The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Friends, Foes & Faux Friends Read online

  I can’t exactly blame her for choosing Dori over me for boyfriend advice. Dori has one major qualification that I do not: an actual boyfriend. Shortly after Bridget and Burke had made it official, Dori had coupled up with Scotty Glazer, one of Burke’s football team friends who’s only a seventh grader but considered worthy enough to have certain privileges usually reserved for eighth-grade jocks and the girls—like Bridget—who are “lucky” enough to be their girlfriends. What privileges? Back-of-the-bus-sitting privileges and cafeteria-line-cutting privileges and get-out-of-my-way-when-I-walk-down-the-hall privileges. The sort of privileges of popularity that don’t seem like a big deal until you see those privileges being enjoyed by NOT YOU.

  Dori and Scotty are kind of a surprising couple. Scotty’s well-known for his athletic and academic accomplishments; Dori’s only sort of known as the plainest girl on the CHEER TEAM!!! who is best friends with the prettiest girl on the CHEER TEAM!!! I swear I’d never seen Scotty speak to Dori before they started going out. And to be honest, I’m still not sure they had a conversation even after they started going out. Whenever the four of them are together—which is pretty much all the time—it seems like all the talk is between Bridget and Dori, Burke and Scotty. From what I can tell, “going out” means holding hands when you walk to and from class together but not actually talking to each other or otherwise acknowledging the existence of the person on the other end of your hand. And also, I suppose, you know.

  Kissing.

  Ack.

  I know. Seriously immature. For the record, I don’t have a problem with kissing in general. It’s just when I think about, like, specific kissing, involving specific people I’ve known since elementary school, that I get all immature and ACKED out.

  I need to work on this.

  So we pulled up in front of the school, and I saw Dori and Scotty waiting on the sidewalk in front of our bus’s assigned spot in the parking lot. Sure enough, they were holding hands but not talking. Dori was bouncing on her toes like the arrival of our bus was an early Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all combined into one awesome holiday for all. Then again, she could have been bouncing to keep herself warm. Like Bridget, she refuses to wear a jacket over her red, white, and blue CHEER TEAM!!! uniform, and it was unseasonably chilly for the second week in October.

  As a middle-of-the-bus rider, I exit before Bridget and Burke. This is a daily source of annoyance for Dori, who is always DYING to catch up with Bridget. Dori’s family has a strict no-technology-after-7:30-p.m. rule in their household, and she just can’t wait to dish on all the many, many major events that have occurred since then.

  “Hey, Jess,” Scotty said as I passed the couple.

  “Hey, Scotty,” I said.

  Scotty’s the only seventh-grade football player who scored high enough on the entrance exam to get into the Gifted & Talented classes. More important, he’s already almost as tall as Burke. When so many of us girls are growing much faster than the boys, tall goes a loooong way for a guy. Anyway, I don’t spend my time thinking about Scotty, but he’s fine. And by fine, I mean, “Scotty’s an okay guy, I guess” and not, like, “Dag, Scotty is so foyyyyyyyyyne.”

  THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION FOR REASONS THAT WILL BECOME CLEAR SOON ENOUGH.

  “Did you finish the science lab?” Scotty asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Cool,” he said.

  Three truths about this conversation:

  1. That was it. The entire conversation.

  2. It was longer than any conversation I’d ever heard between Scotty and his own girlfriend.

  3. I repeat: THAT WAS IT. THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION. And I mean that LITERALLY.

  At the time I didn’t think Dori and I were on bad terms, but we weren’t on the best terms, either. I wasn’t sure what terms we were on, really, or what we had in common other than a shared history with Bridget. So now you might begin to understand why I thought my sister’s IT List could come in handy even if the only part that made sense to me was candy.

  There didn’t seem to be any good reason for me not to greet Dori when she was standing right in front of me. Ignoring someone standing right in front of you requires way more effort than making the polite, normal-person choice of saying “hey.” So I said, “Hey.”

  “Hey, Dori.”

  Nothing.

