The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Popularity, Prettiness & Perfection Read online

  I cannot do a basic cartwheel. But when your perfect older sister is paying attention to you for the first time ever and keeping her attention depends on your ability to do a cartwheel, you assure her that yes, yes, of course you can do a cartwheel.

  “Who can’t do a cartwheel?” I asked, dripping with sarcasm.

  And Bethany gave me an “I know, right?” roll of the eyes and a gentle punch to the shoulder and I swear I’d never felt closer to her in all my life. I wanted to make the moment last.

  “By the way, where’s today’s mail?” she asked.

  I knew our time was short. Bethany would be out the door and back to campus before I knew it. So as I showed her to the stack on the table, I told her all about the disaster of Woodshop and how the teacher is a nut and I’m the only girl in the class and he’s determined to keep me there.

  “That’s fantastic!” Bethany said as she sorted through the pile.

  “It is?”

  “Seriously! Why would you want to switch out of a sweet situation like that? No competition! All the better for getting a head start on IT List number three: Pick your first boyfriend wisely.”

  I didn’t even have time to object. The Woodshop boys aren’t exactly my type. Not that I even have a type.

  “Just don’t wear those T-shirts,” Bethany cautioned, putting the mail back down.

  “To Woodshop? Or the tryout?”

  It was getting very difficult to keep track of the big-sisterly wisdom when it came all at once like this.

  “ANYWHERE.”

  “Why not? The bands are cool, right?”

  “Ugh. I have no idea if those bands are cool.”

  Now I was really confused.

  Bethany sighed wearily. “They are the last remnants of a relationship with a rock-and-roll boyfriend,” she said. “I liked him. I hated the music.”

  The front door had shut behind her before I’d even thought to ask if he was the same boy from IT List #3: Pick your first boyfriend wisely.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next day I did as my sister told me and ditched the vintage tees in favor of one of the T-shirts Mom had picked out for me at the mall. In a slippery purple fabric with silvery stripes, this top was probably the show-offiest thing I owned. It won Bridget’s approval right away.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I liked the vintage vibe you were going with,” she said as we walked to the bus stop, “but this is more…”

  “Me?” I asked, unconvinced. The shiny silver threads were kind of scratchy.

  “More junior high,” Bridget concluded.

  Well, it must have been the right choice because the rest of the girls couldn’t stop complimenting me on it either.

  “Loving! Loving! Loving it!”

  “So amazing!”

  “Totally adorable fashion do!”

  And so it’s been for all the days that have followed since. Whenever I’ve worn something from the mall, I’ve gotten compliments. I think Sara, Manda, and Hope are all being sincere. But it’s impossible not to notice that my adorable top had come from the same store as the adorable skirts Bridget and Sara had worn on the first day of school, and the same store as the adorable cardigan Hope was wearing today, and the same store as the adorable low-cut tank top Manda will probably wear tomorrow. By LOVING my AMAZING and TOTALLY ADORABLE FASHION DO, they were, in fact, complimenting themselves, too.

  It’s just one of the observations I’ve made about junior high so far.

  Here’s another observation: All the teachers seem to be under the mistaken impression that they are the only ones assigning homework. I mean, it’s doable and all, but it’s so much more than we used to get in elementary school! Take tonight, for example.

  Language Arts: a five-paragraph essay describing our favorite character in The Outsiders. (I picked Ponyboy, which is kind of obvious because he’s the narrator. He likes books and writing and thinks too much about things. Like me.)

  Español: choosing the correct form of the verb to be in ten sentences. (Apparently there are two ways to be in Spanish. The estar way to be is temporary. The ser way to be is fixed. Too much of my life right now feels estar.)

  Pre-Algebra: a worksheet about simplifying variable expressions. (The cool thing about math is that an answer is either right or wrong. It’s one of the rare ser parts of my day.)

  Physical Science: answering multiple-choice review questions for the first section of the first chapter of our textbook, General Principles of Physical Science. (Yes, it is as fascinating as it sounds. The most challenging part of this assignment is not drooling all over my textbook when I fall asleep.)

