How Not To Be Popular (11 page)

Walking out the door, I catch sight of Dr. Wohman’s expression. He looks kind of puny and wasted and totally drained of authority—like a plucked peacock. I almost feel sorry for the guy.

The school’s office is in the exact middle of the main building, between the library and the cafeteria and right across from the student center. All the outer walls are made of glass midway up, so you can view office activity from any part of the student center. You can also easily see who’s been called in to meet with the principal.

When I first took a seat in the chair outside Dr. Wohman’s office, there were only a couple of students wandering about. They must have been trained scouts who quickly flew back to their hives with the news, because not long after, I had a group of six staring right at me.

Them I could deal with. But just two minutes ago, the bell for first lunch rang. So here I am, in a dress that fits like gauze bandages, perched awkwardly on a metal chair, trying to ignore the small mass of students pointing at me from the other side of the glass.

Now I know why monkeys throw their poo at people.

“Young lady,” the secretary sternly says—meaning me. “I’m going to the teachers’ lounge to warm up my lunch. Can I trust you alone for a few minutes?”

What does she think I’m going to do? Steal paper clips?

I nod mutely.

She holds my gaze for a moment longer, as if administering some telepathic polygraph test. Apparently I pass, because she gives me a satisfied nod, shoulders her Thomas Kinkade–print tote bag, and marches out into the corridor.

I stare at the door to the principal’s office, wondering what could be taking so long. I hope Rosie isn’t making Dr. Wohman snort rosemary plant.

“Pssssst!”

I whip my head around, searching for the source of the noise, but I find nothing.

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“Pssssst!”
it goes again, this time more loudly.

Finally I notice Drip, the petite girl from the Helping Hands Club, standing inside the office. Her freckled, cereal-box elf face barely clears the front counter.

“What are you doing here?” she asks me.

“Dr. Wohman called me in.”

“Are you in trouble?”

I shrug as much as my squeezy dress will let me. “Apparently he didn’t like my outfit.” Drip makes one of those scoffing exhale sounds. “That’s dumb! I don’t like his spray-on hair, but you don’t see me complaining!”

I laugh wheezily. Drip reminds me of those teeny tiny dogs that aren’t afraid of anything. She might be a loser-dweeb, but at least she has spunk.

“Is he going to call your parents?” she asks.

“Already did.” I wave my thumb in the direction of his closed door. “They’re in there now.”

“Good luck,” she says, her forehead bunched in worry.

“Thanks.”

Drip gives a little wave and heads back into the student center. Almost instantly people start crowding around her, obscuring her from view. After a while they bob up to stare at me. A few even shake their heads.

One guy I’ve never met pushes open the door and says, “Yo! Give him shit!”

“Yeah,” someone shouts over his shoulder. “Screw baldie!” Now even more students are wandering over to get the scoop. A few walk away, disappointed, but most stick around to give me supportive smiles.

What the hell is happening here? All this attention makes me feel sort of…dare I say it?

Popular?

Finally, just as I start losing all feeling in my posterior, my parents emerge from Dr. Wohman’s office.

Rosie is smiling and glancing around as if she were thinking about buying the place. Meanwhile Les and Dr. Wohman are laughing big hearty men laughs.

“And he said, ‘What? I thought Yin and Yang were your lawyers!’” Les says, clapping the principal on the shoulder. The two amp up their guffaws even more.

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Dr. Wohman holds a hand against his belly while he laughs, as if he’s pulled a little-used muscle. Once his chuckles peter out, he straightens his suit jacket and turns to me. “Well now, young lady,” he says breathlessly.

I stagger to my feet and meet his gaze. His eyes are glistening with tears from his and Les’s laughfest, and a rosy tint has spread across his cheeks. He looks almost likeable.

“Here is a copy of our school dress code.” He thrusts a piece of paper into my hands. “You are free to dress however you like, as long as you remain within these boundaries. Understood?”

“Yes, uh…yes, sir.”

He gives a satisfied nod and turns back toward my parents. “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Dempsey,” he says, clasping Les’s hand and giving it a vigorous pump.

