The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter (21 page)

“I made you lunch again,” my mother said.

“Cool.” I wolfed down two pieces of toast.

“It’s a hummus sandwich.” My mother sat down next to me with a brown paper sack.

“What’s it made out of?” I asked.

“Chickpeas!” She smiled and made an
mmm
sound.

I looked out the window into the dark morning. It felt like the middle of the night. My mother’s hair was stuck to her head and she had bags under her eyes.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” I said. “I won’t miss the bus. I’m hurrying.”

She shook her head and poured us each a glass of orange juice. “We have a few minutes before your bus. Let’s chat.”

I took my glass. “Chat?”

“You haven’t talked about any of your friends at school.”

“Sylvie goes to South and we’re still on the outs. Big-time,” I said.

“We’re two weeks into school. I’m talking about your friends at North.”

I did not want to admit to my mom that I hadn’t made any real friends yet. And that currently I was a socially certified nothing.

“Who do you hang out with?” She smiled at me in a very hopeful way.

My mom had bad timing. If she asked me this question in a week, I could tell her about all my cheerleader friends. But I didn’t even know their names yet. “Raya Papas.”

“That’s a pretty name. Tell me about her.”

“She likes stickers and she’s very alert in math.”

“Oh!” my mother said. “She’s got a brain for numbers.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I also spend time with Cameron Bon Qui Qui.”

“She sounds interesting.”

“I think she wants to grow up to be a policewoman. She likes rules.”

“Kids are so mature these days.”

I nodded. Then I changed the subject, because I got tired
of lying about the friends I didn’t really have. “How’s mallet-toe Betty?”

“She needs another casserole. We should probably stop by there today or tomorrow.”

Normally, I would have objected to this idea. But I was tired. And maybe when my mom went there, I could hang out with Betty’s coward dog and spy on Raya some more and figure out why she was rude to me.

“I forgot to tell you something,” my mom said. “Noll came over last night.”

And when my mom said this, my heartbeat zoomed. “Noll came to see me?” I asked in a very surprised voice. Because I was pretty sure that after the Mustang incident Noll thought I was a huge dork who might not have been totally normal.

“No. He brought you something.” My mother lifted up a card.

My mouth dropped open. “Noll Beck brought me a card last night?”

It seemed impossible, but maybe this was his way of telling me that he’d broken up with his girlfriend and was interested in spending time with me.

“No,” my mother said. “The mailman delivered a postcard from Grandma to Noll’s house by mistake.”

My heart stopped zooming and I took the card. It had a big cow on it.

“What’s with the cow?” I asked.

“I think it’s a tourist attraction. Apparently, it’s the world’s largest Holstein.”

The cow was named Sue. And she was black and white and had horns and a big udder. The card said she was made out of fiberglass and stood thirty-eight feet tall.

As Mom loaded my lunch into a brown paper sack, she finally noticed that I’d opened my present.

“Bessica! You opened it.”

I set the card down and nodded. “It was mine.”

“What did Grandma give you?”

“PE pants.” They were folded up in the chair next to me, so I lifted them up and showed her.

“You’re going to wear those to PE?” my mom asked. Her face looked concerned.

“Totally,” I said. “My teacher said I have to wear purple pants. It’s in our dress code. It’s part of our grade.”

But my mom’s face only looked more worried. “Have you read what’s written on the backside?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that something could be written on the backside. I turned them over and read the butt.
KISS THIS
. I gasped.

“I think that might actually violate a decency rule,” my mom said.

I didn’t know if it violated one of those, but I sure wasn’t going to wear purple pants that said
KISS THIS
during PE
in the school gymnasium. What was Grandma thinking? “What are they even good for?” I asked. I tossed them back on the chair.

“Pajamas. Or long underwear,” my mom offered.

“Long underwear?” That seemed like a terrible idea. I liked my underwear regular length.

“They’re thin enough that if you needed an extra layer for warmth you could wear these underneath your pants.”

I could not imagine ever needing an extra layer. “That’s weird.”

