The Friendship Matchmaker Goes Undercover

  “Come on,” Tanya groaned, as we walked out of class at lunchtime later that day. “Don’t tell me you can’t hang out with us again? That’s the third time this week, Lara. Emily and I have done practically all the work for the Roald Dahl project. We still haven’t even seen your part.”

  I gave her a guilty look. “I know. And I’m really sorry, Tanya. But Mrs. Beggs has been on my case to be Majur’s buddy.” I sighed heavily. “I’d feel awful saying no to a refugee. He needs my help. I have to get him used to the playground; teach him how to find his way through the library. That could take all year.”

  Tanya shrugged. “I guess.”

  “It’s kind of strange that they’d give Majur a girl buddy,” Emily said thoughtfully.

  “Not really,” I mumbled.

  “Have you at least started your part yet?” Tanya asked.

  I couldn’t hide the guilty look on my face. “Um . . .”

  “Lara!” Tanya scolded. “It’s due on Friday!”

  “It’s okay,” Emily said. “How about you organize the songs and we’ll do your part? That way the presentation will be in order with the pictures and photos, and we’ll just have to add the songs at the end.”

  I smiled. “That sounds great.”

  We quickly went through the songs I needed to download.

  “I need to go now,” I said, sighing with self-pity. “I should get to Majur.”

  The only reason I could get away with my lie was that the chances of Tanya actually visiting the soccer field during recess or lunch were below zero. She’d have no idea that Majur spent almost every minute of his spare time there, and not touring the school grounds with me as his teacher-appointed chaperone.

  Tanya and Emily left to use the computers in the library, where Mrs. Weston was supervising kids doing schoolwork, and I tucked my hair under my hat, put on some sunglasses I’d gotten for free last year, and started searching the playground for Total Loners in need of my help.

  By the end of lunch I’d held a mediation session between a warring group of friends and offered some unofficial advice to a new kid in sixth grade about all the ways he could fight back against teasing about his bifocal glasses.

  When the bell rang and I’d returned to the locker room, I found Emily and Tanya with arms linked, laughing hysterically. A feeling of jealousy suddenly flooded through me. I’d given up my calling for their sake, and was working undercover, and here they were, acting like . . . best friends.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “We were messing around with the book trailer and pasted our faces on—” She smiled sheepishly. “Never mind. It doesn’t sound as funny when you say it later.”

  Had we become a trio? And if so, was I becoming the third wheel . . . all over again?

  Chapter 13

  Claudia, from the classroom next door, slipped a note into my schoolbag as I was walking to assembly in the morning, just as the first bell rang.

  “Read it, please,” she said desperately. “I need your help—unofficially, of course,” she quickly added with a wink.

  While Emily and Tanya were singing the national anthem during assembly, I sneaked a peek at Claudia’s note:

  My best friend thinks I’m competing with her in class just because I’m getting better grades than her. Can I see you today? What do I do?

  There went my recess.

  But deep down I didn’t mind. Nobody said this job would be easy.

  Since the beginning of the year Ms. Pria had been teaching us about how gold was discovered in California. We read about an old gold mining town and how prospectors panned for gold. Then we did an assignment on some famous dead people from the history of that time. So I felt sorry for Majur when Ms. Pria said we’d be playing Celebrity Heads using identity cards of those famous people. Majur hadn’t been here long enough to catch up.

  It was like that in most subjects. In geography Ms. Pria didn’t seem to mind that Majur hadn’t done the unit on Antarctica. He did ESL work or she gave him something easier to do. In math it was obvious he was behind with his times tables.

  But Ms. Pria didn’t mind and never told Majur off. She was patient and understanding and so most of the class accepted that Majur deserved special treatment. The only person who resented this was Chris. And he could still get some of the boys to laugh whenever Majur made a mistake. In English he didn’t have a clue about all the fairy tales we’d had read to us since kindergarten. Chris and some of the other boys nearly choked when Majur asked Ms. Pria if Cinderella was male or female.

