The Kiss Off (32 page)

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Life Was Cool Until You Got Popular Sampler

Chapter One

I stood by the school gate at Cromwell Prep, feeling weird in the maroon and white uniform. Over the past two years at Malcolm MacGregor Middle I’d gotten used to blue, white and yellow. It’s not like I had a whole lot of school pride or would go and watch any of the team sports I wasn’t forced to, but blue, white and yellow sort of…I dunno, it became part of my identity.

So even though all the other kids were wearing the same colors, I felt completely conspicuous in maroon and white. Especially with my stiff, scratchy jumper, pristine blazer and school dress practically down to my ankles. Mom said I’d grow into it, but really – what am I supposed to do in the meantime? When exactly does your body stop growing, anyway? I hope I have that growth spurt everyone talks about soon or else my school dress will be down to my ankles until I graduate. I saw Stefan Gregorio at the park last week and he sure seems to have made the most of the summer because he grew at least a foot. He’s kind of funny looking now though because his arms and legs are too long for his body. I hope that doesn’t happen to me. But I do hope I start growing soon.

Looking around, I watched my new schoolmates file through the gate, calling out to each other, squealing and hugging their girl and guy friends they hadn’t seen since last year. I tried to hide a grimace. We didn’t squeal and hug at my old school. We just looked at each other and said hey. Most of the time we smiled when we said it. Maybe that’s why it got closed down, we weren’t enthusiastic enough. We sure weren’t peppy.

I heard a screech and two girls ran at each other and nearly fell on their faces the collision was so hard. And it wasn’t just the little sixth graders doing it, but like, the older kids too. Or maybe they were sixth graders and they just looked older. For a split second I wished I was back in sixth grade because then I’d have that excuse for not knowing anyone. But no, I was just the new kid. I don’t think anyone else from MacGregor is coming to Cromwell. At least not from my year. Except Jules, of course. I hadn’t noticed anyone I knew yet. We were the last sixth graders to go to Malcolm McGregor. It’s getting bulldozed this year to make way for an old person’s home. I cringed as my ears were assaulted with another scream and two girls hurled themselves at each other, talking over the top of each other until they were shouting to be the loudest. Thank God Jules was coming. I just wished she’d hurry up and get here already.

I watched what had begun as two really pretty girls lingering over under the beech tree on the lawn beside the front entrance. As I watched, it was slowly becoming a model reunion special. Boys with the perfect summer tan and the latest hair walked over and hugged them, who were soon joined by girls wearing shiny leather school shoes with heels and school dresses the size of tennis dresses and then there were other boys with hair styled into just the right amount of bed head, their ties artily crooked and loose. But it wasn’t messy. It was the kind of messy you’d find on the cover of a magazine. Entirely purposeful. It looked that way to me, anyway.

I looked at them some more. Actually, it might not have been purposeful. It might have just been messy. I watched a line of girls enter the school and walk past the pretty people, glancing over before sharing excited smiles and then proceeded to giggle as soon as they entered the building. Hmm. Every school had one, and before the learning had even commenced, it appeared I’d happened upon the popular clique.

Half the eighth graders hadn’t even arrived, but this group, you could just tell. They had the look, I couldn’t work out exactly what it was though. I guess I gotta give the students here props though. I mean those kids oozed cool. Unlike the popular group at my old school who were led by Hunt Mitchell who’s proudest moment was burping the national anthem through assembly one time and Hilary Whistler who spent the start of elementary school terrorizing the boys with games of kiss-chasey before they finally gave in by the fifth grade and started letting her catch them just to get it over with and get back to their game of football already. Then she came back to school after summer last year with these boobs she’d never had before and from then on she always had a boyfriend, though she’d go with someone different each week.

I don’t think the boys she was going with always knew they were with her though. So yeah, just by the quality of the popular kids alone, Cromwell Prep was turning out to be a top notch school. No wonder Malcolm MacGregor closed down.

I watched out of the corner of my eye with envy, as two of the girls in that clique hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other in forever. My guess? It was probably last night. They jumped up and down in a girly hug and held hands as they spoke over the top of each other, praising the other on how pretty they looked. I wanted to do that. But instead, I stood by myself feeling like a loser loner with no friends. But that would all change in a matter of seconds, when Jules climbed off the bus and came running over to me and I too would be involved in a big, jumping up and down type girly hug, some squeals of excitement and lots of exclamations of how much we missed each other. And unlike them, I actually hadn’t seen her since the last day of school last year.

It was our first time apart – like seriously apart with her traipsing all over a whole other continent on a school trip Cromwell ran– so we most definitely had a big girly squeal, jump up and down, hugging and telling each other how pretty we looked reunion due. I’d probably feel weird about the ‘you’re so pretty’ part, but, not that I’d admit it, the jumping looked fun.

I perked up as I heard the roar of an engine that sounded a little more intense than the station wagons and people-movers that were dropping kids off, and soon the bus rounded the corner and stopped in front of the school with a weary sigh. The front and back doors opened and the bus vomited out students in a tidal wave of maroon and white. I searched every face for Jules – okay, not the boys’ faces, obviously – looking for her dirty blond waves (the family trademark) and probably a school dress down to her ankles like me. I didn’t find her. Wait – was that…no. Oh – yes, it was. Jules’s unruly curls that she’d never managed to tame were now a slick, glossy mane of platinum blond. Her school dress sat above her knee, the right amount of short and her sweater was sitting comfortably on her hips as if it had been professionally tailored just for her.

And since when had she worn make up? We’re talking the biggest tom boy on the planet, Jules was. Worse than me. And since when has her mom let her wear makeup?