“Call me Les.”

“As long as you call me George.”

For some reason they all laugh at this.

“You too, Miss Rosie,” Dr. Wohman continues.

“Thank you for the referral.”

“My pleasure, George. Call us anytime. We just love your sunshine-filled school.” Luckily they’re all so busy chattering in their little “Kumbaya” party they don’t hear my disgusted moan.

I have no idea what they talked about after I left the room, but it’s obvious my parents worked their magic on him. I hope that doesn’t mean he’ll be coming around our place for astrology talks and dead head fruit snacks.

As Dr. Wohman goes into his office, Rosie claps her hands together and says, “Well, now. He was nice.”

“There’s an educator who supports a student’s personal freedom,” Les comments.

“Yeah, right,” I mutter. “Only when he’s afraid you’ll sic the ACLU on his ass.”

“So, sweetness,” Rosie says, throwing her arm across my shoulders. “Do you have time to show us more of the school before you go back to class?”

At this my mind starts rolling a montage of embarrassing moments from my past: the time Les and Rosie decided to weed the flower beds at my school in Seattle…the way the junior high kids laughed whenever Les picked me up on our tandem bike, since every pair of pants he owned slid down to reveal his butt crack…the day both of them showed up during freshman English in full Elizabethan garb—codpiece and all…

I’m just about to tell them I can’t when I suddenly spy those students gathered in front of the office.

“Actually,” I say brightly, “I’m about to go to lunch. You guys want to join me?”
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“You betcha,” exclaims Les.

“Sounds lovely,” muses Rosie.

“Great,” say I. And together we march off toward the cafeteria.

I figure if getting hauled in front of the Whoa Man somehow gained me cool points, the absolute best way to lose them is to be seen eating in the lunchroom with my mommy and daddy.

This is it. The perfect recipe for supreme dorkdom. I’m in the school cafeteria, dressed like a color-blind geisha, pulling food out of a
Star Trek
lunch box while sitting between my parents and across from Penny.

It’s quieter than usual. Probably because everyone around us is either blatantly staring or whispering behind cupped hands.

This is so great. After today I’ll be considered reputation Kryptonite. No sane local teenager will want to get near me! For the first time ever, I’m thankful my parents are so different.

“You mean they don’t offer a vegan tray?” Les is asking Penny.

She shakes her head. “And they run out of dairy-free options all the time. Last month the gravy gave me diarrhea.”

I push aside my fried tofu and dig in to my cherries instead.

“Poor baby,” Rosie croons to her. “Did you protest?”

“I told the nurse.”

Les waves a carrot stick at her. “You should take action. You have a right to be served a meal that doesn’t risk your health.”

Penny seems to be enjoying all this attention. “I’ve told them lots of times,” she says, pushing her lips out as she talks. “Last year when I got my third bladder infection, I told them they needed to offer cranberry juice. And then they did.”

“Good for you!” Les cheers.

A few girls behind us start tittering like crazed birds. But no one except me seems aware of it.

“You know what else you should do for those infections?” Rosie leans forward and her beads tap rhythmically against the tabletop. “You should do vaginal exercises.” I hear a choking sound in back of me as one of the giggly girls starts hacking and coughing. Turning toward the noise, I find all six of them red faced. Five out of embarrassment, and one from lack of oxygen.

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“Someone your age really should practice these movements,” Rosie keeps on saying to Penny. “All of you girls should.” She turns to include the group behind us. “It will aid urine flow and enhance pleasure during intercourse.”

The girls exchange wide-eyed glances and start laughing incredulously.

“Here,” Rosie says. “Let me demonstrate.”

At this the girls’ expressions change from amused to downright alarmed. It’s all so horrible-wonderful I can barely handle it. As mortifying as it is to watch my mother launch into a sex-ed lesson in the middle of my school lunchroom, I almost feel a little proud.

Why didn’t I invite my parents to lunch before now? Rosie and Les are managing to do in minutes what I haven’t been able to do in over a week!

