Sticks & Stones (2 page)

On and on it went until we came to the poster for our class.

Except for an outline of a head and neck with a big question mark in the middle, the poster was totally blank. People were talking in loud, excited voices and straining their necks to have the best view of the empty sign.

“This is all yours, girl!” Lindsey said to Snotty Ami.

“I wonder who it will be,” a guy I didn't know said to a girl I didn't know.

Everywhere I turned, people were buzzing about the posters, the trip, and how awesome and important the Explorer Leader was. The whole thing made me weirdly nervous. Maybe it was just because of all the people in the hall. The hallways in elementary school were never this crowded. There was always plenty of room to walk around and, you know, breathe. Here, there were like triple the people. Sometimes it was exciting, but most of the time I just felt squished.

“C'mon,” Jeg said, pulling me by the arm. “Nobody will be in the bathroom right now. We can come back and look more later.”

I happily let myself be dragged away. Jeg always knew what I wanted without me having to tell her.

But only a minute later, just as I was
finally
about to read the paper, Snotty Ami pranced into the bathroom like she owned the place. Her hair—long, wavy, and the perfect shade of Little Mermaid red—lay flat against the little bumps poking out of her chest.

“Jeggie!” she said. “I thought I saw you come in here.” Then she said, “Oh, hey, Elyse,” in a
much
less excited voice.

“Hi, Ami.” I tried not to notice how Jeg had turned her attention to the mirror. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her grab a few things from her purse—
makeup
things. I had never seen her carry makeup things around before, and especially not use them. Before my brain could fully understand what was happening, she had smeared on a thick layer of red lipstick (since when did Jeg like lipstick?) and was starting to douse her face in shimmery gold glitter.

“Jeggie, you look fab,” Snotty Ami said. “But your hair would be way cuter without those nasty pink streaks. It's such a pretty black and we can hardly even see it. We should totes go to the salon together sometime and take care of it.”

“Totes,” Jeg said.

I gave her a look, but she was staring at her strappy sandals like they were more interesting than my mysterious paper. Did she think I'd be mad to hear her talking like Snotty Ami? I wasn't, really. I just had a stomach that suddenly felt a little twisty.

Snotty Ami smiled snottily. “I'm gonna go look at Explorer Leader stuff. Wanna come, Jeggie?”

“I, um…” Jeg looked from me to Snotty Ami and back again. “I mean, would you mind, Elyse? Or you could come with us.”

“But what about…” I paused as Snotty Ami leaned in. I swear, she and her posse (Jeg and I call them the Loud Crowd) have some kind of radar when you're about to tell a secret. Well, she wasn't going to know about this. “That thing?” I whispered. “That we were going to discuss? Here? Now?”

“Yeah, but I'll hurry, I promise. I'll just go peek at the stuff in the hall with Ami and then come right back, okay?”

“Um, okay, I guess.”

Snotty Ami linked her arm through Jeg's.

“Seriously, I'll be right back,” Jeg said to me. Then she winked, like she knew we still had a very important secret. Like she hadn't forgotten. Like everything was going to be okay and this was just temporary makeup-induced weirdness. Like her makeup, this would wear off by the end of the day.

“Later, dork!” Snotty Ami laughed, and practically pushed Jeg out the door.

I scratched my arm through my sleeve. It itched something major. And made me feel majorly pathetic, too. Maybe I
was
a little pathetic.

Jeg was the one who was supposed to protect me from words like
dork
, to stop the itching before it happened. But she said she'd come back, so she'd come back, and she'd help make it better.

My knees didn't seem to believe that, though. They felt wobbly, like they couldn't hold my legs up anymore, so I plopped down on a corner of the bathroom bench and scrunched myself up into a little ball. I leaned my head back against the cold tile and let out a long breath. Maybe Jeg couldn't help being weird. If Snotty Ami decided I was cool all of a sudden, I bet I would start acting weird, too.

