Ava XOX (8 page)

DEAR DIARY,

I phoned Maybelle, but she was on her way to Kelli's for a sleepover with Zara. That made me feel even worse!

I told Dad what a horrible mess I was in and how in my head, I'd gone from hero to zero without passing Go. He said he and Mom already knew about it, because after I'd told Mrs. Lemons, she'd told Principal Gupta, and she'd told Dad, and Dad had told Mom. Now there's going to be a special assembly for the whole middle school on bullying and health and I don't know what else.

There was supposed to be a P-E-P rally next Tuesday, but it got postponed because of me. Kids like rallies more than assemblies, and I wonder how many people will know it's my fault it got postponed.

Probably everyone.

I never want to go to school again.

I wonder if I can fake being sick until summer vacation.

AVA IN AGONY

DEAR DIARY,

Dad asked if I wanted to go to the Great Wall or the Kahiki. I said I'd rather stay home with Taco, and could we order in tacos? Dad said sure and sat down next to me on the sofa.

“Thanks, though,” I said, and Dad patted my knee as if I were seven. He also said he had a cat joke for me:

Question: What's the difference between a cat and a comma?

Answer: A cat has claws at the end of its paws, and a comma means a pause at the end of a clause.

I tried to smile, but I couldn't, partly because the joke wasn't very funny and partly because I'm feeling too mopey.

Kelli once said her family likes to dine out on Friday, and what if I ran into Maybelle and Zara and Kelli in a restaurant, having a great time without me? I couldn't take it.

AVA, AILING

PS I thought I was Ava the Wise, but I am…other
wise
.

DEAR DIARY,

At dinner, while we ate takeout tacos, Pip said that
her
poster got ruined too—and so did Bea's! Someone gave
Mona Lisa
a beard and wrote “Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle” on her chest! And someone drew inappropriate private parts on Bea's deer! And boogies under the deer's nose! And someone gave Aesop sunglasses and a goatee!

I said the art poster vandals probably weren't the same girls who ripped down my FLASH poster because those girls would never have written “Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle” on
Mona Lisa
.

Pip said, “So true, Nancy Drew!” which she used to say back when she was reading an old series about a girl detective. (Now she's reading a series about a lady detective. It starts with
A Is for Alibi
and
B Is for Burglar
, and there's a new book for every letter.)

We talked about who might have written on the posters.

We did
not
talk about stupid Kelli's stupid sleepover.

Are Maybelle and Zara and Kelli hanging out in Kelli's pink room? Are they eating chocolate-covered strawberries? Are they talking about Chuck? Are they talking about
me
?

I wish
I
were having the sleepover.

And I wish Chuck weren't Kelli's boyfriend, because if he weren't taken, maybe I could call him and he could help me feel better. I keep thinking about Rorie, and I do get some of what she and those girls were saying. But did they have to gang up on me five to one???

A IS FOR ALONE

DEAR DIARY,

I wanted to talk, so I walked into Pip's room and said, “Life is not fair.”

Pip said, “Number one, you should learn to knock. Number two, I'm on the phone with Ben. And number three, life is
fair
ly
fair
for you and me. We have food and shelter, and you should have more
perspective
.”

I made a face and left. She didn't used to have
any
perspective, so who is she to criticize?

Writing things down usually helps, but tonight I also wanted to
talk
. I'm only human. And only eleven.

AVA, ARRRGGGH

PS I wish I'd never written those Tanya Tips. I'm having a hard time not giving myself a hard time!

DEAR DIARY,

I'm glad it's Saturday. I don't have it in me to even think about going back to school yet.

I don't even feel like writing in you.

I feel like soaking in a hot bath until it's not hot anymore, then draining out the water, turning the hot water back on, and taking an even longer bath.

But I already did that! I took the world's longest bath! By the time I got out, my fingers and toes were crinkly. (I'm lucky Pip didn't want to shower right after me, because when I use up all the hot water, she loses
all
perspective.)

The thing is, it's upsetting to have people upset with me. I wish I could wash away the bad feelings!

And it's hard to have “perspective,” because I mostly see things through my own two eyes. Doesn't everyone?

Yesterday at school, it felt like all eyes were on me. Like I was at the eye of a storm.

A-V-A, E-Y-E?