  Social Studies: create a physical map for a new Earth. (Oh, that’s not asking for too much, is it? On top of everything else? To CREATE A WHOLE NEW FREAKING PLANET?)

  Woodshop: no homework. THIS IS THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT WOODSHOP.

  Speaking of Woodshop, Mr. Pudel isn’t the only junior high teacher who can’t remember who any of us are. This is kind of understandable, though. In elementary school our teacher had pretty much the same twenty-five kids all day long. Here our teachers have a whole bunch of classes with twenty-five kids each. I’ll be lucky if any of my teachers know my name before June. Unlike Mr. Pudel, most make an effort. After trying and failing to commit any of our names to memory in the first week, our Language Arts teacher decided to GET CREATIVE!

  Language Arts teachers love to GET CREATIVE!

  “Let’s GET CREATIVE!” Miss Orden suggested after making the mistake of calling Manda “Sara.” This error put Manda in a snit of overenunciation. I’ve noticed that Manda overenunciates whenever she’s really annoyed but trying hard not to sound really annoyed.

  “I. Don’t. Look. Anything. Like. Sara.”

  And it was true. Physically she and Sara don’t look anything alike. Most notably, Sara has corkscrew curly dark brown hair and Manda has flat-ironed dark blond hair. But in Miss Orden’s defense, their outfits—sparkly top, flippy skirt—were essentially identical not only to each other, but to, oh, I don’t know, about half of the seventh-grade female population.

  Myself included.

  So Miss Orden asked us all to reintroduce ourselves using an adjective that begins with the first letter of our first names.

  “It’s a mnemonic device,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”

  No one raised a hand. Miss Orden looked right at me. She had already figured out that I’d always give in to the awkward silence.

  “A mnemonic device is a memory tool,” I said.

  “That’s right! And what’s your name again?” she asked.

  “Jessica Darling,” I replied, suddenly feeling the classroom’s eyes on me.

  “Well, I may not even need a mnemonic device to remember your name, but I’d like to hear one anyway!”

  I had one ready to go. See, the reason I know the definition of mnemonic (as well as the fact that the m is silent so it’s pronounced nih-MON-ik) is because we’ve been asked to play this particular name game several times over the years. I was stumped the first time, back in fourth grade. Think about it: There aren’t a lot of obvious adjectives that start with J.

  I ended up using jazzy, which was definitely not an accurate descriptor but was the first thing that popped into my head because it was the name of my pet gerbil that has since gone on to that great spinning wheel in the sky. And though she didn’t mean to do it, Dori Sipowitz ended up totally embarrassing me by announcing, “Oh! You’re Jazzy like the gerbil!” which led to me being followed around by the catchphrase “Jazzy like the gerbil” for the next month or two. Who knows? I could still be followed around by “Jazzy like the gerbil” if Dori hadn’t peed herself at the Spring Choral Concert during the Sound of Music medley, which inevitably led to the new bullying catchphrase, “Do-Re-Mi! Do-ri PEE!”

  Looking back now, I think that was probably the beginning of the end of 3ZNUF.

  Anyway, the point is, I’ve been prepared with a J-adjective ever since.
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  “I’m Jessica,” I announced to Miss Orden, “and I’m journalistic.”

  Predictably, Miss Orden loved that one. I wasn’t trying to be the teacher’s pet, but it was clear I was well on my way to becoming one. Then again, I didn’t have much competition. My adjective of choice was way more impressive than:

  “I’m Sara and I’m sweet!”

  “I’m Hope and I’m hopeful.”

  (I think Hope was being intentionally lame, in which case that was pretty funny. But I really haven’t figured her out yet, so I don’t know if she was joking or what.)

  And finally:

  “I’m Manda and I’m mondo.”

  And everyone, including Miss Orden, was like, “What the heck?”

  Which was exactly what Manda wanted.

  “I’m mondo,” she repeated as if we were the weird ones for not really knowing what she meant by that.

  By lunchtime, it had become clear enough.