I left the pants and got up and loaded all my stuff into my backpack for school, even Grandma’s postcard. And I felt really anxious, because I hadn’t slept enough and my purple pants were lame and while I was thrilled about Pilot Mike, I wished I were able to be more honest with my mom about stuff. I started shoving everything into my backpack in a rough manner that resembled mashing.

“You should pack up before you go to bed,” my mom suggested.

I shoved my last book inside my backpack and tugged the zipper closed. “Sure I should.”

“Have a good day!” my mom called.

As I walked out to the bus, it was sort of like I couldn’t control my own legs. Because I saw Noll’s car, and even though I knew I should stay pretty far away from it, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see if his girlfriend had
left anything in there. Because if she had, I thought it would mean they were pretty serious, because she knew she’d be returning to the car. But if she hadn’t, then I thought it would mean that they weren’t very serious at all.

I hurried up to the passenger-side window and looked inside. The chemistry book was back. And there were more crumpled-up papers in the backseat. And there was a duffel bag in the backseat. I leaned in closer. But I couldn’t see what was inside of it because it was zipped shut. Maybe it was the girlfriend’s duffel bag. This made me feel terrible. But the duffel bag was red. Would a girl want a red duffel bag? I hoped not.

As I walked away from Noll’s car to catch the bus, I knew that it was going to be hard for me to concentrate at school. Because I had a lot on my plate.

All day I was in a distracted mood. I had a tough time remembering my locker combination. And I forgot to automatically give Redge a pen and he had to remind me.

“Hey. Pen girl. I’m waiting.”

And when Mrs. Mounds lectured about the central nervous system, I only took half as many notes as I should have. And when Mr. Val had us read a story out loud in class about a celebrated jumping frog, I couldn’t follow what was happening, even though he turned off the flute music. When the bell rang and class ended, I was surprised
to see people leaving the room, because it felt like we’d just gotten there. And I was so distracted in math that I accidentally sat in Raya Papas’s seat.

“You’re in my seat,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. And then I didn’t move right away because I sort of wanted Raya to talk to me more.

“You need to move,” Raya said.

“Okay.” But I stayed right there.

“Do I need to get the teacher?”

I shook my head and got up.

“You might not look alt, but you sure act alt,” Raya said. “You’re totally weird.”

And I didn’t understand why Raya was being so mean to me, because I was nice to her. And I liked her. So I thought she should have been automatically kind to me until we became friends and she wrote me notes with heart stickers on them.

After that, the only interesting thing that happened in math was that Raya told the story of her neighbor’s dog getting snatched by a dangerous coyote.

“He got grabbed right by the mailbox!” Raya said. And she didn’t tell just one person. She told everybody. And so that became a very, very popular topic in class.

Coyote. Coyote. Coyote. Dog. Dog. Dog
. It’s all anybody wanted to talk about.

I’d seen a coyote once with my dad. It had big teeth and
looked exactly like a wild animal. I wasn’t surprised that it would snatch a dog. When the bell rang, I went straight to my locker. And when I opened my locker, I took out my lunch sack, and I was bummed out. Because my hummus sandwich was releasing an odor.

I reached inside my backpack and was really surprised by what came tumbling out of it. First, Grandma’s postcard fell to the floor. It was very bent. Then my cell phone dropped down there too. Uh-oh. I remembered the postcard, but I’d hurried so fast to pack for school that I must’ve accidentally stuffed my phone in my backpack. I picked it up and stuck it in my lunch sack along with the postcard. Because I sort of felt like calling somebody. Because lunch was a lonely time for me. I slammed my locker shut and I saw somebody inside Davis’s locker. I figured it was Davis. He gave me a strange look.

“What’s in that bag?” Davis asked. “Is it a dead animal?”

I didn’t mention my banned cell phone. “I’m Bessica. This is my lunch. It’s made out of chickpeas.”

“That’s disgusting,” he said. “I’d rather eat my own arm.”

And I was glad that Davis said that. Because it showed that he was most definitely a dork. And so I walked off and didn’t say another word to him. I headed toward the row. And on my way there a terrible thing happened. I ran into Cola.

“Are you going to walk? Or are you going to run? Or are you going to attack the vending machine?” he asked.