I realized I was still clutching the paper, so I gently opened my fist and unfolded it. Sorry, Jeg. I'd tell her what it said when we chatted online after school.

Hi Elyse,

the inside said in teeny tiny typed letters.

Hello, paper.

I know who you are, and I know what you're dealing with. I want to help.

I blinked once. Twice. Then three times. Then a thousand times.

If you're ready for a change, show me by attending the meeting for Explorer Leader hopefuls tomorrow night. You'd make a great leader, you know … and giving it a shot would be good for you, too.

That was how it ended. No signature, no contact info, no nothing. I blinked about a zillion more times, and when I finally opened my eyes for real, the paper was still there.

Well, then. So much for a secret admirer or a gift certificate to the Best Place on Earth. (A coupon would have also been nice.)

And yet, interesting.

I stuffed the note back in my pocket, a gazillion thoughts flying through my brain. Who wrote this? And when? And why?

When I'd first heard about Explorer Leader, my brain had said a big
No way.
It said,
Stay under the radar, Elyse. You don't need all hundred and fifty sixth graders knowing who you are.
But did this mysterious note have a point? It seemed like people usually loved the Explorer Leader and gave that person tons and tons of compliments. If I was the Explorer Leader, they'd probably write lots of good words on that blank poster, and I could read them again and again for the rest of forever. I could get a copy and hang it in my room. Take it on trips. Take it to college. Take it
everywhere
. Forever.

I sighed, still kinda bummed that Jeg had missed this. She probably just couldn't get out of Snotty Ami's snotty grasp in time. Plus, Jeg was always running late. Just last week, her cousins were in town from China and she was late meeting them for dinner. They had come from
another country
. And she had come from the mall.

So. Timeliness was not her specialty. They forgave her. I would, too. I always did.

But there was someone else out there who really cared about me. And
knew
about me. And didn't want me to feel like a dork ever again.

And that person was someone I wanted to know.

 

4

BEAUTIFUL

There was one more thing I had to do before I left the bathroom.

No, not
that
. Nobody actually uses the bathroom in middle school.

Instead, I rolled my sleeve up to my elbow, and there it was, as expected:
D-O-R-K
. The bold, black word itched more than a thousand mosquito bites. I gave it a long scratch.
Ahhh.
Scratching felt good, but not good enough. Never good enough.

I took a big deep breath, trying to remember the good old days when getting itchy wasn't a problem. Maybe those days had never even existed for me. According to Mom and Dad, we first saw Dr. Patel when I was barely a week old. My regular doctor told them to make the drive from Indiana to Chicago to see him because he was a specialist, and even though I was just a baby who only knew how to poop and spit and burp and sleep, I was already a person who needed a special doctor.

The problem was that I was a beautiful baby, at least according to the doctor who helped Mom give birth to me. Normally that wouldn't be a bad thing, but when they saw
BEAUTIFUL
appear on my little baby arm moments after he said it in the delivery room, everybody was pretty freaked out. After all, babies are just supposed to
be
beautiful, not have the word plastered on their arms like a weird baby tattoo.

Then came the tests. Lots of tests. On me. On Mom. On the word. And then Dr. Patel said the three letters that would change my life forever: C-A-V. CAV. Short for
cognadjivisibilitis
. Short for
freakiest freaky disorder ever
.

Then he said,
Hey, you guys should move to Chicago so I can be your doctor forever and ever and ever. Because you're going to need me forever. Because you're going to have CAV forever. Stinks to be you!

He may not have really said that. I don't remember.

It would have been cool if I could've just stayed beautiful forever. But no—kids had other plans for me, and none of them were good.

Now my thoughts and eyes shifted back to the massive
DORK
on my arm. I let out a quiet whimper, knowing I'd be stuck with this itchy thing for the next two to four weeks before it faded. Longer, if someone said it again. And with Snotty Ami butting in on my Jeg time—and never missing a chance to be her snotty self—it was totally possible that she would be the one to repeat it.

