“Mr. Armbruster, please send Jessica Darling to Principal Masters’s office immediately.”
Everyone “ooh-OOH-oohed” on cue because it’s mandatory to do so whenever anyone gets called to the principal’s office, especially when it’s somebody unexpected like me. Only Sara looked unsurprised. She counted off my offenses on her fingers.
“Number one: You cheated. Number two: Your square engaged in inappropriate body contact. And number three: Your parents neglected their duties as chaperones. It’s time for justice.”
I should have known Sara would get the administration involved. We hadn’t cheated. Mr. Armbruster would back me up on that for sure. But on the way to the office, I considered the other charges and was less certain of my innocence. Had we engaged in inappropriate body contact? Would my parents get in trouble for not stopping it?
I didn’t have any time to collect my thoughts. Mr. Masters was ready and waiting for me upon my arrival at his office.
“Come in, Jessica,” he said brusquely. “Let’s talk.”
He was smiling, but in a distracted way. I felt my mouth smile back at him with similar insincerity. He took a seat behind his desk, and I took one in front. A PJHS mug was filled to the brim with milky coffee. An untouched powdered doughnut waited on his mouse pad.
“A student is joining the seventh-grade Gifted and Talented classes. We’ve chosen you to be a goodwill ambassador for the school.”
Wow. He wasn’t wasting a single second.
“What do you think of that?”
I was thinking he was rushing me through this ambassadorship so he could get going on that coffee and doughnut. He didn’t wait for an answer.
“Great! You’ll help our new addition adjust to life here at Pineville Junior High.”
He was already standing up to show me out.
“But new kids transfer into our school all the time,” I said, still sitting. “None of them have been assigned goodwill ambassadors.”
He slowly sat back down again. His eyes flickered toward the doughnut, then regained focus.
“This student is special. Actually, extraordinary is a better word for it. She’s brilliant. A genius. Any school would be lucky to have her, and to think her family chose Pineville Junior High over other educational opportunities is quite an honor.”
Extraordinary? Brilliant? Genius?
I gulped.
Mr. Masters consulted a folder with my name on it. You know how we’re always warned that bad behavior will be put on our “permanent record”? Until then, I’d thought that was just a made-up threat to keep us in line. But he actually had my “permanent record” in his hands!
“You have top grades, no disciplinary problems…”
He flipped through the pages. There were a lot of pages. It seemed like too many pages for a twelve-year-old seventh grader with top grades and no disciplinary problems. What filled so many pages?
“You show promise as an athlete,” Mr. Masters continued. “And you demonstrated school spirit as the cochair of the Down-Home Harvest Dance and during your brief but memorable turn as the Pineville Junior High mascot.”
Wait. What? Whoa.
How had Mighty the Seagull gotten on my permanent record? It was supposed to be a secret! WORST-KEPT SECRET OF ALL TIME.
I would’ve laughed out loud if I weren’t so freaked out by whatever else there could be about me in that folder. Who knew what I’d learn about myself if I could only get a look? But Mr. Masters shut it before I could even think of sneaking a peek.
“In short,” he said as he ushered me out of his office, “you’re the best Pineville Junior High has to offer.”
I know he meant it as a compliment, but for some reason it didn’t feel like one. I turned around to thanks-but-no-thanks him for the opportunity, but my principal’s mustache was already dusted with powdered sugar. Our conversation was over.
I left our meeting with mixed emotions. On the upside: I was the best our school had to offer. On the downside: Our school’s best was hardly good enough for an extraordinary, brilliant genius.
These conflicted feelings churned inside my belly, so I took a detour to the girls’ bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I’d heard the expression green with envy, of course. But I’d never known it could be taken literally until I looked up from the sink and saw myself in the bathroom mirror. I was already sick with jealousy about a person I’d never met.
I’m the Smart One. Everyone says so.
Who will I be if the new girl is smarter than me?
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Megan McCafferty
Image of girl © 2015 by Howard Huang / Shutterstock / paffy
Photo of gym © Getty Images / Nivek Neslo
Cover design by Maggie Edkins
Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
[email protected] Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Poppy
Hachette Book Group
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: June 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-33325-2
E3
Megan Mccafferty, Jessica Darling's It List 3
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