Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies (10 page)

Instead of daydreaming, I should’ve been paying attention.

“Oh look, the cow chews her cud!”

I swallowed quickly, nearly choking. Lively stood next to my table, balancing a tray of french fries with one hand, pointing with the other.

“Chew, chew!” Lively chanted, snickering. Her blue earrings and barrettes glinted like ice chips in the fluorescent lights.

Where’s a lunch monitor when you need one?
I thought.

My face felt huge and hot, as though the thin layer of skin was all that kept it from bursting. The cafeteria got quiet, all nearby eighth graders openly watching Lively torment me. Philip Mikowski and Robbie Flan, fresh from the lunch line, moved closer. Behind them, I could see Sandra, a puzzled expression on her face. She walked toward the table with slow steps, like weights were tied to her feet.

“What’s the matter, cow, cat’s got your tongue?” Lively said, and she caught sight of my drink. “Ooh, I see, you’re a cow-nibal!” She snatched my skim milk carton. “The Skinny Cow,” she read off the label. “You can’t be serious. Trying to get skinny, cow?”

Now that she was close enough to hear Lively, I could see Sandra trying to edge away. I returned to my salad, fighting the fresh paper cut on my heart.

“Stop it,” I mumbled, forcing breath from my chest, which felt like a cow was sitting on it. “Give it back.” I couldn’t bring myself to look up from the red and white checked tablecloth. I didn’t want to see how my supposed best friend saw me.
This really can’t be happening,
I kept telling myself, more concerned with Sandra’s actions than Lively’s words.
She is not just going to walk away while Lively does this to me.
But she never came to the table. The slice on my heart settled into a throb.

“What, cow?” Lively spit out the words in tight bursts, like cherry pits.

“Give it back. Give me my milk back.” Instead of looking up, I studied my spinach salad. One of the pieces was soggy dark green around the edges.

“Make some more,” Lively said, and turned to walk away. The boys hooted and mooed.

Heat rose in me like a volcano.
What tropical island tribe made
her
their queen?
I was sick of everything. Sick of being a dishcloth, sick of worrying about what I was eating, sick of waiting to lose Miss HuskyPeach, sick of listening to Lively’s trash talk, and especially sick of watching Sandra follow Lively around like an adoring groupie.

The volcano in me erupted. “Give it back,” I said, spewing hot lava, and said the worst word I could.

“You go, Tubby Tostada!” Someone—I think Robbie Flan—cackled.

Lively didn’t miss a step. She turned her head and laughed.

“Nice try, fat girl.” She tossed my milk carton in the nearest garbage can and never looked back.

All the heat generated by my anger disappeared, leaving me feeling like a deflated balloon. I slumped in my seat, appetite gone, and wished I were living some other person’s life.

 

“What the heck happened over here?” Millie arrived at the table. Not even her burger and fries were appealing after that exchange.

“Lively,” I responded, some of my anger returning. “And Sandra. She walked away when Lively was—being Lively,” I finished, unable to think of a way to describe the awful scene. I picked up my fork, poking the air with it as I spoke. “I can’t believe she did that. I mean, she just
walked away.
Who does that to their best friend?” My face burned like it was on fire.

“Celeste,” Millie said, her voice low, “Sandra hasn’t been
any
kind of friend lately, let alone a best friend.” She took a bite of her burger and waited for my response.

Millie was right. Sandra had stopped calling, wasn’t interested in hanging out with me, and certainly wasn’t interested in anything going on in my life, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it. I was still hoping that the Secret Plot to Destroy Lively did, in fact, exist, but if it did, I was the only one plotting. Either that, or it was a
really
big secret. So big, and so secret, Sandra didn’t know about it. That was highly unlikely.

“What do I do?” I said.

She swallowed. “Talk to her.”

“Lively is in the only two classes we have together, Language Arts and gym, and gets in between us when I try. Like Sandra can’t talk to me herself.” I tapped my fork against the edge of the table. “I can’t believe she did that,” I said again. The volcano in me was rumbling, coming back to life. “I do have to talk to her.”

Millie nodded, encouraging. She chomped a french fry in two.

