The Encyclopedia of Me (16 page)

Maybe I'd been struck mute in the night, I thought. But that couldn't be, because I could definitely hear my own voice. “Horse,” I said. “Cow. Pig. Donkey.” Yep, I definitely heard myself, yet Dad was still oblivious. I contemplated this while noisily blending my drink to an absolutely perfect, iceless smoothosity.

“We'll have the picture proofs tomorrow,” he said.

“Whatever,” I said. I poured him a glass of smoothie.

“Thanks!” he said. I smiled at him as sweetly as possible and we drank our smoothies in companionable silence that I didn't bother to fill, because there was clearly no point.

“I can't believe we're going to be in
Everybody
,” he said wistfully. “Who would have thought it?”

“Mmf,” I said.

And now YOU are welcome to hate
Everybody
magazine — and all magazines — as much as I do.

See also
Celebrity;
Everybody
Magazine; Fame.

The opposite of glam. Also, glam backward. This word, “malg,” is not catching on as quickly as “glam,” although I predict that it is only a matter of time before it sweeps the nation.
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See also
Glam.

Dr. Jenna Martin is my mom. She is a doctor in real life, as you know, although she looks like someone who would play a doctor on TV, and not like an actual doctor, which really is grossly unfair, if you think about it. You should either BE a doctor or PLAY a doctor on TV, but it is a terrible gene-pool discrepancy if you get to do both. Mom is a massive success at everything she does, from arranging her hair on her head, to her career, to her mystifying ability to win every board game she ever plays. Mom has never NOT succeeded, and she cannot even begin to understand how someone could just be straight-up terrible at something, such as life or ballet.

Most times, when I introduce people to my mom, they say to me, “Oh, are you adopted?” I wish this was a lie for dramatic effect, but it's true. It has happened on at least seven different occasions. Luckily, I have a Patented Tink Aaron-Martin Stare down for just this occasion, which involves making half my face look unbelievably sad and the other half angry and scornful. When I say “half,” I mean a top/bottom split, obviously, as it would be impossible to split your face vertically and have two different facial expressions on it.

Most of the time, I'm glad that Mom is my mom and not, say, FB's mom, who is flaky and often forgets to cook supper and/or offer supportive, loving advice to FB about how to be a good BFF. Mom could stand to be a little less quick on the “YOU'RE GROUNDED” button, but mostly she's OK. She is really, really, really amazing with Seb. Sometimes. I know Dad means well and tries his best, but Mom is really magical with him when he's haywire. Seb is crazy about Mom. He'd do anything for her. He says she's the only one who really gets him, and he's probably right.

I remember once I asked Mom if I was going to be autistic when I grew up, like Seb.

She said, “No, Tink. Absolutely not.”

That “No” made me feel fixed. Like she'd cured me with her “No”! I'd been worried, to tell you the truth. But she has a way of saying things that made them seem like very obvious and true facts. So while she didn't literally cure anything, because I didn't need “curing,” she did, sort of, cure me anyway.

Mom makes really good caramel popcorn and terrible lasagna. We don't have lasagna very often, though, so it's really no big deal. And we don't have caramel popcorn as often as we should, if you ask me.

See also
Ballet; Grounded.

Like a regular mall, only much, much, much bigger, sometimes containing more than one of the exact same store, and up to six separate Starbucks. Embarrassing bastions to consumerism and pretty pointless places to hang out, but everyone does anyway, because where else can you go and just BE without having to do some kind of activity that requires more energy than sitting down to a big Diet Coke and a plate of fries?

I was in the Tree of Unknown Species, thinking about ­Freddie Blue Anderson and NOT thinking about Kai at all, even though I happened to be looking at his house at the time, when his mom pulled into the driveway, got out of her van, and proceeded to unload half the mall out of the back of it and into the front door.

Back-to-school stuff
, I thought, and my heart dropped all the way to the bottom of the tree and boinged back up again, nearly knocking me to the ground from the impact. And at that exact second, I came up with the most brilliant, if awful, plan in the world to patch up my poor, damaged friendship with Freddie Blue and get back-to-school clothes at the same time.

