Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life (9 page)

I felt so HORRIBLE! That’s when I burst into tears and starting writing in my diary.

Pretty soon I heard some vaguely familiar voices whispering and snickering outside the door.

I just knew MacKenzie and her peeps were trying to track me down to harass me some more about peeing my pants.

“Are you sure she’s in there?”

“I think so. The spaghetti leads right up to this
door and stops. And look, cherry jubilee footprints! She
has
to be in there.”

I was like, JUST GREAT!

At that moment I would have given anything to just DISAPPEAR into thin air.

Then they actually had the nerve to knock on my door. Well, not exactly
my
door, but the door to the janitor’s closet.

I felt like the victim in one of those horror movies where the girl is home alone and hears a knock at the front door.

And when she goes to open the door, everyone in the audience is yelling, “DON’T OPEN IT! DON’T OPEN IT!”

But she opens the door anyway because she doesn’t
know
she’s in a horror movie.

FRIDAY THE 14TH (MIDNIGHT ON ELK STREET)

Who’s that knocking?

Hey, maybe it’s the pizza guy!

So…you say you’re giving out FREE haircuts?!

But I was NOT stupid!

I KNEW I was trapped in a horror flick, so I

DIDN’T open the door to the janitor’s closet. All of a sudden it got really quiet, and I suspected it was a trick to make me think they had left.

But I had a feeling in my gut they were still out there.

“Nikki, are you okay?! We just heard what happened.”

“Yeah, we wanted to make sure you were all right!”

That’s when I finally recognized the voices.

It was CHLOE and ZOEY!!

Zoey said, “Girl, don’t make me bust this door down, because you know I will do it!”

That kind of made me laugh, because Zoey has trouble opening her locker. And sometimes even her bottled water.

I was like,
Yeah, right!

Then Chloe said, “If you’re not going to come out and talk to us, we’re coming IN!”

The next thing I knew, Chloe and Zoey were poking their heads inside the janitor’s closet and acting all goofy.

Chloe was snorting and giving me “jazz hands,” and

Zoey was sticking out her tongue and giving me the “stink eye.”

They were like…

“WHAT’S UP, GIRLFRIEND!!”

For some reason, seeing them made me start crying all over again. Soon, the three of us were just chilling out in the janitor’s closet talking about all the drama with Jessica and MacKenzie.

But I left out the part about Brandon on purpose, because I was still kind of embarrassed about it. Plus, I was pretty sure he’d pick MacKenzie over me
any day. If I were a guy, I sure would. I was so NOT getting my hopes up about Brandon actually liking me.

Pretty soon the lunch period was almost over. Chloe and Zoey helped scrub most of the food stains off
my clothes with paper towels and hand soap right at the big sink.

There were still some stains we couldn’t get off, though. I couldn’t believe it when Zoey ran to her locker to get me her favorite lucky sweater to wear to cover them up.

And Chloe said that if I applied an extra amount of her Candy Apple Swirl ultrashiny lip gloss along with her midnight blue eyeliner, everyone (especially the guys) would notice my beautiful luscious lips and dreamy eyes instead of the pee stain…er…I mean, MILK stain on the front of my pants.

Which, lucky for me, was not that noticeable, since it was starting to dry up.

In spite of how bad things went at lunch, I definitely feel a lot better now. I guess maybe I don’t hate this school quite as much anymore. But I bet Brandon thinks I’m a

TOTAL KLUTZ!!

I think I’m suffering from Nocellphoneaphobia.

I know it sounds like some really nasty disease where you’re covered from head to toe with itchy, runny sores, or something hideous like that.

But it’s actually the irrational fear of
NOT
having a cell phone.

The worse thing about Nocellphoneaphobia is that it sometimes causes hallucinations and makes you do insanely STUPID things.

I think I had an attack of this very debilitating disease on my way home from school today.

I thought for sure I saw a tiny, cute cell phone thingy that clips around your ear lying on the sidewalk near our mailbox.

I was like, SWEET!! A FREE cell phone thingy! It’s ALL GOOD!

But when I took a closer look, it was kind of a bright peachy color.

I guessed that what I had found was actually a HEARING AID.

Of course, I was devastated when I finally figured this out, because I was really pumped about having found a free cell phone thingy just lying there on the sidewalk.

I figured it probably belonged to Mrs. Wallabanger, the little old lady who lives next door.

I suspected she was hard of hearing because for the past few days, whenever I said “Good morning” to her on my way to school, she would ask me to repeat what I said like seven times.

She has a scrawny lil’ Yorkie named Creampuff, and she walks him twice a day.

Creampuff looks like a fuzzy ball of lint on four legs, but he’s as vicious as a Doberman.

Anyway, I spent five minutes trying to decide whether or not to knock on Mrs. Wallabanger’s door and ask if she had lost her hearing aid. But I figured if she HADN’T, it would be a waste of my time and energy. And if she HAD, it would be an EVEN BIGGER waste of my time and energy. I was right. This is what happened:

I was like, “Never mind!” My little chat with Mrs. Wallabanger did NOT go well. So I figured I’d just hold on to her hearing aid for a while. Since she only comes out of her house to walk her dog, what’s the WORST that could happen?!

“Hey, lady! Be careful! Don’t step in that big pile of…!”

“Creampuff, dear, is that sound the mating call of the yellow-bellied swamp goose?!”

“Didn’t you hear me, ma’am? I said, watch out for the WET CEMENT!!”

Okay, so maybe the WORST that could happen is Mrs. Wallabanger gets run over by a semitruck!

But could you really say it was MY fault?!