Stealing Popular (11 page)

Did I dare say it?

“What did someone ax?” asked Liezel.

I was glad she misinterpreted. “Never mind.”

“Is that all you're going to eat for lunch, Adair?” asked Fawn, staring at Adair's bag of veggies. “You want some of my sauerkraut?” She opened a plastic bowl, and the smell—a cross between vinegar and dirty diapers—hit us like teargas. My eyes started watering.

“Yow,” said Liezel, pulling back.

“Oh my God,” cried Adair.

“I know it smells pretty wonky,” said Fawn, “but it tastes good. It's just pickled cabbage—”

Adair spun to face me. “You!”

“Me? I hate sauerkraut—”

“You think I told Dijon about our idea, don't you?”

My mouth said no, but my head bobbed yes. Stupid head. “I'm not saying you did it on purpose. Maybe you were talking to Her Fabulousness and the Royal Court at cheer practice, and it slipped out—”

“Maybe you're delusional. And you really need to stop calling them that.”

“What?”

“Her Fabulousness and the Royal Court. It's pretty rude.”

“You never thought it was rude before. Last year you thought it was funny.” Crunching a crouton, I muttered, “Two weeks on cheer staff, and you're morphing into one of them.”

“Ah!” She flung a celery stick at me. It hit my neck. For such a bland vegetable, celery sure could sting. “If you only knew how many times I've defended you to them.”

“You defended
me
?” I clutched my heart. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Adair. I don't know what I'd do if Dijon and Venice didn't like me.”

“That's right, I forgot. You don't need anybody, do you?”

Fawn threw her hands up. “Stop, you guys, before someone says—”

“Coco, I've got a news flash for you,” growled Adair. “You're not nearly as tough as you think you are.”

“And you're not nearly as popular as you think you are.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What's that supposed to mean?”

I opened my mouth, but Fawn got there first. Thank goodness, she got there first. “Nothing,” snapped Fawn. “She didn't mean anything.”

“No, she meant something, all right. If there's one thing about Coco, it's that she always means something.” Adair turned to me. “You think all I want is to be popular, is that it? If that were true, I'd be over there eating lunch with Dijon and her friends right now, because they invited me, you know—”

“I wouldn't want to hold you back. Feel free to go any time you want.” I stabbed a plump cherry tomato with my spork. The tomato burst, squirting juice all over the front of my T-shirt and the sleeve of Adair's white, crocheted cardigan.

“Eeek!” she screamed.

“Oops,” I said with a snicker.

Adair was not amused. “You did that on purpose!”

“I didn't. Honestly, Adair. It was an acci—”

“This isn't even my sweater,” said Adair, untangling herself from the bench we shared. “It's Truffle's.”

Fawn's eyebrows went up. “Truffle's?”

“She wanted to wear my denim jacket, so we swapped.
If you've ruined this, Coco, I'm going to have to pay for it.”

“You won't. It's not ruined.” I reached for a couple of napkins. “It's only a little tomato juice. It'll wash out. I'm sorry, Adair, really, I am.” I held the napkins out to her, but she refused to take them.

Adair quickly gathered her stuff. “I'll be back,” she said as she stomped away, but I knew she wouldn't. She had taken everything with her.

“It really wasn't on purpose,” I pleaded with Fawn and Liezel.

“We know,” said Liezel.

“It'll be okay,” said Fawn, but the look on her face said otherwise.

Adair crossed the cafeteria, her blond hair streaming out in determined waves behind her. She was almost to the door when she stopped, or something stopped her. I couldn't tell. A bunch of boys were blocking my view, so it took me a few minutes to see she was talking to . . . to . . .

Truffle and Stocklifter.

Über-ew.

Adair pointed to the tomato juice spots dotting the sweater, then over to me. Truffle shook her head. It was weird seeing Truffle in Adair's jacket, and not
just because the arms were too long. I knew that faded jacket as well as I knew its owner. The tip of the left collar never stayed down. The right cuff was missing a rivet. There was a tiny black swish near the left hip that had happened last summer when Adair had laughed so hard at my imitation of a frog, she'd dropped her Sharpie pen. Adair's beloved jacket didn't belong on Truffle.

Stocklifter stole a napkin from Dover and gave it to Adair so she could dab the spots on her sweater. A few minutes later Adair left the cafeteria with Truffle and Stock.

