Violet in Bloom

  Stewy snuffles the Kleenex box.

  “Go inside,” Max coaches. He pats Stewy’s bottom, like a gentle spank. “Go through.”

  Instead, Stewy stays right where he is, but flattens his haunches. His whiskers go back. A stain spreads around him, darkening the carpet.

  “Uh-oh,” Milla says. Did Stewy just . . . do what she thinks he did?

  “Stewy!” Max snatches Stewy and lifts him off the floor.

  More pee comes out, and Milla giggles. She’s learning that hamsters are unpredictable goofballs. Who knows what Stewy’s going to do next?

  “No no, mister!” Max scolds, and then he yelps. Some of the pee has landed on his jeans. Ew!

  Max lets go of Stewy, and he lands upside down on the carpet.

  “Poor Stewy!” Milla cries. She’s dying, she’s laughing so hard.

  Stewy bats his hind foot until his claws make purchase on the carpet, and then he’s off and running. He’s a scurrying ball of fur, and it’s actually a little freaky—what if he tries to scrabble up Milla’s leg?! But Max is laughing, too, and that makes it more fun than freaky.

  “Help!” he says, clambering to his feet. “Hamster on the loose! Hamster on the loose!”

  “There!” Milla says. The door to Max’s closet isn’t fully shut, and she catches sight of Stewy’s hind end disappearing within.

  “I’ll chase him out. You grab him,” Max says.

  Milla crouches and holds her arms out as if she’s preparing to catch a football. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Max enters his closet cautiously. It’s way messy, with clothes on the floor, books everywhere, and board games stacked high on a shelf. On top is a sombrero with fluffy red pompoms dangling from the rim.

  “Stewy?” Max coaxes. “Come here, boy. Milla and I have to go to school, so you need to go back in your cage.”

  Milla tenses her muscles. She’s ready to spring and grab the little guy if he appears. Or run screaming out of the room. One of the two.

  Max kicks aside a blue throw pillow with a giraffe stitched on it. Next he bends at the waist and clears away some of the laundry. He lifts an unplugged lava lamp and hands it to Milla, who takes it and puts it on the floor.

  There’s no sight of Stewy.

  “Max? Milla?” Max’s mom calls. “It’s about time to go, kids!”

  “Coming!” Max yells over his shoulder. To Milla, he says, “Do not tell her Stewy’s loose.”

  “Now, please!” his mom calls.

  Max keeps searching the closet. “Come on, Stewy! Where are you?”

  There’s a flash of brown, and Stewy streaks out, dashing between Max’s legs.

  “Grab him!” Max says, but Milla is frozen. The whole situation is exciting and dramatic and hilarious, but the freakiness is still there, adding a spine-shivery layer of anxiety. What if she lets Max down? What if she does grab Stewy, but spazzes out and lets him go?

  Max loses his balance as he wades through all his junk. Stewy is mad-scrambling across the floor, and Milla is so much closer to him. So much.

  “Don’t let him get away!” Max cries, and that’s it. She has to try, even if it ends in squeamish failure and total humiliation. Because Max needs her. So she lunges for Stewy, and miracle of miracles, she catches him. Omigosh!

  Only he’s warm and twisty and has hamster toenails, which scrape the pad of flesh under her thumb. It doesn’t hurt, but eeeee! She squeals and flings Stewy away.

  “Stewy!” Max cries as Stewy lands on the carpet by the toilet paper–roll tunnel. He rights himself and takes off again, not that Milla can blame him.

  But oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh. What if she hurt him? She has to get him back. She has to make things better! She spots Stewy by the bed and dashes toward him, avoiding the obstacles on Max’s floor as best she can.

  “Stewy, come here, sweetie!” she begs.

  Max is out of the closet. He’s one step behind her.

  “Do you have him?” he pants.

  “Almost!” she says, leaping over the Lego staircase. She’s in the air—her legs splayed, her vinyl boots gleaming—when Stewy decides to be unpredictable again. He does an abrupt about-face, darting away from the bed and straight toward Milla, and Milla has just enough time to gasp before everything shifts to slo-mo. Because there is nothing she can do.

