The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball (9 page)

“To measure your head. Your brilliant strategy gave me an idea for a headband.”

As I stood, my pants stuck to the bench, which happens sometimes when the ice warms against the material. But when I yanked them up, they fell down again.

“I need new clothes,” I said as Eleanor removed my E & R Dream Designs winter cap. “It's weird; everything I own is loose.”

Eleanor had a piece of yarn in her pocket, which she wrapped around my head, then tied a small knot in it to mark the size.

“It's not weird,” she said. “You're outside a lot more now, and you're doing those ski exercises from the magazine.”

“You think that's it?”

“You're also not wheezing as much either, Ruby.”

She was right. I had noticed that, ever since my psychic reading, my life had definitely changed for the better, and I had gotten a lot busier. But until now, I hadn't noticed that my body was changing too.

Eleanor pulled a few other things from her pocket, including a piece of paper the color of a detention note. She stuffed it right back in her jacket.

“
Ohmygosh
, were
you
tardy for school?” I asked.

“No,” she said, but she refused to look at me, so I knew she was embarrassed by something. “I was just looking for a pen and paper to write down your knitting ideas, but I can remember it all.”

“Eleanor,” I said, “you can tell me stuff like that, you know. It's not like I haven't had my share of warning notices. Remember, it's not good to try to be Miss Perfect all the time. Plus, I can give you tons of advice when it comes to dealing with Mr. Tankhorn. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Thanks, Ruby,” she said. “It's nothing.”

13

The next day, Eleanor and I sat down to lunch in the school cafeteria, sharing a table like we always do with her brainiac friends, those boys from the Math Squad who practically drool all over her even though she's completely clueless in that department.

Eleanor is the kind of girl who could be super pretty if she wanted to be, but has no idea of her potential—like, she doesn't even check the mirror and wonder about a new hairstyle, or whether she should wear lip gloss or anything like that. And honestly, it seems really strange to me that her passion in life is to launch a fashion line, because clothes seem to be the last thing on her mind.

Today, for example, she was wearing a plain yellow shirt and blue corduroys, which I have to admit isn't totally her fault, because her mother doesn't allow her to buy jeans or leggings. But at least she's not making her wear skirts and jumpers anymore, like she had to every day all the way through the end of fourth grade.

“Eleanor! You will never believe what happened last night after I asked Mim for her box of crafty things!” I said.

“Oooooh—let
me
guess!” yelled Anton Orlov, the loud, obnoxious captain of the Math Squad. “You sat on the box and it broke?”

His four brainiac friends burst out laughing like they did every time Anton said anything.

I don't know why we ever sit with them, except Eleanor claims it helps them to unite as a team. But lately she's taken a break from Math Squad since her thaththa told her to (and also to secretly keep up with all her knitting orders), so you'd think we could sit somewhere else for a change.

“
Hilarious
, Anton,” I snapped back. “For your information, this has nothing to do with you, so you can go ahead and keep arguing about word problems and Rubik's Cubes and all the other boring subjects that fascinate your oversized brain.”

“Just tell me what happened,” said Eleanor.

I leaned into her shoulder and whispered, “Mim told me she can get
two free tickets
to the—
SB!
”

“The Snow Ball?”

“Yep! She found even more boxes of pretty trinkets and trimmings for you to make stuff, and then asked what we were going to do with all the money we've been earning with E and R. For a second I felt bad, because I thought maybe she assumed I was going to help her buy the Aqua-Pedic aboveground pool, or at least contribute to the family income so Pop could take a break from all his road trips. But then I told her that you wanted a fancy high-tech sewing machine, which she thought was an awesome idea. And then I confessed
I
was saving my money mostly to buy tickets to go to the Snow Ball, because I didn't want to tell her about the skiing part.”

“So what did she say?”

“At first, she looked at me all funny, like I'd just announced I wanted to fly to the moon or something, and then she said, ‘Well, I can get you
free
tickets to
that
.' I almost fainted, Eleanor!”

Eleanor looked at me a little funny, too.

“She actually said they're
free?
”

“All the Sugar Mountain employees get to go if they want, along with a date, but Mim said she didn't know any employees who ever went, and said that she wouldn't go even if they paid her, because she had no interest in partying with her customers. And she definitely knew Pop wouldn't want to go even if they were serving pot roast and waffle fries, which is his favorite dinner.”

Eleanor squeezed her left eye shut, the way she did when she was thinking extra hard about something.

“So what did she say about
you
wanting to go?”

But right at that exact moment my mind went blank, because out of 172 Paris Middle School kids, the one and only JB Knox was walking directly toward me.

“Hey, it's the gym girls,” he said, and stopped in front of our table.

I couldn't believe it. He was talking to me! Again!

I felt my mouth drop wide open as JB took a swig of blue Gatorade and shook his head to get his curly hair out of his face, which was about the cutest thing in the world.

“Hi, JB,” I managed to squeak. “How's ski club?”

“Awesome,” he said, and knocked the table twice with his knuckles. “Turns out some of the Outers are really cool. I've been hanging with a bunch of them at the mountain.”

JB was friends with Outers?

I had so many questions, especially since I had only two months left to ask him out to the Snow Ball. But before I could say another word, annoying Anton butted in.

“No seventh graders allowed on this side,” he announced. “Sixth-grade section only.”

What was he thinking?

I glared at Anton with more anger than I'd ever felt in my entire life, but Eleanor just stared down at her food and poked it with a fork.

