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  Adair looked at me. “Do you want to write or should I?”

  “I will. Uh . . . what are we brainstorming?”

  She snickered. “Weren’t paying attention, huh? I guess you had other stuff on your mind. Or should I say other people.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “The PTA is going to pay for a school improvement project, so we’re supposed to come up with a bunch of ideas, like new turf for the soccer field or new boards for chess club—stuff like that. The class is going to vote, pick our favorite, and present it to the PTA.”

  “I think we should paint a mural over that awful orange wall in the cafeteria,” said Renata. She glanced up, but her fingers never stopped moving. It was starting to get on my nerves.

  “Good idea,” said Adair. “Coco, you could design it.” She turned to Renata. “She’s a really talented artist. She’s especially good with faces.”

  “Nah,” I said shyly, writing the idea in my notebook.

  “That would be so incredible,” said Adair, bouncing. “Imagine a huge wall of different faces blending together. . . .”

  “One second,” said Renata. “Aren’t you forgetting something? We have to get the class to agree—the whole class.” She tipped her head toward Dijon’s group. “I’ve got a better chance of getting elected fall queen.”

  Renata was right, of course. Social rules dictated that any time a class vote was called for, everyone was required to vote for the most popular Somebody in the room. Dijon’s idea, whatever it was, would win.

  Breck popped up from behind Adair. He glanced at me over my friend’s shoulder. “Can I be in your group?”

  “Sure,” said Adair with a wink to me.

  “Breck!” Dijon snapped her fingers. “You’re with us.”

  “Sorry. Next time,” said Breck, flicking his bangs out of his eyes.

  Whatever. I lifted a shoulder. And turned away.

  They were gray.

  Anyway, like I said. Too much hassle. Would never work.

  I meant his eyes. They were gray.

  Eight

  “What kind of soup do they have?”

  I set my tray on the table beside Adair and across from Fawn. “Can’t you tell by the beans?”

  “Chicken,” Fawn and Adair said together, then laughed.

  Adair peered into my bowl. “It looks like antifreeze.”

  “And smells like wet dog,” said Fawn.

  “It was either this or the mystery-meat chimichanga.”

  My friends nodded to confirm I’d made the right choice. I crumbled four packages of crackers into my soup to soak up the sludge.

  Through a thin curtain of rising steam I grinned at Fawn. From across the table she grinned back. It was strange, sharing a secret with her. Adair, Fawn, and I had never hidden anything from one another before. Unless, of course, the two of them had a secret I didn’t know about, which they probably did because they had known each other since the fifth grade.

  Truth was, I smiled to hide my fear. I had done something else—something not even Fawn knew about. And though I didn’t want to admit it, I had begun to regret it almost from the moment Fawn left the girls’ bathroom to deliver the envelope to Mrs. Rivkin. What if, in my rush to finish, I’d made an error? What if Mrs. Rivkin didn’t follow my instructions? What if she suspected something was up? What if Coach Notting, Miss Furdy, or Mrs. Ignazio had gone to the office after we’d left?

  Since yesterday afternoon, a million “what ifs” had been puncturing my brain. And it was beginning to hurt. Fawn was the only link between the judges and Mrs. Rivkin. If any one of my “what ifs” came true, the trail would lead the administration straight to us. Fawn’s guilty heart would spill her guts in record time. Knowing how well organized she was, she probably already had her confession written and had made individual copies for Dr. Adams, Mr. Falkner, and Mrs. Pescatori in detention. We were never going to get away with this. Never.

  The temperature under my hoodie was starting to rise.

  “I can’t sit still,” said Adair, jiggling. “I wish they would post the cheer results. This is killing me.”

  “Me too,” I murmured, fanning myself with my napkin.

  “Monday is three whole days away.”

  I wished Adair would stop bobbing. She was shaking the whole table. I was getting seasick. Across from me Fawn was sipping her chocolate milk and going up and down. Up and down.

  I struggled to escape my stifling hoodie. “Hey, Liezel’s in the lunch line.”

  “Say that three times fast,” teased Fawn.