  She has to land. She can’t stay suspended forever. And there is a snap—

  And a flump—

  And squishiness like bread, only not bread—

  And there is blood

  (red)

  on her white

  (but no longer only white)

  chunky-heeled

  vinyl

  boot.

  a good night’s sleep can do wonders. Katie-Rose woke up determined to do the right thing, and do the right thing she will. She will forgive Yasaman! She will be the better person. The bigger person! No matter that she’s tiny. When it comes to friendship, Katie-Rose has come to the conclusion that you just have to love your BFFs no matter what, especially when they’re not just BFFs, but FFFs.

  Anyway, Katie-Rose knows she’s no saint herself. That’s what she’s thinking about during journal writing time. They’re supposed to be writing about where they like to go to be alone, but Katie-Rose doesn’t like to be alone. Ever. So she makes up her own writing prompt called “Telephone Etiquette: The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth.”

  It’s about how she should have talked to Yasaman when Yasaman called last night. Then all their yuckiness would be over already. Instead, she made Chrissy lie and tell Yasaman she wasn’t there. Chrissy wasn’t pleased.

  “You’re not going to solve anything by avoiding her,” Chrissy told her after hanging up. She cocked her head. “Unless . . . are you trying to punish her?”

  “What? No!” Katie-Rose replied hotly.

  “Well, she sounded sad,” Chrissy said. “I’m just saying.”

  Scribbling away in her journal, Katie-Rose admits how lame she was not to take Yasaman’s call. she writes, She chews on the tip of her pencil. How? How will she make it up to her?

  Inspiration strikes! In addition to forgiving Yasaman in her head for all the Natalia stupidness, she will go that extra step and apologize to Yasaman for being so immature about it all. With words. Which will be hard, because it’s scary to apologize to someone. It makes you feel—if you’re Katie-Rose, that is—unsure of your footing, and Katie-Rose, for one, is a girl who likes to feel extremely sure of her footing at all times.

  But. For a friend? For Yasaman?

  , she writes, setting her jaw.

  She’s glad when journal writing officially comes to an end. After that is morning math, and then it’s snack break. Snack break means stretching and moving around and chatting, which for Katie-Rose means going over to Yasaman—who’s only one desk away, though today the space between them seems huge—and saying all the stuff she wants to say before she loses her nerve.

  She rises from her seat. From the corner of her eye, she sees Natalia rising from her seat, too. Oh no you don’t, Katie-Rose thinks, sidling around her chair and quickly closing the gap between her and Yasaman. She presses her hip into the edge of Yasaman’s desk to form a wall between the two of them and anyone else.

  “Hi,” Katie-Rose says. She wraps her arms around herself. Her hands find her armpits and worm their way in.

  “Hi,” Yasaman says uncertainly.

  “I’m really sorry for not answering the phone last night,” Katie-Rose says in a rush. She glances over her shoulder and sees that Natalia has lowered herself back into her seat, but not in a permanent-looking way. She’s perched on the edge of her chair, her posture stiff.

  Katie-Rose focuses on Yasaman. “I don’t even know why I didn’t answer, except I was mad, only maybe I was more . . . something else than mad. I don’t know.”

  Yasaman regards her from under her long eyelashes. Once, at Katie-Rose’s house, Katie-Rose balanced an uncooked spaghetti noodle on those lashes. She
made Yasaman hold still and not blink, and she gently-gently balanced the noodle right above Yasaman’s dark eyes.

  Does Yasaman remember that? Katie-Rose wonders. Of course she does, she tells herself. It’s not like people go around balancing spaghetti noodles on their eyelashes every day of the week.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you what to do.”

  Yasaman bites her lower lip. “Well, I could have been more . . . you know. Supportive. About your speech. So I’m sorry, too.”

  Hearing Yasaman say this makes Katie-Rose feel a thousand times lighter. She wants to make Yasaman feel better, too, so she says, “Thanks, and I forgive you.” She lowers her voice. “And personally, I think we should just blame Natalia. I hate her, don’t you?”

  Yasaman’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Katie-Rose . . .”

  Katie-Rose makes a face. She hates it when Yasaman says her name like that, and plus, she knows where that Katie-Rose is heading. She doesn’t want a lecture, so says, “Fine, yes, her buttons were semi-cool. But we need to go bigger! Bolder!”

  Yasaman’s gaze goes to something behind Katie-Rose, and her eyes widen. Katie-Rose registers this, but not fully enough, as she is on a roll.

