Always, Abigail (2 page)

1.
The orthodontist said I don't have to get my braces until January. So I don't have to start middle school with a mouth full of metal. Yay! Most importantly, I won't have to be happy hardware face at pom-pom tryouts.

2.
My hair is finally normal after the perm disaster.

Alli and Cami both have wavy hair, and I love, love, love it! So I begged my mom for a perm. She tried to talk me out of it, but since
she's
the reason I have such straight, boring, lifeless hair (hers is exactly the same way), she felt bad for me and gave in.

Man, I wished I could've pressed the rewind button that day. I walked out of the salon looking like a bigheaded poodle. Ugh! I told the lady
waves
not
curls
. But adults just don't get it sometimes. At least it was the beginning of the summer, and I didn't have to go to school. Mom took me back to the salon the next day for a haircut, and I got most of it cut off. My hair was
super
short. I hated it! But it was better than being POODLE GIRL all summer. My hair was finally back to normal length the week before school started. Whew!

3.
AlliCam and I have the coolest clothes for school this year. Shopping was, like, a full-time job for us this summer.

1.
Sundays: collect sale ads from the newspaper.

2.
Mondays: circle everything we like.

3.
Tuesdays: get my mom to drop us at the mall.

4.
Wednesdays: get Cami's mom to drop us at the outlet center.

5.
Thursdays: get Alli's mom to drop us at the thrift shop.

6.
Fridays and Saturdays: try on everything we bought and decide if we really like it.

We planned to shop like this all summer, but we ran out of birthday and babysitting money after two weeks. So we spent the rest of the summer making up more pom-pom routines and practicing them.

1.
We all have winter birthdays. AlliCam's birthdays are in January. Mine is February, so none of us had much birthday money left by summertime.

2.
AlliCam both got sick of their babysitting jobs. The families they babysat for had only boys, and they were monsters, so they both stopped babysitting.

3.
I liked the kids I babysat for, but I didn't like babysitting on Friday and Saturday nights when AlliCam were together doing fun things without me like makeovers, manicures, and workout videos. I hated missing out on all that, so I kept saying I was busy when the moms asked me to babysit, and eventually they stopped asking me. (My mom was not too thrilled once she realized what had happened, but AlliCam were my best friends. What was I supposed to do?)

1.
Even with the poodle-perm incident behind me, my hair is nothing to brag about. Its color: dirty dishwater. (Doesn't that sound attractive?) Its style: nonexistent because it's as limp as a dirty dishrag. (Doesn't that sound fashionable?) Its condition: oily and dull thanks to the hormones of puberty—that's what Mom says. (Doesn't that sound disgusting?)

2.
So I do the best I can with what I have, and mostly I wear my dirty, dishrag hair in a ponytail. It's better than the poodle look, but not by much. The worst part is that AlliCam's hair is amazing—not only is it wavy, but it's perfectly conditioned, shiny, shampoo-commercial hair. Alli's is blond, and Cami's is black. Perfect hair colors.

3.
The coolest clothes don't hide the fact that I don't have the coolest body. I don't know what it is, but I can be wearing the same exact outfit as AlliCam (even the same size), and somehow it always looks better on them.

4.
And then there's the braces thing. I'm glad I'm not getting them on for a while, but it'd be better if I didn't have to get them at all. Why couldn't I have been born with straight teeth like AlliCam? I mean, I've got the bad hair, the so-so body. Would it have been too much to ask to just have good teeth?

Alli's dad let us use his camera, and we did a pom-pom girl photo shoot. We decorated a huge poster with Crestdale Heights Middle School written on it for the background. I did the lettering on the sign, so of course it looked amazing! Then we put on one of our favorite outfits that we bought last summer, and we posed with our pom-poms. We even turned a fan on to blow our hair around, so we'd look like real models.

We took about a
million
pictures until we each got one that we LOVED. (Well, I got one that I “liked.” None of mine were quite as good as AlliCam's.) Then we printed the photos on Alli's brother's computer and used her mom's mini-laminator to make ID cards to carry on our gym bags.

They turned out soooo CUTE!

In sixth grade, instead of being stuck with the
same
boring teacher, talking in the
same
boring way, ALL day long, each homeroom gets to switch to a different teacher for each subject. But without Alli and Cami in my homeroom, it means I get
different
boring teachers, but no AlliCam ALL day long—just the SAME boring, geeky classmates ALL day, EVERY day, ALL YEAR LONG.

Lunch.

My homeroom doesn't have lunch at the same time as AlliCam's, so I'm stuck eating lunch with Jeannie and Marcy.

It's not that they're so bad—it's just that, well, they're kind of prissy and a little babyish. Like their moms still write little “I love you” notes and put them in their lunches. I'd die if my mom did that!

(My mom still writes me messages in the foggy bathroom mirror when I'm in the shower. “I
♥
U!
☺
” I do still like that, but nobody knows about
that
.)

Then there's Jeannie's and Marcy's clothes. Well, let's just say, I saw a second-grader on the bus wearing the same outfit Marcy had on the other day. If that happened to me, I would've faked sick so I could go home. Not Marcy—she kept calling the kid her little twin.

I don't want anyone thinking the three of us are really good friends. That wouldn't do much for my image.

So I sit close enough to them so that it doesn't look like I'm sitting alone, but not too close.

1.
Miss Hendrick (aka Hendrick-the-Horrible-Hundred-Year-Old Hawk) is my homeroom teacher.

2.
Ditto

3.
Ditto

4.
Ditto

5.
Ditto

6.
Ditto

7.
Ditto

8.
Ditto

9.
Ditto

10.
Ditto