  “Right!” Ms. Pria said. “Tanya, Emily, and David, please take your seats.” She turned to the rest of the class. “You can only ask questions with a yes or no answer.”

  Tanya walked shyly to her seat in the row of three seats Ms. Pria had placed at the front of the classroom. Emily grinned as she jumped out of her chair and confidently walked to hers. David—who always took more time to do something than it took for grass to grow—shuffled from his desk to his chair until Ms. Pria hollered at him to hurry up. All I could think about was why Ms. Pria had chosen Tanya and Emily, not Tanya and me. Did Ms. Pria think they were a pair now? Best friends? Inseparable?

  My stomach suddenly felt funny.

  Tanya was never the type to put her hand up in class or volunteer to read aloud. She was only really herself around me . . . and Emily. In class she was shy and quiet and hated drawing attention to herself. For crying out loud, she was the color gray! She never stood out.

  Seriously, if Ms. Pria ever called on her, Tanya would almost disappear into her chair and her face, like now, would flush bright red. (Some kids had made a point of calling out “cherry face” whenever this happened, which only made her face go redder.)

  I tried to catch her eye to offer her a reassuring smile but she wasn’t looking at me.

  Instead, she was seeking out Emily.

  Oh, come on! The supportive friend role? That was mine!

  Their eyes locked and Emily smiled warmly at her. My heart sank.

  “Okay, Tanya, you first,” Ms. Pria said excitedly.

  “Am I a man?” Tanya asked the class in a timid voice.

  “How would we know?” Chris cried out. “You’ve always looked like a girl to us!” Some of the kids burst out laughing.

  Tanya’s face went so red that I wondered if she would burst into flames. She looked at Emily in a panic.

  “I . . . I meant . . .” Tanya fumbled and her voice stalled like a manual car sliding down a hill.

  I was about to say something but Emily beat me to it.

  “Don’t be such an idiot, Chris!” Emily snapped.

  Generally, calling another kid an idiot, butt face, loser, or other insult aloud in class was guaranteed to get other kids laughing.

  Tanya beamed and a wave of jealousy hit me hard.

  The game continued, with Tanya, Emily, and David asking more and more questions until all three of them eventually guessed their identities. Almost everybody in class was joining in, calling out answers and making comments. Except for Majur who sat silently, his elbow on his desk, his head resting in his hand. He stared out the window the entire time. Nobody seemed to notice. Except for Chris and me.

  I was beginning to think Chris was obsessed with Majur. He seemed to always be watching him, studying him, trying to catch him at something. Listening whenever he spoke in class (which was rare) and eavesdropping whenever somebody spoke to him (which was also rare).

  When Tanya, Emily, and David had finished, Tanya sat back down next to me. Emily was sitting at the desk beside us, so Tanya was in the middle.

  “That was so scary,” Tanya whispered, reaching for her stapler and holding it up to her face.

  I took the stapler away from her. “No sniffing school supplies, remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, embarrassed. We’d broken that habit ages ago, but it had a way of coming back whenever Tanya had a cherry-red moment.

  “You were great,” I said, patting he
r on the hand.

  Tanya wasn’t convinced and gave me a skeptical look. “Yeah, right!” she scoffed. “Emily was the amazing one!” She turned to Emily. “How did you guess your celebrity so quickly?”

  I tried shutting out their voices as they chattered away. I felt I was in quicksand, losing control. This is how you lose a friend. Little things like this add up and pretty soon you’ve got nothing to talk about or share.

  I felt sick. I was about to raise my hand to ask if I could go to the nurse’s office—nothing like eavesdropping on the office staff and raiding the supply cabinet to help get your mind off things—but then Ms. Pria called out Charlie’s, Chris’s, and Bethany’s names and asked them to take their turns. She must have thought it’d be easier to stop Chris from heckling if he was in the spotlight.