“I need to know why she’s being such a jerk to me. I haven’t done anything to her.”

She kept nodding, taking another bite of her burger.

“And we don’t have any more classes together today.” The fork clacked a quick beat.

“Yes,” Millie said, her burger gone. “That’s why you need to—”

“Go get her right now,” I finished, dropping my fork and getting to my feet. Mount Celeste was ready to blow.

“That’s not what I meant!” called Millie, but I barely heard her. I was already on my way to Lively’s table.

Parked in the exact center of the caf, Lively’s group of girls surrounded her like ants around a cookie crumb.
And ants can be stomped on,
I reminded myself.
And the crumb gets tossed.
All the girls—there were five or six of them—wore their hair in high ponytails and dressed in skirts that matched their shirts. They coordinated their barrettes and their earrings.
With those sparkling rhinestones and glittery jewelry, it’s amazing that they’re not blinded by the glare from their accessories.
The boys sitting at the table appeared mesmerized by the shiny fake jewels.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Carlee Morgenstern said to Lively. “I would’ve been terrified.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Lively responded, shaking her head. “It’s about being confident. Thinking you can do anything, no matter what. You really could do it,” she finished. After getting the advice, Carlee smiled like she’d just won a prize.

Some prize,
I thought.
Lame advice from Lively.

At first, I didn’t spot Sandra. Her back was to me. As I got closer, though, I caught sight of her brown ponytail bobbing in the sea of blond. She was laughing about something, next to Robbie.

“Isn’t that funny?” she said to him in a high, fake voice I’d never heard her use before. For some reason, that made me even angrier.
How can she laugh at anything when she was so mean to me?
I stopped behind Sandra’s chair.

Robbie shrugged. “I don’t get it,” he muttered into his sandwich.
Couldn’t she see that he didn’t even
like
her?

Conversation at the table dried up quicker than a puddle in the desert. Everyone’s eyes turned to me.

“Sandra,” I said, biting into her name like it was a crunchy french fry, “I need to talk to you.”

Before she could even turn around, Lively broke in. “She doesn’t talk to animals, cow. Shoo! Go back to your pen.” Robbie laughed.

Evidently that’s the stuff that he finds funny.
Giggles swept around the table. Below me, Sandra’s shoulders bunched around her ears.

I ignored the laughter. “Sandra.”

“I
heard
you,” she barked, in a gruff voice she’d never used with me. “Back up so I can get out.”

My face, already hot, turned into a furnace. I stumbled back a few steps. The pressure of anger leaked away.
Why did I think this was a good plan? What was I going to say to her? “Why won’t you be my friend anymore?” “Why are you so mean to me?”
My heart hammered in fear. This conversation was turning into a Very Bad Idea.

“You’re not talking to that cow, are you?” Lively said. Her mouth opened in a big, fake O of shock. “I didn’t even know cows
could
talk. You must be, like, Doctor Doolittle.” She whistled “If I Could Talk to the Animals,” a song that we learned in elementary school. The ants ate this up like it was their last meal. Philip and Robbie were laughing so hard, I thought they were going to fall out of their seats. I turned my back, disgusted, and trying not to let Lively see that her words were chipping away at me.

Her whistling definitely got to Sandra, though. Her face twitched in about twenty different directions, like she didn’t know what expression to make, so she tried to make them all.

“Get
away
from here,” she hissed at me through clenched teeth. Her soft words tore into me, doing more damage than any of Lively’s harsh ones. “I’ll meet you outside the girls’ bathroom in H-wing at the end of next period.” She pushed past me to dump her tray. As she did, I saw the red barrettes holding back the shorter hairs that wouldn’t fit into her ponytail. They matched her shiny ruby earrings.

 

“How’d it go?” Millie asked when I got back to my seat at the rear of the room. At the next table, the kids went quiet. I glared in their direction. A few blushed and tried to resume conversations.

I turned back to Millie. What could I say?

“Awful.” Then I filled her in.

“At least she wants to meet you,” she said. “That’s something.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think there’s much ‘wanting to’ at all,” I said. “When I showed up, she didn’t have a choice. It was the only way she could get rid of me.” My anger replaced with sadness, I stuffed my (uneaten) lunch back into my bag, propped my elbows on the table, and sighed. Millie watched me with sympathy.

