Nice and Mean (20 page)

And suddenly, I was sick of being that person. Why did I care if people knew the names of the lunch ladies? Why did it matter to me if Rachel became dance captain, or tried to look like a model during the school day? I couldn't stand the way Rachel was being such a drama queen, but if I wouldn't even interview the person Sachi wanted me to—Sachi, who was doing me a huge favor—I was just as bad. And even though I was starting to like Sachi, I didn't want to eat lunch with her for the rest of the school year. I wasn't even really sure my parents would want to pay for Marlowe. As Elizabeth had said, it had to stop.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's do it. Let's interview your sister.”

Sachi looked at me in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I got up to throw away my tray. The ravioli was inedible, and what would I eat it with, anyway? “You're right. We can ask people about music and that other stuff. Maybe they'll say something good.”

She came up beside me and threw her tray on top of mine. “Okay. Great.”

The hallway started buzzing with the noise of people coming upstairs. The bell hadn't rung for sixth period yet, but sometimes the teachers got so sick of us in the lunchroom, they sent us upstairs early.

“Sachi!” Her friends appeared in the doorway, looking confused.

“What are you doing here?” asked the one with the black hair. “I thought you said you were helping Ms. Avery.”

“I was,” said Sachi, pressing down her tray so it didn't take up the entire garbage can.

“Then where is she?”

“I'll see you later,” I told Sachi, and hurried into the hall. Science was next, with Rachel and Addie, and I wanted to talk to both of them.

ANOTHER SACHI VIDEO
NIGHTMARE
LIFEMARE #18.0


INTERIOR. MS. AVERY'S HOMEROOM—DAY


Sachi stands at the door with Marina. Flora and Lainey appear.


FLORA


Sachi! What are you doing here?


SACHI


I'm helping Ms. Avery.


LAINEY


But Sachi . . . Ms. Avery isn't here. And Marina is. And we don't like Marina!


MARINA


I am so out of here.


“I knew it!” cried Flora. “I knew you were helping her!”

I stepped back so the kids coming into the room wouldn't trample us. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I saw you and Marina talking before,” Flora said, coming toward me. “You weren't up here doing something for Ms. Avery. You were helping Marina with her video.”

I gripped the door of the coat closet.

“Sachi, you shouldn't let her do this,” Lainey said, tugging on her necklace. “She's using you.”

Around us, kids were yelling and tossing each other soda bottles. The room was bright and the coats smelled musty, and I started to feel sick.

“She's not using me,” I said.

“Oh, come on.” Flora crossed her arms. “What, you think she's going to do something nice for you afterward? You think you guys are going to become friends? You heard what she did to Rachel Winter. And that was her friend.”

As always, I wished Flora would lower her voice. “You guys . . .” I took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something.”

“What,” said Flora, “that you and Marina are secret BFFs?”

“No.” There was some kind of dirt on the floor by the closet, and I crunched it beneath my feet. “I got kicked out of Video too, and Marina and I are working on our video together.”

“What?” Flora looked outraged.

“What?” said Lainey. “It's not because of her video, is it? You didn't have anything to do with that.”

I shook my head.

“Folks?” The whole room stopped and looked at Ms.
Avery, whose voice boomed into the room. “This is unacceptable. If I need to come late to class because I'm in a meeting, you should be mature enough to handle that.
Sit
down, take out your books, and if I see any soda in the next fifteen seconds, you will be in my office after school, stuffing envelopes.”

I turned to Flora and Lainey. “Can we please talk about this later? The bell is going to ring in three minutes, and I still need to get my books for English.”

“Just tell us what's going on,” Flora urged.

“My classroom, my time.” Ms. Avery was passing out papers and paused to whip someone's baseball cap off his head. “Doesn't matter if the bell has rung or not.”

“You guys,” I pleaded with Flora and Lainey. Ms. Avery was the last person I wanted to be mad at me.

“Come
on
,” said Flora.

