My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights (8 page)

Me and Kassie laughed. I spotted Sarah snapping pictures of the crowd. “I better get back before Sarah sees me talking to you guys.”

I waved at my parents on the top row and headed back toward the sidelines.

The second half of the game was like a replay of the first. Our offense was way better than Pine Ridge’s. We scored two more touchdowns and kept them from even getting near the end zone.

My favorite play was the one where DeMarcus would toss the ball to the fullback, Cody Ryans. He’d run one way like he was going to go right. But then hand it off to Bobby Fleagle, who’d take off in the opposite direction.

Classic fakeroo.

Before lunch on Friday, I texted Kassie an idea in the middle of math class.

Me:
hey let’s see if mrs. kellerman will let us eat in the room.

Kassie:
y? u need help with homework?

Me:
no we can all eat together. im tired of sitting with sarah.

There was a pause. I guessed Kassie was picking up the pieces of her mind that I’d just blown apart with my brilliant plan.

Kassie:
i don’t know. sounds risky. i think u should just eat with her 2 b safe.

Or not. So much for eating with my friends.

Me:
fine. but if i starve 2 death it’s bc troy won’t stop eating all my food.

Kassie:
LOL! well they can have u at lunch. but ur all mine on saturdays! :)

I shoved my phone back into my pocket before the teacher asked what I was growling at. Kassie’s plan was pretty solid. And going undercover was actually pretty fun.

But there was only so much Sarah I could take.

O
ur panty hose masks worked like a charm.

When we got to Carson’s house on Saturday, the first thing we did was check our page views. None of the YouTube comments even hinted they knew who we were. We had a few like
OMG u look so stupid
and
GET A LIFE LOOSERS!
but we also had a couple of great ones. Like one that said we should add in some lifts.

“Obviously someone should lift me,” Carson said. “I’m the lightest by far.”

Kassie slapped his arm. “Watch it, stick boy.”

I wrung my hands together. “I don’t know. Don’t you think it’s a little late to be adding in stuff?”

“Not if we do something simple.”

“No, it has to be something amazing.” Carson clicked on another link. “I’m telling you, we need to go full-on
Dirty Dancing
with this.”

“Dillon’s not strong enough to pick me up over his head like that!”

“Oh thanks, Kass.”

“Fine, then, Mr. Football. Let’s see if all that bench-pressing during practice is paying off.” Kassie put my hands on her waist.

“Um, well, actually, all we do is run.” My voice came out high-pitched and warbly.

“And booty slap each other,” Carson said, smacking Austin’s butt.

Austin tried to swat his hand away, but missed. “If you add in a lift now, it’s gonna throw off the continuity.”

“Party pooper.” Carson crossed his arms. “Wait, what do you mean
continuity
?”

“For the music video. Editing this stuff’s gonna be impossible if the dances are all different.”

“Ugh! No one cares about the video, Austin.” Carson immediately tensed up. “That came out wrong. I swear.”

Austin’s face stayed frozen, balled up in a wad of hurt.

Kassie stepped forward. “I think he just meant no one cares if the editing’s not perfect.”

For a few seconds, I was sure Austin was going to grab his camera and leave. I know he already felt like he didn’t belong. He didn’t need us to start telling him his only job didn’t matter.

“But I think that stuff is important,” I said. “The editing and continuation and stuff.”

“Continuity,” Austin said, correcting me.

“Yeah. That. So let’s just wait on the lift. Make what we have, like, really perfect.” The truth was, I sort of wanted to try a lift. But I wanted to keep Austin’s feelings from getting hacked to pieces even more.

Kassie smiled. “Um, yeah. Dillon’s right. We want the video to look as good as it can.”

“See? Kassie knows what I’m trying to say. We don’t want you to be upset,” Carson said. He wrapped his arms around Austin and squeezed. “Especially since you have one serious ugly cry.”

Austin laughed. “Get off me, you freak.”

“I think you mean ‘Dizzee Freek.’ Oh, I almost forgot!” Carson let go of Austin and ran to a box on the shelf. “Our disguises.”

We pulled the masks out, one by one.

Frankenstein. An old man smoking a cigar. Even a werewolf.

Carson already had his picked out. It was a fox. A perfect match to his personality.

Kassie found hers next. She pulled out one that didn’t cover much more than her eyes and nose. It had feathers sprouting from the top. All the purple and black made her eyes look almost green.

“I don’t care what you all say, I’m picking one.” Austin shoved a few masks out of the way and pulled out a white mask that only covered half of his face. “Yes, this one! Dude,” he said to Carson, “I can’t believe you went as Jason from
Friday the 13th
. That’s a little hard-core for you, isn’t it?” He put it on under his glasses and ran back to the camera, looking through the eyepiece with his free eye.

“I don’t have the heart to tell him that’s a Phantom of the Opera mask,” Carson mumbled.

I took a few out, hoping there’d be one left that’d at least cover my face without making me look like an idiot. Right when I was about to give up, I found it. “Whoa. Awesome.” I held up a dark red ninja mask with yellow lines around the open part around the eyes. I turned it over in my hands. I was supposed to be moving away from all of the karate stuff in my dancing, but the mask was too perfect to pass up.

“Okay, let’s put these bad boys on and see if we can get through the routine without breaking something,” Kassie said.

“Oh, let me do something first.” I grabbed my duffel bag and ran into the house. In less than two minutes, I made my way back to the garage with my football pants on.