  Dori doesn’t mind making the effort to ignore me. Since she and Bridget have become friends again, she seems determined to prove that 2ZNUF for her. For some reason, this only made me more determined than ever to get a reaction out of her. So I jumped up and down and waved my arms.

  “HEEEEEEEEY, DORI.”

  Scotty laughed.

  “Oh, um, hey.” Dori didn’t take her eyes off the bus. “What’s—YAY! YOU!”

  And then Dori went back to ignoring me and ran over to hug Bridget, but she didn’t drop Scotty’s hand and he got pulled along like a puppy on a leash. Judging by the helpless look on Scotty’s face, I couldn’t help but think that’s how he felt around his girlfriend in general: always a few steps behind. I could relate. It was only my second month of junior high, and yet I felt like I’d already fallen so far behind my best friend that I’d never catch up.

  Life moves so much faster in seventh grade than it had in sixth. But nothing—NOTHING—sprints around the halls of Pineville Junior High as swiftly as a rumor. As I’d find out for myself less than five minutes after that conversation with Scotty, it’s pretty much impossible to get and stay ahead of gossip.

  Chapter Four

  Sara D’Abruzzi begins every day with an announcement.

  “Omigod!”

  She always uses the same attention-getting HUSH! HUSH! tone whether her news is important (“Omigod! We’re having a pop quiz in Spanish today!”) or not important in the least (“Omigod! My earlobes are fat!”).

  However, Sara’s latest announcement caught me off guard because it came in the form of a question. One I’d been asking myself lately.

  “Omigod! We’re friends, right?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “We’re friends. Of course we’re friends.”

  We’re friends because her last name is D’Abruzzi and my last name is Darling. It’s our alphabetical destiny for her to sit in front of me in every single class (except Woodshop, THE CLASS I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN). Her locker is also right next to mine, so we don’t even get a break from each other before and after classes.

  “As your friend,” Sara said, leaning in and lowering her gaze, “I want you to know that I’m, like, totally on your side.”

  Sara is funny and always says what’s on her mind. She also has the lowdown on everyone and everything and loves sharing all the deets with her more (ahem!) clueless friends. But the nonstop gossip makes me uncomfortable. I like her more when she isn’t being catty. For an all-too-brief moment I thought Sara was making an effort to be the version of herself I prefer.

  “Me too,” I said. “I’m on your side.”

  Awww. Sara and I were having a moment.

  ONLY WE TOTALLY WEREN’T.

  “OMIGOD! Why? Who’s on the other side? Is it Manda? Is she mad because I bought the jean jacket she wanted? WHAT DO YOU KNOW AND HOW DO YOU KNOW IT BEFORE I DO?”

  I tried to calm her down.

  “I don’t know anything about anyone or any sides,” I said. “I swear!”

  She looked at me skeptically, so I appealed to her superior information-gathering skills.

  “No one gets the truth faster than you do, Sara.”

  As Pineville Junior High’s undisputed princess of gossip, this made perfect sense to her.

  “You’re right,” she said, finally relaxing. “Which is why you are so lucky to have me on your side.”

  Again, she was putting herself on my side. Which meant that there had to be someone else on the other side. I didn’t know who that person was, and I didn’t want to find out. Unfortunately, Sara was delighted to share that information with me whether I wanted it or not. />
  “I mean, if you ask me,” Sara began, despite the fact I hadn’t asked her because I DIDN’T WANT THE ANSWER, “you’re waaaay better than Dori.…”

  “Dori? This is about Dori? What did I do to Dori?”

  Then Sara—SARA! Of all people!—shushed me.

  “You don’t want everyone to know,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Do you?”

  “KNOW WHAT?”

  It came out louder than I’d intended. Now everyone really was looking at us and listening to us. I lowered my voice to a whisper.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.…”

  And then our cranky homeroom teacher, Mr. Armbruster, came skulking into the room all stealthlike because he wanted to catch us misbehaving. His favorite thing in life is to punish seventh graders before eight a.m. Sara immediately shut up and spun back around in her chair before she could clear up my confusion. I poked her in the shoulder to try to persuade her to turn around and finish what she’d been about to say, but she just shook her head like, “NO WAY,” because Mr. Armbruster had already given her detention twice (for not shutting up and for not facing forward in her chair), and Sara didn’t dare to spend any more time in detention with Mr. Armbruster because he is THE WORST.

