How to Be Popular Read online

  Can I just point out that it was my idea to put the dolls behind glass, after I figured out we were losing about a doll a week to doll collectors, who are notoriously light-fingered when it comes to Madame Alexander, and who carry very roomy tote bags—generally with cats on them—into shops like ours for the sole purpose of adding to their collections without the pesky burden of actually having to pay for the dolls?

  Jason says the dolls terrify him. He says that sometimes he has nightmares in which they are coming after him with their tiny plastic fingers and bright blue unblinking eyes.

  Jason stopped swinging his feet.

  “My goodness. I didn’t realize it had gotten so late.” My mom came out of the back office, her stomach, as usual, leading the way. I truly believe my parents are going for the state record in child producing. Mom’s about to pop out their sixth child—my soon-to-be new baby brother or sister—in sixteen years. When this latest kid is born, ours will be the largest family in town, not counting the Grubbs, who have eight children, but whose mobile home isn’t technically situated in Bloomville, as it straddles the Greene–Bloomville county line.

  Although actually I think some of the younger Grubbs got taken away after child services found out their dad was mixing up batches of “lemonade” for them with bottles of lemon Joy.

  “Hi, Mrs. Landry,” Jason and Becca said.

  “Oh, hello, Jason, Becca.” My mom smiled glowingly at them. She’s been doing that a lot lately. Glowing, I mean. Except when Grandpa’s around, of course. Then she glowers. “And what are you kids planning on doing with your last free Saturday night before school starts? Is someone having a party?”

  That’s the kind of fantasy world my mom lives in. The kind where my friends and I get invited to fun back-to-school parties. It’s like she’s never heard of the Big Red Super Big Gulp incident. I mean, she was THERE when it happened. It’s her fault I had the Super Big Gulp in the first place, on account of her feeling so sorry for me after having taken me to get my braces tightened, she surprised me with a Super Big Gulp to drink in the car on the way back to Bloomville Junior High. What kind of parent lets a sixth grader bring a Super Big Gulp to school?

  Which is just more evidence to my theory that my parents have no idea what they’re doing. I know a lot of people feel this way about their parents, but in my case, it’s really true. I realized it was true the time Mom took us on a trip to a publishing trade show in New York City, and my parents spent the entire weekend alternately lost or just stepping out in front of the cars, expecting them to stop, because people stop for you when you step out in front of them in Bloomville.

  In New York City, not so much.

  It would have been okay if it had just been my parents and me. But we had my then-five-year-old brother Pete with us, and my little sister Catie, who was in a stroller, and my youngest brother, Robbie, who was just a baby and still in a Snugli (Sara wasn’t born yet). It wasn’t just me and my parents. There were little children involved!

  After about the fifth time they tried to just mosey on out in front of a moving crosstown bus, I realized my parents are insane and not to be trusted under any circumstances.

  And I was only seven.

  This realization was cemented as I entered puberty and my parents began to say things to me like, “Look, we’ve never been the parent of a teenage girl before. We don’t know if we’re doing the right thing. But we’re doing the best we can.” This is not something you want to hear from your parents under any circumstances. You want to feel like your parents are in control, that they know what they’re doing.

  Yeah. With my parents? Not so much.

  The worst was the summer between sixth and seventh grades, when they made me go to Girl Scout Camp. All I wanted to do was stay home and work in the store. I am not what you’d call a big fan of nature, being basically a human chigger-and-mosquito magnet.

  Then, to make matters worse, I found out Lauren Moffat was going to be one of my cabin mates. When I very calmly and maturely told the head counselor that this wouldn’t work because of Lauren’s extreme hatred of me, thanks to the Super Big Gulp incident, the camp counselor lady said, all heartily, “Oh, we’ll see about that,” and my mom actually APOLOGIZED for me, saying I have a hard time making friends.

  “We’ll change that,” the counselor lady said, all confidently. And made me stay in Lauren’s cabin.

