You’re Invited Too (8 page)

“So what was it? Was it that pre-algebra test?” Vi asks.

I nod. The whole humiliating scene replays itself in my head for the millionth time. Sitting at my desk last period yesterday, trying to keep my eyes open because Zach had showed me this crazy-fun video game where you can create people and build houses for them and get them a job and a family and have them cook turkey for dinner and pretty much invent their whole entire lives. Anyway, I got so into it on Thursday night that I stayed up way too late playing it—ignoring the alarm I'd set to remind myself to go to sleep.

After we spent forty-five minutes working problems on the whiteboard and then doing group work, Ms. Snyder started handing back our tests. Sadie got hers first. She held it up to show me the shiny A-minus on the front page. Ms. Snyder put my test upside down on my desk.

That's never a good sign.

I ducked my head down and lifted the corner of the paper to see the grade. And my stomach dropped.

Becca pokes me, and I stop reliving the whole horrible scene. For now, anyway. “Lauren, what was it? An F-minus? You know we'll still love you even if you flunk seventh grade.”

Vi snickers and then turns it into a cough.

“It was . . .” I can't even say it. I look at Sadie.

“It was”—she pauses—“a B.”

Becca giggles.

“Laur-
en
!” Vi says. “You got a B?
That's
why you're in such a bad mood?”

“It's probably the only B she's ever gotten,” Becca says.

“It is. So what? Some of us have goals, you know. Like big, enormous goals.” I pick up my chair and turn it so I'm facing the ocean, my back to Becca. My flashlight pokes me in the hip. I pull it from my pocket and flick it on, away from the turtle nest. Then off. Then on. Then off.

“Oh, come on, Lauren. It's okay. They're just teasing you,” Sadie says.

“But it's a big deal!” I say over my shoulder. “It starts with a B, and then who knows what?”

“Then you end up getting arrested and tossed in jail,” Becca says, her face all serious.

“Or you run away and live in a cave and forget how to speak,” Vi adds.

“And then you have to, like, fill your own cavities because you eat too much coconut,” Becca says.

“Yeah, and pull out your teeth, like in that old movie with Tom Hanks where he's stranded after his plane crashes!” Vi shudders.

“I don't think Lo can grow a beard like Tom Hanks.” Becca shines her flashlight at my chin and pretty much blinds me. I twist back toward the water. “Nope, no can do on the beard front.”

I bite my lip so that I don't laugh. I get it, I do. Getting a B isn't the end of the world. But what my friends don't understand is that now I'm afraid. Am I having too much fun? Are RSVP and that trip to the roller rink with Becca and video games with Zach and playing Words With Friends with Bubby ruining everything I've worked so hard for? Or maybe it's just that I haven't been using my study time as well as I should. That's got to be it. I just need to study harder, more efficiently. If I can do that, I can still do the fun stuff.

“Hey, look,” Sadie says. “Is Lance hanging out with that Philippe guy?”

I move my chair back around to see what she's pointing at. Mostly I'm just happy that the attention is off me.

Both Becca and Vi shade red in the glow of their flashlights and look down. Vi toes the sand and Becca starts messing with her hair. Which is pointless since the wind off the ocean just keeps messing it up anyway.

“Ooookay,” Sadie says. She looks over Becca's head toward me for help.

I shrug. It's kind of obvious that Becca likes Philippe, even if she won't admit it, and Vi's been ignoring Lance for three weeks—since the whole dance-and-Linney fiasco. Fiasco: a completely humiliating failure—like Vi at the dance or me getting my test back yesterday.

We sit in silence for a few minutes while the turtle volunteers peer into the sand that covers the nest.

“We have movement!” one of them announces.

A ripple of excitement rolls through the crowd. I sit up a little straighter in my chair.

And then nothing happens for an hour.

As the beam from Bodington Lighthouse sweeps across us every thirty seconds, Becca goes on and on about Philippe's accent and his hair, and Vi keeps reminding her that she's sworn off boys. Sadie smiles as they talk, but it's not a real smile. I get up and move around Becca to kneel behind Sadie's chair.