  Even then he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. As he walked over to the front of the class, he passed Majur’s desk and flashed him a cocky grin.

  “What’s the point of your being in school if you don’t understand a thing we’re doing? You should start from scratch. Back to kindergarten.”

  “Chris Martin, that’s enough!” Ms. Pria bellowed.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” Majur asked, ignoring Chris completely.

  “Yes, you may, Majur,” Ms. Pria said.

  Majur stood up quickly and left.

  Chris clucked like a chicken and looked from left to right, trying to get the other kids to laugh. But all he got were faint smiles, even from Ty and A. J. who were usually his best audience.

  Chris realized nobody was laughing with him and stopped.

  It was sad and pathetic. He was sitting at the front of the classroom. The center of attention. Only he was the center of attention for all the wrong reasons.

  By the end of the lesson I wondered if I was the only person who’d realized that Majur hadn’t returned.

  I raised my hand. “Ms. Pria, can I go to the bathroom, please?”

  She said yes and I ran out and headed straight to the boys’ bathroom. I waited outside until Majur came out. Then I followed him. He sat down on a bench in the quad and started scratching and poking the ground with a long stick from the garden bed behind him.

  “Just ignore Chris,” I said as I walked up to him. “He’s only being mean because he’s jealous of you.”

  Majur looked surprised. “Why aren’t you in class?”

  I shrugged. “I got bored.” I sat down, but not too close to make him uncomfortable. “Hey, what was it like in Sudan? School?”

  “Nothing like this,” he said, motioning toward the school grounds. “In Sudan there were many more kids in one class and we sometimes had one book to share. It was completely different.”

  “It must be tough here, huh? Trying to catch up? Everybody understands, though. Nobody thinks the way Chris does. He’s just trying to get under your skin because you’re the new kid.”

  “I did not go to school in the camps,” he explained. “I have missed many years. I know less than half of what you all know.”

  I smiled gently. “There are people born here who haven’t missed a day of school who probably know less than you!”

  He laughed quietly. “You just saying that.”

  “Seriously. You’ve got an excuse! They don’t. So don’t feel bad one bit.” I looked at my watch. “We better get back or Ms. Pria will have a fit.”

  “Fit what?”

  “She’ll be mad. Really mad. You don’t want to see that!”

  “Sometimes I think if she did get mad and not give me so many chances maybe Chris would not be so mean.”

  I shook my head. “Look, for him it all comes down to one thing: soccer.”

  He stuck his chin out. “I’m not going to play bad just so he treats me better,” he said in a tight voice.

  I made a face. “Don’t you dare play badly! You do that and he’ll really give you a hard time. Right now he looks up to you because you play amazingly. That’s probably what annoys him so much.”

  Chapter 14

  Chris wasn’t losing any time. He cornered me in the hallway the next day, demanding to know whether I’d found him a friend.

  “Keep your voice down!” I said, worried Tanya, who was within earshot, might hear.

  “Have you kept this a secret?” he asked, lowering his tone.

  “Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “But for my sake, not yours. I don’t want anybody to know I’m doing this kind of thing anymore. It’s all supposed to be undercover.”

  “Good. That suits me fine. So how is it going? Found anybody?”

  “It’s only been a few days since you asked me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Anyway, I’m still thinking of my strategy.”

  “Strategy?” His eyes widened in disbelief. “It’s not rocket science.”

  “Would you keep it down?” I muttered in a panic. “Meet me outside at the water fountain.”

  I walked out, and he waited a moment and then followed.

  I leaned over the water fountain and he stood beside me, pretending he was about to also take a drink.

  “You need to give me some time,” I said. “You haven’t exactly been the nicest person in school. Most people don’t want to mess with you, so I need to figure out a way to change all that.”

  “I don’t have time!” he whined. “The guys are barely passing me the ball in soccer. They don’t even invite me to play with them anymore. I have to invite myself. And that’s only because I’m not going to let that major jerk—get it? A Majur jerk—come in and act like he owns the place.”