  So the rest of homeroom was torture.

  “Good morning, Pineville Junior High!” said the voice of our school principal, Mr. Masters, speaking through the school’s PA system.

  I was too busy staring at the back of Sara’s head to pay much attention to the morning announcements.

  “And it’s a grrrreat morning for the girls’ cross-country team.…”

  I was studying Sara’s dark curls with such intensity that I almost convinced myself I’d be able to see past all the hair and look right into her brain if only I focused just a little… bit… harder.…

  “Jessica Darling!” Mr. Armbruster croaked. “Stand up!”

  Everyone in the class was looking at me again. Except Sara. I’m pretty sure she thought it was a trap set by Mr. Armbruster just as an excuse to give her detention again.

  “STAND UP.”

  I was reluctant to stand up. However, I was even more reluctant to find out what sort of punishment Mr. Armbruster would dole out if I didn’t. So I stood up.

  Then my homeroom teacher did something totally unexpected.

  He smiled. And started clapping.

  “Congratulations to you and the rest of the girls’ cross-country team on your victory!”

  Yesterday our team had ended our forever-long losing streak. I was proud of myself and my teammates, but I’d been too busy trying to read Sara’s mind to enjoy the public celebration of my first-ever athletic triumph.

  “Oh,” I said. “Uh. Thanks.”

  “I was a long-distance runner myself in my youth.…”

  Seriously, the only thing worse than having a cranky old teacher like Mr. Armbruster dislike you is having a cranky old teacher like Mr. Armbruster like you too much. Every minute he went on and on about his cross-country glories was another minute Sara knew something about me I didn’t know myself. When the bell finally rang a BAZILLION MINUTES LATER, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And I mean that in the most literal way because Mr. Armbruster blocked the doorway as I tried to slip past him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t finished reminiscing just yet.

  “And that’s how I beat the legendary Kicky McGhee.…”

  I could only watch helplessly as Sara darted down the hall, surely telling everyone in seventh grade whatever it was she hadn’t gotten around to telling me.

  Chapter Five

  We were starting a Shakespeare unit in Language Arts, but the theatrics had already begun outside Miss Orden’s classroom.

  “Omigod, Jess!” Sara gushed. “DRAAAAAMAAAAA.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Manda said as she gently patted my arm. “Sara told me everything about your situation.”

  That was exactly what I was worried about.

  “How could Sara tell you everything about a situation that doesn’t exist?”

  “Denial!” Manda and Sara said simultaneously.

  Then they high-fived and chanted “Bee-Eff-Effs!” which is what they do whenever they say the same thing at the same time.

  This happens a lot.

  That is, when they’re actually speaking to each other.

  Manda and Sara are interested in the same things: boys, being popular, and bossing people around. But they often get into fights and make up and LOVE and HATE and LOVE and HATE and LOVE each other many times throughout a single day, which can be very exhausting to keep up with. On that morning, however, they were definitely BFFs. So far.

  Manda took off her glasses and polished the lenses with the hem of her pink V-neck. She put them back on again and gave me a pensive look.

  “Come on, Jess. You can trust us. We’re on your side.”

  Sara nodded vigorously. “I was just saying how you’re so much better than Dori,” she said. “Like, it’s not even close.”

  Aha! If Dori was on one side and I was on the other, there could only be one person in the middle: Bridget! This was about Bridget! No wonder Manda and Sara were getting themselves involved. They do not like Bridget. At all. When she made the CHEER TEAM!!! and they did not, Manda and Sara took it very personally, as if it were somehow Bridget’s fault that they showed up five minutes late and got kicked out by the coach before tryouts even began.

  “It’s not a competition,” I began.