I rolled my sleeve back down quickly so that no one would come in and see my arm. As the fabric reached my fingers, I realized that my other arm was kinda itchy, too.
Huh?

I bit my lip. It didn't make any sense for my other arm to be itchy. Snotty Ami had only called me
DORK
, and no one had called me anything else too bad lately. I knew it had to be a bad word because only the bad ones itched. Plus, the letters usually formed one by one like someone was writing them on my skin with a sharp fingernail. But that hadn't happened. Or maybe it did, but I was too busy wondering about the note to notice. I guess that was possible.

I rocked back and forth and rubbed my sweaty hands on my pants.
Just look,
I told myself.
How bad can it be?
Also,
When did my hands get so sweaty?

I rolled up the sleeve, my heart racing. The word was horizontal, so I saw it all at once:
PATHETIC
.

Pathetic?

I tilted my head to the side and thought back to earlier in the day. No, Snotty Ami hadn't called me pathetic. Nor had Jeg or Liam or Ms. Sigafiss or anybody else.

But then I sat up very straight and pressed my palms to my cheeks as I remembered something important. There
was
one person who'd called me pathetic:
me
.

For a second it felt like I was glued to the bench. I couldn't move a muscle or think or talk or even breathe. The world stood completely still. This was
not
one of Freaky Thing's symptoms. I
knew
it wasn't. CAV meant itchy bad words and soothing good words. It meant being careful about who I hung out with so that I heard more good than bad. It meant always watching out for what other people called me.

It had never before meant watching out for what I called myself.

Holy. High. Heels.

Dr. Patel was going to love this one. I could already see the headline: “New Symptom of CAV Discovered! Still No Cure in Sight. Elyse Doomed Forever.”

I stared out into space as I pushed my sleeve back down. The bathroom looked exactly like it had a few minutes ago, but everything was different. I had a note and a new secret, and I had them both before second period.

It was going to be a long day.

 

5

POOPYHEAD

I couldn't tell Mom or Dad about the new symptom, even though keeping it to myself was driving me crazy. But being driven a little crazy was way better than being driven to Dr. Patel's at a gazillion miles per hour, which was exactly what my parents would do if they knew. This would totally freak them out, and one freaked-out person in the family was more than enough. I could probably handle it myself anyway. At least, I hoped I could.

After dinner the next night, Mom and I went to my room so she could help make my hair cute for the meeting. With each brush stroke, I almost blurted out,
Guess what? Now the names I call myself show up on my arms and legs, too! Isn't that just delightful?
But luckily Mom started talking before I could get myself in more trouble.

“My friend Veronika's daughter was Explorer Leader,” Mom said. “She had a great experience. No matter what happens, I'm proud of you for trying this, sweetie. Just remember, sticks and stones…”

She didn't have to finish the saying because I knew it backwards and forwards. She had told me every night before bed since I was little.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Words did hurt me, though. Well, itched me. Close enough.

I shuddered, thinking of the words bugging me now and all the ones that had bugged me before. Then I giggled to myself a tiny bit, remembering the first bad name I had ever been called. The one that changed everything.

It happened at preschool. Mom stayed with me the whole first day, holding my hand the entire time and only letting certain kids get near me. But the one time she left the room for a second, Max Iverson came up to me and called me the worst name you could possibly be called in preschool: poopyhead. That's all it took.

When Mom came back, I was surrounded by kids and teachers and was screaming my brains out.
POOPYHEAD
took up a huge chunk of my forearm. And it itched. Bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. The only good thing was that Jeg was sitting right beside me, scratching it like it was a fun game, like it was totally normal to see a word on a person's body and even more normal to plop down next to that person and scratch it. Well, Mom plucked me up right out of the crowd, threw me over her shoulder, and whisked me off to the doctor before I could say goodbye to any of my new friends. (Or get revenge on that Max kid.)