  Until two days later when I hadn’t eaten a thing—too nauseated—or gone to the bathroom—since every time I tried to go, Lauren or another one of her “bunk” mates appeared outside the outhouse-style toilet and hissed, “Hey…don’t pull a Steph in there.”

  That was when the counselor moved me to a cabin with other rejects such as myself, and I ended up having a passably good time.

  Obviously, given the above—I’m not even including the fact that my mom knows next to nothing about bookkeeping or accounting and yet owns her own business, or that my father thinks there is a huge market out there somewhere for his unpublished book series about an Indiana high school basketball coach who solves crimes—my parents are not to be trusted.

  Nor are they to be told anything personal involving my life, except on a need-to-know basis.

  “No, no parties, Mrs. Landry,” was how Jason replied to my mom’s question about our evening plans. I’ve been coaching him as to how to handle my parents, because Jason’s grandma is marrying my mom’s dad, which makes him my mom’s stepcousin. I think. “We’re just going to drive up and down Main Street.”

  He said it like it was nothing—I think we’re just going to drive up and down Main Street. But it was far from nothing. Because Jason is the first one of us to have gotten his own car—he’d been saving up all summer to buy his grandmother’s housekeeper’s 1974 BMW 2002tii—and this is the first Saturday night he’s had possession of it.

  It will also be the first Saturday night in our combined histories that Jason, Becca, and I do not spend lying in the grass stargazing on The Hill, or sitting on The Wall outside the Penguin, which is where everyone in our town—who does not have access to a car—sits on Saturday night, watching the rich kids (the ones who got cars for their sixteenth birthdays, as opposed to iBooks, like the rest of us) cruise up and down Main Street, the cleverly named main drag through downtown Bloomville.

  Main Street starts at Bloomville Creek Park—where Grandpa’s observatory is almost finished being constructed—and goes in this straight line past all the chain stores, which managed to drive the locally owned clothing shops out of business (the same way Mom thinks the Super Sav-Mart and its massively discounted book department is going to shut us down), up to the courthouse. The courthouse—a large limestone building with a white dome that has a spire sticking through the middle of it with a weather vane shaped like a fish on the tip, although no one knows why they chose a fish, since we’re a land-locked county—is where everyone turns around and heads back down to Bloomville Creek Park for another lap.

  “Oh.” Mom looked disappointed. Well, and why shouldn’t she? What parent wants to hear that her child is going to spend her last Saturday night of summer vacation driving up and down the main drag? She doesn’t know how much better this is than sitting there watching other people do it.

  Although Mom’s idea of fun is putting the kids to bed and watching Law and Order with a big bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch. So her judgment must obviously be called into question.

  “How much longer you gonna be, huh, Crazytop?” Jason asked. I was reaching for the cash drawer, to start counting out the day’s receipts. I knew that if they didn’t tally to be equal to or greater than this day’s receipts from last year, my mom was going to have a coronary.

  “I wish someone would give me a criminal mastermind nickname,” Becca hinted—not very subtly—with a sigh.

  “Sorry, Bex,” Jason said. “You don’t have the recognizable facial characteristic—such as a huge chin, or a large amount of real estate between the eyes—that wou
ld merit the bestowing of a criminal mastermind nickname, such as Lockjaw or Walleye. Whereas Crazytop here…well, just look at her.”

  Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy singles.

  “At least I can blow-dry my hair straight,” I pointed out. “Which is more than I can say for your nose, Hawkface.”

  “Stephanie!” my mom cried, appalled that I would make fun of Jason’s long, slightly too-large nose to his face.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Landry,” Jason said with a mock heavy-hearted sigh. “I know I’m hideous. Avert your gazes, all of you.”

  I rolled my eyes, because Jason is so very far from hideous—as I know, only too well—and lifted the cash drawer out of the register, then walked to the back of the store to lock it up in the safe in my mom’s office overnight. I didn’t mention to her that we’re a hundred dollars shy of last year’s day’s total, and fortunately, she was too freaked out by my being so mean to Jason to ask. Like she hasn’t heard him call me Crazytop approximately nine million times. She thinks it’s “cute.”

