Mackenzie Blue (16 page)

Then she turned out the lights and crawled into bed.

T
he next morning, Zee had another apology to make. She headed straight for the music room.

It was still pretty early, so Mr. P was alone in the room. But he barely looked like the eager new teacher from the first day. Or the cool international rock-and-roll star from his concert. Dark circles hung under his eyes. His hair was sticking up all over the place. And his shirt was misbuttoned. Mr. P must have felt as bad as he looked. He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.

“I'm sorry,” Zee blurted out.

Mr. P looked up. “For what?”

“I didn't mean to embarrass you at your concert.”

Mr. P looked confused. “You didn't embarrass me.
Actually I was very happy to see some friendly faces. The whole night was outrageously nerve-racking.”

Zee wasn't going to let herself off that easy. “Maybe we shouldn't have brought up that you're a teacher—you know, since you used to be such a big rock star.”

Mr. P laughed, stood up, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I'd say I was a
medium
rock star.” He paused and looked at Zee. “But it was my choice to leave. All the touring and recording just weren't fun anymore. When work isn't fun, it's time to try something new. And being a teacher is something I've always wanted to do.”

Zee examined his exhausted expression and wondered if it was still something he wanted to do. “Is teaching fun?” she asked carefully.

Mr. P's face lit up for the first time all morning. “Teaching
is
fun, but…challenging…sometimes.” His smile disappeared as he said, “I hope I can meet those challenges—before it's too late.”

“Too late for what?” Zee asked.

Mr. P sighed. “It's just an expression.” Then he perked up a little again. “How did rehearsal go yesterday?”

“Ohmylanta!” Zee said. She'd been so focused on
apologizing to Mr. P, she'd forgotten about her song crisis.

“What?”

“It's just an expression, too,” Zee said, shrugging. Then she told Mr. P that her diary and song were stolen. She didn't mention Kathi's name. He'd figure it out when he heard Kathi sing. “Since I don't have a song, I may not audition for
Teen Sing
after all.”

“You're just going to quit?” When Mr. P put it that way, it sounded so awful. Zee's teacher laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her seriously. “At some point, you have to stand up to those people.”

“Did anything like this ever happen to you?” Zee asked.

Mr. P nodded. “The first professional band I was in, one of the other guys got a solo deal and stole my song.”

“What did you do?”

“After I finished yelling at him and calling him names, there was nothing I could do. Then I realized that only musicians who are afraid they don't have talent steal from other people.”

“He wasn't talented?”

“He was. But he wasn't cut out to be a soloist.” Mr. P gave a sly smile. “Of course, it made me kind of happy that that song was the only hit he ever had.”

Zee thought about what Mr. P had told her. “I'm still
not sure what to do about
Teen Sing
.”

“Pick a new song. There are lots of them out there.”

“But I want to write my own. I want to be a singer
and
a songwriter. I want to stand out.”

“So do it.” He moved over to the piano and sat down on the bench. “What have you been working on?”

Zee followed her teacher across the room. “It's a song about my favorite nail polish—Miami Sunset. But I'm stuck on a rhyme for
orange
.”

“I see.” Thinking, Mr. P moved his lips from side to side. He laid his fingers on the piano keys. “It's great to write about what you know, but it's really cool when you take a risk and are honest about your feelings.”

“I'm so scared of being honest,” Zee sighed. “I'm tired of having everyone know my secrets.”

Mr. P played the piano and sang,
“I'm so scared of being honest, so tired of all my secrets.”

Zee's eyes grew wide. “Did you just write that?”

Mr. P smiled. “No, you did. Write the next line.”

Zee took a deep breath.
“There's a place I used to put them, all the things I was afraid of,”
she sang as Mr. P joined in on the piano. She opened her eyes and smiled. “You're a really good teacher!”

“Thanks!”

A
s soon as class began, Mr. P called Jasper up to be class leader. With a serious expression on his face, Jasper stood very straight and tapped the beat on a music stand with his baton.

The group was starting to sound better, and Zee played along, but she could barely focus on the music. Had Chloe and Jasper gotten her email? Did they want to be friends? Zee couldn't tell.

When the bell finally rang, Jasper and Chloe gathered their instruments and books and left without Zee.
I guess they really don't like me anymore,
Zee thought.
Maybe we won't ever be friends again.

 

When Zee walked into French class, Jen and Marcus were already there talking to each other.

“…and my brother said, ‘Next time you burn a CD for me, could you include at least
one
band I've actually heard of?'” Marcus finished. Jen threw her head back and laughed way too hard. Zee hated the thought of having to sit right next to phony Jen, but Madame Frazier had assigned seating.

Zee slid into her chair and looked straight ahead. “Hi, Zee,” Marcus said.

“Hi, Marcus,” she answered, still avoiding Jen's glance.

Marcus looked from one girl to the other. “Is there something going on I don't know about?” he asked.

Jen said to Marcus, “Kinda. Can I talk to Zee in private for a sec?”

“I'm not even here,” Marcus said, turning around and sticking an index finger in each ear.
“La la la la la.”

Jen swiveled in her seat so that she was facing Zee. Not wanting to give her the satisfaction of her full attention, Zee turned slightly in Jen's direction. “I'm really sorry, Zee,” Jen apologized. “I thought Kathi was just going to read your diary. I didn't know she was going to use it against you like that.”