She stepped off the bus in school shoes with heels on them, and was busy dabbing her pinkie into a pot of pink lip gloss, smearing it across her already super shiny lips. And did I mention she was wearing dangly earrings with colored glass beads that jiggled around when she moved and sparkled in the sunlight? She had bangles on one wrist and… was that a gold watch? Jules. Looked. Ridiculous.

I stood there with my mouth hanging open, watching as more students flooded the sidewalk and manoeuvred their way around me. I don’t remember dropping my back pack but at some point I did. Hard. On my foot.

Jules was mid-conversation with someone and paused on the curb, waiting for them to join her. Had it been possible for my jaw to drop any further, it would have. She laughed at something that was said, and tossed her hair. She smacked her re-glossed lips together and placed the pot in her blazer pocket. My eyes narrowed somewhat. I didn’t mean for them to.

‘You drop this?’

‘Huh?’ I blinked, a tall boy with a mop of scruffy hair held my back pack out to me. My tummy fluttered. He must have spent the summer growing, too. But unlike Stefan Gregorio, he looked just right.

I took the bag. ‘I guess. Thanks,’ I said.

He gave me a crooked smile and my heart nearly stopped. Yes, totally because he was completely adorable but also a little bit because he’d snapped me out of my “who on Earth is that girl, is it Jules? No it can’t be but I think it is” trance and now I was starting to feel the pain of my bag having collided with my tootsies. It was starting to throb, but I had more important things to think about.

We’d never really bothered with boys before, Jules and me. Not the boys we knew. They were rough and sweaty and thought it was hilarious to fart and throw things at you. In fact our opinion on the matter had been: Boys are stupid. End of sentence. But this boy was completely different to any of the boys I’d come across before. This was the sort of boy Jules and I would discuss in minute detail in the tree house in my backyard. Except this boy wasn’t in a magazine. This was a real life lust-worthy boy! My stomach fluttered some more as I stood there looking at him. But it fluttered in a nice kind of way. Unlike my toes which throbbed in a bad kind of way.

‘No problem,’ he said, and with that he turned and ambled toward the building.

‘Travster!’ One of the boys from the model reunion called. Girls opened their arms to Mr. Tall and Scruffy and squealed. He dropped his bag on the grass and began an elaborate greeting ritual of air kisses, hugs and complicated high fives. My shoulders drooped. He was one of them. Of course he was. I turned back to Jules.

The person she was waiting for had gotten off the bus, and I realized with horror that Jules had to be an alien clone. There was no other explanation for it. Because there was no way that the real Jules would laugh and joke and enjoy the company of the finest playground bully there ever was, our sworn enemy, Meg freaking Colton. Of all the people from Malcolm MacGregor Middle School I would have been glad to be rid of forever, it was her. Absolutely her. How did I not know that she of all people was coming to the same school as me
again
? I’d suffered through elementary school with her and it killed me when she showed up on the first day of sixth grade at MacGregor as well, but this? She got into Cromwell too? A couple of the pretty people called out to Meg. One girl skipped over to her and Jules, her high heels clickity clacking on the pavement, and the girl opened her arms with yet another squeal. To Meg. She opened her arms to Meg and hugged her.

I take it back. I take it all back. No props to Cromwell. The props have been revoked. For if they actually like Meg (gag), then they must all be clinically insane and I’d in fact been transferred to a mental institution. You see, We hate Meg. Jules and me. We always have. I actually remember the day we decided that we would hate her forever.

It was first grade and she already had a posse of girls that followed her around and laughed at people when she told them to, and said ‘Yeah’ whenever she said something mean (so they said ‘Yeah’ a lot). There are tons of movies with girls just like them. Must be where they learned it from.

Jules and I had been playing on the jungle gym. We were sitting up the top, surveying our kingdom (we were princesses – actually I was the Queen and Jules was a princess but I didn’t tell her that) and we were deciding whether or not to send the knights out to war or let the enemy come to us and ram down the gate. Pfft. Let them try. All I knew was good luck getting over the moatful of crocodiles. Anyway Meg and her girls sauntered over and had a good old laugh looking up our skirts and from then on she called me Dumbo, cos I’d been wearing these cute little elephant underpants. Jules didn’t get a nickname at the time because she was wearing plain white ones. She probably hadn’t planned it out, that the nickname would catch on and everyone – especially the boys – would call me Dumbo for the next six years of my school life. I mean she was just a little kid. But I clearly remember the look in her eye when Louis Markowicz heard and laughed and announced to everyone that my name was Dumbo. She was thrilled. And this was just the beginning of Meg’s reign of terror against me. Jules got her fair share of abuse too. Actually in second grade she earned the nickname Tipper because she went through a clumsy phase and tipped over a lot.

But jeez, Dumbo? Jules was my best friend so she hated Meg for me. She was insulted for me and we spent a lot of time glaring at her from across the playground and staying out of her way. And besides, isn’t it really mean to call someone Dumbo for six straight years? Especially when other kids caught on to it but thought it meant I was stupid.

As I watched them standing over there, I remembered the last day of term last year, Jules and I walking home and we’d started running and skipping with joy because we were finally rid of the evil evil Meg. We’d really been looking forward to that. Then what on Earth was Jules doing laughing with her right now? I mean, Meg!

I was still standing on my own by the gate, trying to be inconspicuous in my school gown, but I probably wasn’t doing a good job of it because I think my jaw had hit the pavement and my eyebrows had most likely disappeared into my hair line.

And then Jules’s mascara’d eyes turned to me, but they didn’t light up like they were supposed to. She didn’t run over to me and hug me because she hadn’t seen her best friend in months. She didn’t exclaim about how boring that trip to Europe had been and how much she missed me, and wished I’d have been there because it would have been so much more fun with me by her side. Oh, and she was so sorry she got back two weeks ago but whisked off on an end of summer trip to the beach with family friends. It had all been so last minute!