  Mom’s never met Mark Finley, so obviously she doesn’t really know what cute is.

  On the way to the back, I noticed that Mr. Huff, one of our regulars, was engrossed in the latest Chilton’s for Mustangs. His three children, of whom he has custody on weekends, were busy wrecking the Brio train set we put out for kids to play with while their parents shop.

  “Hey, guys,” I said to the little Huffs, who were ramming the train’s caboose up an Arwen action figure’s dress. “We have to close now. Sorry.”

  The kids groaned. Their dad clearly doesn’t have as many cool toys at his house to play with as we did at the store.

  Mr. Huff looked up, surprised. “Is it really closing time?” he asked, and looked at his watch. “Oh, wow, look at that.”

  “Way to pull a Steph Landry, Dad,” eight-year-old Kevin Huff said with a laugh.

  I just stood there, staring at the kid as he grinned toothily back at me. It was clear he had no idea what he’d just said. Or who he’d said it in front of.

  The thing is, though, it’s okay. Because I’ve got The Book now.

  And The Book is going to save me.

  * * *

  If you’re not popular, it’s important to examine the possible reasons why.

  There could be many reasons, of course.

  Do you suffer from body odor?

  Do you have acne?

  Are you particularly over- (or under-) weight?

  Are you the class clown (practice inappropriate humor)?

  Probably not, since the above are all easily remedied through cosmetic products, diet and exercise, and self-control.

  If you answered no to the above questions, then your case of unpopularity is more serious.

  Your unpopularity might be something you brought upon yourself.

  Suppose you once did something horrible, something that made you unpopular. What can you do about it? Can you ever live it down?

  * * *

  Three

  STILL T-MINUS TWO DAYS AND COUNTING

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 10:20 P.M.

  I don’t know why I haven’t told Jason and Becca. About The Book, I mean. I’m not embarrassed about it—well, not much, anyway.

  And it’s not like I stole it, or anything. I fully asked Jason’s grandmother if I could have it the day I found it in that old box in the Hollenbachs’ attic, which we were cleaning out so Jason could turn it into his Ryan Atwood pool house/Greg Brady bachelor pad (which, considering he is an only child, makes no sense. Except for the fact that it was easier to turn the attic into his new bedroom than strip the race car wallpaper off the walls of his old room).

  And okay, I didn’t pull out The Book itself and ask Kitty—Mrs. Hollenbach, Jason’s grandmother, who asked us to call her by her first name, so as not to confuse her with the other Mrs. Hollenbach, her daughter-in-law Judy, Jason’s mother—if I could specifically have IT. I just asked if I could have the BOX, which contained The Book as well as some old clothes and a couple of very steamy romance novels from the eighties—which, I must say, have caused me to look at Kitty in a new light, considering the heroine in one of them turned out to like having sex “Turkish-style,” which in the book did NOT mean “while wearing a fez.”

  But Kitty just glanced into the box and went, “Oh, of course, dear. Though I can’t imagine what you’d want with those old things.”

  If only she knew.

  Anyway, so I haven’t told them. I don’t think I’m going to, either. Because, truth?

  They’ll just laugh.

  And I don’t think I could handle that. Thanks to Lauren Moffat, I’ve had five years of people laughing at—not with—me. I don’t think I can take any more.

  Anyway, it turns out driving up and down Main Street? It’s not as fun as sitting around, watching people drive up and down Main Street.

  And making fun of them behind their backs while they do so.

  I can’t believe that all summer, I’ve been longing to be inside a car instead of outside of one, watching the action on Main Street. When it turns out it’s so much better back on The Wall. I mean, from The Wall you can see Darlene Staggs open the passenger door of that night’s boyfriend’s pickup, and barf up all the Mike’s Hard Lemonade she ingested while sunning herself over at the lake that afternoon.

  From The Wall you can hear Bebe Johnson’s little chipmunk voice as she sings along with Ashlee Simpson on the radio.

  From The Wall you can see Mark Finley adjust his rearview mirror so that he can see his own reflection and gently fluff up his bangs.