Carson’s jaw dropped. “You finally got some tights!”

“Not exactly,” I said, putting on my mask. “Football pants. But they’re not too bad.”

“What about the jeans?” Kassie said.

“I can’t dance in those. And these aren’t tights, so all three of us are still wearing something different.”

Kassie stared at them for what seemed like forever.

“Please?” I begged. “I’m gonna have to suffer through Sarah torturing me every Monday. The least you could do is let me wear them.”

She sighed. “I guess it’ll be okay, since Carson’s tights are black and yours are white.”

I jabbed a fist into the air and turned around to start stretching. Austin roared with laughter. “Hold on, Kassie, they’re not
all
white!”

Great. I was so excited about wearing something besides jeans, I’d forgotten they hadn’t seen the stain before. Until now it had always been covered by my football jersey, which was so big it hung down past my butt.

“Well, at least no one’s gonna be calling you Tighty Whitey anymore. More like Tighty Brownie,” Austin said.

Carson picked up a stray mask and threw it at him.

“Oh, I’m so glad you said that, Austin.” Kassie glanced at me. “I mean not about the stain. About the nickname. Because I was thinking it’d be good to come up with one in case Sarah hears about the dance-off.”

Austin let out a loud groan. “Does everything we do have to be about tricking her? Why can’t you all just dance and I can record it like we used to?”

“If you’re about to tell us you have a crush on Sarah…,” Carson said, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

“I’m not—I’m just saying it’s getting sort of old.”

“We’re not doing this to trick her,” Kassie said. “We’re doing this so Dillon won’t get caught. And, no, that’s not the same thing.”

“Fine,” Austin said. “Then I call Jason.”

“Jason’s not a nickname,” Carson said. “It has to be something catchy.”

“Then I call Dr. Doom.”

“Better. I’m going to be C-Note,” Carson said, striking a pose. “Because these moves are rich, baby.”

“Nice.” Kassie pulled a note from her pocket. “I wrote down a few but the one I really like for me is Mystic.”

She held out the paper, letting us see how she spelled it.
Misstik.
We all agreed it was perfect.

When it was my turn, all I could think of was, “Anything except Tighty Whitey. Or Brownie.”

My mind wouldn’t stop going through all the ways I’d embarrass myself at the dance-off. Falling off the stage. Breaking a bone while I tried to jump like Carson. Breaking someone else’s bones while I tried to do a move like Kassie.

I wasn’t new to competing. I’d had to spar with an opponent for every belt I’d earned in karate. But this was different.

This was at a
mall.

Luckily, I made it through practice without breaking anything. Or getting a cramp.

The top of my head lifted open and the notes poured in. I forgot about all the junk I’d gotten myself into and concentrated on the music. I needed to let it all out.

I kicked, I jumped, I twirled imaginary nunchucks like I was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle of Dance.

I even busted out some karate-style popping and locking, combining it with one of those cool arm waves breakdancers do. It looked terrible, I’m sure. But I forced the worry part of my brain into hibernation mode and kept on going.

When the music finally stopped, my heart was humming in my chest. Not because I was out of breath. But because the moves…

As awful as they were—as bent and nasty and crooked as everything probably was—

They fit me.

While the video uploaded, we worked on math homework in Carson’s room. Or more precisely, three of us worked on math while Kassie tried to help everyone understand how we were supposed to use Horatio’s number of steps taken to figure out Julia’s number of steps.

Because apparently Julia couldn’t count her own.

“This is pointless,” Carson said, slamming his pencil down. “Why do we even need to know how many she took? She’s walking down a hallway, not trying to find her way out of the Temple of Doom.”

Austin tossed his mask up in the air and caught it. “I just wrote down fifty-three so it sounds like I used some sort of formula to figure it out.”

“You guys are making this a lot harder than it should be,” Kassie said. She leaned back against the wall and hit play on the video. Carson leaned over the edge of the bed to watch with her.

Austin started to scoot over beside her, but I grabbed his arm. “Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” He sat back down. “Are we, like, okay?”

He shrugged. “I guess. Why?”

“It’s just been weird. You seem like you’ve been mad at me.”

He let out a long breath. “I’m not
mad.
Just—I guess I never thought you’d actually go through with all of this.”

“I haven’t gone through with anything yet.”

“Yeah, but you will. And I know they keep saying Sarah and the studio are, like, really awful, but it still seems like a super jerky thing to do.”

Sarah. Again. For a second I wondered if Carson was right. Maybe Austin did have a crush on her. I wouldn’t blame him. She was definitely pretty.

“And part of me is worried that you
won’t
go through with it and we’ll never get to film our zombie movie. It’s like no matter what happens, it kind of stinks.”

“Don’t worry, man,” I said. “I’ll never even make it to the top three. Sarah won’t ever know what we had planned and next summer we’ll make the bloodiest zombie movie ever.”

Austin stared at me for a second, then nodded. I gave him a friendly nudge to make sure he knew I was serious. He nudged back to let me know he did.

“Oh my gosh, I’ve got it!” Kassie yelled.

Austin and I ran over to where she was sitting. “What?”

“I have the perfect one.” She had the screen paused where I was in the middle of a side kick. I looked awesome. Like I could be on the poster for
Last Ninja 3.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Your nickname.” She grabbed my mask off the floor and held it in front of me. “You’re the Kung Fu Kid.”