Bessica Lefter Bites Back (21 page)

Snap!

We drove in silence for a long time.

“I don’t know what the rest of you thought, but that tiger kid looked like a complete dweeb,” Willy said.

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

My mother let out a big, disappointed breath. “That might be true, but biting dweebs is not allowed.”

“I only bit his tail,” I explained. “It was all stuffing.”

“Bessica,” my mother said in a stern voice. “A bite is a bite.”

“Your mom’s right. You probably won’t get off scot-free,” my dad said.

“Let’s listen to the radio,” Grandma said.

And a song about a roller coaster came on. And that felt appropriate. Because I felt like I was riding one of those. And I knew right where it was headed.

The principal’s office.

A
ll day Saturday I sat in my room and stared at Bianca. She didn’t do much. She slept. She ate. She licked up water beads from her plastic tree. The crickets were more interesting. It felt like I was watching an adventure movie as the powdered bugs tried to figure out ways to escape. They tried crawling up the aquarium’s slippery glass walls or squeezing under the cage’s Astroturf-lined bottom. They knew they were about to become lizard food. And they wanted to find a better life.

I’d dropped these crickets inside the cage two days ago. They didn’t have much longer. Poor crickets. I didn’t know if it was because I was waiting for my punishment
or if it was because I’d recently been trapped in a cafeteria, but I could relate to these bugs on a very deep level. I wanted to save them.

I hurried to the kitchen to get some Tupperware.

“You look much more cheerful,” Grandma said. She and Willy were flipping through a book together at the kitchen table.

“Where’s the lid for this?” I asked, holding up a big plastic rectangle.

“Check the dishwasher,” Grandma said.

I found it. I also grabbed some rubber gloves. And paper towels.

“Cleaning?” Grandma asked.

“Kind of,” I said as I headed back to my room.

My heart raced as I gloved my hands and stuck them in Bianca’s cage. I didn’t normally wear gloves when I put my hands in the cage. But touching live crickets seemed risky. “Stupid crickets,” I said. Because they kept jumping away from my hands.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Grandma opened the door. “Sylvie’s here.” Then she saw what I was doing and frowned. “What are you doing to that poor lizard?”

“Nothing,” I said. I was so excited that Sylvie was here. “I’m liberating the crickets before they die.”

“Didn’t we just buy those crickets?” Grandma asked.

I didn’t answer. I looked behind Grandma and saw Sylvie’s head. I waved.

“I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Grandma said.

“Thank you so much for coming over to visit me,” I said. I wanted to rush up and give Sylvie a hug. But I also wanted her to do something to signal it was okay for me to rush her.

“I heard about your game ejection,” Sylvie said.

I was sort of sad to hear that Sylvie hadn’t been at my game and had only heard about it.

“T.J. was making rude hand gestures at Grandma. I had to do something,” I said.

“Rumor is you completely throttled him,” Sylvie said.

We were still separated by the length of my room.

“I’m a bear mascot,” I said. “So I went a little ‘bear’ on him.”

Sylvie smiled at that.

“When he finally showed up at my birthday party he was a complete nightmare,” Sylvie said.

I nodded enthusiastically. “That’s why I acted so weird and accidentally crashed into your cake,” I explained. “I was trying to get out of there.”

Sylvie walked a few steps closer to me. Then she sat on my bed. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

I sat down next to her. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want anybody to think I was a wimpy mascot.”

“Well, nobody thinks that now,” Sylvie said. “Our bee mascot, Kirby, is terrified to cheer against you.”

I looked up and made a sympathetic face. “Oh, tell her not to be. I only attack jerks who personally threaten me or insult my grandma.”

Sylvie smiled huge when I said that. “You are so funny.”

“You’re so funny too.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Would anybody inside this room care for pie?” Grandma asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Weren’t you going to liberate the crickets?” Sylvie asked.

“I guess. But I’d just have to buy more.”

“Sort this out and join Willy and me and Alma and Pete at your leisure.”

“Pete?” I asked. I didn’t like that a strange man was in my house and I didn’t know about it.

“Alma’s long-distance boyfriend,” Grandma said.

“What?” I asked.

“Alma’s boyfriend,” Grandma said again. “Pete from Florida.”

Then I heard a bizarre laugh that sounded like a duck. “Is that
him
?” I asked.

“Yes,” Grandma said. “He’s very gregarious.”

“Poor Alma,” I said. Not only did her boyfriend live very far away, but he also had a terrible laugh.

Then Grandma left. And I asked Sylvie a very important question. “What do you call a triangle when you add a corner to it?”

“A square.”

I gasped. I’d created a terrible square crush between Grandma, Willy, Alma, and Florida Pete. Except maybe it wasn’t terrible.

“I tried to break up Willy and Grandma,” I explained.

“Again?” Sylvie asked. “You need to accept that he’s your grandma’s permanent boyfriend.”

Those were very sad words. Very sad indeed.

Sylvie reached into her bag and pulled out her nose hair trimmer. “I want to give this back to you. Your present really hurt my feelings.”

I took the trimmer and stared at its tiny round blade. “It was a terrible gift,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”

Then we were both quiet. I set the trimmer down and took off my plastic yellow gloves and tossed them next to Bianca’s cage. Then I realized that Sylvie didn’t know that this was Noll Beck’s lizard and that he and his girlfriend
had broken up. So I rushed to tell her this. “I have the craziest story to tell you about gorgeous Noll Beck!”