  Manda said, “Your shoes are so mondo” to Sara.

  Sara said, “Football boys are so mondo” to Bridget.

  Bridget said, “So Burke Roy is mondo, right?” to us all.

  Then right as the bell for eighth period rang, Hope said, “Burning your hand on the stove in Family and Consumer Sciences is so not mondo.”

  There you have it. One day in the not-so-distant future, when mondo is inducted alongside awesome and sweet into the Pineville Junior High Slang Hall of Fame, we will remember where we were the first time we heard it: seventh grade, first period, G&T Language Arts. More important, we’ll remember it was Manda who said it.

  Which—again—was exactly what Manda wanted.

  In other classroom news, Mr. Pudel greeted our class with arm-swooping choreography worthy of a Broadway revue.

  “Beeeeee the treeeeee!” he sang. “Beeeeee the treeeeee!”

  Trust me, it was waaaaay weirder than Mom and Dad’s first-day-of-school song and dance. It was the type of behavior I’d expect from a floaty goddess-of-poetry type like Miss Orden, not a Woodshop teacher built like a professional wrestler. Apparently, this song was meant to inspire us to get in touch with our “inner natural resources” because if we “respect the wood,” we would be less likely to “waste the wood.”

  “Wasting the wood,” Mr. Pudel warned, “is the worst thing you can do in this classroom.”

  Leave it to that redheaded kid Aleck to ask what I was thinking.

  “Even worse than losing a finger?”

  And then Mr. Pudel nonpointed at him with the empty space where his pointer finger would’ve been. You know? If he still had one.

  “That won’t happen,” he said. “You’ve all passed the workshop safety exam.”

  This didn’t make me feel any better. I assume Mr. Pudel had also passed the workshop safety exam at one point in his life. And yet he still lost a finger. In this very classroom. Doing exactly the sort of thing he was assuring us we were adequately prepared to do.

  See, after a week’s worth of woodshop safety videos, Mr. Pudel had determined that we were finally ready to “be the tree.” Personally, I would’ve preferred spending the rest of the marking period taking multiple-choice workshop safety exams. Sample question:

  1. Most workshop injuries occur when someone doesn’t use:

  A. polite words like please and thank you

  B. deodorant

  C. COMMON SENSE!!!

  I was in the minority, of course. The guys couldn’t wait to get their hands on the band saws, table saws, miter saws, routers, lathes, and jointers—scary-sounding machinery I’m only comfortable using within the context of multiple-choice exams.

  “Um, Mr. Pudel,” I said.

  “Yes, Clementine?”

  Since he’d found out my last name was Darling, he had taken to calling me Clementine. As in the cowpoke song sung around a campfire. This was better than most of the other nicknames he’d bestowed upon the boys, including Mouth, Cheddar, and Squiggy. Even Aleck had really gotten off rather easy by comparison.

  “Is there, like, another safety exam I could take?” I began. “I’m not sure—”

  Mr. Pudel cut me off. Like a finger.

  “Class participation in the form of your completed project is ninety percent of your grade, Clem. No spoon, no passing this class.”

  So here’s another multiple-choice question.

  1. You’re taking Woodshop. A class YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN. You are required to use dangerous tools to carve a wooden spoon out of a block of soft maple. Do you…

  A. refuse, fail the class, and single-handedly sabotage your academic record?

  B. agree, and end up single handed?

  C. There is no third choice.

  Sigh. I’m doomed to either fail Woodshop or lose a limb.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WAIT A SECOND. THERE’S ANOTHER UPSIDE TO WOODSHOP! If I lose a limb, I won’t be able to try out for the CHEER TEAM!!!

  HOORAY.

  Who am I kidding? My handsprings couldn’t possibly get any worse than they already are. Even without a hand to spring from.

  Oh, did you think I’d forgotten all about #2 on the IT List? Unfortunately, my distraction strategy—Let’s Think About Everything Else Except the Thing That Is Most on My Mind—could only work for so long. Especially when three of the other four girls at my lunch table also added their names to the sign-up sheet. Yes. Bridget, Manda, and Sara are also trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!

