Nice and Mean (mix) - Softcover

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Jessica Leader graduated from Brown University and holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

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Nice and Mean

MARINA’S LITTLE BLACK BOOK, ENTRY #1

* Most Suspicious Behavior: Rachel Winter

A tinfoil shirt, a popularity poll. What exactly is Rachel up to?

* Worst Mother: Bianca Glass, a.k.a. Mom

Those pants? That attitude? This mother’s truly in a category by herself.

When I realized I was about to flip through the Seventeen Back-to-School Fashions for the third time that afternoon, I slammed the magazine shut and hurled it across the room. It flew through the air and landed against the garbage can with a big loud smack.

Exactly.

Where were my friends? Play practice ended at five. Even adding time for Rachel to do an extra shimmy, Elizabeth and Addie to straighten chairs, and the three of them to snag snacks, they should’ve gotten here twenty minutes ago. And I should’ve been snacking with them, not sitting alone on my bed like someone who forgot to order a life.

I got up to grab my magazine, since my ninja throwing-moves had bent the cover. I couldn’t believe how the play had turned into such a time suck. Elizabeth was the only one with a real part—did all of them really need to spend three afternoons a week in that sweaty drama basement? I had no desire to join the Grease cult—they’d already started quoting the songs so often that I’d had to tell them, “Hold the cheese, this is not Burger King.” But if I’d known that my only company would be the blast of the AC and the thump of my iTunes, I wouldn’t have blown off the audition so hard. How was I supposed to know that the lines in the play weren’t the same as in the movie, or that they’d make us sing alone in front of everybody? Why hadn’t anybody told me these things?

Ding-dong.

Took them long enough. I threw my magazine on the bed and ran down the hall to open the door.

“Marina, darling!” Rachel struck a pose in the doorway.

“Um . . . hey.” I couldn’t decide which was weirder—the drama-queen voice or her new getup. Today’s silver shirt had already been a strange choice for a Wednesday, but now she had piled her long black curls on top of her head like she was about to walk a runway.

“Hey, Marina.” Elizabeth gave me a hug, and I breathed in her sweet, flowery smell, which has been the same since second grade. When we first started having sleepovers, I used every soap and shampoo in her bathroom, trying to find that exact scent, but I never could.

We’d barely let go before Addie cried, “Reener!”—then strangled me and bonked me with her grocery bag. Four bottles of Diet Dr Pepper and one package of Mint Milanos straight to the shoulder blade.

“Ow!” I rubbed my back. “Hey, careful with the Pepper.”

Rachel slipped into the apartment, laughing. “Nice one, Addie,” she said.

Hunh? She and Addie were usually BFFs.

“Sorry!” Addie cried. She’s half-Chinese, with freckles on her wide cheeks, and when they puff out, she reminds me of a sad puppy. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said as she stepped past me. “Seriously.” It’s too easy to make Addie feel bad. Even Rachel, her best friend, wanted to vote her Biggest Plebe in our online poll—“plebe” after the word for commoner—in social studies last year.

“Sorry we’re late,” Elizabeth said, following Addie inside. “People kept fooling around while we were learning the dance, so Ms. Mancini kept us after five.”

“Oh.” I led them into the kitchen, the only place my mother would let us drink soda. “Were you late? I didn’t notice.”

“Well,” said Rachel, “we were actually late for two reasons.” She giggled.

As I hopped up onto the counter, the cold granite sent a shiver up my spine. I held out a hand and said, “Pepper me, Addie.”

Her brown eyes gleaming, Addie handed one bottle to me, one to Rachel on the opposite counter, and one to Elizabeth at the breakfast table. “So?” Addie said to Rachel, once we had tapped down the fizz. “Are you going to tell her, or should we?”

Rachel grinned and squeezed her eyes shut, then blurted out, “I’m in love!”

Elizabeth and Addie cracked up.

“Again?” I untwisted my soda cap. Last year, Rachel had fallen in love about once a month.

“With . . . ,” Elizabeth prompted.

Rachel and Addie answered together, “Julian Navarro!”

I choked on my soda. I was the one who had pointed out his hotness after summer vacay. Julian was mine.

“We’re dance partners,” Rachel explained, leaning so far forward, she looked like she was going to fall off the counter. “He kept messing up the hand jive, so I stayed after and helped him a little.” She giggled. “He kept teasing me, like, ‘Oh, prima ballerina thinks she’s got moves,’ but he totally liked it, I could tell.” She drummed her feet on the cabinet below her. “He is so hot! Eee!”

“You guys looked like you were really into it.” Elizabeth took a sip of Pepper.

“You’re, like, meant to be together,” Addie agreed.

I forced down a burp. Why was Rachel suddenly going after Julian? He was popular but also a homeboy, not like the artsy guys she usually went for. The clothes, the Addie slamming . . . what was going on with Rachel?

She’d come back different from camp, that was for sure—wanting to drag me to the boutiques listed in magazines, and suddenly obsessed with popularity. It had been her idea to poll our class for the “mosts”—Most Popular, Most Beautiful, Nicest Boy, Nicest Girl. I could tell she’d been upset when I’d won Most Popular, but please—did she not know how these things worked? I’d gone to elementary school with most of the kids at Jacobs, and she was still getting to know them.

Plus, she just wasn’t Most Popular material. The other day in math, when she’d cracked up over some weird thing, all the boys had looked at me like, You’re her friend? She was fun—we’d spent all of last year trying to get revenge on Señora Blanca together—but fun did not equal popularity. Then again, if she could turn Addie into her own personal plebe, make Julian pay attention to her, and convince Elizabeth and Addie that she and Julian had potential . . .

I gulped my soda. The bubbles scraped against my throat.

Elizabeth already has a boyfriend this year—she’s got that sort of nice-and-shy thing going on that the boys all love—but I hadn’t gone out with anyone since last spring, and I would die if Rachel beat me to a boyfriend in seventh grade. Not that she could ever pull that off, of course. I totally had things that Rachel didn’t. Like, I don’t know, taste, or—

“Rachel, what are you doing?” I asked. She had hopped off the counter and started doing this weird dance, slapping her thighs and punching her own fists. Elizabeth and Addie were cheering her on.

“It’s how he dances !” Rachel laughed. “Don’t you remember the hand jive? From the movie?”

“Ah. Right.” I twisted the Pepper cap as...