A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (6 page)

“This is why I'm going to take tai chi,” Beanpole informed us.

“Tai what?”

“Tai chi. It's this ancient Chinese exercise martial-arts thing that uses slow movements. It'll help me with my balance.” Beanpole slowly spread her arms wide and smiled. “I'm gonna be one with the universe.”

Placing her palms together in front of her chest, she closed her eyes and began to chant. “
Ommmmm
.”

I turned to Q. “Is she serious?”

“I wonder if they'll ever make a crayon color called Spinach. Don't you think the world would be a better place with spinach-colored crayons?”

“Do you ever answer the question you've been asked?” I said.

“Beetlegunk.”

I decided it would be silly to continue the conversation with Q. This was her way of having fun with me; the more frustrated I grew, the more entertained she became, and this time I wasn't falling for it. Thank goodness Beanpole finally opened her eyes. “You know, I've been reading up. With tai chi I will learn to accept the universe as it is.”

“I thought you said it was a martial art,” I replied.

“I don't really know what it is. My first class is next week,” Beanpole answered. “Maybe I'll learn some karate too, like,
Hi-ya!
” she exclaimed as she jumped into a fighting stance.

Unfortunately, Beanpole hadn't looked behind her when she exploded into her martial-arts display, and her back arm smashed into a stack of medium-weight sweaters. Quickly trying to catch them before they fell, she surged forward but tripped over her uneven size feet…which caused her to bonk her head into a hanger, knock over eight pairs of blue jeans, lose her balance entirely, and fall head over heels into the Windbreaker section of her closet, the area that had been reserved for moderate gusts.

I let out a deep sigh as clothing items designed for inclement weather collapsed on her head.

“Don't worry, don't worry, I'm okay.” She emerged from the closet, a wool sock dangling from her ponytail. “I'm okay.”

Clearly, there was a tai chi teacher somewhere who had no idea what she was about to get into.

B
ack at school on Monday, the plan was to try to get the ThreePees to eat some “complimentary peppermints” that would have caused their teeth to turn green and red. My brother was great with pranks and stuff like that—the fake wrappers made these breath fresheners look like the real deal—but Kiki and her two ding-a-lings didn't fall for it, and they avoided catastrophe. Not sure what happened to the mints, though. They mysteriously disappeared after we left them on the lunch counter.

On Tuesday, I was almost fooled into eating a chocolate-chip cookie made with horse laxative, which most probably would have sat me on the toilet for a week. However, at the last minute, I was warned about them by Logan Meyers, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Greek god of middle-school boys.

“Hey, Maureen,” Logan whispered, just before the bell rang to dismiss us from social studies. “They did something to some cookies today.”

“They did?” I said nervously, knowing exactly who he was talking about. “Thanks,” I told him.

“Don't mention it,” he replied with a bright white smile. “Besides, when you really think about it, cookies are stupid.”

Earlier in the year, I admit, I'd had a HUGE crush on Logan. But after we did this project together for Mr. Piddles's class, where Logan made, like, four hundred fart jokes while I did all the work, I began to see that a girl should like a boy for more than just his looks, even if he is hot like a jalapeño pepper.

“I mean, I'm more of a video-game guy myself,” Logan continued, as if he hadn't already told me this about a zillion times. “Video games are not stupid.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, Logan. You really saved me.”

“I mean, even the
stupid
video games are not stupid, you know?” he said.

“Indeed,” I said, closing my notebook, looking for a way to end the conversation.

“Like, this stupid school doesn't stupid-appreciate how not stupid video games are. Am I right or am I right or what?” he argued.

“Preach it, brutha. Preach it,” I said, hoping that if I agreed with him he'd let the whole thing go.

“Thank you,” he said, happy to see that there was at least one person who could really understand where he was coming from (even though I had no idea where he was coming from).

Logan wandered away. As he did so, one thought, one inescapable, unavoidable, never-to-be-disputed fact, filled my brain.

He's got a cute butt.

I blame genetic programming for random zone-outs like this.

After I managed to avoid Tuesday's booby-trapped cookies, Wednesday and Thursday were free of pranks, but when lunchtime came on Friday, it was Game On once again.

Q's eyes darted from side to side, looking around to make sure no one was watching us. The outdoor courtyard, where we always ate lunch, bustled with activity. Boys punched other boys, then ran off. Girls played with their phones while gossiping or doing homework. A few kids flirted. Nothing out of the ordinary, just another Friday on campus. Once Q felt the coast was clear, she reached into her backpack.