DEAR DIARY,

Dad made his famous Irish breakfast, and Pip told us she dreamed that
Z Is for Zinnia
won an award. I said I dreamed that some big kids were about to beat me up.

“Oh, honey,” Mom said.

Later I went to Maybelle's, and we watched a Disney movie. That helped take my mind off my troubles—except for the part in
Beauty and the Beast
when the whole town just assumes that Beast is terrible when he isn't.

I decided to ask Maybelle about her sleepover with Kelli and Zara.

She said it was fun. At least she didn't say, “It was sooooo much fun!” Maybelle knows it hasn't been easy for me to watch her become friends with Zara, and now with Zara's friend Kelli—a.k.a. my…enemy? My
riva
l
?

“What did you guys do?” I asked.

“We watched a movie and went to the Great Wall,” she said. (That made me extra glad that my family didn't go!) Maybelle looked up and added, “I will say this: Kelli's mom is a little—”

“A little what?”

Maybelle hesitated. “Well, let's just say she let us watch a movie that our parents and Zara's grandparents would
never
have let us watch. It was about a teenage girl who likes a boy who is a
bad
influence. And Kelli's mother, Candi—”

“Candy?”

“Candi with an
i
!”

“Go on.”

“She watched part of it with us and acted…inappropriate.”

“What do you mean? You have to tell me!”

“She said when she was our age, she wanted to be bigger, you know, up top. And she showed us this exercise she used to do with her friends. They'd kick back their arms and chant, ‘We must, we must, we must build up the bust. The bigger, the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys will look at us!'”

“Omigod!”

“I know!”

“What did you and Zara do?”

“What could we do?”

“Didn't Kelli make her stop? Or tell her she was being, I don't know, sexist and sizist and…weird?”

“I don't think Kelli realized how weird it was. All she said was, ‘Did it work?'”

“What did her mom say?”

“Of course not.”

“Do
you
call her Candi?”

“Of course not!” Maybelle repeated.

I nodded and thought,
My mom may not be the huggiest mom in the world, but at least she's not embarrassing with a capital E.

Back home, Mom was reading in bed and said, “Come in,” so I did. I even got in next to her. She asked me what had caused “all the fuss” at school. So I told her that Tanya got laughed at in assembly, and I got
ostracized
(spelling word) in the cafeteria. She asked me to show her the Tanya Tips, so I did, explaining that I hadn't called anyone “fat,” and Rorie had taken everything personally.

Mom nodded, and for a second, I wished she would give me a big hug and say all the right words like TV moms do. But Mom isn't like that. Her mom, Nana Ethel, isn't either.

Here's what Mom did say: “People get very sensitive about this subject. It's a minefield. Even Dr. Gross has to be supercareful when he tells clients that their cats or dogs need to lose weight.” She looked at me. “He avoids saying ‘fat' because it's such a loaded word.”

“Like a loaded gun?”

“Well, not
that
dangerous.” She met my eyes. “And not as dangerous as a real minefield either.”

I pointed out that the word
diet
has the word
die
in it.

Mom chuckled. “Even for animals,” she said, “losing weight is harder than you'd think. It's mostly up to the owner to buy special foods, provide exercise, and hold back on table scraps. No one wants to hear that their pet should go on a diet, but if an owner wants a pet to live a good, long life…”

Just then, Taco nudged the door open with his head, padded toward us, and jumped onto the bed. Mom and I started petting him, and after a moment, Taco started purring.

I like how sweet Mom is with Taco. I sometimes forget that he's not only
my
first real pet, he's
Mom's
first real pet too!

“Taco's not a fat cat, right?” I whispered.

“Right,” Mom replied.

“But he's not as scrawny as he was when we rescued him, right?”

“Right,” she repeated.

“He's purr-fect,” I said, and Mom agreed. I kissed Taco on his white zigzag.

“He's at a healthy weight for an adult indoor male,” she added.

“You know the expression ‘puppy love'? There should be a term ‘kitty love.'”

Mom laughed. “You're right. There should.”

AVA, RIGHT
NOT
WRONG

PS What I feel about Chuck may not be “true love,” but it's more than “puppy love.”

DEAR DIARY,

I just read an Aesop fable that I wish I hadn't. Its moral is the opposite of the one for “The Lion and the Mouse.”

