As soon as my alarm went off I bolted out of bed without hitting the snooze button once. My stomach flipped over. The first day of middle school! After my shower I put on the outfit I picked out the night before, grabbed my backpack, and ran downstairs to the kitchen. My mom's back was turned as she fussed with a stack of folders she planned to take to work.
"Ready," I announced.
"Not so fast, Kiddo," she said, setting down a bowl of oatmeal with sliced strawberries on top. My dad was sitting at the table, reading the paper and sipping coffee. He was working from home so he could keep an eye on the guys who were ripping out some of our old appliances and the rain gutters and putting in new ones. There was no way he would leave me home alone after school with a bunch of strangers
"Mom, I am so not hungry."
"You're just stressing because it's the first day at your new school." My mom handed me a spoon and a glass of orange juice. "It'll help if you eat something."
"All right," I grumbled. As soon as I took the first bite I realized I was starving. "I just hope I'm not late."
My mom smiled. "Relax, Honey. We have plenty of time." The doorbell rang and my dad stood up and walked through the living room to answer the door. I heard loud voices and booted feet come through the entryway. Then banging and crunching noises as heavy tools were set down. The construction crew had arrived. While I was eating, my mom disappeared into a hallway and came back with something hideous hanging off the end of her stiff arm. "Here you go."
I looked up and my stomach bottomed out. "Oh please don't make me wear that."
She gave me an annoyed look and shook the bulky sweater at me. Like she would ever wear something that ugly. "Mom, I'm starting a new school."
"Skylar."
I stared at her, horrified. "But I've had that sweater since fifth grade."
"It was big on you then, and it still fits," she said, sensibly.
"Mom, that thing's vile. And there's going to be boys at Pacific. Older ones." There would be hotties in my grade, too. Like Dustin.
Lines deepened in her forehead. "Middle school boys aren't going to protect you from the cold, Skylar." She draped the sweater over one of my shoulders.
Time to change up my strategy. "It's going to be eighty degrees today, Mom."
"And it's sixty-five now and breezy. Please hurry up and put it on. If you keep arguing with me you are going to be late."
Yanking thick, itchy wool around my shoulders I grumbled, "Could anything make me look like a bigger tool?" She didn't answer. Just walked toward the garage, looking over her shoulder to make sure I was coming.
Before I followed her I snuck a peek into the living room. It looked like Harley-Davidson was having a party. Beefy men with beards and tattoos lurked around, ready to start working but like they weren't sure what to do. A short, angry guy peered into every corner as if he was looking for something. I knew my parents would never have hired a scroungy crew like that if our next-door neighbor hadn't raved about the great job they had done on her house. She'd showed off her kitchen to my parents, who agreed that it looked amazing. Their prices were fair, too. However, I found out later that there were other details about the men that our new neighbor did not share with my mom and dad.
She beeped the horn. I headed for the garage, glancing over my shoulder at my dad who was watching the strange crew roam around our new house. We didn't talk much as we wound down the hill and drove past the beach, heading toward Pacific Middle School. After begging her to drop me off around the corner so no one would see me getting a ride from my mommy, I walked up to the entrance of the school I had been so looking forward to starting. My first day of seventh grade wasn't turning out to be nearly as fun as I had imagined.
Pacific was huge compared to elementary school. I had to find my way to six rooms in different buildings, and I didn't know where any of them were. Worse yet, a breeze came up and it was cold, so I kept the sweater on. If someone started a Worst Dressed list, I'd be number one. My face was hot, my stomach felt jumpy, and my hands were sweating. How pathetic.
Looking around, I didn't see Alexa or one single person I knew. I wanted to get to my first class before the other girls noticed me wandering around alone, wondered why I didn't have any friends, and decided there must be something wrong with me. I wouldn't have admitted it to anybody, but I was scared to death. Then a worse thought hit me: If I wasn't even brave enough to make it through the first day of middle school, how could I run my own detective agency?
One of my undercover detective fantasies took over and I tried to get my confidence back.
I walked through a glamorous hotel wearing high heels, a short blonde wig, and brown contact lenses. A sparkling chandelier dangled from the ceiling and knots of foreign businessmen bustled around me. I was wired with an earpiece, a microphone, and a recording device, ready to eavesdrop on a secret meeting of anti-American forces. Suddenly enemy agents in suits and dark sunglasses rushed through the lobby, heading straight for me. Before they could catch me I darted into an elevator, came back out disguised as a man, and escaped into a waiting limousine.
"Private detectives aren't chicken," I mumbled to myself.
Yeah, right.
I finally found room A-12 just as Alexa rushed around the corner. "Hurry," I said, and she caught up to me right as the warning bell rang.
"I went to room A-21 by mistake. I thought it said A-12," she admitted, and her cheeks turned pink.