  You can’t do any of that stuff from the backseat of Jason’s new car.

  And I had to be in the backseat, because Becca gets carsick when she sits in the back. So she was in the front seat, next to Jason. Which meant I couldn’t actually see anything much, except their heads. So when Jason went, “Whoa, did you see that? Alyssa Krueger just took a spill in the middle of the street trying to race in platform espadrilles from Shane Mullen’s SUV to Craig Wright’s Jeep,” I missed the whole thing.

  “Did she rip her pants?” I asked eagerly.

  But neither Jason nor Becca were able to confirm pant-rippage had occurred.

  If we’d been sitting on The Wall, I’d have seen the whole thing.

  Plus, while I understand that Jason is excited about his new car and all, I think he’s kind of gone overboard with the whole thing. Now when he sees another BMW, he practices this thing he calls BMW Courtesy, which means he lets other BMWs cut in front of him—especially if they are a Series 7, the king BMW of them all, or the convertible 645Ci. Which I find personally egregious, because that’s what Lauren Moffat drives, on account of her father owning the local BMW dealership.

  “Oh no, you did not just do that,” I said when I saw Jason let a blonde in a red convertible cut in front of us up by the Hoosier Sweet Shoppe on the Square. “Tell me you did not just let Lauren Moffat in.”

  “BMW Courtesy, Crazytop,” Jason said. “What can I say? She drives a superior model. I have to let her in. It’s a moral obligation.”

  Sometimes I think Jason must be the biggest freak in Greene County. Bigger than me, even. Or Becca. And that’s saying something, considering Becca spent most of her life on a farm with virtually no contact with children her own age, except at school where no one but me would speak to her on account of the fact that she wore overalls and fell asleep every day in fifth grade social studies. People would always try to wake her up, but I was like, “Leave her alone! She obviously needs a little nap.”

  I always thought Becca must have a very unsatisfactory home life, until I found out it was just because she had to get up at four every morning in order to catch the bus to school, since she lived so far out in the country.

  It took careful negotiation to get her to ditch the OshKosh B’Goshes. The sleeping-through-class thing didn’t get solved until last year, when the government bought out her parents’ farm to put I-69 through it,
and the Taylors bought the Snyders’ old house down the street from ours with the money.

  Now that Becca can sleep in until seven, she’s wide awake in class. Even Health, which you don’t necessarily have to stay awake for.

  It figures these two people would be my best friends. I mean, not that I don’t feel lucky to have them in my life (well, okay, maybe not Jason, the way he’s been acting lately). Because we’ve had some major laughs together. And those nights we’ve spent, stretched out on our backs on The Hill, watching the sky above turn pink, then purple, then finally the darkest blue as the stars came out one by one, while we talked about what we’d do if a giant meteor—like those in the Leonid shower—came hurtling at us at a million miles an hour (Becca: Ask the Lord to forgive her sins. Jason: Kiss his ass good-bye. Me: Roll the heck out of the way).

  But still. Becca and Jason are not what you’d call normal.

  Take what we were listening to as we drove around in Jason’s car: a compilation Jason made of what he considered the greatest music of the 1970s. Since his car was from that era, he thought it only fitting that we should listen to the songs that were hits in that decade. Tonight we were listening to his favorite year…1977—the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” and the Star Wars: A New Hope soundtrack, complete with Cantina scene.

  Seriously. There’s nothing like cruising up and down Main Street to the sound of an alien space band.

  It was while we were stopped at the light in front of the art supply store that I saw Mark Finley pull up to the corner of Main Street and Elm in his purple-and-white four-by-four and honk.

  And my heart, as it always does whenever I see Mark Finley, did a somersault in my chest.

  Lauren, who was in her convertible in front of us, got all excited and honked and waved back. Not at us. At Mark.

  It was hard to see what Mark did next, because Jason was making obscene gestures at him…from below the dashboard, so Mark would be sure not to see him, since you don’t really go around making obscene gestures at the school quarterback if you want to live to see the first day of eleventh grade.