“Hey.” I poke her in the back. “You okay?”

She shrugs. “I guess. It's just weird at home.”

“Is your mom talking to you?”

“Yeah . . . but it's not the same. It's all very ‘How was school today, Sadie?' and ‘Can you pick up some eggs on your way home today?' ” She frowns. “It feels like there's something huge between us.”

“Named Alexandra Worthington?” I scrunch up my face so that I look like Miss Worthington when she gets one of her “brilliant” ideas. “Sadie-babe, I was thinking.”

Sadie giggles—just for a second.

“I hate that things aren't right between you and your mom because of RSVP.” I rebalance myself as my toes sink too deep into the sand.

“I could have said no to Alexandra Worthington,” Sadie says. “And in a way I'm glad I didn't, but I wish it didn't hurt Mom so much.”

I stand up and give her a hug.

“Sorry about your B, too,” Sadie says, her voice muffled.

“Thanks.”

“You're not going to quit, are you?”

“Quit? You mean, RSVP? No way! I just . . .” I smooth my hair as I ask my brain the same question I've been asking it since yesterday afternoon: Should I cross some of my fun stuff off my schedule? But I shouldn't have to, not if I'm studying harder. “I have to figure out how to make the most of my homework time, that's all.”

“I know you will.” Sadie squeezes my hand.

Becca grabs my arm the second I sit back down. Then she shoves her phone under my nose. The bright light is blinding, and I have to blink for a second in order to read.

Bubsters3000: My Lo Baby got a B on her pre-algebra test yesterday! Yayness! She's totes got the smarts!

“What?! What is this?” I squint at the screen and reread. It's not that my grandmother talks just like Becca—I'm used to that. And the fact that she can out-pop-culture me and that she likes to shop in the same mall stores my friends and I do. Used to all of that, too. (Mostly.)

“It's a tweet from Bubby. See, someone's happy you got a B—a B is good,” Becca says.

“Noooooo . . .” I click the phone off and hand it back to Becca. Then I slump down into my seat. I can't believe Bubby would tell the whole entire world about my B. I called her yesterday to get some advice, but all I got was her being thrilled at my grade. I suppose that when you're used to grandkids like Zach and Josh, anything higher than a C-minus deserves balloons and cake and tweeting to everyone on the planet.

“She's proud of you,” Becca says.

“
Everyone
is going to know now!” And I mean everyone. Our entire school follows Bubby on Twitter because of a party at Sandpiper Active Senior Living this summer. What if one of my friends on It's All Academic mentions it to our faculty advisor? What if I lose my vice captain's seat? What if I keep getting Bs? What if . . . ?

“Flashlights and phones off, folks!” a turtle volunteer calls from the nest. That means something's happening. Baby turtles need to follow the light of the moon to get to the ocean, and they can get distracted by other kinds of lights.

We lean forward. I can just barely see some sand moving. After a few minutes, there's a rustle and an excited “Oh!” from closer to the nest.

“Look!” Sadie says.

I stand up with my friends and peer over Becca's shoulder. A tiny little sea turtle comes wobbling and sliding down the smooth path of sand toward the water. It is possibly the cutest thing ever. Once it gets to the tide line, it's bumped by the waves a few times before it disappears.

Sea turtles have it easy. Well, if you can get past the whole mother-turtle-laying-the-eggs-in-the-right-spot and not-dying-in-the-egg and then-finding-the-ocean parts. But at least they only have one goal: survive.

I wonder if I was better off when I had one goal. Maybe I have too many now, and that's what's wrong. The logical thing to do would be to pick the most important goal—excellent grades—and forget the rest.

But I don't think I can do that anymore. I'm not the same Lauren I was in June. I love RSVP and spending lots of time with my friends, and even just doing stuff that doesn't really have a point, like playing video games with Zach.