“Big man!” said JB as he laughed and walked back into the crowd. “Later, kids.”

“
Anton!
” I yelled. “What is wrong with you? Do you know who that is?”

“Yep. The biggest doofus in the school,” he replied, which made the Squad boys giggle.

“No, that would be
you,
” I growled.

“Forget it, Ruby,” said Eleanor. I know she hates it when anyone argues. “You didn't finish your story?”

“Yeah, Ruby, finish your boring story!” Anton snapped.

Boys like Anton were a complete mystery to me. Why would they think that acting obnoxious was the way to impress girls? Why couldn't they all be just like JB?

“Ignore him,” mumbled Eleanor. “So tell me, what did your stepmother say?”

“
Arrgghh
,” I groaned. “I can't remember. Where was I?”

“The free tickets?” she whispered.

“Oh yeah. Well, even though Mim has zero interest in the Snow Ball, she said she could see why a fancy dance like that would appeal to someone my age.”

“Really?” she asked. “Wow, your stepmom is
so
nice.”

To be honest, Mim added a lot more words and descriptions that weren't exactly “nice” and shocked me a little, since she's usually the sweetest person in the room. But Mim said it's maddening to think about rich people spending more money on their designer gowns than she makes in a six-day week baking Monster Chunk cookies ten hours a day from her own secret recipe.

“So now that you know you can go, and you don't have to purchase the tickets, what do you plan to do with your earnings?”

“I'm not sure, but I think I want to start ski lessons a lot sooner now, and maybe take more than one or two, so I can get really good,” I replied too loudly.

“Ski lessons!” Anton hollered. “Have you ever even been on skis, LaRue?”

“Why would I need ski lessons if I've already skied, Anton?”

“Have
you
ever been on skis?” Eleanor asked.

“I hate skiing,” he said, dodging the question, which was so typical of a kid like him who twists everything around to make himself seem better than everyone else. “Who wants to hang around with a bunch of snobby Outers from nowheresville?”

“You wouldn't say that if you were one of them,” I snapped back, “because then you would be the happiest kid on earth.”

Anton stood up and shouted, “HA! I already
am
the happiest kid on earth.”

Then the rest of the brainiacs stood up, too, and followed their leader to the garbage cans to dump their trays.

“Don't let him bother you,” said Eleanor. “Believe me, he'll argue anything. He's actually not that bad once you get to know him.”

Just then, I noticed Anton stop to pick up something from the floor. It looked like a headset. He gave it to Lewis, a hearing-impaired boy in our grade. Lewis smiled and Anton high-fived him.

For a brief second, I wondered if I could actually be wrong about Anton.

14

“How about five o'clock?” Eleanor asked. “You should walk over before it gets dark.”

I had almost keeled over when I got the call from Eleanor this morning. Saturday is my day to sleep in, of course, since my alarm rings before dawn during the week. So I knew something had to be up when the phone rang extra early, which almost never happens on the weekend.

Mim had already left for work, and the twins were still in bed, too, so at first I thought it might be an emergency, like Pop calling from the road. When it turned out to be Eleanor, sounding super cheerful, it was just about the best way to wake up on a Saturday, especially when she said she was calling to invite me to dinner.

I would have canceled plans with the Head Outer (if there were one) to get a dinner invite to Eleanor's house. It's not like I haven't been hinting forever. She said it was her father's idea—that he really wanted to get to know Eleanor's friends, starting with me, her
best
friend!

To be sure it was okay, I called Mim at the Slope Side Café. She was just as excited as I was, and even offered to buy a gift box of assorted Monster Chunk cookies with her employee discount for me to take along as a present, which is the polite thing to do when you're invited to someone's house for a meal.

After making all our plans, I was so wound up with excitement, I didn't know what I would do with myself for the rest of the day as I waited for dinnertime to roll around. It was snowing hard outside, practically a blizzard, so I didn't feel like dragging the twins down to the playground or looping through town to check on customers in this weather. And I knew Eleanor would be busy right up until supper, making cute rainbow chokers, since we had recently received a rush order for them from the Treasure Chest.

The twins were happily lounging on the couch, watching cartoons, eating bowls of Honey-Os cereal, but I just couldn't stop fidgeting. I thought and thought about what I should do as I scanned the room—and that's when it hit me. I decided to clean! I don't know why, because I'm not an uptight neatnik in any way, but I hoped it might lead to something else, like it had with Eleanor and me; plus, I had to admit that it did feel good to see the results.

So I started with sweeping the floors, which were all wood except in our bedrooms, where we have carpeting, and right away it looked like my cleaning had led to something else. The broom picked up a folded piece of paper from underneath the couch, exactly like one of those little pieces of paper Eleanor had been stuffing in her pockets lately.

At first, I wasn't sure if I should open it, but decided I had to, in case it was important:

W
EAR A YELLOW SHIRT IF YES
. W
EAR A RED SHIRT IF NO
.

It was signed only with the letters “NA” at the bottom.

I figured it was probably something Pop had written down before a road trip, although it didn't make much sense. Who knew how long it could have been tucked under the sofa? Pop hadn't been home since his short break during the holidays. So I decided to toss the note, and continued cleaning and sorting like crazy until the snowstorm had passed.

The family room and kitchen were as “neat as a pin,” according to Mim, who arrived just before it was time for me to leave for Eleanor's house. Mim said it made her feel almost as good as having Pop home, which suddenly made me miss him more than usual. He had never been away this long before, but I didn't say anything—I didn't want to spoil Mim's happy mood.