The Mega Mall.

It would be an ADVENTURE. And an ADVENTURE is all we would need to get back to being just regular Tink and FB, like we always had been, BFFs 4eva, etc. We would not let a boy come between us! Even if he was the only boy I might ever really, really like! Even if he did hang out with FB during my moment of fame! And even if FB still hadn't told me what happened! It would all be perfect again!

Instead of what we had now, which was just an awkward love triangle where two of the points didn't even know they were part of the shape.

I climbed down the tree and marched into the house, tripping over Hortense and knocking over those stupid encyclopedias, which always seemed to be in the way. I found the phone stuffed between the cushions of the Itchy Couch and I called Freddie Blue.

“Hey,” she said. “What up, sister?”

“Don't talk like that,” I said. “It's sort of racist. You are the wrong color to call me ‘sister.'”

“Oh, don't be so sensitive,” she said. “It's boring. You are not the only nonwhite person in the world, you know.”

“OK, OK,” I said. There was a silence.

“I know, I know,” she said. “You are dying to ask me about Kai and what we did. Well, guess what? It's a secret! My lips are sealed like an envelope.”

“I don't care what you did,” I lied.

“Oh,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“FB,” I said. “I'm sure.”

“Well, sigh,” she said.

“Look,” I said. “I have an idea! It's for an adventure. We need an adventure, FB. We just do.”

“I guess,” she said. “I've been bored, I have to tell you. Bored, bored, bored.”

“Um,” I said. “OK. The idea is that we go to the mall and . . .”

And I told her.

My Big Idea.

My Really Big and (in retrospect)
Incredibly Stupid
Idea.

“Tink,” she said. “You are totally an awesome geni.”
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I hung up and right away began to get ready to sneak out into the night. Except it wasn't night, it was day. But “sneak out into the day” just doesn't sound as good. And it wouldn't even be sneaking. But again, “sneaking” sounds more exciting, no?

It felt like sneaking, so it's really the same thing. My heart was already pounding like crazy and I was dripping with flop-sweat, which is the sweat you have when you are about to do something that is quite likely to fail dramatically. But I didn't care. It was awesome to be embarking on something with Freddie Blue. Like she and I were a team again! Like no boy was confusing everything! Like the old days.

It was the perf plan. MY plan: We were going to — on ­purpose — get locked in the department store at the Mega Mall overnight. We'd be able to try on all the clothes and shoes and even sleep in the beds that are all made up in the furniture department, while watching the big-screen TVs. They sell food on one floor, so we wouldn't go hungry. It was foolproof! We couldn't possibly get caught.
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We went to the mall at noon, for lunch. And to do our research, which mostly meant that we ate too much junk food and giggled. Even though I was desperate to ask her what happened with Kai, I didn't. Because I didn't really want to know, in case it wrecked
this
. I was seriously happy to be giggling with Freddie Blue. It felt right.

It felt normal.

Especially when she started to laugh when I tried to start a flash mob in the food court, and her Diet Coke came spraying out her nose, which hurt, so she started to cry, which was good — she said — because it stopped her from peeing in her pants.

“Flash mob!” she whispered, and we started laughing again. She probably would have peed that time if I hadn't suddenly heard a really familiar voice shouting, “ISADORA! WAIT UP!”

Freddie Blue didn't even turn around, because why would she? I think she's forgotten it's my name. But I turned around. My hands were insta-shaking. And there was Kai, waving like mad. He came over and he was all, “What are you girls doing?”

I couldn't look right at him. All I could think about was the ice cream shop and how one minute he was just standing there and the next minute, he was kissing me.
KISSING ME.
And then, next thing I knew, he was hanging out with Freddie Blue. All of a sudden, I wished I'd pressed her for details. Why didn't I? I was desperate to know! Why didn't she just TELL me? She knew I wanted to know! What kind of BFF was she?