"It's OK. Come on."
We walked inside the classroom and I couldn't believe what I saw. I grabbed Alexa's arm and pointed toward the fourth row with my eyes. Dustin Coles was in our first class. She steered me down the first aisle and I could almost feel Alexa vibing me not to look at him. But, OMG, he got so tan over the summer. And Dustin had actually asked Alexa where I was, twice. Once at the party I'd missed and once when she ran into him at the mall. Did the biggest hottie in Santa Monica really care what I was doing before we came back to school?
Apparently not. Dustin barely looked up when I walked in. He glanced at me and nodded his head in the fastest hello possible. Then the boy on his other side started talking to him and he turned away, just as I started walking down the aisle toward the fourth row. Maybe when Dustin asked Alexa about me during the break he was just trying to think of something to say. My heart sank as I realized he probably wasn't interested in me after all.
There weren't any empty desks near him anyway. I looked around the room, hoping I wouldn't spot my enemy. And then my stomach lurched. There she was. On Dustin's other side. The bully who had hated my guts for two years: Emelyn Peters.
I remembered the first day that Emelyn came to our elementary school from Florida, sneering as she looked around, complaining about the shabby classroom.
"They wouldn't put up with these conditions in West Palm Beach," Emelyn said, sticking her pointy nose into the air and flipping white-blonde hair over one shoulder.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked innocently.
"Yeah, what's wrong with it?" Alexa put her hands on her hips.
Emelyn whirled around and glared at us, and her eyes narrowed. "This school is a total dump. But it figures you two wouldn't get it."
That was our first taste of Emelyn Peters. She'd grown up rich and spoiled, until her dad got sent to prison for stealing money from the company where he worked. Then Emelyn moved to California with her mom and her tall, blond older brother and started acting like the queen of our elementary school. When her brother got suspended from Pacific for selling marijuana, Emelyn bragged about it to everybody like he was really cool. Then she started crushing on Dustin and things got ugly.
In fifth grade Alexa, Emelyn, Dustin, and I had all been in the same class. Alexa's best subject was art, and one day we all had to sketch each other in charcoal. My picture of Alexa came out okay, but her drawing looked exactly like me. The teacher hung it on the bulletin board with the other best ones. Dustin looked at Alexa's sketch and then at me. "You look better up there than in real life." Dustin was trying to tease me, but when he realized it sounded like a compliment, he blushed. Emelyn Peters glared at me like she wanted to rip my hair out—then, and any time Dustin had talked to me since. She got suspended twice last year for bullying, but it didn't do any good. Emelyn was as mean as ever. She wasn't afraid of anything or anyone, and she let us all know it.
Alexa and I couldn't find two chairs next to each other, so she had to sit one row over and two seats back. I looked over my shoulder and Emelyn pointed at me and blew her cheeks out like a bloated fish, which was exactly what I felt like in my fifth-grade sweater. Thanks, Mom. Why hadn't I stuffed the stupid thing in my locker when I had the chance? Ripping it from around my shoulders, I tried to cram it into my backpack but it didn't fit. I hung the sweater on the back of my chair and could almost feel everyone behind me staring at its ugliness.
The teacher hobbled in and wrote her name on the board. "Good morning, class, I'm Mrs. Mintin." Mrs. Mintin wore her gray hair in a tight bun, and she walked slowly as if her pointy shoes hurt her feet. "Everyone please take out a sheet of paper. I'd like you all to write two paragraphs describing a problem you had over the summer, and how you solved it. You have twenty minutes. Begin."
After thinking for a minute, I wrote a long paragraph about how we had to move out of our old house and into a new one. My problem was that I fell in love with this old stone mansion we'd seen, but my mom thought it was too old and dirty and not worth the money. I described how I'd solved the problem by using good arguments to convince my mom to buy the house. Like the greenhouse could be her hideaway, I wouldn't have to change school districts, and we'd still be close to both my parents' jobs. My essay practically wrote itself and I was done in less than ten minutes.
With time to kill, I took out my notepad and glanced at everyone sitting near me, but there wasn't anybody exciting enough to write comments about. I debated playing Silent Detective solitaire, where I check out an interesting person and write down what I think their favorite food is, what they want to be when they grow up, and what they like to do when they're all by themselves. Then I try to get to know them and find out if I'm right. But I already knew the boy next to me, and the girls on my right were pretty average and didn't spark my curiosity.
I decided to do a little spying and fished my compact out of my purse. Opening up the mirror, I angled it so I could see the fourth row of desks over my shoulder. Dustin was close to the end of that row, but his head was bent over his paper so I couldn't see his face. Better not to stare at him anyway. He'd probably look up and catch me. Angling my mirror in the other direction, I pretended to look at myself while I put on lip gloss, but I was really checking on Alexa. Her knees bounced up and down as she frowned at her paper with an angry look on her face. I knew she was willing the words to come, but her pencil wasn't moving.