“I got the goods right here,” she whispered.

I cranked my neck to see what she'd brought.

“Exploding pens. The kind that, when you press down to write, they will”—
Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh
—“blast a squirt of ink into the person's face.”

“Niiiice!” I said.

“I got them at the magic store down on Harris Street,” Q continued. “But how are we going to get them into the ThreePees' hands?”

“Good question,” I said as I gazed across the courtyard. Just as we were huddled around the table trying to come up with a way to really stick it to the ThreePees, it seemed they were also huddling to try and figure out a way to stick it to us.

“Can I just officially say that I don't like any of this?” Beanpole remarked. “I don't like it at all. I mean, every time I sit at a desk I check for tacks or ‘Kick Me!' signs or glue. It's making me crazy.”

“Hey, glue,” I said. “Good idea, Beanpole.”

“Yeah,” said Q, her eyes glowing with possibilities. “Maybe we could glue the witches to a park bench, cover them in corn kernels, spread maple syrup over their faces, and import some Australian crows to eat out their eyeballs!”

“They've wounded you, haven't they?” I asked.

“More than you know,” Q replied.

“How come I don't think you two are really listening to me?” Beanpole asked.

“We're totally listening, Beanpole,” I said, getting ready to ignore her again. “Just go play with your phone or something, while we figure this out.”

“I'm not getting it till this weekend,” she said. “By the way, have you heard from your dad again?”

I pretended not to hear the question. “So, the ink that will be squirted, is it blue?” I asked Q in regards to the magic pens.

“Deep purple,” she answered. “Think grape juice.”

“Niiice,” I said.

“You know, Mo,” Beanpole said, knowing that I'd quite clearly heard her question yet chosen to ignore it, “denying reality doesn't change reality.”

“Well, if God didn't want me sweeping reality under the rug, then why did he make me so good with a broom? Now,” I said to Q, “what if we put the pens—”

Suddenly, Mrs. Chambliss, one of the vice principals, walked up to our lunch table. She was wearing a yellow sweater over a white blouse with a necklace made of topaz. While some teachers are slobs who look like they don't even own an iron, Mrs. Chambliss always dresses with class and style.

“All right, girls…let's go.”

“Where? Why? We didn't do anything,” we protested.

“Tell that to the principal,” she responded. Like all vice principals, Mrs. Chambliss held a black walkie-talkie in her hand, and used the antenna to point out the direction in which we needed to go. “Now, move.”

Across the courtyard, Mr. Piddles, the social studies teacher who did double duty as lunchtime monitor, approached the ThreePees and started pointing toward the front office as well. A moment later, they were on the march.

Kiki and I made eye contact across the courtyard, both of us knowing we were headed to the exact same place: Principal Mazer's office.

Well, bring it on, I thought. Bring it on.

The six of us didn't make a peep as we entered the principal's office. Vice Principal Stone was in the room, wearing a striped tie—purple and black—that did not quite match his light peach shirt. He glared from the left-hand corner, looking even more hostile and uptight than usual.

“Did I not tell you that I wanted this to stop? Didn't I?!” growled Principal Mazer.

“But…” Brattany said in protest, “we didn't do anything.”

“Oh, yeah?” Principal Mazer barked. “Then how come Mr. Stone looks like he swallowed one of Santa's elves?”

Mr. Stone flashed his teeth. They were green and red and frightening.

“Eeek!”
I yelped.

“Plus,” Principal Mazer continued, “the poor man's had diarrhea for the past seventy-two hours. Does anyone care to explain what kind of poop potion you put in those cookies?” He glared, practically with steam coming out of his ears. When Oompa Loompas get mad, watch out.

“They did it!” Kiki shouted, pointing at us.

“Huh? What? We did not,” I replied. “You did it!”

“No, you did!”

“You did!”

“All right, ENOUGH!” Principal Mazer said. “You wanted it, you got it. You are now the official PPWBs of Grover Park Middle School.”

There was a moment of confused silence.

“The what?” I said.

“The PPWBs,” Principal Mazer said. “The Personal Polishing Worker Bees.” He rose from his chair. “You're going to polish basketballs. You're going to polish tubas. You're going to polish doorknobs and desks and toilet-flushing handles and gum-stained carpets.”