I threw my hands into the air. “Fine.” I kept my voice low in the hopes that Ms. Avery wouldn't notice us at the side of the room. “My parents didn't want me to take Video, but I signed up anyway, and when they found out, they said I had to take Test Prep, so Marina and I are working on a video. Okay? It's going well and she's not using me, so can we please just go to class?”

“Wait,” said Lainey, “you lied to your parents?”

“I—” I hadn't expected her to say anything about my parents, of all things. “Yeah.”

“Did they freak out?”

“Well—”

Beside Lainey, Flora was shaking her head. “You're so different this year,” she said.

I looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“The video about clothes? Making a video with Marina? You never would have done
that
last year.”

“Girls,” said Ms. Avery, “it's time for class. Sachi, we're starting. You need to take your seat.”

“She's bad news, I told you!” called Alex, and the whole class laughed. Oh! Now, of all times?

“I just have to get my things,” I said breathlessly, heading for the door.

“Make it quick,” said Ms. Avery, who was glaring at everybody for silence.

I stalked out of the room so fast, my shins burned.

How dare Flora accuse me of changing! She was the one who was acting so different this year, pretending her parents let her do whatever she wanted, and getting obsessed with looking cool. She was the one who needed to go back to the way things were.

My heart thumped as I fought my way to my locker,
Lainey and Flora following at my heels. Could I tell her that? We'd been best friends for four years, and we'd never had a fight. But if I could stand up to Marina Glass, surely I could talk to Flora.

We reached my locker. I turned around, my stomach rolling with nerves.

“Flora,” I said, “I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the video, but maybe it's because you're always talking about how pathetic my life is.”

“What?” cried Flora. “What are you talking about?”

“When you were like, ‘Oh, Sachi can't wear this necklace,' or ‘Sachi can't go downtown,' or ‘Sachi can't talk to a boy.' How do you think that makes me feel? Especially when you say that in front of other people? Your parents have rules too, but I'm not telling people about them. So please don't tell other people things about me, especially if they're not even true.”

Flora opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. “I was just—,” she began. “I wasn't
trying
to—,” she said. Then she let out a breath of air and looked at the floor. “Okay,” she muttered, “I won't.”

The first bell rang. I realized my heart was pounding.

“I'm sorry I'm working with someone who was mean to you,” I told Lainey. “But if it makes you feel any better, she
told me she was sorry for making fun of your shirt.”

“Oh.” Lainey shrugged. “That's okay. Just as long as you don't make fun of it in your video.”

“Of course I wouldn't!”

“I hope you're going to talk about my bicycle-chain necklace in your video,” Flora put in. “Because I heard Marina saying that this year bicycle-chain necklaces are
hot
.”

I looked at Flora, about to say, “Are you
serious
?” Then I realized she was grinning, and the three of us burst out laughing.

“Sachi Parikh, Flora Jasari, and Lainey Freeman-Reese.” Ms. Avery's voice echoed down the hall. “You have exactly thirty-seven seconds . . .”

“Sorry!” we cried, and ran to get our books.

INTERIOR. SCIENCE LAB—DAY


MARINA


Rachel, I'm sorry I made that video.


RACHEL


You're sorry? Who cares? I made the website during lunch, and everybody already hates you even more.


VIDEO NIGHTMARE 19.1


MARINA


Rachel, I'm sorry I made that video.


RACHEL


What? I'm sorry, did somebody just say something? Oh, I guess it was just a really strong wind.


VIDEO NIGHTMARE 19.2


MARINA


Rachel, I'm sorry I made that video.


RACHEL


I'll show you sorry. I'll—


“Okay, everyone.” Ms. Lewis's voice broke through my thoughts, and I almost jumped out of my seat. I could see what Sachi meant when she'd talked about playing videos in your head. Once you started, it was hard to stop.

