Seeing Cinderella (4 page)

Super Freaky Glasses Rule #
₂

Make sure your crush actually Knows Who You Are before you spy on his thoughts.

Trust me on this one.

S
EEING THE THOUGHTS OF
P
ACIFICVIEW’S STUDENT BODY
sent me crashing through the halls. Twice I bumped into a group of angry girls, bringing me unwanted attention. As I stammered out an apology, I saw their thoughts on the screens hovering next to them:

Look at that hair. Looks like she stuck her finger in a light socket. And those glasses!

Wow. Did she, like, steal her grandpa’s glasses?

Is she a special ed kid? Maybe we should find her teacher.

My classes went okay, except I didn’t understand a word my Spanish teacher said—probably because she spoke
Spanish the whole time. Raven Maggert ended up in two of my classes, but otherwise the day was a haze of textbooks and the usual first day junk.

During class I experimented with my glasses and dis covered that half the time, even my teachers didn’t pay attention in class. My history teacher spent the whole period thinking about a baseball game he wanted to watch. In gym class Miss Riley barked at us to listen up and stop watching the boys’ soccer practice—but she was actually thinking about some guy she liked.

Which weirded me out. My mom is a teacher so I know they have their own lives. But I still like to believe that
my
teachers are basically the opposite of vampires. At dusk they crawl into a hole and don’t come out until first period.

As I was walking to fifth period, I saw a really cute boy looking at me. It made me feel sort of flustered, but sort of happy. Until I read his thoughts:
Nerd alert, nerd alert, nerd alert!
We walked into class together, and he took a seat as far away from me as possible.

Apparently my glasses had another magic power: They repelled boys.

Throughout the day as I read the strange blue screens, I wondered
why
I’d been given a pair of magic glasses.
Dr. Ingram told me to use them wisely. Did he know there was something special about them?

I was still wondering when I arrived at drama, the last class of the day. A sign on the double doors read
MULTI-PURPOSE ROOM
, in stenciled black paint. And below that a handmade sign welcomed students to Mr. Angelo’s drama class.

Just open the door and walk in,
I commanded myself. But my arms and legs weren’t taking orders at the moment. So I continued to stand in front of the door, paralyzed.

The thing was, I never would have signed up for drama. When we had opened our class schedules and I saw drama listed, I was sure there had been a mistake. Until Ellen told me that on orientation day last spring she crossed out “art” on my elective slip and wrote “drama” instead. Guess I should’ve been suspicious when she offered to turn the slip in for me.

“I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” Ellen said, all blond-haired and blue-eyed innocence. “I just wanted to make sure we had a class together. Please Callie? Do this for me?” Ellen held out her pinky. “Best friends forever?”

If having a class together was so important to Ellen, she could’ve changed
her
elective choice and taken art with me, I had wanted to say.

But I couldn’t do it. “All right,” I had mumbled instead, and crossed my pinkie with hers in our usual pledge. “Best friends forever.”

Now I felt around in my pocket for my plastic baggie and popped some Red Hots into my mouth. If I had been given a pair of magic glasses, why couldn’t they do something
really
cool, like make me invisible?

“Could you move?” said a rough voice behind me. “You’re blocking the door.”

I turned around. Raven stood in front of me, looking just as sullen as she had in English.

“Hi, Raven,” I said, moving aside.

“Are you deaf, or what?”

“What?”

“Our locker is totally trashed—I
told
you not to mess with my stuff.”

“Oh, s-sorry. I was putting my stuff away and then things fell out and then—”

“Whatever.” Raven held up her hand. “Like I said, stay away from me, and stay away from my stuff.” Raven stepped around me and slunk into the multipurpose room.

I followed her. Rows of folding chairs faced a darkened stage, where a thin red carpet ran from front to back. It reminded me of a large, toothless mouth, ready to swallow me
if I set one foot on that monster. Off to the side, a portable whiteboard stood with a message scrawled in blue marker:

The seventh-grade class
will perform CINDERELLA in December.
Tryouts are in two weeks.

Okay, so
Cinderella
was definitely my favorite fairy tale. Something about her story gave me a hopeful feeling. Maybe it was the dress, or the ball, or the pumpkin carriage. But still, reading the whiteboard made me want to run out the door, down the hall to the principal’s office, and request a schedule change. Why in the world had I agreed to stay in drama?

Because Ellen asked you to and she’s your best friend, I reminded myself as I walked down the aisle. That’s what best friends do.

Raven plunked down in a middle row. I didn’t want to sit anywhere near her, so I chose a row toward the back and placed my backpack beside me to save Ellen’s seat.

More kids quietly slipped inside, until the door burst open and Ellen bounded in, followed by a girl with golden skin and hair. I waved at Ellen. But Ellen was too busy talking and giggling with the Golden Girl to notice.

Everyone turned to watch Ellen and the Golden Girl as they trooped up the aisle, and I felt a familiar feeling—like something was coiling around my chest and squeezing tight. Jealousy. Not that I wanted people watching
me
—but sometimes it was irritating having a best friend who was really smart
and
really pretty. Wasn’t there a rule somewhere that said you could be one or the other, but not both? And how come I didn’t get to be either?

I studied Ellen’s new friend. She kept giggling and tucking her hair behind her ears as she sashayed up the aisle. She reminded me of when Sarah dressed up in Mom’s clothes and pranced around, just waiting for someone to tell her she was beautiful.

“Hey, look,” she said loudly, “there’s Raven.”

Raven turned, and I saw her face pucker like she had just sucked a lemon. But Ellen and her new friend didn’t seem to notice; they plunked down next to Raven and began whispering to her.

