Violet in Bloom Read online

  “I think it’th wrong for our very own thchool to make uth eat thomething bad,” Natalia says. “Becauth we’re kidth, they think we don’t matter. But I thay they’re wrong. I thay we should thtart a revolution!”

  Everyone gets excited, and the mood flips from let’s-give-Katie-Rose-a-hard-time to Weeeeee! Let’s go wild!

  “Yeah,” Chance says. “We could make signs and march around the school!”

  “No,” Ms. Perez says, holding her hands out in an attempt to stem the tide.

  “We could sneak into the Cheezy D’lites delivery trucks!” Preston says. “We could put ink in the boxes, like that ink they use to stop bank robbers, and when you opened the box, it would dye everyone blue!”

  “No, orange, because of the fake cheese,” Ava suggests.

  “Class? No,” Ms. Perez says. “No protest marches, no sneaking into delivery trucks. You all need to calm down.”

  “Well, I made buttonth if anyone wantth one,” Natalia says. She lifts her ziplock bag.

  Kids flock to her desk.

  “I do. I want one!” Ava says.

  “Me too,” says Melissa.

  Natalia passes them out. Even the boys want one, because everyone loves free stuff.

  Chance aims the sharp needle-y part of his at Preston. “En garde!” he cries.

  “No swords,” Ms. Perez says. “Anyone who uses his button as a weapon will lose his button, got it?” She approaches Natalia’s desk and fingers the shiny buttons. “These are really cool. Can I have one?”

  “Of courth. I made enough for the whole grade.” She hands two additional buttons to Ava and says, “Will you pleath give thith to Yathaman? And here’th one for Katie-Rothe.”

  “No thanks,” Katie-Rose says angrily.

  But Yasaman accepts hers, and she sees that Ms. Perez is right. Natalia’s buttons are cool. Inside a red circle is the word Trans Fats, and there’s a red slash through it, the universal symbol for saying something’s not allowed. Around the outer edge of the circle is the slogan Why Snackrifice?

  Yasaman peeks at Katie-Rose, who’s scowling and slouching in her seat. Yasaman feels a flash of irritation, which she quickly pushes away.

  “Okay, gang, time to get back to work,” Ms. Perez says. “Put your buttons away and take out your math books, please. Chance? That includes you.”

  She tells the class what problems to do, and Yasaman gets busy. She keeps thinking about Katie-Rose and the buttons, though. Why is Katie-Rose so mad at Natalia, when Natalia has actually helped their Snack Attack campaign? Isn’t Katie-Rose being . . . well . . . meanish and ungrateful?

  A folded-up note lands in her lap. She opens it, expecting it to be from Katie-Rose. Expecting it to maybe say, “Fine, I admit it, the buttons are cool. But Natalia is still annoying. And why didn’t you stand up for me when the Snack Attack was your idea in the first place???”

  But the note is from Natalia, and instead of calling her out for being such a wimp, it says, When Yasaman looks up, she sees Natalia smiling and giving her a thumbs-up. Yasaman smiles awkwardly back.

  A few seconds later, and another note lands in her lap. Then another, and another—a whole series of Natalia-notes. One is folded up to be a fortune-teller, and the flaps open to reveal healthy food choices, like tangerines and peanut butter toast. The next says, The one after that says, And under that, the words and with empty squares next to each.

  “Tell her to stop passing you notes!” Katie-Rose whispers from the desk beside her.

  Yasaman tries to ignore her, because there’s no talking during math. She wishes Natalia would stop passing her notes, too, because there’s not supposed to be note-passing, either.

  Katie-Rose kicks the leg of Yasaman’s desk.

  “Let me read them,” she whispers. “Let me read them, and I’ll write back!”

  At the front of the room, Natalia waves furtively to get Yasaman’s attention. “Pick one!” she mouths, using hand gestures to mime putting a check mark in one of the squares.

  Yasaman has never had two people fighting over her. Some girls would probably like it, being pegged with notes and jostled by kicks, even if the kicks had anger in them. They would be like, Ha ha ha, and whom should I bestow my favor upon today? Ha ha ha, of course, everyone wants to be my friend!

  But Yasaman hates it. She glues her eyes to her math book and grips her pencil.

  Katie-Rose kicks her desk again.

  Natalia bends down, trying to worm her way into Yasaman’s vision.