That's the famous fable about the lion who gets really mad at the mouse who wakes him from a nap. The mouse begs the lion to spare him, and the lion says okay, and later, when hunters throw a net over the lion, the mouse sees him and starts gnawing away at the ropes and saves the lion's life. The moral? “No good deed is ever wasted.”

Well,
this
fable, the one I just read, is called “The Frog and the Scorpion,” and its moral is “No good deed goes unpunished.” It starts out with a scorpion who begs a frog to ferry him to the other side of a stream:

“How do I know you won't sting me?” asks the frog.

“If I do, I will die too, because I can't swim,” says the scorpion.

“How do I know you won't sting me when we get to the other side?” asks the frog.

“I would never do that!” says the scorpion.

The frog says, “Okay, fine,” and the scorpion crawls onto the frog's back, and they start across the water. In the middle, the scorpion stings the frog! His poison paralyzes the frog, and suddenly they are both about to drown.

“Why did you sting me?” the frog says. “Now we're both going to die!”

“It's who I am,” the scorpion says. “I couldn't help it.”

Worst. Fable. Ever.

I mean, I like how Aesop sometimes tells different stories to make different points. And I get that the world is complicated.

But still. “No good deed goes unpunished” is a terrible moral.

(Even if it might sometimes be a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty bit true.)

AVA, STUNG

DEAR DIARY,

Observation: when things are bad, you can tell who your friends are. Today a lot of people were
looking at
me, and a few were
looking out for
me.

Not Rorie. If looks could kill, I'd be dead as a doornail! She and her gang got detentions because they “harassed” me, and I bet she's blaming me for that—which is totally not fair. I also saw Lacey today, and she stared at me in a way that made me
want
to go hide in a bathroom stall!

Maybelle was extra sweet all day.

Zara was
too
.

And Bea was…
three
. In the hallway, she even said that those older girls had had no right to “dump on me,” and there was “nothing wrong with our list.” I was glad she didn't add, “Except your title,” since
I
was the one who'd idiotically called it “FIT OR FAT.”

Tanya actually left a note in my locker. It said, “Don't let the turkeys get you down. (Not easy, I know.) Gobble, gobble.” She even sketched an excellent turkey with a droopy wattle and trusting eyes. An hour later, I left a note in her locker that said “Thanks!” and drew the only turkey I know how to draw, which is the kind you trace with your five fingers, the way we learned in first grade.

At lunch, Alla, a sixth grader whose name is a palindrome (A-L-L-A), told me that some of those same girls picked on her when she moved here from Russia. She also said that at her bus stop this morning, Tanya told her that her whole family is giving up soda.

“They are?” I asked.

Alla nodded and added that Tanya had asked her if she wanted to start taking walks after school.

“What did you say?”

“I said sure. So we're going to try to walk on Thursdays.”

Okay, I am now about to tell you the best part. One other person was really nice to me today. Can you guess who?

Chuck! Yes, Chuck!

He and I got to English before anyone else, so we were alone for about one minute, maybe two. He said, “I heard what happened.” I looked right at him, and my nose got tingly and my eyes got hot. “I wish I could help,” he said.

“Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a writer,” I said. I didn't expect to say that, but sometimes with Chuck, all I can be is honest. And after all, my writing
does
keep causing trouble, whether I write about a queen bee or rescue cat or weight loss. “I probably shouldn't be trusted with a pen.”

“Ava, don't say that! You're a great writer! The S rule was funny. So was the O rule.” He met my eyes.

“Wait! You saw the poster before they took it down?” Had Chuck read what I wrote about Seconds, Sweets, Snacks, and Sugary Soda? And Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, Tostitos, and Oreos?

“I recognized your handwriting, so I read it on Friday morning.”

“You didn't think it was bossy and offensive? Or that I was acting like the ‘body police'?”

He shook his head. “I thought it was
sincere
and
earnest.
” He smiled because those were recent spelling words. “And brave,” he added. “And…sweet.”

He kept looking at me, and maybe this is all in my imagination, but it felt like he was thinking “…like you.” And that he could tell I was thinking this.

It was as if we could read each other's minds.

“Chuck,” I said, meeting his eyes, “you said you wished you could help, and I think you just did.”

AVA, FEELING A BIT BETTER