But Sylvie looked at me like she already knew. “I heard. But don’t worry. It sounds like his surgery was very minor.”

“What?” I asked. “Who got surgery?”

“Noll Beck. While riding, he was thrown and had his shoulder dislocated. He had to have surgery.”

I felt awful. My possible future boyfriend had been hospitalized and I’d had no idea.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

At the exact same time I was fending off T.J., gorgeous Noll Beck was getting trampled by a horse.

“I hate horses,” I said.

“I think he was messing around and got thrown off a cow,” Sylvie said.

“I hate cows even more!”

Sylvie shook her head. “No you don’t. You eat hamburgers more than anybody I know.”

And it felt so good to be talking to a friend who knew so much about me.

“This means we’re friends again, right?” I asked.

“You need to watch the tone in your texts,” Sylvie said.

“Yeah. I didn’t realize how easy it is to send mean texts until I fired off a bunch to you.”

“Mine were sort of rude too, and I apologize for that.”

I swung my arm over Sylvie’s shoulder and gave her a hug.

“What happens next?” Sylvie asked.

“I’m waiting to learn about my punishment.”

“That’s so harsh.”

“I just hope I get to keep being the mascot.”

“You think they’d take that away from you?”

“They might,” I said. “In the worst-case scenario.”

Sylvie and I both stared at Bianca’s cage. I felt bad that we’d run out of things to talk about.

“I should probably get going,” Sylvie said.

“Why?” Because I still had a bunch of free time.

“I’m meeting Malory at the mall,” Sylvie said.

I didn’t really enjoy hearing about Sylvie’s other friends. “Okay. Have fun.”

“Can’t you be a little happy for me? I’ve been trying hard to make new friends.”

“But I’m your friend,” I said. “I’ve been your friend the longest and I’ll always be your friend. Forever.”

Sylvie put her arm around me. “I know. It’s like we’re sisters.”

And when Sylvie said that, I had a hard time not crying. Because that was the exact way I felt about her. We weren’t just two random people who met in grade school and started riding our bicycles together. We were like family.

“I hope you have a good time at the mall,” I said.

“Will you call and tell me about your punishment as soon as you find out?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Then Sylvie pulled away from me and stood up.

“I wonder how much longer you’ll have to keep his lizard. Postsurgery, I bet he can’t really even lift stuff, let alone take care of a reptile.”

“I’ll take care of Bianca as long as I need to,” I said.

A white cricket darted across Sylvie’s foot and she screamed. “They escape?”

“All the time,” I said.

“You must really truly like Noll Beck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I really truly do.”

W
e got the call on Monday that my disciplinary action was more severe than anybody had suspected. My principal was very disappointed in me. So was my mom. And my dad. And Grandma. I didn’t really care what Willy thought. That night at dinner it was the first thing that came up.

“Never in a million years did I think that you would face disciplinary action in middle school!” my mom said.

“Me either,” I said.

But I also had never imagined a situation where a tiger mascot would insult Grandma at a football game in front of two hundred people.

We sat at the dinner table and tried to eat chicken and dumplings. I wasn’t sure my mom had made them properly. Everything looked gray. Even the carrots.

“That other kid got suspended,” my dad said.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to defend myself a little bit.

“The only reason that happened was because they found a cooler he’d brought filled with balloons that were stuffed with shaving cream, and his school has a strict policy against balloons,” my mom said. “It’s not like he
bit
Bessica.”

“He shoved me,” I said.

“Lots of kids face disciplinary action and go on to live respectable and wonderful lives,” Grandma said as she took a big, juicy bite of a dumpling.

“I got suspended once,” Willy said.

“Ooh. What did you do?” I asked, because having my family talk about Willy’s suspension would be easier on me than having my family talk about my problems.

“I brought firecrackers to school and lit them during class,” Willy said.

“Whoa!” I said. “That’s hard-core. At my school, fireworks are considered weapons.”

“Okay,” my mom said, interrupting. “Let’s not glorify delinquency. Let’s focus on preparing Bessica for the punishment panel.”

“It’s not called that,” I said. When Principal Tidge called
my house, she had informed my mom that on Thursday I would have to go before a peer review panel to determine my punishment. And a peer review panel was exactly that. A group of kids from my middle school who would determine how much trouble I was actually in.

“According to Principal Tidge, no parents are present during the review. Bessica gives a speech. Then the students call witnesses.”

“Ooh,” I said. “There are a lot of those.”

“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” my mom said.

I spooned a dumpling into my mouth.

“What’s your defense?” my dad asked.

I shrugged and chewed my dumpling.

“They’re going to want to know why you bit the tiger,” my dad said. “Your punishment hinges on your answer.”

I swallowed. “I wanted to humiliate him before he could humiliate me.”

My mother groaned. “You need to be honest and sympathetic at the same time.”

That sounded hard.

“Your mom’s right,” my dad said. “You’re going to need a better answer.”

“Let’s not pressure her too much,” Grandma said. “I’m sure when the time comes, Bessica will have a perfectly good answer for her punishment panel.”

I frowned. “It’s not called that, Grandma.”

As I waited to face the peer review panel, the days dragged on and nothing at school felt normal. Not riding the bus. Not going to class. Not talking to my friends. Not eating lunch. Not even sitting alone and thinking. It was a very stressful time.