That psycho-bully was such a goon. I didn’t even know what to say to him. So I just said a fact. “I brought my lunch today.”

Then Redge and Beecher appeared.

“What’s that smell?” Beecher asked.

And I didn’t mention that it was my sandwich.

“What’s in your bag?” Cola asked.

“Lunch,” I said.

Then I started walking away, because I didn’t want to waste valuable minutes of my life talking to those three.

“I know what’s in your bag,” Cola said. “A fart sandwich.”

Then Cola made loud fart noises over and over. And I just kept walking. But he followed me. And so did Redge and Beecher. And they made fart noises too. So I didn’t walk to the row. I walked to the bathroom as fast as I could. Because my eyes felt hot. Like I could cry at any moment. And I didn’t want to cry in the hallway. I really didn’t want to cry in the bathroom either. But I thought that was my safest option. So I opened a stall and sat down on a toilet. And I watched the tears tumble to the floor in juicy splatters.

I wanted to throw my sandwich away. But I was also hungry. I didn’t understand why school had to be this
difficult. Or why the psycho-bullies couldn’t stop being psycho. Or why rude Raya couldn’t start being nice. Or why my mom couldn’t have made me a peanut butter sandwich.

I reached over and grabbed some toilet paper and blew my nose. Then I continued to sit there. And I decided to open my smelly bag and eat my smelly sandwich. And that was when a bunch of girls came into the bathroom. Something about what was happening reminded me of my weird dream. I held my breath and peeked through the crack in the door. There were three of them. And one of them was the fluffy-ponytail girl who knew that I liked Kettle. I almost lost my appetite.

“We’ll make them do round-offs right away,” said a girl wearing green shoes.

“Backflips,” said Alice Potgeiser.

“Shouldn’t we let them stretch first?” asked a girl wearing red sandals. “Won’t they break their necks if we don’t?”

“Maybe,” Alice said. And then they all laughed. “But we only want the best. No losers who can barely jump.”

Then they all laughed some more and left. And I knew they were talking about cheerleading. And I knew that I didn’t know how to do round-offs or backflips, even if I did stretch. So it seemed pretty likely that after school today I would break my neck.

I blew my nose again. And then I remembered Grandma’s postcard. I reached into my lunch sack and pulled it out. On the back of the cow postcard, Grandma had only written two words:
LIVE LARGE!
I put the postcard back in my bag. What was that supposed to mean? Just because she was off having a fun time with Willy didn’t mean that she should send me messages I couldn’t understand.
Live large
. What did she want me to do—try out for cheerleading and break my neck?
Live large
. I said it over and over as I sat on the toilet. What a mean thing to send me. Grandma didn’t have any clue about how bad things really were. That was when I realized the only solution to this problem. I needed to get my banned phone and call her.

Sadly, I just got her voice mail. She was probably with maniac Willy inside a stupid cave where she didn’t get cell phone reception. In addition to hating Willy, I was really starting to hate caves. I left Grandma a message:

“This is Bessica and I’m calling you from the bathroom because I have no idea what your cow card means. Can you please call me as soon as possible and explain? Also, would you please consider coming home? Just
consider
it. Your room is very empty. Sometimes I go down there and sit and miss you and feel rotten. In ten minutes I plan to—”

And then I just hung up, because I sort of wanted to leave Grandma a cliff-hanger message. Because I thought that might encourage her to call me back sooner. I peeked out the door at the clock on the wall. Lunch was over in five minutes. Time flies when you’re bummed out on a toilet. I looked at my phone. I felt like calling somebody else. Then it hit me. I should call Marci Docker and ask her for more tips about trying out for cheerleading. Because she was an expert. Also, she was one of the only people whose number was programmed into my phone. I was so relieved when she answered!

“This is Bessica Lefter again,” I said. I could hear a ton of noise in the background. I guessed high school was a loud place. “I just heard some cheerleaders talking about tryouts and it made me very nervous, and that day we had lunch you said a lot of helpful things and I was hoping you could give me some pointers.”

There was a little bit of silence. And I was afraid she’d forgotten who I was. And I was getting ready to talk about her feet issues and how she knew my mom, but then she started talking.