“Um, how do you polish a gum-stained carpet?” Brattany asked.

“On your knees,” Mr. Stone said, with menace in his eyes. “On your knees.”

I gulped. Boy, those teeth were scary. And they completely clashed with his tie, too.

“But, honest to goodness, we didn't do anything,” Kiki said in her best
I'm a little angel
voice. She even fluttered her eyelashes.

Barf, I thought.

“Save it, Miss Masters,” the principal said. “I like to think I am a man who keeps his cool and finds productive ways to reach his students, but you girls, well…Just maybe this will polish some dadgum sense into your heads.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I just need a quick signature to approve the Academic Septathlon flyer,” Principal Mazer's secretary said.

“Come in, Mrs. Rumpkin, we're just finishing up here anyway,” the principal told her.

“But isn't there some way we can avoid the PPWB, or whatever you call it?” Kiki asked as the secretary passed a sheet of paper to Principal Mazer.

“Yeah, polishing isn't good for my polish,” Brattany said, holding up her fingernails as if to present her manicure to the court as official evidence.

“Sure…” Principal Mazer replied absentmindedly as he signed the sheet of paper. “Win the Academic Septathlon and all is forgiven,” he said in an offhand way.

“Fine, we'll do that,” Kiki said.

“No,
we'll
do that,” I shot back, not wanting to give an inch.

“No, we will.”

“We will!”

“Stop! Nobody is going to do that,” Principal Mazer explained. “I mean, sure, I'd like to think someone from this school could win it, but Saint Dianne's has won it nine out of the past ten years, and the last seven in a row. Heck, we haven't even been able to field a Septathlon team for the past two or three years. Students have just totally lost interest.”

“We'll do it for you, sir,” Kiki said, straightening her spine like the world's biggest suck-up. “We'll carry the torch of school pride.”

The torch of school pride?
OMG, so pathetic.

“No,
we
will carry the torch of school pride,” I insisted. “And we will carry it to the educational summit of Mount Olympus!”

Hey, no one's going to out-suck-up me.

“No, we will!”

“We will!”

“Just be quiet a minute!” Principal Mazer ordered, covering his ears. “Holy goodness, what is with all of you?”

He stared at the flyer, considering how to proceed.

“Okay, here's what I'll do,” he said, some kind of positive-discipline lightbulb going off in his head. “We'll have a little qualification tournament. The team that earns the right to represent our school will have their PPWB time cut in half. And if you win and beat Saint Dianne's, you're off the hook entirely.”

“And the team that loses?” Brattany asked.

“Polishes,” he replied. “Polishes until I can see my smile in every door handle on this campus, no ifs, ands, or buts. Is it a deal, ladies?”

Kiki looked over at her two pet Chihuahuas.

“Deal,” she said.

“Deal,” I replied, without a moment's thought, not giving the ThreePees an inch. Beanpole practically bounced out of her seat with excitement. Considering that she was the type of girl who actually liked homework, the thought of an Academic Septathlon totally wound her dorkasaurus clock. Q, on the other hand, showed a glint of Wild West gunslinger in her eyes. In the battle of brains, there was no one coming to the table with more gray matter than her.

“The Septathlon is in four weeks. Our qualification tournament will be a week from Monday,” the principal explained.

“Ten days?” I exclaimed. “That's not enough time.” Being that I had already participated in Math-a-thon a few years ago, I knew exactly how much work it would take to get prepared for this sort of thing. Science, history, music, language arts, these Septathlon things were no joke.

“I have toilet-paper-roll dispensers that could use some buffing right now if you prefer, Miss Saunders,” Principal Mazer said. “And let me ask, have you ever been in the boys' bathroom on the first floor? The smell alone can turn your nose hair green.”

I recoiled in horror.

“No, ten days is great, sir. Easily done.”

“Here are some study materials to get you started,” the principal said, opening up a closet. A moment later, each of us was holding a binder. Not just any binder, of course, but the biggest binder of intellectual materials ever put together. They must have been the size of two phone books, weighing twelve pounds each. I mean, brain surgeons probably need to know less to remove cranial tumors.

“Wait,” Sofes said to Kiki. “Do we, like, have to learn this, or do we just carry it around for show, like we do with all our other schoolbooks?”

Kiki ignored her.

“Good luck, ladies,” Principal Mazer said. My arms practically sank to the floor with the weight of the tome. “I love that Aardvark spirit.”