, so no one else heard it but me. So now we’re getting TWO books for each tattoo, although it seems a bit GREEDY, if you ask me.
!

I used to daydream about everyone at WCD knowing my name. And today, more than two dozen people said hi to me before I even got to my first-hour class. It made me happy to have so many new friends
.

In biology, we had to choose a lab partner and look at dust mites under a microscope. I thought for sure that Brandon was going to ask me to work with him. But three people interrupted him while he was trying to talk to me.

They were all like, “Hey, Nikki, let’s work together so we can talk about my new tattoo design.” But I didn’t want to talk to people I hardly knew about tattoos. I wanted to have a really deep emo convo with Brandon about dust mites.

In the end, I got stuck with Alexis Hamilton, the
captain of the cheerleaders. The whole time we were working, all she did was blab about how they (the cheerleaders) needed me to come up with a “superhot” tattoo for their big game against Central, which, BTW, was on Friday.

But I already knew this because I overheard them talking about it in front of my locker this morning. A few of them were waiting around for me after second hour, and they seemed pretty cranky. It wasn’t like I was afraid of them or anything; I just jumped inside my locker because I can be a little shy at times.

HEY…! WHERE’D SHE GO?! ME BEING HUNTED DOWN BY AN ANGRY MOB OF CHEERLEADERS!

Anyway, I told Alexis that everyone had to sign up with Zoey first. But she said Zoey had a waiting list of 149 people through next Wednesday, and she needed the tats right away since it was kind of an emergency. Alexis said she had already donated three books for each tattoo to Chloe, and Chloe was authorizing the squad to be placed at the top of the waiting list.

So, NOW it was
THREE books
?!

I told Alexis that since Zoey was director of scheduling and Chloe was director of book procurement, she should probably just ignore Chloe. Then Alexis got an attitude about the whole thing and refused to talk to me or help write our lab report on dust mites. Talk about a cruddy lab partner!

But what really upset me was that Zoey had scheduled 149 people without asking me first. I have a French test on Friday and a geometry test next Monday, and I’m barely pulling a C in each of those classes.

How am I supposed to study if I’m staying up past midnight EVERY night designing tats for all of these people?! And I haven’t had time to eat lunch for the past two days!

Then, as I was leaving class, Samantha Gates stopped me to say how much she loved her tat of Justin Timberlake. She said all of her friends in the drama club wanted one too. She invited me to hang out with them after school on Friday, and I told her I’d let her know. But how can I have a social life when I have to draw tattoos 24/7?
!

I had a really CRUDDY day today! It seems that all Chloe, Zoey, and everyone cares about is TATTOOS.

I came to school early and did nine. Then I did fourteen at lunchtime and another ten during library. That’s thirty-three tattoos!

Then I overheard Zoey tell Chloe, behind my back, that I worked “slower than a constipated snail in an ice storm,” and I needed to speed up since she now had 216 people on the waiting list for next week. I was so NOT doing 216 tattoos in one week! And I told Zoey that right to her face. In a really friendly way.

Then Chloe wanted to know why I told Alexis to ignore her. She said that, since the cheerleaders had a big game, she thought they should be put at the
top of the list for tomorrow. That’s when Zoey said, as the director of scheduling, that the decision was hers alone and she didn’t care
what
Chloe thought. Which was the EXACT same thing Chloe had said to us a few days ago.

Then Mrs. Peach came over and asked us to PLEASE lower our voices because we were, after all, in a library.

But I knew better. It WASN’T a library…!

IT WAS A WICKED TATTOO SWEATSHOP!

ME (feeling very miserable)