Mount Celeste had just gone dormant.

ABOUT TEN MINUTES before the end of science, I asked Mr. Regan for a bathroom pass.

“Can’t you wait?” he said. “Class will be over soon. You can go during the passing period.” We were doing a lab on Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy, so the class was dropping various-sized objects into fish tanks and trying to calculate volume. At least, that was what was supposed to be happening. From what I could tell, most boys in the lab groups were splashing one another or threatening to drop the girls’ notebooks into the water. Alan Okuri, one of the smartest boys in school, had finished and was whispering with Mike Arroyo. Alan nudged Mike and they both peeked in our direction. Alan’s direct stare made me blush. Millie and I had also finished the experiment and were trying to figure out what I should say to Sandra while watching the boys. So far, we hadn’t come up with anything. Alan jostled Mike with an elbow. He slid off his lab stool.

“Well, I kind of can’t,” I said, turning back to Mr. Regan. Unable to figure out how to end the sentence, I raised my eyebrows at Millie.
How can I get out of here?
Regan was young, new, and hated to give out bathroom passes.

“Mr. Regan, Celeste has been having cramps since lunch,” she said, giving him a “you-know-what-I’m-talking-about” look. Mike, headed in our direction, slunk back to his seat.

Regan made the STOP gesture with his hands. “Fine, Ms. Taposok. That’s enough.” Then, to me, “Back before the bell and turn in your lab report on your way out.” I nodded and offered him a weak smile.

“Did you have to say
that
?” I whispered to Millie when he left.

“Got you out, didn’t it?” she said. “Go. Good luck.” She shooed me to the front of the room. Moos and whispers of “Skinny Cow” followed as I squeezed between the desks occupied by Lively’s friends. A couple of kids watched me with pity.

I took the pass—a plastic thighbone labeled
Femur (always trying to teach us something, isn’t he?)
—and moved as fast as my short legs would take me across the building to H-wing. The closer I got, the heavier my heart pounded. The bone was getting slick in my right hand.
What if she’s not there? What if she is? What am I going to say to her? Why did I do this?
My empty belly gurgled. I felt like Piggy fumbling around for his glasses on the beach in
Lord of the Flies
.

When I turned the corner into H-wing, I saw Sandra leaning against the wall outside the bathroom door. I hadn’t realized how much she’d changed in just two weeks. Her red tank top matched her red and white skirt. Before Lively, Sandra would never wear a tank top to school, let alone a skirt. Soccer shorts and T-shirts were her, well, uniform. The only shoes she owned were either sneakers or cleats. The red strappy sandals on her feet had to belong to her sister, Sarah.

Or Lively,
Red Bathing Suit Woman whispered.

I slowed. Sandra pushed the bathroom door open, holding it for me.

I entered without a word. Sandra followed, then leaned against one of the sinks, legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded in front of her chest. I stood across from her, back against the mirror, and tapped my leg with Femur. For what felt like an hour, we stayed like that, watching each other.

“Hey,” I began, not sure what I was going to say, mouth as dry as pocket lint. I kept my gaze on the sink to her left. “I just want to know what’s going on. What happened?”

“What
happened
?” she said. Her words were as cold as the sundaes we both loved. “What happened was that you were totally embarrassing at lunch. I can’t believe you would
do
that to me!”

The Conversation Bus passed my stop. I shook my head and forced my eyes up to meet hers. “What I did to
you
? What are you talking about? You were the one who just
walked away
when—”

“Whatever.” Sandra flipped one hand like she was brushing away a fly. “You don’t get it, Celeste. Lively is cool. She says mean things sometimes, but she’s also really nice and funny when we hang out. I
like
hanging out with her. And so does Robbie Flan.”

Someone replaced the bathroom floor with a boat deck, because all of a sudden I couldn’t keep my balance. Pain and fear forgotten, I stopped tapping and put my free hand against the cold tile wall to steady myself. “You
do
?”

“I do,” she repeated. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t hang out too. It just means that we’ll have to hang out together . . . outside of school.” A spot above my head held her attention.