Queen of Likes (19 page)

“It's never happened before,” says a boy in front of me with a crew cut. I think his name is Charlie.

“I can't believe it,” says his friend.

“It's because of that exchange student. He won the hot dog–eating contest by a long shot and he happens to be a sixth grader. Even though, technically, I think the guy should be an eighth grader.”

All kinds of comments surround me. We lost. But the eighth grade lost too. Suddenly, from across the gym, I feel Auggie's stare. He mouths, “Too bad,” and shrugs.

I mouth back, “I know.” Ella turns around and our eyes meet. She sees me looking at Auggie and Auggie looking at me. And now I'm making a face at him.

And he's making a face at me. And we're both sort of laughing.

I thought he would be superangry at losing, but he doesn't look that mad. And neither am I.

Auggie throws his cardboard megaphone into the air.

Sometimes life is stranger than any book or movie or TV show.

The amazing thing is that right after school, Dad lets me go to the drugstore and make a disc of all my photos and download them onto his laptop. Then I make some photo posters.

Later I'm nibbling on some pumpkin seeds when Toby dramatically flops on the couch in the family room. “What's the matter?” I ask.

He moans. “Bryce is sick. He was supposed to come over today. It's not fair.” He slumps down further on the couch. “Nothing in my life is going the right way.” I know the feeling, but I don't say this out loud.

“C'mon. We're going to the park. We'll take Lucky for a walk.” At the mention of his name, Lucky pops out of his dog bed.

Toby's forehead crinkles. “We are?” He peers outside. “It's raining.”

“So? When has that ever stopped us?”

I grab our raincoats and snap on Lucky's leash. We bike to the park with Lucky and I put down my hood, tucking my camera on the inside of my coat. Fat raindrops slide down my cheek and slip down my neck.

Taking out my camera, I stand under a shelter. Toby jumps in even more puddles. It's just a light drizzle now. I play with distance. I put the soccer ball down and focus on him, messing with the depth of field. That's moving around the aperture, which is the opening and closing of the lens. The background is blurry and only the soccer ball is in focus. Then I adjust the aperture some more. Each time I snap, the background becomes sharper and sharper. On the next nondrizzle day, I want to take a photo of the moon as it rises over Mount Hood. I'd make the moon clear and the snow-capped mountain dreamlike in the background.

“What are you doing?” asks Toby.

“Nothing.”

“I want to do nothing,”

“I've got an idea.” I direct Toby to jump and take photos of him. Playing around again with the depth of field, I decide I like it best when I can focus on Toby and everything in the background goes blurry. I focus on what's important, what's right in front of me.

On the way back I spot Ella riding her bike on the path by the grove of trees inside the park. From across the street I see that she's got on her backpack and she's riding toward the school. I tell Toby to go home with Lucky and that I will be back soon. I suddenly, urgently need to talk to Ella. On my bike, I race back to the park to catch up.

The sun stretches through the clouds even though it's misting.

It's so beautiful I want to take a photo.

But I don't have time.

There's a dad kicking a soccer ball to his kid and an older lady walking her yappy little dogs. They bark at a jogger as she passes by.

“No, Fifi,” the lady says in a tiny little voice, like she's talking to a little kid.

I see Ella. Yes, I beat her. I figure she has to hop off her bike and walk around the puddles. But she stays on her bike as she passes the little dogs that look like stuffed animals but think they are wolves.

Fifi lunges for Ella's tire.

“No, Fifi,” says the lady in her small voice.

She's so busy saying no to Fifi that the other dog, who she calls Muffin, is growling at Ella.

“Hey!” I call out, but it's too late.

Ella's bike swerves, skidding on a rock. She puts her feet down just in time. “I almost ran over your dog,” she says, out of breath.

The lady steps daintily down the path and picks up her dog. It's still barking and growling. “You should go slower.”

“They need to go to obedience school or something,” snaps Ella. She glances over at me but doesn't wave.

“We're working on that.” The lady murmurs something like “Bad Muffin” to her dog, and then strides away with the two dogs yanking on their leashes, desperate to attack Ella.