  Adair gave it a try. “Liezel’s in the lunch line. Liezel’s in the lunch line. Liezel’s in the lee line—aaugggh!”

  I didn’t know she had first lunch. “Let’s ask her to eat with us,” I said.

  Fawn let out a ghostlike sigh.

  Adair was more direct. “Do we have to?”

  I looked from one to the other. “You don’t like her?”

  “It’s not that we don’t like her.” Fawn sucked in her lower lip. “It’s that she’s sort of . . .”

  “Beige,” said Adair.

  Color code for boring.

  “With blue stripes,” said Fawn. “She’s always got on a sad face.”

  “Add some purple stripes,” said Adair. “She’s accident-prone. Every time I pass her in the hallway, she’s picking her stuff up off the floor.”

  Fawn peeled the lid off her vanilla pudding. “You know what happens when you mix beige, purple, and blue. You get—”

  “Brown,” I finished.

  Brown was worse than beige. Brown was death.

  Was it a coincidence that brown-haired Liezel was wearing a dark-brown sweater with brown pants and brown boots? Even her backpack was brown. Adair and Fawn bowed their heads at the tragedy.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, coming to my senses. “She might wear brown, but she isn’t brown. You want proof?”

  “Always,” said Adair.

  “Exhibit A: She’s not accident-prone. Venice tripped her in front of everybody in the gym, and now she’s got the Royal Court doing it too—every chance they get. They think it’s funny.”

  “No!” Fawn exhaled in horror.

  “That’s just mean.” Adair dumped out her veggie chips onto a napkin.

  “Exhibit B: She plays guitar in a rock band. A high-school rock band.”

  Fawn’s spoon halted in midair. Adair looked up from sorting her veggie chips. She liked to arrange them in little piles according to color: orange (carrot chips), green (spinach chips), and yellow (potato chips).

  “She does?”

  “Seriously?”

  As Liezel carried her tray to the cashier, Adair’s eyes tracked her with new admiration. “She never said anything to anybody,” she said, surprised.

  I opened another package of crackers. “Actually, she’s had a poster tacked up to our locker all week,” I replied.

  “Liezel!” Adair waved. “Come sit with us.”

  Fawn scooted her stuff down to make room.

  “Hi,” said Liezel, sliding onto the bench. “Thanks for the 911. I just got switched to this lunch and thought for sure I was going to get stuck in the boonies with Mr. Quigley. Did you hear? He’s got an MP3 player now. It can hold, like, five thousand pictures of Clawed Monet.”

  We groaned.

  “Liezel, do you really play in a rock band?” asked Adair.

  “Uh-huh. I play guitar. I sing and write songs, too.” She glanced at me. I knew she wanted me to say something about her music, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t yet listened to her CD. I had meant to, even took it out of the jewel case, but I was too afraid to play it. What if the band was terrible?

  Fawn’s mouth was open. “You mean, you play in public?”

  “Of course. That’s the whole point, Fawn. We just played at my church’s Labor Day picnic.” Her grin faded. “We sent in an audition CD to play at the Big Mess fall dance, but we never heard back. I guess the committee chose another band.”
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  “Yeeeeooooooooow!”

  I was pretty sure the shout had come from the other side of the cafeteria, near the door. Or maybe from the hallway outside.

  “It’s probably Parker and Todd wrestling again,” said Adair.

  “Or skateboarding inside again,” offered Fawn.

  “Or sword fighting with Todd’s drumsticks again,” said Liezel.

  We could go on all day. With those two spit wads the possibilities were endless.

  A few seconds later there was another scream. This one had a slightly higher pitch and much more energy behind it.

  “Eeeeeeeeek!”

  That had definitely come from the hallway. This time, Her Fabulousness and the Royal Court quickly packed up and headed out the door—but not too quickly. It wasn’t good form for a Somebody to appear too eager to go anywhere.

  I looked for Mr. Quigley, our lunchroom monitor. He was on the far side of the cafeteria showing his cat photos to a couple of captive sixth graders. He didn’t seem concerned about the shrieks coming from the hall.

  “Auuuggggh!”