I also knew the people sitting near her couldn't help her with her spelling like I would have. They didn't know the secret code we'd made up in fourth grade: Alexa would tap her pencil on her desk twice, then whisper a word to herself, just loud enough for me to hear. I glance around the classroom casually to make sure the teacher isn't looking at us. Then I would bend over my paper and whisper the spelling to Alexa. We never considered it cheating since Alexa was competing with such a disadvantage. I was just helping her catch up to the rest of the class. But a new teacher probably wouldn't see it that way.
I'd helped Alexa try to hide her dyslexia from our classmates since we were nine, but the older we got the harder it was to fake everyone out. Since last year I've tried to figure out how to help her deal with it instead.
All of a sudden Alexa doubled over in pain. I put down the mirror and turned around to look at her. She raised her hand and asked to be excused, and then hurried out of the room. Did she have another stomachache? Or was she trying to get out of writing the essay? Maybe she was afraid we'd have to read our paragraphs out loud and she'd feel embarrassed. I wanted to chase after her to see if she was all right, but I didn't want to make the teacher mad.
Peeking back into my mirror, I saw Emelyn Peters point at the door and snicker with a tough girl named Pat Whitehead who sat on her other side. Pat's hair was short on the sides and spiked up in the middle with gel. Her eyes were so light-colored they looked like an albino rat's. Pat had four brothers, and the five Whiteheads were always getting into fights. "Dyslexa had to GO," Pat said, and Emelyn bent over her desk laughing loudly. Spying on those two was anything but fun. I put my mirror back inside my purse, wishing I were home looking for clues to find the hidden jewels.
If I had any idea what was already starting to happen at my house I would have been glad to be safe and sound, writing a paragraph in English class.
At lunch I met Alexa at our locker. She smiled, but her face didn't look happy. "Are you OK?" I asked.
"Yeah. My stomach was killing me so I went to the bathroom and then to the nurse's office. She called my mom and then gave me a Tylenol."
"Did it help?"
"Not really. I'm all right. Just hungry." We headed for the cafeteria and Alexa nudged me. "Look," she whispered. Dustin and Brendan were just a few tables away. Dustin's green shirt really made his eyes stand out, and Brendan was leaning over the table, waving his arms like he was telling a funny story. Emelyn and her friends were sitting right behind them, giggling loudly and trying to get their attention.
I looked at Alexa and rolled my eyes. "Emelyn makes me lose my appetite."
She nodded. "Her whole table is trouble."
After school I took the bus most of the way home. Sitting on the grass by the sidewalk, I checked Facebook and email on my phone while I waited for my mom to pick me up at the bottom of the hill. The waves were flat, so there were no explosive crashes when they broke. Just a quiet sizzle followed by a long shhhhh as the water moved slowly forward and back across the sand. Then I tried to study history, jiggling my foot, reading the same paragraph over and over. The first day of school had me so wired I could barely concentrate.
Dustin Coles was in two of my classes! Fortunately Emelyn Peters was only in one. And there were clues to a fortune hidden somewhere in my new house. I hoped an aggressive bunch of construction workers wouldn't get in the way of my search. I was also hoping my mom would get there soon so I could get back to work on the mystery, but as soon as she pulled over I wished she'd forgotten to come get me. "Hi Skylar," my mom said as I swung my legs into the car. "Where's your sweater?"
"Uh," I stalled, trying to remember where I'd seen it last. "I'm not sure."
She threw the gearshift into park and turned to face me. "Don't tell me you lost it." I could tell by the way her eyebrows were pinched together that she thought I lost it on purpose.
"Wait. Let me think. It's not in my locker, and it didn't fit in my backpack." I could reason this out if she'd just give me a minute. "I had it in first period but I don't remember having it at the break. I must have left it in English." It was probably still hanging on the back of the chair. No way would anyone steal something that ugly.
"That's convenient. You didn't want to wear it this morning and now it's missing." My mom put the car in gear and steered carefully into traffic.
"I didn't lose it on purpose." She glanced at me with one eyebrow raised. "I didn't. I'm sure I'll find it tomorrow. If it isn't in English I'll try the Lost and Found."
"Let's hope you do find it, or its replacement is coming out of your chores money."
Delightful.
A few minutes later we pulled into our driveway. We sat silently while the garage door opened. "I needed a new one anyway," I mumbled.
"No you didn't."
My mom wanted to keep the hundred-year-old countertops with yellowed tiles featuring a tiny flowered print. Fortunately the ancient wood paneling would be replaced by smooth drywall, ready for paint. The crumbling exterior also needed major help. I realized later that my dad keeping his eye on the construction crew was a great idea.