Ella pedals away hard but her bike is turned funny. She's got her head down and her bike gets stuck in a puddle. She flies off the bike. It slaps on top of her. Her backpack flips upside down. Colored pens and art things tumble into the mud.

I pedal up to Ella. “Are you okay?” I hop off my bike and lift hers off of her. “Those dogs should be registered lethal weapons.”

Ella winces as she tries to stands up, and immediately falls back down.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“My ankle. I can't put any weight on it.”

“Maybe you sprained it.” I collect all her drawing pads, wipe them off as best I can, and stick them inside her backpack.

She glances at her bike. The gears are off the chains and she's rubbing her ankle. “It really hurts.” She grimaces.

“It could be broken. Here, lean on me and we can hop to my house.”

Ella shakes her head. “I can't. I'm supposed to be decorating the gym. Right now. I'm seven minutes late.” She looks down toward her pocket. “Where's my phone?”

Then her eyes travel two feet ahead. And my eyes travel two feet ahead. And there is her phone, or at least what was her phone. The screen is so shattered it looks like a spiderweb. “I can't believe this! My mom's going to kill me.”

“Maybe just the screen's broken.” I pick it up and push on the button. Miraculously, her phone turns on. “See, it's fine.”

But Ella's not smiling. She's sort of sniffling as she points to something across from the rock. It's a mud puddle, and inside of it sit all of the stars and moons that Ella has made. They are normal-looking, just like I suggested. Rolls of yellow streamers, out of their plastic bags, are also sopping wet.

“Oh no!” she cries.

“Maybe they can dry,” I say.

Ella blinks back tears. “The dance starts in three hours. We started decorating yesterday afternoon, but these are the finishing touches. Everything is ruined.”

Ella hobbles toward the decorations, grimacing. “Oh my gosh. I can't believe this!”

“Let's make sure you're okay first and then worry about the decorations,” I say. The rain hisses and fat drops splash onto my cheek. “We should call your parents.”

Tears flow out of Ella's eyes. “We can't. My dad's away on a trip. He's in Phoenix. And my mom is at the gym. So she won't even pick up.” Ella's face is streaked with mud and rain and tears. She sniffles and wipes her eyes on her sleeve. She's wearing a nice dress for the dance. Or, it was nice.

“I'll call my dad,” I say in a hopeful voice. “He's home and only a few houses away. He'll come with the car.” I take Ella's phone, since I left Flippie at home, and call.

“Sorry,” says Ella, even as she winces.

“For what?”

“For not . . .being there.”

“It's okay, I get it.”

I really, really, really want to ask Ella about what happened earlier. Why she was so upset in the bathroom, but it isn't the right moment.

So I call my dad and he immediately answers. “Dad,” I say. “It's Karma.”

“What's wrong?” asks Dad.

“I'm in the park. Ella fell. She might have broken her ankle or something. She was on her bike and her parents aren't home. . . .”

Dad tells me he'll be right over, and that Mom's home and will stay with Toby.

“He'll be here in three minutes,” I say as I collect the wet decorations and dump them in a nearby trash can.

“I knew already,” Ella whispers.

“What? That my dad could come?”

She shakes her head. “The only reason I'm cochair was because of you.”

“What are you talking about? That's not true.”

“What you said on Monday. It was all true.
You're
the one they wanted. They knew you could get everyone involved. I'm just good with colored pencils.”

“You're not just good. You're amazing. You're the best. You're professional,” I argue. “What's crazy is thinking that Bailey and the Bees wouldn't get right away how awesome you are. You didn't even need me as cochair. I probably just made everything worse.”

“That's not completely true. Okay, maybe, kind of.” Smiling weakly, Ella stands up and limps toward her bike. “Ow,” she groans.

“Don't try to move, Ella. You could do some serious damage.”

Ella wipes her eyes. “I hate being mad at you. Really, really hate it.”

“And I wish I had borrowed someone else's phone, like Auggie's. So his would have been locked up, not yours, and we wouldn't have this fight,” I reply.

“Speaking of which, he's been driving me crazy asking about you, Karma.”

“Why? Because he wants to hear the details of my lock-up?”