And now was he looking at her funny? Was he looking at her at ALL?

He was mostly looking at me.

I could feel myself starting to blush from my feet up. My tongue felt like it had been stung by a bee. “Oh,” I said. “You glbkr, we were just gjlkjw.”

“Huh?” he said. “Are you OK, Is?”

Is!
No one had ever called me a nickname based on my actual name before. I felt swoony. I glanced at Freddie Blue, thinking I'd give her the OMG HE IS SO CUTE look, when I realized that she was blushing. And smiling in a way I haven't seen her smile before. She bit her lip and flicked her hair back dramatically.

“Hey,” I said, “what are you —”

She interrupted, “We were looking for little clothes for Tink. Because she's so . . . little. It's hard to find cool stuff in kids' sizes!”

“Freddie Blue,” I started to say. But it didn't come out. Instead, I think my mouth just hung open in a way that suggested I might be dying, accompanied by a wheezing sound. I coughed to cover it up.

“Huh,” Kai said. “I just grabbed some new jeans. I had to take back a bunch of stuff my mom bought this morning that was so hid. Like, hideous. You know? Unless I wanted to go to school looking like a junior stockbroker. My mom has NO idea. What can you do?”

He waved the bag in our faces and we were both so flustered that at the same time, we both said, “They're nice!” even though obviously we couldn't see them through the bag. I shot Freddie Blue my newly Patented Tink Aaron-Martin Stare of He Kissed Me First So I Have Dibs Even If You Tried To Steal Him When My Back Was Turned, which she didn't interpret right.

“You look weird,” she said. “Are you getting a headache, Tink? We should get you home. But then we can't do our thing. That we're going to do.” She looked at Kai and winked in a super-theatrical way.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

And before I could stop her, either with a look or by reaching up and clamping my hand over her big mouth, Freddie Blue had invited him to join us on our adventure, our TOP SECRET adventure, MY adventure.

While she talked (and talked and talked), I couldn't help but notice that she was taller than him. They just didn't look right together. I didn't think it made sense that he was her number one crush AT ALL.

“I think that . . .” I started to say, but then I stopped. I didn't know what I thought.

“Is it OK if I come too?” Kai asked. “It has to be OK with Isadora,” he said firmly to Freddie Blue. “What do you say, Is?” He looked into my eyes and the cold bits of fear that were all around my heart melted instantly, like butter in the microwave.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Sure. It will be . . . fun!” I was feeling something. Something I couldn't really describe, mostly because I didn't know what it was. Whatever the halfway point is between terrified and excited and confused and happy and upset and mad and giddy. I thought about how FB and I had each told our parents that we were sleeping over at each other's house. The oldest trick in the book! And how my mom had said, “Good! Have fun, you deserve it. I know things have been hard for you.”

She was being so nice. I felt bad about the lie. I really did. But it's not like I could have told her the truth, even though I wished I could have.

“We're going to hide in the bathrooms,” said Freddie Blue. “Just before closing.”

“I think they check the bathrooms, though,” said Kai. “I have a better idea.”

Which is how we came to be hiding in the center of the round racks of sale clothes in the clearance section when the lights went off. We waited for what felt like seven hours, breathing in the horrible plastic smell of the awful material they use to make blouses
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for elderly women. It was SO quiet in there, the quiet was like a blanket blocking out all the air, making me feel like I couldn't quite breathe. And I couldn't move.

Finally, I heard Freddie Blue pushing the clothes aside and tumbling onto the floor. “TINK!” she yelled. “KAI! COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE! Hey, this is so great, we can play hide-and-seek and stuff.” She giggled.

“Don't pee,” I murmured. But for some reason, I still couldn't move. I stood there in the dark with all the toxic-smelling clothes pressing around me like a horrible predator's hug, and it occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to leave the store now, no matter what. What if something were to happen? The doors were all locked and probably had an alarm on them. We were trapped!

I started wigging out, trying to remember to breathe out through my mouth and in through my nose, when Kai stuck his head through the cushion of clothes.