  “What is going on out there?” squealed Adair at the exact moment Évian went by, hurrying to catch up to Dijon.

  Évian turned our way and said dryly, “Cheer results.”

  A hard jolt went through my body. It felt like lightning, but it was probably Adair, yanking off my right arm. “They posted early!”

  Color draining from her face, Fawn was frozen to her seat. I had to clap my hands in front of her face to bring her back to reality. “Come on, Fawn, we’re going with Adair to check the cheer results.”

  “O-okay.”

  I wished she would stop looking so guilty. We had nothing to feel guilty about. Right?

  As the four of us made our way across the cafeteria, Adair, who was still firmly glued to my arm, kept repeating, “I can’t look, I can’t look, I can’t look.”

  “If you don’t look, you’ll never know,” said Liezel.

  “Okay, I’ll look.”

  She would, however, have to wait. A traffic jam, several girls deep, blocked the ASB bulletin board. Some of the girls were scanning for their names. Some were scanning for the name of someone they knew. Most, eventually, dropped their arms or heads and silently fell away. When the last of the bodies moved aside, I put my fingers on Adair’s spine and pushed her forward.

  Fawn, Liezel, and I huddled together. I tried to stay calm, but the beans from my soup kept doing tumbling passes in my stomach. Also, the loop of “what ifs” had started in again from the beginning. What if, in my rush to finish, I’d made an error? What if Mrs. Rivkin didn’t follow my instructions? What if she suspected something was up? What if Coach Notting, Miss Furdy, or Mrs. Ignazio had gone to the office after we’d left?

  I wasn’t going to get away with this, was I?

  Nobodies never got away with anything, especially when it involved pulling one over on the Somebodies. Something like what I had done had probably never before been attempted in middle-school history. I wiped my sweaty palms on the front of my jeans. What had I been thinking? No way, no how was this ever going to work.

  Adair was charging at us. “I made it!” She leaped into our arms. Her voice was muffled in my shoulder. “You were there with me every step of the way, Coco.”

  She had no idea.

  I smiled at Fawn, not to hide my worries but for real. Wiping her forehead with an exaggerated motion, she smiled back.

  We had actually done it! A couple of Nobodies had changed the course of Big Mess history. Adair was so excited, she couldn’t stop squealing and hopping and hugging. I, however, was completely exhausted. Manipulating the world takes a lot out of a person.

  “I don’t believe it.” Willow Christopher turned from the bulletin board. She looked at us, her expressionless face a chalky pink. “I never thought . . . My mom said I shouldn’t try out. She said I’d get my heart broken. My sister said I wasn’t the right size. . . . I mean, you hope but never in a million, trillion years do you think it’s possible and then . . . and then . . .”

  “You make it,” I whispered.

  A tear rolled down her left cheek. “You make it.” Trembling hands came to her mouth. “Oh my God, Coco, I made it. I MADE IT!” Willow threw her arms around me and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until I was certain three or four vital organs were going to burst. She released me so quickly, I stumbled backward into Liezel. “Has anyone told Cadence?” asked Willow. “She’s going to flip when she finds out—seriously flip!”

  “Cadence? Uh . . . you mean, Cadence is on the squad too?” Fawn moved in to read the post for herself. Her head swiveled to me. “Cadence and Willow both made cheer. How about that, Coco?”

  “How about that?” I said meekly. Now she knew my secret. I had changed a few more scores than we had agreed on. I couldn’t help myself.

  Arms outstretched, Willow sailed away. She moved seamlessly through clusters of kids standing in the hall, twirling once to the right, then once to the left, before continuing on her way. It was anything but a middle-school dance. It was the kind of dance you did when you were six years old, and you didn’t notice or care if people were watching.

  Liezel sighed. “That’s a girl in the clouds.”

  From now on, I knew Willow’s life was going to be different. Not because she was a cheerleader—well, partly because she was a cheerleader, but mostly because she was free. She wasn’t a Nobody anymore. She was just Willow. Purely Willow.

  And I, Coco Simone Sherwood, had helped her to claim that independence.

  I felt warm. Electric. Alive.