  “Puh-leeze, sweetie,” Manda said, twirling her shiny dark blond hair.

  “Omigod! Everything is always a competition.”

  For Manda and Sara, this is totally true. After all, they had founded the Spirit Squad solely for the purpose of proving that their rivals on the CHEER TEAM!!! did not have a monopoly on peppiness or—more important—popularity. Despite the tension between all of us, I still held out hope that we could put our differences aside. And to prove it, I decided to encourage Manda and Sara with my positive example.

  “Bridget can be best friends with whoever she wants to be friends with,” I said. “She doesn’t have to choose between me and Dori.”

  IT List #1: 1 BFF < 2 BFFs < 4 BFFs < 8 BFFs < INFINITY BFFs

  Sara and Manda exchanged looks. Then they burst out laughing.

  “This isn’t about you, Dori, and Bridget, sweetie,” Manda said in her most patronizing voice. “I mean, who cares about Dori and Bridget?”

  “Not me!” Sara said, shooting her hand in the air a little too eagerly to prove her point. “I don’t care!”

  “Well, if this isn’t about me and Bridget and Dori, then who—”

  And then, because she couldn’t keep it to herself for another second, Sara shouted, “OMIGOD! IT’S ABOUT YOU AND SCOTTY!”

  And then I reacted in the only logical way.

  “Har dee har har.”

  “We saw you,” Manda said.

  “I saw them,” Sara said defensively. “You wouldn’t even know if I hadn’t told you.”

  “Saw us what?” I asked.

  “Omigod! Flirting when you got off the bus this morning!”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Manda said.

  “Um. Excuuuuuse me,” Sara said, eyes narrowing. “But you didn’t see it. I saw it.”

  Sara wasn’t kidding when she said everything was always a competition.

  Manda plastered a sweet smile on her face.

  “I’ve seen things, too, you know,” she said. “I just don’t feel the need to blab all about it.”

  Oh no! This was not the time for a BFF breakdown. Not when I needed them to provide me with vital information.

  “Listen, you two! This is important,” I said, stepping between them. “I wasn’t flirting! We were just talking! About the science lab!”

  Manda and Sara exchanged “yeah, right” looks.

  “It’s a total scandal,” Sara said, rubbing her hands together with glee. “The Scotty Scandal.”


  “W-w-what?” I sputtered.

  “Are you a genius at playing dumb?” Manda asked. “Or are you really this clueless?”

  And before I could even contemplate that very legitimate question, Scotty himself elbowed his way through our group and into the room.

  “I’m pretty sure this is a fire-code violation,” Scotty said to us as he passed.

  Sara waited until he was three steps away before going into a full shout.

  “OMIGOD! DID YOU SEE THAT?” Sara asked. “DID YOU HEAR THAT?”

  I honestly had no idea what she was getting all shouty about.

  “Did I hear and see what?”

  “He elbowed you first,” Manda explained. “And he called you hot.”

  “He didn’t call me that!”

  “Yes, he did,” Manda said knowingly.

  “Duh! The fire-code joke,” Sara said.

  I still wasn’t following.

  “Fire is hot,” Manda and Sara said.

  Same time. “Bee-Eff-Effs!” High five.

  “That doesn’t mean he was calling me hot,” I protested.

  Manda and Sara shook their heads sadly because I was so hopeless. Then the bell rang, and our waifish Language Arts teacher, Miss Orden, clapped her delicate hands to get our attention.

  “Greetings, hallway lingerers!” she sang out. “It’s time to learn the language of Shakespeare!”

  And as we took our seats, Manda snorted in my direction. “It’s time you learned the language of boys.”

  Manda had it all wrong. I needed to learn the language of girls because nothing they were saying made any sense to me. And my most reliable Manda/Sara translator/interpreter hadn’t shown up for class.

  “Where’s Hope?” I said, mostly to myself.

  Sara was—as usual—sitting directly in front of me, so she took it upon herself to answer.

  “Omigod, she’s totally sick,” she said. Then, quieter: “I think.”