“And that made me … it made me feel sick. I’m not saying she has to be a flower friend. But she’s still a person, Yaz, and I think she needs friends. I think she needs us.”
Yasaman closes the distance between Violet and herself. “I know,” she says. “I don’t agree with everything you said, not totally. But I do think that we should be kind to her, and that’s what I wanted to say, too.”
“You … you did?”
Yaz puts her hands on Violet’s shoulders. She steers her to a chair and makes her sit. She pulls over a second chair and sits beside her.
“I was wrong,” Yaz says. “I said you had to pick me or Hayley, but that’s not who you are. That’s never been who you are.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not someone who sits back and stays quiet when bad things happen,” Yaz says. Her voice is thick with shame. “And I made you. And I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Three minutes ago, Violet’s words were stuck inside of her. Then they came whooshing out. Now all she’s got left are the single-syllable ones, like huh and oh.
“And I’m not the sort of person who looks away when someone needs help,” Yaz says. “Or … I don’t want to be.”
“You’re not,” Violet says. “You’re really and truly not.”
Tears well up in Yasaman’s eyes.
“Don’t cry!” Violet exclaims. Tears fill her eyes, and she laughs and swipes them away with the back of her hand. “Don’t you dare cry, Yasaman! You are the nicest girl I know, I swear to God. Or Allah. Or Bob, as Katie-Rose would say.”
Violet makes a silly face, and Yaz manages a choky laugh, too.
“Okay. Stopping.” Yaz presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. She drops her hands and blinks several times in a row. “So, um, I think we should tell Hayley sorry for sending her away.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
Warmth fills Violet’s chest. “All right. Yeah.”
“We should keep trying to help Elena, too,” Yasaman says. “Don’t you think? Even if it’s hopeless?”
Violet scrunches her nose. “Elena might be hopeless, but I guess we never know.” She pauses. “Oh, gosh. Does that mean we have to help Quin? And Modessa?”
“Um … I’m going to hold off on answering that one,” Yaz says. “Anyway, first things first, right?” She stands and holds out her hand to Violet. “Come on, let’s go find Hayley.”
mildly. It begins with Violet and Yaz pulling Hayley over to Milla and Katie-Rose and making an announcement. They’ve been talking to Hayley, and they’ve just discovered that Hayley—yes, Hayley—is a real live dancer who takes hip-hop lessons and everything. And guess what? She loves dance parties, and tomorrow she’s going to teach all the flower friends some dance moves.
“It’ll be at my house,” Yaz says, “and I want everyone to come. Okay?”
“A dance party?” Katie-Rose says. “That’s out of the blue.”
“No, it’s out of Hayley’s head,” Violet says. “At her old school, she and her friends had dance parties all the time. Just because we don’t have dance parties—”
“—doesn’t mean we shouldn’t,” Yaz finishes. She and Violet grin at each other. Then she gets stern and focuses back on Katie-Rose. “We’re doing it. It’ll be fun.”
“Um … okay,” Katie-Rose says. After all, a dance party could be fun, she supposes. Plus, she kind of feels like she needs to be on her best behavior. Milla was surprisingly chillaxed at lunch—about the whole Olive Garden thing last night. Katie-Rose kept expecting her to bring it up. But she didn’t. So Katie-Rose thinks maybe she should … be agreeable? Say thank you?
Violet explains that the dance routine will incorporate hip-hop moves with mock-cheerleader silliness. Then she clears her throat and says that she, personally, thinks the song they do their dance to should be the awesomely ridiculous “Sexy and I Know It.”
“What? No!” Yaz cries. She swats Violet. “When did you come up with that idea, Violet?”
“It’s a good song!” Violet protests. “It’s got a good beat for dancing!”
“It is very danceable,” Hayley says.
“But, Violet,” Yaz says. “My mother. Will. Freak. She will freak! I am already freaking!”
“Me, too!” Katie-Rose chimes in. “Ten-year-olds are not sexy. Gross!”