Ella shakes her head. “It's more like he's obsessed with you. Have you noticed he can't stop looking at you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“He's just an insensitive, annoying, hyper ukulele-playing pest. He's waiting to figure out when he can photo bomb me next.”

“Hello.” Ella waves her hand in my face. “Are you dumb? Auggie likes you.”

“What? He hates me.”

“Then why did he ask me when the invitations to your bat mitzvah are coming? Huh? And whether he's invited and whether there's going to be a party?” A huge grin spreads across Ella's face. “And if you were coming to the Spirit Dance tonight?” Nobody asks people to dances at Merton, but if someone asks about you, then it usually means that they will ask you to dance a slow dance.

“Really? REALLY?” I close my eyes and imagine Auggie as someone who would want to dance with me. And as someone danceable. And I kind of almost see it. Maybe the same way that Ella can see the cuteness in Milton P. “So I guess there are some things I don't get.”

Ella's smile gets even bigger, if that's possible. “Me too,” she agrees.

“Like Milton P. is not a spy. He's just a boy.”

“Yeah, a strange but cute boy,” says Ella. “So you know that Auggie posted a video called ‘The Girl with Leopard Hair'? It's got that photo of you and he's strumming his ukulele.”

“What?” It's like I've been living on another planet—my own life. “Do I want to know?”

Ella picks up her phone, thumbs through it, and hands it to me. The song is about a girl who wakes up with spots all over her hair, and how it's school picture day. I'm popping my hand over my open mouth because I can't believe he's done it.

And it's really catchy, actually, and kind of sweet.

That cute girl with spots and dots all over town!

Ella gazes down. “Three hundred and thirty-three
LIKES
.”

I stare at the video of Auggie in his brown-and-white spotted beanie playing his orange ukulele and singing about a gutsy girl with leopard-striped hair. And suddenly I'm realizing what this means.

This is all weird for me. Ella and I are giggling like mad, and that's when Dad comes up with his car.

“I thought someone was hurt,” says Dad.

“She is,” I say, nodding at Ella.

Dad shakes his head. “Hurt, huh? Sounds like an awful lot of not-hurt-anymore is going on.”

“Let me see that ankle.” Dad examines it a moment, to Ella's
ow
s.

It's swollen and eggplant purple. “At least it's your favorite color,” I joke to Ella.

He scoops her up in his arms like a firefighter and carries her into the car. “We'd better get to the ER. I'll call your parents on the way.”

As we drive to the hospital, Dad calls the exercise place and tells them to find Ella's mom. In fifteen minutes, all of us meet up in the ER waiting room, and Mrs. Fuentes is thanking my dad and me. Then the nurse calls Ella and her mom back to the emergency room, where you have to be family of the patient.

“Can't I pretend we're sisters?” I ask.

“We don't need to pretend,” says Ella. “And as your sister, can I ask you a favor? Can you go to the gym and help decorate?” She hands me her phone. “All the decorations I made are on Google Drive. You can print them out again and hang them up. Well, except for the streamers.”

I look at Dad. “Is this okay?”

“It's fine,” Dad agrees.

“Sure, then.”

“Thank you,” says Ella. “I mean it.”

“Feel better. I want to write on your cast, if you get one!” The doors swish close and Ella, even though she's hobbling down the hall and wincing, blows me a kiss, and mouths, “I-L-Y!”

And I mouth, “I-L-Y!” back.

Dad glances at me. “I'm proud of you, Karma. You did the right thing. You called. That was a very good decision. You used good judgment.”

“See, Dad. Phones aren't evil.”

“No, they aren't,” he says. “They have a purpose. Many, actually. So you need to be dropped off at the gym?”

“Yes.”

Did I really say that? That I was going to help decorate the gym with a bunch of girls who probably hate my guts?

Yes, I did. For Ella, I'd do anything.

“One last thing.” As Dad pulls up to the school, I say, “I have some advice for you. If you're cycling and you see these cute little white, stuffed animal–looking dogs that are about twelve inches high, go in the exact opposite direction. Otherwise they could ruin your ride.”