Mia a Matter of Taste (11 page)

But I felt completely humiliated. “Can you please get my backpack? I'm going to stay in here until the bell rings.”

Katie sighed. “Okay. But you're being silly.”

As soon as Katie left, I felt kind of dumb hiding out in the bathroom, but when I thought about going out and facing Chris, I just couldn't do it. While I waited, I decided to make a list on my phone, so that it would never happen again.

1. No food that can get stuck in teeth. Soft food and liquids only.

2. No food with color.

3. No smiling, ever.

Yes, it was drastic. But I was determined that I was never, ever going to be embarrassed like that again.

For the rest of the day, I walked around without smiling or opening my mouth. I talked in class only when I was called on. I didn't relax until soccer
practice after school, when I was allowed to take out my braces.

That night at dinner, Eddie made spaghetti with tomato sauce.

“It's Eddie Spaghetti night!” he joked, like he always does.

I was about to dig in when I remembered my rules, and I stopped. The tomato sauce was bright red.

“Is everything okay?” Mom asked, watching me.

I kept thinking. The spaghetti smelled delicious, and I could brush my teeth right after, so I decided it was okay to eat. Lunch, tomorrow, was another matter.

“Mom, can I have vanilla yogurt for lunch tomorrow?” I asked.

Mom looked concerned. “Are your teeth still hurting, honey?”

“A little,” I lied. “Would that be okay?”

Mom nodded. “I'll run out and get some after dinner.”

I felt a little guilty making Mom run out like that, but not too guilty. After what happened with Chris, I was not going to take any chances!

F
or the next couple of days I got really good at sticking to my list. I made sure not to smile or open my mouth when I laughed. I stayed quiet in class, and I didn't even talk much at lunch.

At lunch on the first day I vowed to keep to my list, Katie, Alexis, and Emma spent the whole time trying to convince me that things weren't so bad.

“I saw Chris smiling at you all during social studies,” Katie said.

“He's probably remembering my giant green teeth and laughing,” I said glumly.

“If he noticed, he would have said something,” Alexis pointed out, trying to use logic. “You should just go up and talk to him today like nothing's wrong.”

“If anything, he probably thinks it's weird you ran away from him like that,” Emma said.

I groaned and put my head on the table. “Oh great! I totally forgot I did that. That's even
more
embarrassing!”

On Thursday at lunch, I noticed that my friends did not talk about my teeth or my whole not-smiling thing at all. Alexis started a Cupcake Club meeting instead.

“So, we're making chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cupcakes, right?” she asked. “Katie, did you get all the ingredients?”

Katie nodded. “Mom and I went shopping last night. We're all set.”

“Give me the receipt, so you can be reimbursed,” Alexis said.

“Cool,” Katie said. “Mom said we could do it at five, when she gets home. She'll order Chinese food for us.”

We all agreed that sounded good. Mom dropped me off at Katie's right at five.

“Are you going to be okay eating the Chinese food?” Mom asked. “Most of it's soft, right?”

“I guess I'll be okay,” I replied. I was glad Mom was worried about me. Most of the time it was annoying, but at times like these, it felt good that
she cared so much about me. I gave her a hug. “We're just baking tonight, so we should be done around eight.”

“Text me,” Mom said, and then I got out of the car.

When I rang the bell, Katie called to me from inside the house.

“Door's open!”

I walked inside, curious. It kind of reminded me of the time when they all surprised me by wearing glasses. And when I got into the kitchen, Alexis and Emma were already there. But nobody had on glasses. They all looked exactly the same as usual.

The weird thing was that nobody was saying anything.

“What's up?” I asked.

The girls slowly opened their mouths at the same time. Each one of them had stuff stuck in her teeth! Katie had rainbow sprinkles and icing, Emma had gummy bears, and Alexis had two long strands of licorice hanging down from her two front teeth.

I started laughing. “Get out! You guys are too much.”

“Do you like us any less?” Katie asked.

I shook my head. If anything, I loved them even more.

“Exactly!” Katie said. “So stop moping around. And start smiling again, please. We miss the old Mia.”

Katie looked so funny when she talked. “It's hard to take you seriously when you look like Rainbow Brite,” I said, giggling like crazy.

“I don't understand what's so funny,” Alexis joked as the licorice wiggled back and forth as she talked.

“Yeah, we look perfectly normal,” Emma said, giving me a big, wide, gummy bear–filled smile.

“Okay, okay, I promise!” I said. “Please get that stuff out of your teeth. It's too weird.”

“I don't know, I kind of like this look,” Katie joked. “Although if my mother sees this, she'll have me brushing my teeth ten times a day from now on.”

Soon my friends had their normal teeth back, and we got to work baking the cupcakes. We baked four dozen vanilla cupcakes, three dozen chocolate cupcakes, and two dozen strawberry cupcakes. I know that sounds like a lot, but we're used to big jobs by now. And when the oven was filled with baking cupcakes, and we had more pans of cupcakes ready to go, we sat down and ate our Chinese food.

Mrs. Brown had ordered a bunch of stuff, including wonton soup, which I love. It's meat-filled dumplings floating in a broth with green onions. For a second I thought about skipping it, so I wouldn't get green onions stuck in my teeth. And then a picture of Alexis and her licorice teeth popped into my head.