Ellen knew Raven? And who was the Golden Girl? And most important, why hadn’t Ellen looked for me?

“Excuse me?” an accented voice said above me.

I looked up. A girl with mocha-colored skin and hair the color of coffee beans grinned at me. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.

She smiled and looked right at me as she pointed to the empty seat and said, “May I sit there?”

This was very different from the girl who asked me that same question in English class earlier.
She
had smiled halfheartedly, and looked at the door while she spoke. Like in a sea of unknown faces, she had weighed her options, and decided I might have potential. But, if someone else walked into class, someone with better hair, or better clothes—someone who looked like they might one day become middle-school royalty—then she might change her mind.

But
this
girl continued to smile right at me as she repeated her question.

“Sure,” I said, snapping back to attention and moving my backpack.

“I think my uncle lives next door to you,” she said, sitting down. “Esteban Garcia? I just moved here from Mexico—he said I could come live with him. My name is Ana,” she said, pronouncing it like
Ahn
-a.

“Okay.” I
had
seen Ana before—in the front yard while the two Garcia boys chased each other with squirt guns. At the time, I just thought she was their new babysitter.

“I’m Callie.”

“I’ve seen you in your window, writing,” Ana said. “Did you have school in the summer?”

“Summer school? No, I just like to write. Stories and stuff like that.”

Ana looked impressed. “I love stories. You must show me yours sometime.”

“Sure,” I said. Ana settled in and I looked at the front row again.

I felt stumped as I watched Ellen—like I was staring at a puzzle with missing pieces. How had Ellen managed to make a whole new group of friends in the last six hours? I slipped on my glasses, waited for the screens to appear, and then stared at the Golden Girl’s thoughts.

At first there was an image on the screen hovering next to her—a picture of a pudgy girl with dull blond hair and green rubber-band braces. Then the screen changed and words scrolled across:
I can’t believe I have two new friends already! I love science class! How awesome is it that we can all be lab partners? Don’t be an idiot, Stacy, and forget their names: Ellen Martin and Raven Maggert. Ellen Martin …

Okay, so Ellen had science class with Raven and Stacy the Golden Girl. So what? I sat with two other kids in science class too. That didn’t mean I was going to suddenly start ignoring my best friend.

I looked at the screen hovering by Raven:
I can’t believe these morons are my lab partners.
Then Raven glanced
at Ellen and smirked:
Maybe I could get the uptight one to do most of the work.

I grinned and turned to Ellen’s screen, expecting to see a ton of thoughts about how middle school totally rocked:
I am sick of all these ridiculous classes! What’s the point? If I do well, I’ll just end up at Tara’s stupid college anyway. I am so tired of hearing how wonderful Tara is. And why won’t Mom and Dad let me get a guitar? It’s not like I’m going to start a punk band or something.

What? Those couldn’t be Ellen’s thoughts. I took my glasses off and banged them against the chair in front of me, like a flashlight with dying batteries. But when I put them back on and the screen appeared by Ellen, her thoughts were the same. I took my glasses off again and polished them with my T-shirt.

Just then I noticed a boy sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. His shaggy brown hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. My mouth dropped open and my heart started doing jumping jacks. Scott Fowler was in my drama class! I watched as he spoke to the boy next to him—who, I realized with a sinking feeling, was Charlie Ferris.

Last year, Scott Fowler was the cutest boy in the sixth grade. And I would know. I spent large chunks of classroom time staring at him and his ponytail. Ellen said his ponytail made him look scruffy and unhygienic, but I thought he
looked mysterious, especially with his usual smirk, like he knew something no one else did.

When we studied poetry last spring, Scott wrote the most romantic haiku I’d ever heard. I even copied them into my journal, which Ellen thought was lame. “It’s not like he wrote them for you, specifically,” she’d said. But I didn’t care. In the stories I wrote about Scott, I pretended he did write them for me—right before he confessed his undying love.

Just then Scott looked over. Our eyes met and my face flamed up like I’d crunched a gazillion Red Hots. As I quickly slipped my glasses back on, my thoughts were clear. Last year, I would’ve given anything to know what Scott thought of me. And right now, I could find out. I held my breath as the air waved and shimmered and the screen appeared next to him:
Dude, those glasses are epic ugly. Wait, isn’t that Polka Dot? Ellen Martin’s best friend? What was her name . . . Carrie, maybe? The one who never talked.

Scott gave Charlie a nudge and pointed at me. A screen launched up next to Charlie as he turned:
Hey, it’s Polka Dot! I knew I saw her in Spanish class!

I looked away and sniffed, causing Ana to ask, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled.

But really, I wasn’t sure what I should feel more upset about:

1. That Scott thought my glasses were “epic ugly.”

2. That Scott remembered “Polka Dot,” but thought my real name was “Carrie.”

3. That Ellen hadn’t looked around to find me, not even once. Now that she’d found Stacy the Golden Girl, it was like she’d forgotten about me completely.

Chapter 4

Super Freaky Glasses Rule #
₃

Most people tell little white lies. Don’t get offended. You do the same thing.

W
HEN THE BELL RANG, STUDENTS BURST FROM CLASS LIKE
soda from a punctured can. I hung back and waited for Ellen, who was talking to Stacy.

“Callie,
there
you are,” Ellen said, like she’d been looking for me.

“I was sitting behind you the whole time.”

“I didn’t see you. I figured you were late. Like usual.”

Then why didn’t you save me a seat
? I wanted to ask but didn’t. Instead I said, “I looked for you in the cafeteria.” My stomach rumbled then, reminding me that when I couldn’t find Ellen, I decided to skip lunch. So
I’d fled the crowded cafeteria and hid out in the library till the bell rang.