  “Girls?” Ms. Perez says. She looks in turn at Katie-Rose, Natalia, and Yasaman. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, ma’am,” Yasaman whispers.

  “No, ma’am,” Natalia jumps in. “Thorry.”

  “Katie-Rose?”

  Katie-Rose has pale skin, so when she blushes, it’s extremely noticeable. Right now she’s the color of a ripe tomato.

  “No, ma’am,” Katie-Rose mutters.

  “Mmm,” Ms. Perez says, meaning, Then let’s do our work, shall we?

  Yasaman returns to her math problem, trying to focus on train number one, which is heading west at fifty miles an hour, and train number two, which is heading east even faster. Presumably, they won’t ram into each other, because things in fifth-grade math books tend not to explode.

  Yasaman prays the same is true for her classroom.

  Milla is floaty with happiness, and if not for the laws of nature, she’d surely rise up from her desk like a girl-shaped balloon. She’d bob around above everyone, smiling down, and as she got the hang of being weightless, she’d do tricks, even. Like a flip!

  She glances at Max, who is the reason for her floatiness. Why? Well, because he’s Max, and he’s smart and sweet and adorable. Also because of what happened at the pencil sharpener five minutes ago. They both got up to sharpen their pencils at the exact same time—coincidence? or fate?!—and he said, “Do you want to hear a joke?”

  It was about a duck who went to a bar, but instead of ordering a drink, he asked the bartender if he had any grapes.

  “No,” the bartender said. “This is a bar. Why would I have grapes?”

  So the duck waddled out of the bar, and then waddled right back in two seconds later. “Hi there!” he said. “You got any grapes?”

  “No,” the bartender said. “I don’t have any grapes. Sheesh!”

  This happened again and again, until finally the bartender said, “Listen, duck. If you ask me for grapes one more time, I will flip you upside down and nail you to the wall by your feet!” Which Milla and Max agreed was a terrible thing for that bartender to say, because ouch! Or to use Max’s phrase, owwie ow ow, and when Milla said that, Max grinned.

  “So the duck waddled out of the bar,” Max said, “but, two seconds later, in he waddled again.”

  “Uh-oh,” Milla said.

  “But this time he said to the bartender, ‘Hi there! You got any nails?’ And the bartender got really mad and said, ‘No!!!’”

  Max held Milla’s gaze. Milla’s lips twitched, ready to smile.

  “So the duck said, ‘Well, then, you got any grapes?’”

  Milla laughed, and Max looked happy, and his happiness fed into hers. The knowledge that she’d be going to his house this afternoon made her even happier, and happiness bounced back and forth between them like a super ball.

  Now Max is back in his seat, and it takes him a minute to feel Milla’s glance. But then he does, and when their eyes meet—whoosh! Milla’s chest expands.

  “Attention up here, guys,” Mr. Emerson says, snapping his fingers. “There’s something we need to talk about, and it’s not pretty. But it’s out there, and it’s not going away.” He pauses. “The elephant in the room, my friends? Puberty.”

  Heat travels up Milla’s body. Why do words like puberty, which are totally embarrassing in terms of what they mean, also have to sound so embarrassing? Take the word lamp. There is nothing embarrassing about lamp, or table, or pork loin.

  No, that’s
not true. Pork loin is semi-embarrassing, but not nearly as bad as puberty. Mr. Emerson is always tossing random and possibly inappropriate comments into their class discussions, and usually Milla loves it. Like just last week, he shared with his students an aha moment he’d had regarding nose hair. “Yes, gang,” he said, “you can buy actual nose hair trimmers made specifically for that purpose. After careful consideration, I went with the Turbo-Groomer Five Point O.” He tilted his head, nostrils to the ceiling. “I think we can all agree that it lives up to its name, yes?”

  But it’s one thing to discuss embarrassing details about himself, and another to bring up embarrassing topics that are specific to fifth graders. Must he really discuss puberty when he’s supposed to be making them do their vocabulary?

  “I’m talking about sweat,” he says. “Body odor. I don’t say this to make anyone uncomfortable, but I’ve noticed that our room sometimes has a funky smell, and I know it’s not me.”

  Everyone titters, or almost everyone. Cyril Remkiwicz doesn’t. He’s scrawling away in his notebook, the notebook that has nothing to do with schoolwork.