“Chill,” Violet says. “We’ll use the karaoke version and change the lyrics, and your mom will never know. Cool?”
“I think it sounds fun,” Milla says. “And, Katie-Rose, you can add in whoos. I know how much you love whooing.”
Katie-Rose mulls this over. She hums a bit of the song to get it started in her head, then launches into actual singing. “When I walk in the spot—whoo!—this is what I see. Whoo! Everybody stops, and they staring at me! Whoo!”
Hayley laughs a big, loud laugh, which makes Katie-Rose grin. Yaz hides her face and says, “Oh my gosh,” which makes Katie-Rose grin even more.
“But we’ll change the lyrics,” Violet reiterates. To Katie-Rose, she says, “You can still whoo, don’t worry.”
Katie-Rose gives Violet a thumbs-up. Then, feeling magnanimous, she throws her arms around Violet and Yaz and says, “Group hug!”
Yaz pulls Milla in, too, and the four girls link their arms over each other’s shoulders. Katie-Rose breathes in deeply, noticing how nice her friends smell all clustered around her: sweet, sweaty, peanut-buttery. Although the peanut-buttery might be her.
“Hayley, get over here,” Milla calls. “We’re having a group hug—that means you have to be part of it!”
“That’s okay,” Hayley says.
“Hayley,” Yaz scolds. “You have to!”
Katie-Rose can’t see Hayley’s expression, but she hears the doubt in Hayley’s voice when she says, “Are you sure?”
“We’re sure,” Violet says. She digs her fingers between Katie-Rose’s ribs, making Katie-Rose yelp. “She wants to know if you think it’s okay. And you do, right?”
“Do I?” Katie-Rose says.
“I think you do,” Yasaman says.
“Me, too,” Violet says.
Milla brings her face so close to Katie-Rose’s that their noses touch. “Of course you do. It’s our job to do the right thing. You taught me that, Katie-Rose. Way back when you helped me escape Modessa’s clutches.”
And you helped me, Katie-Rose thinks. All of you.
“Um … you guys?” Hayley says from the sidelines. “I’m feeling a little dumb here. Just so you know. Maybe we could start working on the dance, and you guys could, you know, stop hugging?”
Oh, whatever, Katie-Rose thinks. She rises to her tiptoes and says, “Come on, H-babe. Just, you have to swear not to turn into an Evil Chick. Do you swear?!”
Hayley hesitates, and then she smiles and bounces over. It’s obvious she wanted to all along.
Realizing that softens Katie-Rose’s heart. Spotting Modessa off by the swing set, glowering and looking fit to be tied—or fit to wet her pants—fills Katie-Rose’s softened heart with fizzy glee. Ha ha to you, you Evil Chick! she thinks. Beaming, she makes room for Hayley and cries, “Huzzah! Yiperee, Bob!”
“You’re weird,” Hayley tells Katie-Rose. To the others, she says, “Is she always this weird?”
Katie-Rose takes a big sniff of Hayley’s hair. It smells … oddly familiar. “Your hair smells good. Like … something. Something good!”
“Always!” Violet, Yaz, and Milla chorus.
“Ha ha hardy har ha,” Katie-Rose says, delighted. She really does recognize Hayley’s hair-smell, but she doesn’t know where from. She puts that thought away. “Only, Hayley, you haven’t sworn, and you have to. Do you?”
“To not become evil?” Hayley asks.
“Not to become evil, yes,” Katie-Rose says. She peeks again at Modessa. It gives her great joy. “But more specifically, not to turn into an Evil Chick. You know, like Modessa and Quin and Elena?”
Hayley snorts. “Is that what th
ey call themselves? Please. I have no interest in hanging out with those girls.”
Well … but you did, Katie-Rose thinks. You did hang out with them, and not just once or twice, but on multiple occasions.
Yasaman will get mad at her if she says that, though. So she says, “Work with me here, Hayley. I am glad you have no interest in hanging with them. That shows excellent taste on your part.”
“Thank you?”