  “Okay, I get it,” I said. I took another sip of water and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’ll try my best. Can you at least help me out? Send me a note about your hobbies and stuff. What you like doing.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “Why?”

  I sighed impatiently. “It would help me find somebody to match you with if I knew more about you, wouldn’t it? I don’t see you getting along with the guys in the chess club.”

  “No freaks or nerds,” he warned.

  “Okay, don’t get hysterical.”

  “I mean it,” he snapped. “And just because you’re doing this for me doesn’t mean I won’t make your life miserable if you mess up.”

  “Yes, yes, I get it, you’re Mr. Scary.”

  He tried to look menacing but ended up letting out a laugh. “Look, I only want to be matched with normal people.”

  There were so many tempting ways to respond. But I bit my tongue.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was on an impossible mission.

  Chris sent me an instant message after school.

  The Terminator You wanted me to send u stuff about myself. This is it.

  1. I like sports especially soccer

  2. Gaming

  3. TV

  4. Surfing the net

  5. Riding my bike.

  That’s it. Don’t even think of hooking me up with a kid who hates sports and just wants to talk about Harry Potter or vampires. And no wimps either. And forget about any kid who likes sports but becomes a nerd in class. I’m not even gonna begin to think about sitting next to a guy who sucks up to the teacher.

  And if you show this to anybody you’re seriously dead meat.

  It wasn’t that Chris’s list didn’t give me a lot to go on. With any other kid, it would have been more than enough. But I realized when I took out our seventh-grade photos that I had to rule out half the class because I’d be inviting death if I suggested a girl. I started looking through the boys for possible best-friend matches with Chris, crossing them out as they were eliminated. Hakan? He was great with a ball, but he was brilliant at math and not afraid to show it. Somehow I couldn’t see him giving up algebra so he could mess around in the back row. Terence? He was obsessed with gaming, which would work, but he had a very gentle personality, which wouldn’t. There was no chance Chris would put up with Terence’s good manners. Kyle? Chris had pantsed him in swimming last term and didn
’t let any chance to tease him about it go by. Matthew? Also really into the Internet, but had a weight problem, which Chris reminded us about every chance he could get. Robert? Went pale at the sight of Chris. Charlie? A teacher’s favorite, what with his adult vocabulary and interest in world affairs. Tony? Artistic. Marcel? Sci-fi geek. Ali? Into pop music and hated sports.

  Eventually I’d gone through every row in the class photo. There were ten boys left who hadn’t been eliminated.

  It wasn’t lost on me, as I wrote down their names, that I was offering a predator his prey on a silver platter.

  And while I had a heart of twenty-four-carat gold, I wasn’t a saint.

  Chapter 15

  In all the chaos of Majur’s arrival, finding Chris a friend, and taking on my old FMM duties undercover, I’d completely forgotten about Tanya being left off Mandy’s birthday party guest list. I only remembered when I woke up on Saturday morning and Mom reminded me that we had to stop at the mall on the way to the party to get Mandy a present. How could I have forgotten to speak to Mandy about inviting Tanya? And I’d already told Mandy I was going!

  I acted quickly and dialed Mandy’s number.

  “Hi, Mandy, I’ve been meaning to talk to you but I kind of got distracted . . .”

  “What’s up?”

  “Um . . . you forgot to invite Tanya to your party. Do you want her phone number so you can call her? I’m pretty sure she’s free.”

  “Are you kidding me? My party is today. I can’t just invite somebody at the last minute.”

  “Oh.”

  Mandy snorted. “Anyway, what makes you think I forgot to invite her?”

  An uncomfortable pause. I was torn. I cleared my throat. “That’s mean, Mandy,” I said. And then I thought, what the heck, I need results. “Don’t forget I know stuff you wouldn’t want other people to know . . .” I instantly felt guilty.

  “You’re blackmailing me to invite her?”

  “Hey. This isn’t the movies,” I said coolly. “I’m just saying.”