  Willow was at the end of the hall, turning the corner. Still dancing. Still floating above us. Five fluttering fingertips were the last of her to disappear.

  Nine

  After opening our mailbox, I pulled out a couple of bills and a pile of junk mail. A yellow slip of paper fell to the ground.

  Ooooh, a package!

  I stuck my mailbox key into another large box at the bottom of the row, swung the door wide, and took out a short, square box. The package was addressed to me. I recognized the handwriting: It was my mother’s. I took the box inside our apartment and set it on the end of the granite countertop. The upper right-hand corner was stamped with the word “Kyoto.” There was no return address.

  My mom always sent me cool stuff from wherever she was, and usually I tore right into it. So why not today? What was I waiting for?

  I wasn’t sure.

  I went to my room. Dash was sleeping—a caramelcolored fluff ball barely visible under his burrow of shavings. After I filled his feeder with hamster pellets and gave him fresh water, he stirred a bit, then went back to sleep.

  Restless, I went back out into the kitchen. Yep. The box was still there.

  Taking my sketchbook out of my backpack, I headed outside to sit on our balcony. I had nothing against balconies, though I longed for a front porch. We had one. Once. Before Mom. It had a white, wooden love swing that hung from the rafters by two chains. I used to spend my summers on that porch, playing tea party with my dolls and watching people stroll past with their dogs. “Don’t go off the porch, Coco,” my mom would call out the kitchen window if I ventured too close to the steps. It was hard to obey her, especially when a golden Lab puppy stopped to sniff our bushes or I heard the ice-cream truck blaring “The Farmer in the Dell” slightly off-key. I knew, even then, there was so much waiting for me beyond those stairs. I guess that’s why I missed them. A front porch lets you open your arms to what’s coming toward you. A balcony is only good for watching what is going away.

  I took a seat on one of the green plastic chairs on our third-floor balcony. In no hurry, I began to sketch an extreme close-up of the black-and-white bark that papered the birch trees next to the railing.

  All afternoon I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Willow and Adair. I had known they were going to be thrilled to make cheer, of course, but I’d never dreamed they’d be so completely . . . What w
as the word I was looking for?

  “Ecstatic”? “Radiant”? “Transformed”?

  Transformed.

  That was it. In an instant, it seemed, everything about them had changed, from their faces to their attitudes to their movements. And all it had taken was a single victory. Just one. As I began drawing a garden spider weaving her web in the eaves, I wondered, wouldn’t it be something if every Nobody at Big Mess could feel the way Adair and Willow felt? Even for a little while? Even for a minute? It would be more than something. It would be everything.

  I let my hand draw whatever it wanted. I did not stop it, even when I knew what it was up to. Those were my rules of art. Never interfere. After about an hour my page was filled with several images—the rippling black-and-white birch bark, a mottled brown spider hanging from fragile threads, and a pinched face hidden behind rectangular glasses and flying saucer hair.

  Renata.

  I laughed out loud. If anyone needed transformation, it was Renata. But helping that particular Nobody was going to take a lot more than a calculator and an eraser. I wasn’t sure I was ready for a challenge like Renata. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  I looked at my watch. My dad was late.

  Closing my sketchbook, I went inside and stared at the package for a few more minutes.

  For goodness’ sake, it’s not going to bite or blow up. Just open it.

  I got a paring knife and cut into the thick tape on the seam, pulling apart the top flaps. Digging through a layer of bubble wrap, I took out a white shirt box and slipped off the top. There was a note.

  Dear Coco,

  I hope you like the kimono. Don’t you just love the color? The little silk pouch isn’t a purse. It’s a charm. The Japanese call them “omamori.” In Japan, parents and grandparents often give their children omamori on the first day of school to bring good luck or protection. They may tuck a piece of paper with prayers or good wishes inside the bag, but NO PEEKING! You are not supposed to open the pouch, or the luck will disappear. Kids attach omamori to their cell phones or backpacks. I see them everywhere here! So here’s a little luck to get your new school year off to a great start. Hope it’s going well. I’m off to my next assignment in Taiwan and will call soon.