  “Because even with Natalia’s dumb buttons, nothing changed,” she says. “Everyone still ate their Cheezy D’lites, and they’re eating them again today. Just look around!”

  She gestures at all the Cheezy D’lite action going on, and her hand smacks someone’s soft stomach. Natalia’s soft stomach.

  “Ooof,” Natalia says.

  Katie-Rose reddens. “Sorry.”

  “It’th okay,” Natalia says in a tone that suggests it isn’t. Then she lifts her chin. To Yasaman, she says, “I love your hijab. Ith it new?”

  Yasaman looks pleased. “Uh-huh. My cousin gave it to me.”

  “It’th gorgeouth. I wish I could wear a head thcarf.”

  You do not, Katie-Rose thinks, wishing she’d thought to compliment Yasaman first. You aren’t Muslim, dummy.

  Natalia swivels to face her. Her headgear is like a planet. “And how are you, Katie-Rothe?”

  “Fine,” Katie-Rose says.

  “I felt tho bad for you yethterday,” she goes on. “When you weren’t able to manage your anger? I thaid a thpecial prayer for you latht night.”

  Katie-Rose smiles grimly. But she isn’t going to let Natalia get to her. Not today. If the situation gets too ugly, she’ll use one of Chrissy’s tricks for getting rid of annoying people, though she hopes it doesn’t come to that.

  “How nice,” she says. “Tell God ‘hi’ for me.”

  “Oh, Katie-Rothe,” Natalia exclaims, bringing her palms together. Her tone suggests that Katie-Rose is faking being strong, but that she, Natalia, can see right through her and, in fact, feels sorry for her.

  “Oh Katie Rose what?! You don’t need to say it like that, like I’ve got some kind of terminal disease.”

  “But you were thrown out in front of the whole clath,” Natalia says. “I can’t even imagine how mortifying that mutht have been.”

  Katie-Rose curls her toes inside her sneakers, but keeps her smile in place. “Well, it’s true that not everyone has a good imagination, but I’m sure you have lots of other skills.” She widens her eyes. “Like emptying the trash. When you were the trash helper, you did an excellent job. Maybe you could be a janitor one day.”

  Natalia drops her concerned act. “My mom wonderth if you thkipped prethchool, and that’th why you don’t know how to share.”

  “My mom wonders if you got dropped on your head when you were a baby, and that’s why you’re so annoying,” Katie-Rose retorts.

  “Thee?” Natalia says. “You’re only thaying that to be mean, becauth you don’t like me being friendth with Yathaman. You never learned to share your toyth, and now you don’t know how to share, period—even the important thtuff.”

  Katie-Rose doesn’t like where this is going, and yet she asks, irritably, “Like what?”

  Natalia puts her arm around Yasaman. “Friendth, thilly.”

  “A friend isn’t a toy.”

  “I know. A friend is a perthon, and you can’t claim minethies on a perthon.”

  Minethies?

  Oh. Minesies. As in a four-year-old clutching a frizzyhaired doll and twisting away when someone tries to take it, crying, “Minesies! I call minesies for today and tomorrow and the next tomorrow, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo!”

  It’s a pitch-a-fit spoiled baby word, one Katie-Rose hasn’t used or thought of in a thousand years, but the awful thing is, hearing Natalia throw it at her so smugly makes her want to pitch a spoiled baby fit.

  And why is Yasaman just standing there, Natalia’s arm draped over her like a dead-rat boa? Why doesn’t she fling it off like the dead rat it is?

  But Katie-Rose is not going to let Natalia win, which means . . .

  It’s time for Plan Chrissy.

  “Boobies from outer space!” Katie-Rose yells, making Natalia shriek and jerk violently back. Yasaman jumps, too, and from behind her desk, Ms. Perez is so startled that her fingers splay open and she drops her Starbucks cup, which lands hard on her desk, its lid bursting off and its contents spewing out. Fortunately, it was almost empty. Unfortunately, what little was left splatters Ms. Perez’s rosy silk blouse.

  “Girls!” she exclaims. She draws her hand to her heart, and Katie-Rose is suddenly afraid she’s going to have a heart attack, right then and there.

  Omigosh, I’ve killed my teacher, she thinks, her mouth going dry. My teacher is going to die, and I ruined her shirt, and it’s all my fault. Or maybe Chrissy’s, for telling me to yell out random and embarrassing things if I need to drive people away.

