Twist My Charm (12 page)

B
efore we can discuss it further, the bell rings. School's always getting in the way of more important things. I rush to my seat, and though I don't mean to, I glance toward Larry.

He's looking straight at me, raising his eyebrows in a long-distance hello. If eyebrows could talk, they'd be saying,
“I love you.”

This isn't good.

I turn away as quickly as possible, as Kevin tells us to get out our math workbooks. I pull my pencil case out of my desk and open it.

POP! KA-BLOW! An explosion of colorful confetti flies into the air, into my hair, onto my clothes, and then onto the floor. Lisa Lee screams like she's heard a gunshot, and Kylie Mae puts her hand over her heart. They're both being a little dramatic. I mean, this was surprising, but it was hardly heart-attack surprising!

Picking the confetti out of my hair, I see that it's shaped like stars, hearts, and smiley faces. It's got to be Larry. He's definitely the kind of boy who could rig a mini explosion inside a pencil case; plus his lovey-eyebrow face has turned into a goofy, grinning one. The little monkey on his desk looks like he's smiling too, though I know in reality he always has the same expression.

I glance at Samantha, praying she doesn't have any idea where this romantic gesture came from. She has no expression at all—but I hope her expressionless expression isn't anger. I know what she does when she's angry: she chases you through graveyards and throws boots and pepperoni at you!

Kevin, however, is not expressionless. “Cleo, what's this all about? What is this mess?”

“It wasn't me!” I sputter. But here I am, covered in the stuff. There's no denying I'm involved somehow.

“Well, clean it up when we have our next break. Let's turn to page one-eighty-two and get started….”

I look over at Madison. She understands what's going on and feels my pain. Larry's half nodding, like he wants my approval. He's not going to get it.

Well, if I had any question about the bay leaf potion before, I don't now. It hasn't worked.

The day gets worse from there.

At lunchtime, Madison says she's hungrier than usual, but I'm guessing that's because I smell like stew. We stand in the lunch line together. Normally I wouldn't buy lunch on the day they serve almond-encrusted organic chicken breast and steamed garlic spinach, but today I have no choice, since Dad didn't make me a lunch.

As a cafeteria worker puts a rice cake on my tray (we get those instead of rolls, which might actually be tasty), I hear a voice behind me. “What's that smell?”

It's Lisa Lee, looking like someone's holding a week-old bologna sandwich under her nose. “Are you
wearing
your lunch?”

“She smells like my mom's spice rack,” Kylie Mae whispers, loud enough for me to hear, of course.

“Maybe it's the latest perfume,” Madison tells them.

I like that idea! I add, “Yeah, it's so new, you don't even know about it.” Los Angeles is odd enough that this could maybe be true. Dad told me he heard about a restaurant where people eat dinner in a pitch-black room, and they can't see their food or their forks or even their hands in front of their faces. In LA, any weird thing can be popular.

Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae look at each other. For a moment—one tiny, hopeful moment—it looks like they could possibly, just possibly, believe me. Then they both shake their heads. “Nah,” they agree.

Oh well. We tried.

I step away from them to pay the cashier. I know I have my wallet in my backpack, but I'm not sure which pocket it's in, so I have to unzip them all. The cashier sighs as I hear the conversation behind me.

“I really hope you'll come to the Bling Bling with us,” says Lisa Lee.

Kylie Mae adds her usual, “Yeah.”

Then I hear Madison's voice. “I'm not sure. We'll see.”

We'll see?
I try to concentrate on finding my wallet, but it's kind of hard when I'm hearing this.

“Come on, Maddy, we've been doing it all our lives, and we always have the best time; you know it's true.” I wonder if Madison hears the same whiny voice I do when I listen to Lisa Lee.

“Yeah,” Kylie Mae says again.

Madison says she doesn't know. “I'll think about it. I'll be seeing you this summer anyway.”

“That's why we need to kick it off at the Bling Bling, duh!” says Lisa Lee.

“Yeah,” Kylie Mae says. “Duh.”

The more I listen, the more disturbed I get. Then, finally, I pull out my wallet, trying to feel triumphant instead of bummed. I give the cashier a weak smile, but she's not impressed by the magnificent feat of finding my money.

“Um, you dropped something,” says Lisa Lee. I can tell by the tone of her voice that she's not talking to Madison anymore.

When I turn, Kylie Mae is bending down and picking up a piece of paper from the floor. I have no idea what it is, but I'm sure I don't want Kylie Mae's mitts on it! She hands it to Lisa Lee, who unfolds it.

“Hey, that's Cleo's!” says Madison. But it's too late.

Lisa Lee reads it out loud.
“You, you, you plus me, me, me. Put them together and it's fun at the Bling Bling Summer Fling.”
She looks up from the paper. “Someone's a Ryder Landry fan, I see.”

Of course I know who it's from, and he's the opposite of a Ryder Landry fan. He's just making a chemistry joke.

“Who's it from?” Kylie Mae asks.

“Doesn't say,” says Lisa Lee. Thank goodness! If he had written
Love, Larry
(or something crazier, like
Lovingly yours
or
Your one true love
), I would never hear the end of it. Lisa Lee folds the note back up and hands it to me. “But it looks like you have a date to the Bling Bling. So you won't mind if Madison comes with us.”