  There is something about Cyril that Milla feels bad about: He does, on occasion, smell, and she wonders if Mr. Emerson is maybe thinking of him as he talks to the class about deodorant and daily showers. He’s not even listening, though. Is he?

  She peers at him from under a swoop of hair. He does look slightly uncomfortable, so maybe he’s just pretending not to listen. Or maybe he isn’t feeling well. He puts down his pen, closes his eyes, and presses his hand against his stomach.

  “And use shampoo,” Mr. Emerson continues. “You kids are at the age when you’re going to need to wash your hair more frequently, every other day or even every day.”

  Milla nods. She’s all for clean, shiny hair. Max’s hair is thick and kind of crazy in the way it sticks up all over the place, but it’s always clean, so she knows Mr. Emerson isn’t talking to him. Anyway, Max might even wear cologne. Milla can’t swear to it, but standing beside him at the pencil sharpener, she caught a whiff of pine trees and toothpaste. Colgate, the Great Regular Flavor.

  “All right, then,” he says. “Are we good? Are you guys going to keep your faces clean and your armpits deodorized?”

  The class laughs, even Milla—even though she doesn’t yet wear deodorant. Should she? Omigosh, how horrible it would be if she had body odor like Cyril, and she didn’t even know it! She’s 99 percent sure she doesn’t. But what if she did???

  “Terrific,” Mr. Emerson says. “I’m glad we had this talk, as I, for one, feel closer to each and every one of you. I’m sure you feel the same. And now, take out your vocab and turn to this week’s lesson.”

  There is a widespread opening of desks. As Milla fishes out her workbook, her eyes dart to Max. She doesn’t consciously decide to peek at him. It just happens.

  Max’s eyes meet hers—omigosh, he’s looking at her, too!—and she smiles foolishly. Just as foolishly, he smiles back.

  to read to her called When Sophie Gets Angry, Really Really Angry. Her mom read it to her a lot, and it took Katie-Rose longer than it should have to realize why: Her mom was secretly thinking about all the times Katie-Rose got angry, really really angry, and hoping the book would give her coping strategies and stuff.

  Once Katie-Rose figured this out, she accidentally-on-purpose returned When Sophie Gets Angry to the public library, when it had never been a library book in the first place. Katie-Rose didn’t have anger management issues, not then and not now. Please.

  But as Natalia passes what has to be her fifty-millionth note to Yasaman, Katie-Rose finds herself wondering if maybe she does. She wants to punch Natalia in the face, which she suspects is not the reaction of a calm and levelheaded person.

  Or maybe Natalia is just amazingly irritating. Maybe—no, not maybe, definitely—Natalia has friend-stealing issues, and Katie-Rose’s urge to punch her is completely justified.

  She digs her fingernails into her palms as Yasaman reads this most recent note. (Although, why is Yasaman reading the note? Why has Yasaman read any of the notes? Doesn’t she know she’s just encouraging Natalia?)

  Stop it, she tells herself, not wanting to think bad thoughts about her friend. It’s much better to think bad thoughts about Natalia, and plus there are so many to choose from.

  Like how in third grade, Natalia stood so close to her in PE that Katie-Rose didn’t have enough room to do the hula hoop, which made everyone assume she was physically incapable of doing the hula hoop, which was utterly ridiculous as Katie-Rose could do the hula hoop for thirty minutes straight in her own driveway. Yes, she timed herself, and yes, if it wasn’t for Natalia sucking her hula-hoop love right out of her, she probably would have been a national champion by now.

  Then, in fourth grade, Natalia beat Katie-Rose in the geography bee. It was a travesty. Katie-Rose sat in a row of chairs with the other nine finalists while the rest of the school looked on. Each kid got asked a question from a special booklet the principal had. Ms. Westerfeld wasn’t allowed to choose which question to ask. She had to follow specific rules and all that.

  The group of finalists went from ten to five, and then from five to two, and the two were Katie-Rose and Natalia.

  Natalia’s final-round question was, “What is the capital of California?” Which was so easy, because they lived in California! So of course Natalia got it right!

  Then it was Katie-Rose’s turn. If she answered her question correctly, they’d have a tiebreaker round. If not, Natalia would be the winner.

  Ms. Westerfeld ran her finger down the page of the booklet. Her eyebrows went up, and Katie-Rose’s muscles clenched. Then—far worse—Ms. Westerfeld smoothed out her concern and blandly read out Katie-Rose’s question.

  “What South Carolina coastal area is home to one of the largest populations of loggerhead turtles in the country?” she asked.

  Well, who in the world knew that, except maybe a kid from South Carolina? Now Katie-Rose knows, because it was burned into her memory. It’s some beachy place called DeBordieu. Big-flapping-fantastic.

  But back then, at the critical moment, Katie-Rose got it wrong, and she knew in her heart Natalia would have, too. And yet Natalia was declared the champion, and she received a special certificate with a special seal. A month later, she got to miss school to attend the citywide competition, but she didn’t win that time, so ha ha.

  Katie-Rose knows she’s not being very mature. She even knows that in the BIG PICTURE, the stupid fourth-grade geography bee was just that: a stupid fourth-grade geography bee. Who cares who won, especially now, a whole year later?

  But there is the problem with that argument: In the BIG PICTURE, Natalia hasn’t gotten better with time. First she stole Katie-Rose’s hula hoop Olympic gold medal, then she stole Katie-Rose’s geography bee victory, and now she’s trying to steal Katie-Rose’s BFF.

  She is, only Yasaman can’t see it since Natalia’s being as nice as pie to Yasaman.

  A crease forms in Katie-Rose’s forehead as Natalia folds a new note into a triangle, like those paper footballs the boys make and shoot across their desks. She cups the note in her hand and reaches her arms behind her, pretending to stretch. Katie-Rose perches on the end of her chair.

  Ms. Perez calls on Olivia to do the next math problem, and Natalia listens attentively, the perfect student. Behind her back, she flips her wrist, and the note arcs through the air and lands with a soft plimp by Yasaman’s desk.

  Katie-Rose doesn’t think. She just acts. She lunges, snatches, and is back in her seat before Yasaman can blink. With fumbling fingers, she unfolds the piece of paper and reads Natalia’s message:

  Katie-Rose crumples the note, because, grrrrrrr! Natalia is such a liar! Again, and Katie-Rose will say it till the day she dies, there is no way anyone in America can live to be ten years old without trying at least a sip of pop. Most ten-year-olds have drunk a gazillion-squillion gallons of the stuff, if not more. Katie-Rose certainly has.


  Some might say—like Katie-Rose’s mom, for instance—“Oh, Katie-Rose, who cares? You’ll only make things worse by getting all dramatic about it.” Katie-Rose can’t live that way, though. Undramatically. Not when someone is lying in order to make Katie-Rose look bad. Not when that same someone is trying to wedge a crowbar between Katie-Rose and her BFF, hoping to kick Katie-Rose out and slide into her spot!

  The thought of Natalia taking her place in Yasaman’s heart makes Katie-Rose feel as if she were standing at the edge of a dark and bottomless pit. Katie-Rose has worried in the past about losing Milla to some unspeakable evil (like Modessa and Quin), and as for Violet, Katie-Rose still marvels that such a cool and collected girl would choose to be her friend. But the possibility of Yasaman replacing her with someone else . . .

  She can’t think about that. She can’t. She fantasizes, instead, about exposing Natalia’s lies so that Yasaman will know what a fake she is. Maybe she’ll buy one of those teddy bears with a video camera hidden inside and plant it in Natalia’s room so she can catch Natalia’s fakeness on film. Or no, she should put it in Natalia’s kitchen, since that’s where the refrigerator is. No doubt filled with Coke and Pepsi!

  Maybe the video camera should be disguised as a vase of flowers instead of a teddy bear, and the center of one of the flowers could be the camera lens. Ha ha, that would be perfect, a flower capturing Natalia’s soft-drink-chugging downfall!

  “Watch,” Katie-Rose would say to Yasaman after uploading the incriminating video to LuvYaBunches.com.

  “I don’t understand,” Yasaman would say.

  “You will soon,” Katie-Rose would reply. Then she’d hit the Play button on her laptop.

  FADE IN TO KATIE-ROSE’S FANTASY SEQUENCE:

  INTERIOR NATALIA’S HOUSE—KITCHEN—LATE AFTERNOON

  Natalia skips into the kitchen and drops her backpack on the table.

  NATALIA