“You’re welcome. But repeat after me: ‘I will not ever become an Evil Chick, or bow down to an Evil Chick, or be associated in any way with the evilness of Rivendell’s three Evil Chicks.’ Can you do that?”
Hayley untangles herself from the hug. She straightens her spine, lifts her chin, and proclaims, “I will not ever become an Evil Chick, or bow down to an Evil Chick. Nor will I be associated in any way with the evilness of Rivendell’s three Evil Chicks, unless it is to bring them down.” She looks Katie-Rose in the eye. “Are you satisfied?”
Katie-Rose searches her soul and realizes that yes, she is. She really is.
“I am,” she says.
“Good,” Hayley says. She brings her hands together in a single, sharp clap. “Then let’s get to work. We have a dance to learn.”
The girls work hard to master Hayley’s choreography, and Katie-Rose is flushed and happy when Mr. Emerson signals the end of afternoon break by ringing his giant cowbell. She’s leaving the playground with the others when someone taps her on the shoulder. It’s Preston. Her pulse quickens. She suddenly wonders just how sweaty she is.
“Hold up,” Preston says.
She does, without really knowing why. Kids pass her on either side. Her flower friends, as well as Hayley, disappear into the building.
Preston tugs her off to the side, to the sandy area where the play structure is. “So, uh, has anything unusual happened today? To you?”
“The hedgehogs,” she says under her breath. She knew it, but she wasn’t sure she knew it, but now she is! “The hedgehogs!” she says, this time with gusto. “You did it! You gave me all those hedgehogs!”
“I neither affirm nor deny that allegation,” Preston says, but a smile tugs at his mouth. “Do you like them?”
She adores them, but she’s not telling him that. “You asked if something unusual happened, and the only unusual thing was the hedgehogs, so you just did affirm that alli-whatever. So, ha. What I want to know is why?”
“Why what?”
She wants to rip her hair out. Or his. Preston has surprisingly nice hair, for a boy. It smells surprisingly nice, too. She got a whiff of it one day when she was behind him at the water fountain, and its scent has lingered in her brain cells.
“Why hedgehogs? Why me?”
Preston wrinkles his forehead. “I don’t understand the question.”
“Preston! Aaaargh! You do, too!”
Preston smirks. “Sheesh, you’re prickly. You know what else is prickly?”
Katie-Rose gets a bad feeling.
“Hedgehogs,” he says.
Katie-Rose blinks. “You’re such a jerk, Preston,” she says. “Did you know that?”
“Huh?” His smirk falls away. “But … you smiled when you got them. Every time. You smiled every single time you got one.”
“Because I didn’t know you were giving them to me to be mean,” she says. She feels like an idiot. “But now I do, and guess what? I’ll un-smile when I throw them away, every single one of them.”
She heads for the building.
Preston grabs her wrist. He holds on even when she struggles against him. “Katie-Rose …,” he says.
“Let go!” she snaps. “You’re hurting me!”
He releases her. She stumbles.
“Preston! Katie-Rose!” Mr. Emerson calls. “Come on, kids!”
“We’re coming!” Katie-Rose calls back. “One of the preschoolers left a tricycle out!”
“Well, put it away and get to class,” Mr. Emerson says. “And hurry!”
There is no forgotten tricycle. There’s just Katie-Rose and Preston. Soon even Mr. Emerson is gone; Katie-Rose hears the clunk of the heavy door as it closes behind him.
“You’re going to throw them away?” Preston says. He rakes his hand through his hair.
His not-so-bad-for-a-boy hair. His very clean-smelling hair, which she has smelled before. Like, when she was behind him at the water fountain one time, and once during art class.
“Hey,” Katie-Rose says, figuring out something that was bothering her earlier. Hayley’s hair smelled familiar because her shampoo smelled almost, but not exactly, like Preston’s. “What kind of shampoo do you use?”
“What?!” Preston says. He looks so bewildered, and so silly, that Katie-Rose’s anger leaves her. Her prickliness, as Preston might call it.
She fights to suppress a smile. Preston sees and his features smooth out.