More baby turtles bump and slide down the sand. Becca practically squeals at each one she sees, Vi has a perma-smile glued to her face, and Sadie keeps trying to take pictures with no flash. There's no way I could miss something like this.

I just have to study better, that's all. Maybe even find more time for it. Time that doesn't take away from my friends or RSVP or anything else I love.

Rebecca Elldridge's smile has a dental

appointment on October 14 at 3:15 p.m.

Terrific Teeth

Dr. Michael Bernstein

1215 Rosalinde Street

Sandpiper Beach, NC 28461

If unable to keep your appointment, please give 24 hours' notice.

Daily Love Horoscope for Scorpio:

Sometimes it's only when you've given up on your fate that your fate finds you.

Said No One Ever

lyrics by Becca Elldridge

That tarantula is the cutest

Said no one ever

This haggis tastes amazing

Said no one ever

I have too much money

Said no one ever

I love you

Said me never . . .

N
o. No, no, no. Nope. No.

I will not write a love song. I will not be the least, teensy-tiniest, microscopically bit inspired by the cute French boy who is currently invading approximately 94.2 percent of my brain space. Get out of my frontal lobe, Philippe! Shoo!

I toss my pen off the bed, where it hits a pile of dirty laundry and falls between a crumpled pair of skinny jeans and my yellow-and-gray-striped hoodie. I don't care who says redheads shouldn't wear yellow—I love that thing. Hey, I wonder if Philippe likes girls in yellow . . .

AHHHHHH. STOP IT, BRAIN!!!

“Rebecca! T-minus one minute until the bus! You're not missing it again today, young lady!” Daddy's yell has that
My coffee hasn't kicked in yet and I'm not in the mood this morning
tone to it, so I swing my legs onto the floor and hop between patches of visible carpet to my dressing table. I pick out my sparkliest silver clip to match my twinkling ballet flats and hook my backpack over my shoulder. At the door I pause, then double back for the yellow hoodie. (Of course I hold it up first to make sure it passes the wrinkle/smell test. Because eww.)

What? So I'm curious what the French think of yellow. Sue me.

As soon as Daddy drops me at school (um, yes, I missed the bus; I might possibly have been so focused on my hoodie that I forgot I hadn't printed out my English paper yet—whoops, sorry, Daddy), I hunt down Vi in the hallway.

“Did you get it?” I ask, leaning my hip into her locker door and accidentally slamming it shut. Vi gives me an exasperated look as she starts spinning her combo lock.

“Um, get what? Hey,” she says, “before I forget, can you show me that thing with the eyelash curler again? I promise not to scream this time. Or I promise to try really hard not to scream.”

Okay, so there was this day last winter when Vi discovered a nest of spiders under the front steps of the trailer she lived in before moving to her meemaw's. A whole entire nest of eight-legged creepy-crawlies. Did she screech? Call the police? Move to the other side of the state? Nope. She did not. She scooped the whole nest full of gazillions and zillions of creepy-crawly BABY SPIDERS up in a newspaper and rode it to school on her bike handles so she could show it to our science teacher, Mrs. Fenimore. Now, I ask, how on earth could someone who has no issue with seventeen thousand twitching spider legs be freaked out by one small, innocent metal eyelash curler?

However.

Tomboy Vi caring about curled eyelashes is majorly exciting. She's like a tiny doe and I'm holding out my palm full of yummy deer food. (I have no actual idea what baby deer eat, so we're gonna go with generic deer food here.) But I know I have to stand extra perfectly still so I don't scare her away.

“Suuuuuuuure, Vi,” I drawl gently. “Anytime you want. Maybe before your soccer game this Friday?”

“Before my . . . ?
Why
would I curl my lashes to play soccer, exactly?”

“Maybe since you're on the team with all those cute boys? And, well, since Lance is starting forward?” I hold my breath, since bringing up Lance around Vi these days is kind of a no-no. Her eyes burn lasers into the floor, so I change the subject super fast. “You never answered me before. Did you get it?”