A tremor rocketed up my spine. It hadn't taken Adair long to ditch her Nobody friends for the Somebodies, had it? If that's what she wanted, then she deserved every spiteful thing Her Fabulousness and the Royal Court were about to heap on her.

No, she didn't. Not really.

I was mad. She was mad. We would both calm down and make up.

Wouldn't we?

Fawn was gathering up her trash. I watched her place the lid back on the plastic bowl. “Could I have that?” I asked.

“My sauerkraut? Uh, yeah, sure.” Slightly confused, Fawn slid the bowl toward me. “Enjoy.”

When Fawn went to dump her stuff in the garbage, I turned to Liezel. We were in a public place, so I couldn't say anything. Instead, I held up two fingers and wiggled them. It took Liezel a few seconds to catch on.

When she did, her lips slid up the right side of her face. “Perfect.”

“Above the eyes or below?” I asked.

“Just above,” said Fawn on my right side.

“Agreed,” said Liezel on my left. “But don't go above the eyebrows. She'll look like we stuck a bowl on her head and cut around it.”

“Straight across or angled?”

“Slightly angled,” said Fawn after a moment of thought.

“Agreed,” said Liezel. “But don't overdo it. She'll look like she's got a lopsided head.”

“Thick or wispy?”

“Somebody cut!” came the cry from behind a reddish-brown curtain of bangs.

“Okay,” I said meekly.

I'd stalled as long as I could. Adair was almost an hour late. She probably wasn't coming. We had barely spoken since our fight yesterday, and today she had
eaten lunch with
them
. I had tried to pretend it didn't bother me. But, of course, it had.

I picked up the scissors from Fawn's dresser. Sliding a section of hair between my fingers, I made the first diagonal cut a few inches beneath the bridge of her nose. The room fell silent and stayed that way as I continued across the width of her bangs. We all let out a sigh of relief when I clipped the last section. Using the very tips of the scissors, I cut a fraction of an inch up into the line of bangs to fringe the edges the way I'd watched stylists do hundreds of times only a few inches in front of my own face.

“Look, Renata, you have eyes!” said Liezel.

“We should trim the ends, too,” said Fawn.

“Agreed,” said Liezel.

I liked how everyone kept using the word “we,” even though I was the one taking all the risks. Sure, I snipped my bangs all the time, but I'd never cut someone else's. If you do something to your own hair, oh well, you cover it with a hairband or something, but do something awful to someone else's hair, and you've made an enemy for life.

Was it getting hot in here or was it just the color of Fawn's room? I'd never been inside a sunset before,
but I bet it would be like Fawn's bedroom. Every wall was painted a different vibrant shade of the horizon. Orange to the north. Red to the east. Pink to the west. Purple to the south. I loved it! Fawn's sewing machine and bookshelf, crammed with rolls of fabric, took up the orange wall. The pink wall was papered with dozens of fashion spreads she'd ripped out of
Teen Vogue, Seventeen
, and other magazines. She had plenty of her own sketches tacked to the wall too. Some had little squares of fabrics pinned next to them. When Dad and I got our house, I was going to paint murals on my walls and decorate them with sketches too.

I swiveled Renata's chair so she faced the mirror above Fawn's dresser. Brushed out, Renata's hair fell about five inches past her shoulders. The layered ends were dry and split. “Shoulders or collarbone?” I asked.

“Collarbone,” said Fawn.

“Agreed,” said Liezel.

Renata made a mousy squeak, but didn't protest. I cut a little at a time so I wouldn't freak her out. Or myself.

Fawn flopped on her bed with her phone. “I just got a text from Adair.”

“Where is she?” asked Liezel. “When is she coming?”

“Let's see . . . it says, ‘Stuck at cheer practice.'” Fawn sighed. “She's not coming.”

Cheer this. Cheer that. I was getting a little tired of hearing the “ch” word.

“Ever since she joined ch—the squad”—I caught myself—“she's not the same person.”

“How could she be?” asked Renata. “Everything's different for her now.”

That stung, but I knew she was right. And I knew it was my fault. By changing the cheer scores, I had given Adair everything she'd always wanted. Unfortunately, I had also blurred the lines of social order at Big Mess. I had opened the door between their world and ours. How could I possibly stop Adair if she chose to walk through it?