“All you have to do is think of…an elevator,” Rosie says. “Your vaginal muscles are designed to squeeze upward”—her pitch rises and she slowly lifts her hands—“and relax downward.” Her pitch lowers and her hands dip back into her lap.

Penny has abandoned her food and is listening intently. I won’t be surprised if she produces paper and pen and starts taking notes.

I look over my shoulder to catch Les’s reaction, but all I see is his half-eaten carrot lying on the table.

“Where’d my dad go?” I ask Penny.

Keeping her gaze on Rosie’s lesson, she absently points over her left shoulder. And there’s Les, standing by the theater kids, juggling fruit. He keeps three oranges going in a quick circle and then pulls out the neck hole of his belted tunic top to catch them, one by one, in his shirt. The kids at the table clap and cheer.

“Do it again!” shouts one guy.

No, no,
no
! This is
not
part of the plan. He’s supposed to be spooking the natives, not making friends with them.

I leap up and wend my way through a pack of lunch tray–carrying students. They’re all trudging along, totally clueless to my emergency. Thanks to the kimono, the whole journey seems to take till retirement age. Finally I fight through the last of them and reach my father, who is now balancing an apple on his head.

“Um…Les? Come back and sit with us, ’kay?”

“Hi, sugar bear!” he says, greeting me, as if he weren’t right beside me just five minutes ago. “Fellow players, this is my daughter.” He carefully gestures toward me.

A couple of the kids say, “We know.” Most of them go, “Hi.”

“Hey, man. I heard you faced down Wohman today,” one guy says to me. “Way to go!”

“Uh, thanks.” I turn back to my father. “Come on, Les. I…need you to finish my salad for me.”
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“In a sec. I was just telling these guys about my Shakespeare days.” He grabs the apple off his head and assumes an exaggerated stage posture. “Alas, poor Yorick!” he says in a deep and tragic-sounding voice.

“You played Hamlet?” someone asks.

“Not exactly. I was more of a comedic actor.” He snatches a couple of the oranges off the nearby table and starts juggling them again. This time he orates as he tosses.

“I am the worse for my friends. They praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself; and by my friends I am abused.” He ends the speech, catches the oranges, and takes a little bow.

Just as I feared, the students are all looking at him the way preschoolers regard a man who makes balloon animals.

“You should come talk to our class,” says a guy in a
South Park
T-shirt.

“Yeah,” chime in the others.

No!
I scream silently. “Um…Les? The salad’s getting soggy.”

“Sure, Shug. Just let me leave my card.” Les opens the leather pouch hanging from his belt and pulls out a business card. “I’d be honored to come speak to you,” he says, handing the card to the
South Park
fan. “It reads Satya Nichols, but this is the number where you can reach me. I’m running Satya’s store for a while.”

“Hey, I know that place,” says a redheaded girl, leaning sideways to inspect the card. “Our drama teacher sometimes gets costumes there.”

“Oh, we have more than just costumes. We have all kinds of clothes. Speaking of which…” Les cranes his head and studies the nearby snack bar line.

For a nanosecond, I have no idea what he’s looking at. And then I see her. Coming out of the frozen-yogurt station is Shanna, wearing the gently used jeans she just bought at our store.

Shanna spots Les, realizes he recognizes her, and freezes. Since she typically sports a deer-staring-down-a-diesel expression, no one else picks up that something is wrong. But I notice her hands tighten around the rim of her tray, making her drink wobble ever so slightly.

Les’s grin broadens and I see his hand start to lift. But before he can wave to her, I grab his arm and tug it backward.

“Dad!” I shout.

That gets his attention. I never call him that. His head instantly snaps toward me, his mouth half-open in a Penny-like stare.

“Um…Rosie’s looking for you,” I mumble. Over his shoulder I see Shanna scurry to the safety of the popular crowd.

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“Righty-ho.” Les turns and bows to his newfound fans. “Always a pleasure to meet fellow thespians.

And remember…‘some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.’”

“Bye, Les!” they call after us as we walk back to our table.