“Okay,” said Ms. Lewis, “time to set up for that bell-jar planting experiment you read about last night. Partners, go to the supply area and get—”

“Ms. Lewis!” Rachel called out without raising her hand. “I need to change partners! Addie and I want to be partners now.”

“Oh, we want to change too!” It was that guy Noah who'd been in Video with me. “Me and Javon want to swap with Dardan and Jack.”

“Guys!” Ms. Lewis held up her hand. “We're not switching lab partners today. Deal with it, and get to your stations.”

“She thinks she's so cute,” Rachel muttered under her breath.

I let Rachel stay at the lab table talking to Addie while I loaded up the grocery basket with supplies—plant, trowel,
soil, washcloth, empty pot, and something that looked like the glass top of a cake platter. When I got back to our table and started unloading, Rachel turned around and slid her books to the side—not to help me, I was sure, but to make sure she didn't get dirt on her notebook.
When you take out the little shovel,
I told myself,
you have to say it. Okay, no —when you take out the dirt, you have to say it. Okay, right—when you put the pot on the counter . . .

“Rachel,” I blurted out, “I'm sorry about the video.”

Watching me unload the basket, she snorted. “Yeah, of course you're sorry now. You just don't want me to put your White Pages notes online.”

So she
was
planning to do that. Just like on the lunch line, everybody's voices got louder, and the room seemed to grow and shrink at the same time. I picked up the little plant, feeling the thin plastic baggie crinkle in my hand.

“I don't want you to post the notes,” I admitted, setting the plant next to the pot. “But they kind of made me see your point about the video—that it's not, like, fun to think about everybody laughing at you. I mean, you should wear what you want to wear. And I shouldn't have made a video about it.”

She looked down her nose at me. “You were going to show people that awful video, and you dragged Addie into it. Apology
not
accepted.”

Ugh! Why didn't she want to make up? Elizabeth was right: Putting up a website would only make things worse. I didn't want worse—I wanted to end the war. I grabbed the little plant and started massaging the roots, trying to loosen them up the way Ms. Lewis had shown us. What could I say to get Rachel to call it quits?

“I should warn you,” I said, “I'm doing serious detention for the video. You'll probably get it too if you put up that website.”

Rachel untied the soil bag. “My parents won't care.”

How could I have forgotten that? “You're lucky,” I said, watching her grab the trowel. “My parents are majorly mad.”

She shrugged.

Okay. Should I keep telling her nice things? “Hey, did you see?” I asked. “That Hula-hoop belt you have was on
Modelicious
the other night.”

She dug into the soil. “I saw.”

“I guess you knew something I didn't.”

Rachel dumped the soil into the pot. “I guess so.”

Argh! I was getting nowhere! Did I really want to be friends with Rachel so badly that I would let her keep insulting me? This was torture!

I suddenly noticed someone giggling nearby, and looked across the lab table to see the annoying girls from my math
class huddling together and whispering. “I heard there were barfing noises!” one of them said, and the other one snickered. They noticed I had heard them, and pretended to be busy filling up their pot. Next to me Rachel was doing the same thing and biting her giant lips.

Wow. I didn't know that people had heard about the video outside of our group. So that's what it would have been like, I thought, if I'd shown it: kids I didn't even know having their laughs.

I needed to try again. If Rachel posted the notes, I would just want to get back at her, and it would keep going until everyone thought we were a joke.

“If you don't like
them
laughing,” I said, “wait until you're in detention. There are these eighth-grade guys in there, and every day they've been like, ‘What did you do? What did you do?' And when I see them in the halls, they're like, ‘She's the bad one!' ”

Rachel's eyes flicked toward me. I could tell she was thinking,
Really? I don't want that
. At least that's what I hoped she was thinking.

There were no eighth-grade boys in detention. But I knew she cared about eighth-grade boys in general. And if a little story was what it took . . . “If you really want to post the notes, go ahead,” I said. “I probably deserve it. I just
want you to know what you're in for.”