Nice and Mean

Jessica Leader

 

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ALADDIN M!X
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Aladdin M!X edition June 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Jessica Leader
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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Designed by Mike Rosamilia
The text of this book was set in Garamond.
Manufactured in the United States of America/0410 OFF
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Control Number 2009937536
ISBN 978-1-4169-9160-1
ISBN 978-1-4424-0669-8 (eBook)

 

For Mom, Mandy, Tamar, and Adrien,

who make everything in life even better

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  

I am lucky to have had the insight and support of many wonderful people during the writing of
Nice and Mean
. I would like to thank the following ones especially:

Suma Chennubhotla, Lakshmi Kartha, and Sherrie Khadanga read the manuscript and showed me my characters in a new light. Similarly, Julia Morrison's expertise on video making taught me much more than where to indent.

My critique group, Darcy Cleaver Maloney, Jennifer McMaster, and Emily Wheeler, provided helpful feedback, kept me laughing at the Monkey House, and gave me a writing home in Louisville.

The community at the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults taught me what it means to be a writer and supplied encouragement and laughs, especially when I should have been in bed. I am also grateful to my loving and supportive classmates, the Super-Secret Society of Quirk and Quill, and to Gwenda Bond and Varian Johnson, for their ever-ready guidance through the publication process.

My brilliant, generous, hilarious Vermont College advisers,Julie Larios, Rita Williams-Garcia, Tina Wynne-Jones, and Margaret Bechard, gave me one of the most important gifts of all: helping me tell my story. Margaret's direction on
Nice and Mean
in particular—tireless, thorough, tough, and reassuring—merits a great honking truckload of bonbons.

Great leaping and cheering thanks to my editor, Kate Angelella, for turning me into an author, sending me purple e-mails full of smart ideas, and generally making the entire process fun. Much gratitude also to my agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, whose insight on matters large and small steadies my hand as I go.

Thanks to my former students at West Side Collaborative in NYC and St. Francis in KY for being fun, smart, inspiring, and generally lovable. If my characters display one-third of your moxie (look it up), I will have succeeded in depicting middle-school life.

Two lifelong role models, Suzy Thompson and Joan Gardiner, have always encouraged me in my writing and graciously read many two-pound packages over the years when they had lots of other things to do. Thanks.

Amanda Leader, Jessica Green, Jessica Freireich, Susie Jakes, Tamar Paull, Maia Miller, Kate Lancaster, Julia Morrison, Susan Loucks, and Monica Flory—I am so proud
to have you as friends. I often thought of you when I wondered what Sachi would do next.

My mother, Susan Leader, has always supported my dreams of writing, and for that I am truly grateful.

Thanks and love beyond all measure to my partner, Adrien-Alice Hansel, for her narrative genius, countless hours talking over the story, and unwavering understanding and support. As it turns out, Frances the Badger was sometimes wrong: Things
are
very good around here.

* Most Suspicious Behavior: Rachel Winter

A tinfoil shirt, a popularity poll. What exactly is Rachel up to?

* Worst Mother: Bianca Glass, a.k.a. Mom

Those pants? That attitude? This mother's truly in a category by herself.

When I realized I was about to flip through the
Seventeen
Back-to-School Fashions for the third time that afternoon, I slammed the magazine shut and hurled it across the room. It flew through the air and landed against the garbage can with a big loud smack.

Exactly.

Where were my friends? Play practice ended at five. Even adding time for Rachel to do an extra shimmy, Elizabeth and Addie to straighten chairs, and the three of them to snag snacks, they should've gotten here twenty minutes ago. And I should've been snacking with them, not sitting alone on my bed like someone who forgot to order a life.

I got up to grab my magazine, since my ninja throwing-moves had bent the cover. I couldn't believe how the play had turned into such a time suck. Elizabeth was the only one with a real part—did all of them really need to spend three afternoons a week in that sweaty drama basement? I had no desire to join the
Grease
cult—they'd already started quoting the songs so often that I'd had to tell them, “Hold the cheese, this is not Burger King.” But if I'd known that my only company would be the blast of the AC and the thump of my iTunes, I wouldn't have blown off the audition so hard. How was I supposed to know that the lines in the play weren't the same as in the movie, or that they'd make us sing alone in front of everybody? Why hadn't anybody told me these things?

Ding-dong
.

Took them long enough. I threw my magazine on the bed and ran down the hall to open the door.

“Marina, darling!” Rachel struck a pose in the doorway.

“Um . . . hey.” I couldn't decide which was weirder—the
drama-queen voice or her new getup. Today's silver shirt had already been a strange choice for a Wednesday, but now she had piled her long black curls on top of her head like she was about to walk a runway.

“Hey, Marina.” Elizabeth gave me a hug, and I breathed in her sweet, flowery smell, which has been the same since second grade. When we first started having sleepovers, I used every soap and shampoo in her bathroom, trying to find that exact scent, but I never could.

We'd barely let go before Addie cried, “Reener!”—then strangled me and bonked me with her grocery bag. Four bottles of Diet Dr Pepper and one package of Mint Milanos straight to the shoulder blade.

“Ow!” I rubbed my back. “Hey, careful with the Pepper.”

Rachel slipped into the apartment, laughing. “Nice one, Addie,” she said.

Hunh? She and Addie were usually BFFs.

“Sorry!” Addie cried. She's half-Chinese, with freckles on her wide cheeks, and when they puff out, she reminds me of a sad puppy. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said as she stepped past me. “Seriously.” It's too easy to make Addie feel bad. Even Rachel, her best friend, wanted to vote her Biggest Plebe in our online poll—“plebe” after the word for commoner—in social studies last
year.

“Sorry we're late,” Elizabeth said, following Addie inside. “People kept fooling around while we were learning the dance, so Ms. Mancini kept us after five.”

“Oh.” I led them into the kitchen, the only place my mother would let us drink soda. “Were you late? I didn't notice.”

“Well,” said Rachel, “we were actually late for two reasons.” She giggled.