The cashier clears her throat. She's been waiting a long time for her money.

“That's, um, up to Madison,” I say.

“She does smell funny,” I hear Kylie Mae say as I pay the cashier and flee into the lunchroom. I scan the room from side to side and don't see Larry. I'm glad. If he got close enough to get a whiff of me, he'd probably say I smell as nice as a powdery baby or an ice cream parlor serving waffle cones.

I gobble up my food, barely even talking to Madison. I don't want to discuss her plans for the Bling Bling Summer Fling, and I don't want to run into Larry. I just want to force down my organic chicken breast and steamed spinach and get back to class.

When Larry walks into the lunchroom with his tray, I'm done. “I'm gonna go,” I tell Madison, standing up and heading toward the door.

I've only been under the jungle gym for a minute when Madison runs out to join me. “You can't live like this the rest of your life!” she says, a little out of breath.

“I know,” I agree. “We have to do something. Something that will work.”

Madison looks sympathetic. “Okay, then, let's do another potion. As soon as possible.”

“Why?” I ask. “Because the other ones have worked out so great?” I know I should try to be positive, but I can't help it. We were only trying to do something good, and now it's a big mess—with me in the middle. Smelling like stew.

“What other choice do we have?” asks Madison. “Look, we don't know exactly what's going on with your dad and Sam's mom, but this one with you and Larry—we've got to fix that!”

Of course Madison is right. A love potion caused it; a love potion is going to have to make it right.

When Kevin tells us it's time for the Focus! kids to head to Focus!, my heart feels paralyzed. I don't want to walk across the schoolyard with Larry, so I leap from my chair and run for the door. I pull it open so fast, it almost hits me in the face. I cross the lawn, hearing Larry call out, “Hey, wait up!” but I pretend like I'm too far away to hear and zoom into the Focus! room, pushing other kids out of the way to keep my distance.

Roberta has moved all the desks and chairs to the edges of the room, and I'm hoping this means we'll play improvisational games, like when we tried out for
Healthyland
. Working on the play, it was acceptable to be weird. When you're an actor, it might even be acceptable to smell like bay leaves. I bet Johnny Depp smells like bay leaves all the time.

When all the other kids have streamed into the room—and I spot Larry and Samantha on the opposite side—Roberta announces what we'll be doing today. Unfortunately, it's not improv games. It's something scary.

Not scary like bungee jumping from a high tower or eating rat intestines or anything, but pretty darn scary for a random day at Friendship Community School.

Square dancing. Ugh!

I saw square dancing once at a county fair. A bunch of old couples, probably married a million years, were wearing what looked like Wild West costumes and walking around in circles to corny music. Square dancing is all about twirling and bowing and skipping around. This isn't education; this is torture!

“Square dancing is a great way to practice listening, following instructions, and working together,” Roberta tells everyone. She walks around the room and pulls people into position on the empty floor. “Plus, it's fun,” she adds, though if the county fair was any example, I doubt it!

Roberta puts Larry in the middle of the room and goes to get him a partner. I hunch my shoulders and hold my head down.

“Roberta, I know who my partner should be,” Larry says in a big, grand manner. It scares me.

It should.

“Come on, Cleo. We're partners in chemistry. Let's be partners in square dancing too!”

I wish I could drink a potion right now and shrink to the size of a cockroach. I'd skitter across the floor, underneath the door, and out into the yard and burrow into the ground, as far down into the dirt as I could go.

I look to Roberta as if she could save me, but she gestures for me to get up there while she places other people in position. Larry bows, which I might have found funny on any other day, but
now—today
—it's horrible. What if Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae were here to see this? They thought his stupid
note
was hilarious, and this is a million billion times more embarrassing!

Then it gets worse: I look at Samantha and she's staring at her sneakers like they hold the clue to something really important, like world peace or the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. When Roberta walks toward her, Sam looks up and says—with her voice all weak and wounded, a way she never sounds—that she hurt her ankle and can't do physical activity.

But I know the truth.

I hope she doesn't think I had anything to do with this. I hope she thinks Larry is just being his usual goofy self, not that he's declaring me his partner in life or anything. I look closely at her to see if I can get any sense—any little hint—of how she's feeling, but her face is blank. When Samantha was my best friend, I always knew how she felt, at least until she turned against me. I wish I could understand what's going on now.

Roberta actually lets her sit on the sidelines, making me wish I'd thought of this excuse first. This is another reason I need to be friends with Sam again. She's quick and smart. I could use those smarts right about now.

But instead I've got to square dance. With Larry.

Roberta starts teaching us the dance moves, and almost all of them include the last thing in the world I want to do right now—holding hands! Sure, the boy just puts his palm up and the girl puts her hand on top of it, but…yuck.

I'm
holding hands.

With a boy who wants to be my partner in more than chemistry! With a boy whose hand has a little bit of nervous moisture on it. Now, I don't want to be rude about Larry, because my hand is sweaty too. Even worse, the smell of bay leaves is coming out of my hand…and my armpits…and the area under my nose. I'm a big, sweaty beef bourguignonne, holding hands with a boy.