“I'm scared about our presentation,” said Renata, never taking her eyes off the path of my scissors. “It's so much pressure. Whenever I have to speak in public, I start lisping. I get so nervous, I feel like I'm going to pass out.”

“Wiggle your fingers and toes,” I said. “It helps keep blood flowing and releases nervous energy.”

“You should hum a song,” said Fawn, still on her back. “It'll relax you and warm up your voice.”

“Find a friendly face in the audience to talk to,”
added Liezel. “And be honest. Audiences like honesty. They also like it when they get to participate, so include them in your talk.”

“So let me get this straight,” Renata said. “I should wiggle around, hum a tune, tell everyone I'm going to lisp, then faint, and ask them to catch me?”

We laughed—Fawn most of all. She fell off the bed and onto my backpack. “Ow!” she said, rubbing her lower back. “What have you got in there?” She unzipped the pocket. “Oh, it's a CD.”

“That's Liezel's band,” I said sheepishly. I still hadn't listened to her CD.

“Can we play it?”

With an uncertain grin Liezel gave permission.

Fawn slid the disc into her laptop. Hearing Liezel's voice on speakers was weird, but a good weird. Her voice was as pure and beautiful as it had been in the hallway at Big Mess, maybe even better with the band.

“This is good!” I shouted to Liezel above the music.

“This is
great
,” called Fawn, hopping up to dance around her room. My friend Fawn is an amazing designer. She is an amazing student. But she is not—not even remotely—an amazing dancer.

I lowered the scissors. I was done. It was a simple cut:
straight across, and a hair below the tops of the shoulders (ha! I just got that), with angled bangs she could pull forward or tuck back into a barrette. It was all I knew how to do. But it made a stark difference. Now you could see her slightly concaved cheekbones, oval face, and long neck. Step back, people! Renata Zickelfoos had a neck. Believe me, when she'd unwrapped that scarf of hers, I had been prepared for the worst—a big lump, a hairy wart, a mole the size of Montana. But no! Not a single lump, wart, or mole to be found.

Renata turned left and right, studying herself in the mirror. Little furrows appeared on her forehead. Uh-oh. Was she going to cry? Had I done that horrible of a job? I started to reach for the box of tissues when she whispered, “I like it.”

“Me too,” said Liezel.

Fawn patted my back and whispered, “Adair couldn't have done any better.”

Oh yes, she could have, but remembering Renata's minilecture, I gritted my teeth and absorbed the praise. “Thanks.”

“Come on, Renata, let's go raid my stuff,” said Fawn, leading the way into her mammoth walk-in closet. “Let's start with tops.”

While the two of them picked out clothes, Liezel and I lay on Fawn's bed. We listened to a few more songs from Avalanche and flipped through last year's yearbook. The yearbooks were all presold by the time I'd gotten to Big Mess, so I hadn't gotten to buy one. We laughed at the faculty section. True to form, Waffles was crooked and Coach Notting growled at the camera. Liezel and I took our time going through the seventh-grade mug shots. Considering I'd only been going to Big Mess since last spring, I knew a lot of people. What I didn't realize until I saw them all together was that there were
so
many Nobodies. They were all lined up in precise rows. Row after row after row of nice, neat, never-make-trouble Nobodies.

Not long ago you could have pasted my picture on the end of any row on any page. But not anymore. Now I was on a mission to give back what the Somebodies had taken away. Insult by insult. Glare by glare. Cackle by cackle. I even had a trusty assistant.

“Nice work, today,” I said, raising my arm. I turned my palm out.

Liezel slapped my hand. “Right back at ya, partner.”

We were, of course, referring to Phase Two of Operation Locker Rescue. After school Liezel had acted as
lookout while I'd poured some of Fawn's toxic sauerkraut in the slot under Dijon's locker (I didn't need much!). It had taken less than ten seconds to complete our task, though I had lingered longer at Dijon's locker than I should have. It was that beauty board, that condescending, puffed-up pink heart of a dry-erase board that was Dijon's mouthpiece. I hated the thing. I hated everything about it, from its lacy pink rim to the gingerbread-coated commands scrawled across it. I couldn't rip it down, I knew, but there had to be
something
I could do.