I poured myself a bowl and took a nice, big slurp with a big piece of green onion in it. Sure, it might get stuck in my teeth, but thanks to my friends, I didn't care one bit.

T
he next day we were supposed to decorate cupcakes at Katie's again, but first I had an appointment with Dr. Payne—just a quick checkup to make sure everything was okay.

When we got to her office, there was already another kid sitting there waiting. Mom frowned.

“I guess she's a little backed up,” Mom said after she signed me in. “I need to go make a call. Sit tight, and I'll be right back.”

Mom stepped into the hallway, and I sat back on the comfy light blue couch and sighed. There were a bunch of magazines on the coffee table, and I noticed the latest copy of
Teen Style
poking out from the pile. I picked it up and started flipping through it.

At least I don't need glasses to read,
I thought gratefully.

“Hey, Mia.”

I looked up to see Chris Howard standing over me. A woman I guessed was his mom was talking to the receptionist at the front desk.

“Oh, hey,” I said.

Chris sat down next to me. “Are you getting braces too?” he asked.

“I, um, I already have them,” I admitted.

“No way!” Chris said. “I never noticed. Are they invisible or something?”

Hadn't noticed? Was he kidding? So Chris hadn't noticed the spinach after all. Unbelievable. I opened my mouth to show him.

“Yeah. I got the invisible ones, so you can't really see them,” I explained.

“That is so cool,” Chris said. “I asked Dr. Payne about those, but she said they won't work on my kind of teeth. I guess I have mutant teeth or something.”

I laughed. “Your teeth look perfectly normal to me.”

“I wish,” Chris said, and I could tell he looked nervous. “So do those clear ones hurt?”

“A little, at first. But I heard it's the same with
metal ones. They hurt at first, and you can get them adjusted, but then most of the time you don't feel them.”

“That's what Dr. Payne said, but I didn't believe her,” Chris confessed.

I remembered what Emma's brother Sam had said. “Even when it hurts, it's not so bad, because you can ask for ice cream for dinner,” I told him.

Chris grinned. “That doesn't sound too bad.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, maybe I can do this.”

Chris's mom and my mom came over and then sat by us at the same time. Chris's mom is short, which was kind of funny because Chris is so tall. But I noticed they had the same green eyes.

“Mom, this is my friend Mia,” Chris said.

“I remember Mia,” Mrs. Howard said, smiling at me. “You two went to the pep rally dance together, right?”

Chris and I both nodded.

“It's nice to meet you,” Mom said, smiling and shaking Mrs. Howard's hand.

“You too,” she replied. “I'm very glad we ran into Mia today. I couldn't help overhearing their conversation. Chris was nervous, but Mia has been so helpful and reassuring. Thank you, Mia.”

I think I blushed a little, and so did Chris.

“Um, you're welcome,” I said, a little shyly.

From the corners of my eyes, I could see our moms smiling at each other.

Aaaagh! They think we're cute together!
I thought, and then, thankfully, the receptionist called my name.

The appointment was really fast. Dr. Payne said everything looked good, and I didn't have to come back for six weeks. As we left, I waved good-bye to Chris, and he smiled at me.

“Good luck,” I called. “It will be fine.”

“Thanks!” he said, but he still looked a little nervous. “Ice cream and milk shakes, right?”

“Yes!” I said. “For breakfast, lunch, and dinner!”

He grinned. “Cool. We can have ice cream together for lunch!”

Did he just say that? He did!

“Awesome!” I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. I kind of stood there for a minute, and then I realized I was just standing there grinning like an idiot. Mom was smiling really hard, like she was trying not to laugh. I gave Chris another little wave and almost ran out of the office.

Then Mom took me right to Katie's house, where Katie, Alexis, and Emma were already starting to decorate.

“We get to decorate twenty-five cupcakes each,” Alexis informed me. “We saved yours.”

She pointed to a tray on Katie's table with an assortment of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry cupcakes on it. There were bowls of icing and all the decorations we had played around with the week before, plus more.

“This is awesome!” I said, taking a seat. I picked up a bowl of icing that had been dyed blue and started to frost a vanilla cupcake with it. I thought I'd do a sky with fluffy marshmallow clouds.

“Isn't this the best?” Katie asked, making a pattern of colorful candy-coated chocolates on top of a chocolate-iced cupcake. “I think I could make a thousand of these, and they would all be different!”

“Totally,” I agreed.

We were so into what we were doing that we didn't talk much, except to show off what we had done. I decorated my cupcakes one by one and then put them in the cupcake carrier. I just had one last little cupcake left, a vanilla one. I spread some vanilla icing on top, looked at it, and then packed it.

“Aren't you going to decorate that one?” Alexis asked.

“I don't think so,” I replied. “It's ‘Come as You Are,' right? So maybe someone wants to come, you
know, plain. Like an almost-naked cupcake.”

“But you don't like plain anything!” Katie exclaimed.

“True,” I said. “But sometimes plain is all you need. No embellishment required.”

Alexis nodded. “Perfect. Now we really have something for everyone.”