  Because Bridget has known me since birth, only she registered the reasonable response to seeing my name on the list.

  “You’re trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?” she asked with a gasp. “Why would you try out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”

  Four pairs of eyes scrutinized me from all around the lunch table. I didn’t want to reveal the secret of the IT List. I wanted to keep it between Bethany and me. I tried another tactic instead of the truth.

  “Uh. For the same reason all of you are trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!”

  “School spirit?” Bridget asked.

  “Mondo uniforms?” Sara asked.

  “Mondo boys?” Manda asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Sure. All of the above.”

  Bridget, knowing me as she does, refused to let it drop.

  “You can barely do a forward roll!” she protested. “When 3ZNUF used to play Olympic Gymnastics Team, you were always the scary Eastern European coach who yelled at us!”

  Usually Manda pretended not to hear anything Bridget said. But this caught her interest.

  “What’s 3ZNUF?” she asked.

  “Oh! That’s the name Jess, our old friend Dor—OUCH!”

  I kicked Bridget under the table to stop her from telling everyone that we used to be BFFs with Dori Sipowitz. I quickly changed the subject.

  “So, Hope! Why aren’t you trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”

  Hope looked up from her notebook. “Uh, what?”

  She was too busy doodling portraits of all our teachers to pay the least bit of attention to our conversation. Her rendering of Mr. Odd’s Frankenstein-square head was impressively lifelike.

  “Why aren’t you trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”

  “Yes, Hope,” Manda chimed in. “Please tell us why you’re totally bailing on our all-for-one-one-for-all promise to try out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”

  I’d no idea that Manda, Sara, and Hope had made such a promise. Or when. All I knew was that I hadn’t been included in the pact.

  Hope sighed and set down her pencil.

  “I’m just not CHEER TEAM!!! material.”

  Then she picked up her pencil and started shading the shadows under Mr. Odd’s bloodshot eyeballs.

  “But you promised you would,” Manda pressed.

  Sara backed her up. “Omigod! You totally did.”

  And then the bell rang before this debate could go any further. I didn’t have time to say it then, but I’ll say it now: Hope is getting more interesting by the day. Unfortunately, I don’t
think she feels the same way about me.

  Anyway, Bridget wouldn’t drop the subject on the bus ride home.

  “Are your parents making you try out for the CHEER TEAM!!!?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  Truth was, I knew exactly why she would ask that. Bridget knows my parents well. She wouldn’t be surprised that they had, in fact, already given me an ultimatum: Choose an extracurricular activity or we will choose one for you.

  “Because you and the CHEER TEAM!!! go together like…” She pulled on the ends of her hair as if switching on the lightbulb in her brain. “Like Cap’n Crunch and milk!”

  This was an inside joke. Only Bridget knows I prefer eating my sugary cereals in overflowing handfuls, dry, right out of the box.

  “So the best I can figure,” she continued, “is that, like, your parents are forcing you to try out for the CHEER TEAM!!! because, like, that’s what your sister did in junior high and they figure it’s, like, what all girls do when they get to junior high.”

  Mom and Dad had absolutely no idea I was trying out for the CHEER TEAM!!! And it’s highly doubtful that the CHEER TEAM!!! would be on their list of “approved” activities to choose from. Especially Dad. He blames one too many falls from the top of the pyramid for Bethany’s below-average academic performance over the years.

  Bridget leaned toward me, eyes wide and expectant, waiting for me to confirm her theory. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t want to tell her the truth either. Unlike the IT List, Bridget’s explanation actually made some sense.

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s all my parents’ fault.”

  Putting the blame on my parents was so perfectly logical that it was actually better than the truth.

  That’s what I told myself anyway.

  I should’ve known that Bridget wouldn’t be able to leave the discussion on the bus. Later that afternoon, I was in the hammock dozing off to General Principles of Physical Science, enjoying the last bit of mid-September Indian summer sunshine, when I was nearly startled to death by a shrieking TWEEEEEEEET!