  Ms. Perez doesn’t die, although the spots of latte on her blouse look like dried blood. If blood were brownish, that is. She rises from her desk and strides toward the three girls. “What in heaven’s name . . . ?”

  Natalia gulps and scuttles away.

  Weenie-head, Katie-Rose thinks, though her feet are telling her to run as well.

  “Katie-Rose?” Ms. Perez says ominously.

  “Omigosh, I’m so so sorry! I don’t know—I was just—omigosh—and I’ll totally buy you a new shirt, because that one’s really pretty, and . . . and . . .” Why did Chrissy tell her to say the word boobies in public? Boobies is not a word people say in public! Even a second grader knows that (probably), so what was Katie-Rose thinking?

  Well. She wasn’t thinking, obviously. Thanks, Chrissy.

  Ms. Perez lifts her eyebrows. Katie-Rose can’t tell if she’s mad mad, or just normal mad, but either way, Katie-Rose’s anxiety builds to near bursting. She won’t be able to handle it if her beloved teacher doesn’t like her again, for the second day in a row.

  Katie-Rose lifts her clasped hands in front of her the way people do in movies when they’re begging for their lives. “Please forgive me, dearest teacher who teaches me so many good things! I beseech you!”

  Ms. Perez almost snorts. Katie-Rose is immensely heartened by this, and she drops to her knees and goes to her teacher, throwing her arms around Ms. Perez’s calves.

  “I’ll never say ‘boobies’ at school again. I swear to you on my life.”

  “Katie-Rose . . .” Ms. Perez says. She shakes one leg, trying to dislodge her, but she’s laughing. Maybe she doesn’t want to be, but she is. She’s not mad anymore!

  Katie-Rose hugs Ms. Perez’s legs tighter. As close as she is, she has an excellent view of Ms. Perez’s stockings, which are a pale gray patterned with black roses. Roses! Another good sign!

  “I like your stockings,” Katie-Rose says.

  “Thank you,” Ms. Perez says. “Let go now, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Katie-Rose says. She releases her teacher and falls back onto her bottom.

  “And now stand up, please, and return to your desk.”

  She gets to her feet. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And, please, I beseech you. Don’t ever scream ‘
boobies from outer space’ in my classroom again.” She eyeballs Katie-Rose. “Ever.”

  Titters erupt around her. Katie-Rose is too happy to care. Natalia looks like a sour pickle, and that makes Katie-Rose even happier.

  “Whew,” she says to Yasaman after Ms. Perez leaves the room to do what she can about her blouse. “That was close.”

  “You are so strange,” Yasaman says. Her expression is aghast, incredulous, and admiring, all mixed together in those luminous brown eyes of hers.

  “I know,” Katie-Rose says. She is a buzzy ball of gladness, because not only has she fixed things with Yasaman, but she fixed that weenie-head, Natalia, too! Ha ha ha! Chrissy’s trick did work!

  Something pings the back of Katie-Rose’s head, and she hunches over instinctively. “Ow! Hey! Who did that?”

  She spots a paper football on the floor, folded tight with sharp, pointy edges. Oh, nuh-uh, she thinks, flabbergasted at Natalia’s nerve.

  Katie-Rose peeks at Natalia, who’s pretending she didn’t write the note. She’s bent over her journal, and her tongue, pink and wet, is sticking slightly out of her mouth. Her feet are twined around the legs of her desk.

  Katie-Rose sticks her own foot out and captures the note beneath the toe of her sneaker. She draws it close and unfolds it. She even smiles at Natalia—not that Natalia is looking—to say, I can be mature, too. See?

  She smooths the note flat on her desk. A quick glance reveals messy cursive beneath some sort of picture.

  Snortle heh snortle heh, she hears from the left side of the room. The left side of the room, which is, um, not where Natalia is. She feels a prick of foreboding, because the snortler is Preston, and the heh-heh-er is none other than Chance, who yesterday made that oh-so-hilarious jab about her brain being poisoned by Cheezy D’lites.

  She shouldn’t read the note. Obviously, she shouldn’t read the note. Anyway, why would she? She’s far too busy paying attention to their fabulous and wonderful teacher, who has returned from the teachers’ lounge and has launched into a fabulous and wonderful explanation of . . . something. Definitely something, and whatever it is, it’s fabulous, and she is not going to look down, not going to look down, not going to—