“But it was
mine
,” Zee said. “It was nobody else's business.”

“I know,” Jen replied, “and I feel awful about what I did.
I made a huge mistake.”

A mistake. Jen's words echoed in Zee's head. She knew all about mistakes. All she wanted was an apology. How could she expect Chloe and Jasper to forgive her if she didn't accept Jen's? “It's okay,” she said. And she meant it.

Zee looked up and down the seventh-grade lunch tables, searching for a place to sit. Since they'd stopped talking to Zee, Jasper and Chloe had avoided her by eating at a different table from the rest of the music class gang. And now there was no way Zee could sit by Kathi, so she'd have to eat somewhere else, too.

Jen approached with her lunch tray. Good. Maybe she and Jen could sit together. “Hi,” Zee called out to her.

With Kathi watching from her lunch spot, Jen quietly whispered, “Hi,” without even bothering to look at Zee.

Unbelievable!
Zee thought. Jen might have been sorry, but she was still under Kathi's spell.

Zee was stuck. Doomed to eat lunch all by herself for the rest of the year, she took the closest seat. As she unzipped her lunchbox, her Sidekick buzzed. A text message read,

Zee looked over at Chloe and Jasper, who were smiling at her.

 

“Your project was just so awesome!” Zee said as the three friends walked down the sun-filled halls toward science together. She had so much to tell them, she was practically bursting. “You won't believe what Kathi's parents are doing to Mr. P. I think they're trying to get him fired.”

“Really?” Jasper said.

“I mean, if it weren't for him, I wouldn't even be auditioning for
Teen Sing
,” Zee continued. Their conversation was interrupted by loud voices coming out of the head of school's office.

“We chose this school for our daughter because of the excellent music program.” A woman's voice drifted through the closed door to the hall. “They haven't seen a note of classical music. This Mr…. P…doesn't know what he's doing. If you don't fix the problem, we will have to consider withdrawing her—and we'll expect our tuition back.”

Then the head of school's door flew open. A tall woman in a dark gray business suit passed through it, then suddenly stopped when she saw Chloe. “Hi, honey,” she said in a smooth Southern accent. She smiled warmly.

Chloe looked from the woman to Zee and back to the
woman. “Hi, Mom,” she answered awkwardly.

Ohmylanta!
Zee thought.
That isn't Kathi's mother! It's Chloe's.
Now Zee understood why Chloe couldn't go to the amphitheater and couldn't audition for
Teen Sing
. Her parents didn't approve of Mr. P.

“Mom, this is my friend Zee,” Chloe said.

Mrs. Lawrence-Johnson smiled at Zee. “I'm so happy to meet you.” Zee wanted to be angry with Chloe's mother. After all, she was trying to get her favorite teacher fired. But she couldn't ignore this other, kinder side of Mrs. Lawrence-Johnson. Especially when she rubbed her hands together and asked, “Who wants to go to Wink! after school? I just won my case this morning, and I'm dying to celebrate.”

Mrs. Lawrence-Johnson had said the magic word. Wink! was Zee's favorite spa. She never turned down a chance to go there.

“Cool beans!” Zee said. “I'm in.”

“Are you coming?” Chloe asked Jasper.

Jasper looked at the six eyes fixed on him like a lamb surrounded by wolves. “No, thank you,” he said carefully. “I think I'd feel rather strange getting my nails done.”

The three friends giggled, but Zee laughed the hardest, happy to be together again with her new, true friends.

 

 

 

“I can't really blame you for suspecting me,” Chloe said. She was sitting under the dryer in the chair next to Zee, their hair wrapped. “I
was
hiding something from you. You liked Mr. P so much, and I was afraid you wouldn't like me if you knew how my parents felt about him and
Teen Sing
.”

Zee thought back to the first day of school, when she had made her father drop her off a block from school because she had been so embarrassed by his SUV. “Let's make a pact,” she suggested, “that we won't freak out about the things our parents do.”

“It's a deal,” Chloe said, holding up her right hand. Zee high-fived it.

“Oh. My. Gosh!” Chloe mouthed, pointing to the salon's entrance. Kathi had just walked in. The girls froze as Kathi passed by on her way to the spray-tanning booths. But with their heads wrapped—and Kathi's nose high in the air, as usual—she didn't even recognize them.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Zee asked.

“Revenge!” Chloe said excitedly.

They watched as Kathi stepped inside the booth. The spa employee told her, “Get ready, and I'll be right back to apply your bronzer.” Then she shut the door, adjusted some controls, and walked away.

In the next second, Zee and Chloe were outside the booth door. They looked at the controls, which were set to “summer light.”

Chloe pointed to the highest setting on the knob—“super dark.” “Kathi will be as orange as a carrot,” she whispered. “No way she'll want to sing that way. You'll get your song back.”

It was the perfect plan! Zee imagined Kathi with her new “tan,” and she had to stifle a laugh.

Slowly Chloe turned the knob up high. She was just about to push the spray button when Zee grabbed her arm to stop her. Then Zee turned the knob back to its low setting.

“Don't you want to beat her?” Chloe whispered.

“Of course!” Zee told her in her softest voice. “But I can't beat her if she doesn't compete. Besides, no matter how mean she is to me, I won't go down to her level.”

“The best revenge,” Chloe said, “will be when you get the
Teen Sing
recording contract.”