“My shampoo?” he says. He preens in a way that only he can get away with, sticking his hip out and putting his hand behind his head. “Don’t you wish you knew?”
“Yes, which is why I’m asking.” Katie-Rose makes a fist and punches her palm. “Tell me, bucko.”
“I will, but only if you come a little closer,” Preston says. He offers his cheek. “Plant one right here, sweetheart.”
“A punch? You want me to punch you?”
“A kiss, dorkwad. You know you want to.”
“Ewwww!” Katie-Rose says, and yet her feet—what are they doing, those unreliable feet of hers? They’re moving of their own accord! They’re stepping closer to Preston and bringing her with them!
Preston lifts his chin, taps his cheek with his fingertips, and says, “One smooch. One quick smooch, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“You are so gross,” Katie-Rose says, her heart thumping.
He waggles his eyebrows. “Am I?”
She gulps.
He taps his cheek again. It is just his cheek, after all. Kissing someone’s cheek is like … is like … kissing an apple or a baby. Or a tree.
“Okay, fine,” Katie-Rose says. “But just so you know, I am pretending you are a tree. Got it?”
Preston tilts his cheek to make it more accessible. He closes his eyes.
“Oh, crap in a can,” Katie-Rose mutters. “You better not tell anyone.” She purses her lips, darts in for the kill, and—
“Preston!!!” She hyperventilates. She sees stars. She swoons and almost faints, and not in a good way, and the reason why is because Preston is a dirty, sneaky rat! Because at the very last microsecond, when Katie-Rose’s lips were this close to Preston’s slightly chubby cheek, he turned SO THAT HER MOUTH MET HIS!!!!
“Geez-o-criminy, you freakazoid!” she bellows. “What’d you do that for?!”
Preston is beaming. He’s bright red, but he’s beaming. “My first kiss,” he says. He clasps his hands over his heart. “I will treasure this moment forever.”
“Well, I won’t!” Katie-Rose cries. And yet … she might. She just had her very first kiss, too. Geez-o-criminy!
“Until we meet again,” Preston says, saluting her. He walks away, a spring in his step.
“Hey! Wait!” she calls.
He looks back over his shoulder. “Yes?”
Katie-Rose opens her mouth—the very mouth that touched his—then shuts it.
I kissed a boy, she thinks. The words play over and over in her mind. I kissed a boy. I kissed a boy. I. Kissed. A. Boy.
“Ohhhhh,” Preston says. He gives her the smarmy snap-and-point move he’s so annoyingly good at. “My shampoo, because you loooove the delicate aroma of my golden locks.”
Katie-Rose wakes from her trance. “Your golden locks?! The delicate aroma?!!”
“My mom buys it somewhere,” Preston says. “It’s organic, so you could drink it if you wanted to and not die.”
“Great, Preston. That’s so totally fascinating.”
“I know, right?”
“And so totally helpful, since you haven’t even
told me what it’s called.”
“Lusty Lavender,” he says, savoring the words.
He grins. She scowls.
Geez-o-geez-o-criminy.
Thanks to Susan for being Susan and helping me write this book during a hard time. Thanks to Erica for being such a cheerful, tireless cheerleader. Thanks to Maria for making it look beautiful! Thanks to Zoey for liking me and getting feisty when my honor is challenged, and thanks to Bob, always, for ensuring that my honor—so connected to self-worth—stays intact. And, Al? I love your “Where I’m From” poem. Thank you for letting me model Violet’s poem on yours!
Lauren Myracle *really* likes tweens and pretweens; she’d rather sit at the kids’ table than at the boring grown-up table any day. She’s written squillions of books, including the bestselling Internet Girls series and the Winnie Years series, and she is SO SUPER EXCITED about the Flower Power series. Why? Because at last she’s written books that blend the thrills of social media with the goofy, wonderful madness of fifth grade.
Visit her on the Web at laurenmyracle.com, and come hang with Milla, Violet, Yasaman, and Katie-Rose at flowerpowerbooks.com.
Lauren Myracle, Awesome Blossom
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends