Always, Abigail Page 3

  One Thing I Realized for the First Time during the First Day of Silent Reading Time

  All summer, AlliCam and I had been looking at magazines like Makeover Mania, Fashion Hits, and Team Spirit, taking personality and fashion quizzes, reading up on the latest accessories, and finding out the best ways to get middle school boys to notice us. I didn’t realize how much I had missed reading a really good book.

  One Thing I Added to My “What to Bring Home from School Today” List

  (Right after “My Math Book” and Right before “My Science Book”)

  Newfangled Fairy Tales: Modern Day Fractured Fairy Tales for Teens. (Even though Old Hawk didn’t tell us we had to bring it home.)

  Friendly Letter Reply #1 from Gabby to Me That I Found in My Streamer, Sequined, and Glitter-Covered Awesomely Cute Shoebox-Mailbox

  Dear Abby,

  Pom-poms? Yeah, I could see that. You’re the pom-pom type.

  Obviously, you are my letter partner, and obviously, we are both in sixth grade. You’re right. I do have an older brother. His name is Pete, but I call him Paul because he’s a tree climber. Get it? Paul Bunyan, the lumberjack from the tall tale. Pizza is my favorite food too, but I only like chocolate cake if it has nuts in it. As for Ella Enchanted, it was okay, but you’ve got to be kidding about Hatchet. My dad and I loved that book. As for mushrooms, I’m no dummy. I wouldn’t eat them if my life depended on it. They could be poisonous. And pumpkin pie? I can take it or leave it.

  Looking forward to your next letter.

  Your friendly letter friend,

  Gabby

  The Not-So-Friendly Letter I Wished I Could Write to Gabby

  Dear Gabby,

  For your information, my name is “Abigail,” not “Abby”!

  Second of all, I’m not surprised you like the book Hatchet. You seem like the Hatchet “type.” And why would your dad even read it? Sounds a little weird to me.

  But most importantly, the reason you can see me as a pom-pom girl is because I was born to be one.

  And by the way, calling your brother “Paul” when his name is “Pete” sounds pretty stupid to me, even if he is a tree climber, whatever that is.

  Your “Assigned” Letter Partner,

  Abigail

  The Friendly Letter I Actually Put in Gabby’s Shoebox-Mailbox, Which She Had Decorated to Look Like a Carton of Lemonade, Which Made No Sense

  (But for Gabby, Making No Sense Made Perfect Sense, So I Guess for Her It Actually Made Sense)

  Dear Gabby,

  It’s bad enough we have to write these letters, now Old Hawk has us making mailboxes out of shoeboxes? I mean, didn’t we all make enough Valentine mailboxes when we were in grade school? Doesn’t Old Hawk realize we’re almost teenagers?

  Speaking of teenagers, how old is your brother? I think he might be in the same grade as my brother, Ben. Ben’s a senior and is the captain of the baseball team. He’s really good. When I was little, he tried to teach me to play. All I remember about it is he kept saying, “You throw like a girl!” What a stupid thing to say. I AM a girl!

  You said your brother’s a tree climber. Is that a new extreme sport? I’ve never heard of it.

  Sincerely,

  Abigail (NOT Abby!)

  P.S. Obviously, I ignored the sarcastic way you used “obviously.” But I CANNOT ignore you calling me Abby. My name is ABIGAIL!

  One Hilarious Thing That Happened at Alli’s House after School

  We got into World War III with Alli’s brother, Brian.

  We call Brian “The Brain,” because all he ever does is study. And as usual, he was upstairs studying while we were trying to practice poms.

  “Turn down that music, you little ‘pom freaks’!” he yelled from his bedroom.

  Alli’s mom wasn’t home, so he knew he couldn’t get in trouble for yelling at us. Alli’s mom would’ve stuck up for us because she had been a pom-pom girl in high school. She knew how important practicing was.

  “Leave us alone!” Alli yelled.

  That’s when the war started.

  First, The Brain threw a pair of balled-up sweat socks down the stairs at us. We cracked up because he missed us by a mile. (The Brain was really smart but not athletic at all.)

  Then Alli threw a bunch of little pillows from the couch. Every pillow she threw hit The Brain. One nailed him right on the forehead.

  He threw a few more pairs of socks, which barely made it to the family room, and then he threw a pillow from his bed. The pillow was way too big to throw, so it didn’t even make it down the stairs.

  Cami and I fell on the floor laughing while Alli grabbed a couple more things to throw. She whipped one of their dog’s tennis balls and hit The Brain right in the thigh.

  “Ouch!” he yelled and slammed his door.

  That’s when Alli’s dad walked in. He was home early. Cami and I got up from the floor, and Alli dropped the rest of her ammunition, mostly dog toys.

  “Oh, hi, Dad!” Alli said, a little out of breath. “We were just going out to the garage to practice. We don’t want our music to disturb Brian.”

  Cami and I followed Alli out into the garage, where the three of us fell on top of each other laughing.

  That’s when Alli got her brainstorm. A perfect way to get back at The Brain for being such a pain.

  In the garage, there was a recycling bin overflowing with newspaper. Instead of practicing poms, we spent the next hour crinkling up newspaper and stuffing it into The Brain’s Volkswagen. When we were finished, you couldn’t even see inside the car anymore.

  Then Alli yelled into the house, “Dad, could you tell Brian it’s time for him to drive Cami and Abigail home!”

  And the only thing funnier than the look on The Brain’s face when he saw his car was the fact that he actually had a red mark on his leg where the tennis ball had hit him.

  A Note I Found in My Locker after Fourth Period

  Abigail,

  At lunch we heard that last year’s poms are going to Chitchat after school. It’s our chance to get in good with the pom crowd. We HAVE to go!

  We’ll get off at Cami’s stop and walk from there.

  Write back!

  SPF,

  AlliCam

  P.S. Jackie and McKenzie are meeting us there.

  Three Things I Thought About during Social Studies

  1.How much trouble I’d get into for going to Chitchat without permission. (My mom thought I was going to Cami’s house to practice after school. The rule was no changing after-school plans during the school day because my mom didn’t want me calling her at work all the time asking if I could go here or there.)

  2.How supernervous I was! This was really it! Hanging out with real pom-pom girls.

  3.Jackie and McKenzie? I worried about homeroom inside jokes. Was I going to spend the whole afternoon feeling left out?

  Five Questions I Thought of That Gave Me a Stomachache by the End of Social Studies

  1.Would Jackie and McKenzie like me?

  2.Would the other pom girls like me?

  3.Would I be able to think of anything to say?

  4.Would there be any boys there?

  5.Were Alli and Cami as nervous as I was?

  The Note I Put in AlliCam’s Locker after Fifth Period

  Chitchat with the poms, really? I’m in! See you on the bus!

  SPF,

  Abigail

  Something We Did on the Bus on the Way to Chitchat

  AlliCam and I took turns brushing each other’s hair. We wanted to make sure we looked perfect when we got there. The problem was, AlliCam’s hair already looked good before we even started, and mine didn’t look much better when we were finished.

  Thankfully, Alli had a great idea. She put one little braid on each side of my hair and used a hair clip to pull them toget
her in the back. I checked it out in the mirror that Cami kept in her backpack, and it looked sort of like a style you’d see in a magazine.

  By the time we got there, AlliCam looked like they belonged on the pom squad, and I hoped I did too.

  Five Things That Happened at Chitchat

  1.As soon as we saw Jackie and McKenzie in the parking lot, they both yelled, “Hello, daaaaarlings!” And AlliCam both yelled the same thing to them, exactly the same way. It must’ve been a homeroom thing. I cringed. Feeling left out with AlliCam was bad enough, but with AlliCam and J&M it was going to be unbearable.

  2.Inside, we ordered at the counter, and while we waited for our food, we saw the seventh- and eighth-grade poms sitting in the corner booth. One of the poms recognized Jackie and Alli from the pom practice session last summer, so they called us over. I wondered why they didn’t recognize me. Maybe Cami and McKenzie were wondering the same thing.

  3.The other girls invited us to sit down with them, but there was only room for four more in their booth. AlliCam and J&M got those four spots, so guess who had to pull up a chair? This wouldn’t have been so bad except the booth was higher than the tables, so my chair was too low. I felt like I was a little kid sitting at the adults’ table.

  4.I tried to make the best of it, but it’s hard to join in the conversation when your chin is almost resting on the table. Besides that, I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say. AlliCam and J&M were all, “I love that eye shadow,” and “How do you get your hair so shiny?” Blah, blah, blah. The older girls were loving all the attention and compliments.

  5.The worst and the best parts happened when the boys showed up. They came over and crowded around our booth. All I could smell was cologne. It made me woozy, so I couldn’t concentrate on the conversation. It made it impossible to think of anything to say, let alone something interesting, funny, or smart.

  Since I was sitting on the end of the booth, the boys crowded around me.

  This should’ve been a good thing; but somehow, maybe because of that stupid low chair, not one guy even noticed I was there. I felt like a bug that could’ve easily been swatted away, or worse yet, squashed to smithereens.

  One Thing to Do before Hanging Out with the Poms Again

  Make a list of interesting things to say to the seventh- and eighth-grade poms.

  Three Reasons I’m Beginning to Be Furious with AlliCam

  1.I’m so sick of their inside jokes I’m ready to puke. This morning on the bus, they were doing some sort of sign language thing—hand signals and shrugging their shoulders at each other. Then doubling over in fits of laughter. I didn’t know what they were doing.

  “C’mon, you guys, cut it out!” I said.

  But they wouldn’t stop.

  “Oh, Abigail, just chill out! We’re only goofing around,” Alli said as both of them broke down in another fit of laughter. I was hoping they’d laugh so hard they’d pee their pants.

  When they headed off to homeroom, I felt like giving them a hand signal that I’d get grounded for if anyone saw it.

  2.AlliCam kept talking about how great it was to practice with Jackie and McKenzie at lunchtime. They know I don’t have anyone to practice with at lunch. The only girls in my homeroom who are trying out are Jeannie and Marcy. And for obvious reasons, they’re not exactly pom-pom girl material. You’d think AlliCam would be a little more loyal. I mean, after all, we’re supposed to be best friends and sisters.

  3.But the biggest reason I’m furious with AlliCam is because of what happened at my house. They slept over Friday night, and we’d stayed up really late doing makeovers, making a list of all the cute boys in middle school, watching TV, baking cookies, and painting each other’s toenails.

  About four a.m., we finally crawled into our sleeping bags. We whispered to each other for a few minutes in the dark, and eventually AlliCam started talking about stuff that happened in homeroom, so I just lay quietly listening. I was quiet for so long, I guess they thought I was asleep because pretty soon they started talking about me.

  “Do you wish we’d gone to McKenzie’s house tonight instead of coming here?” Alli asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cami answered. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Alli said. “I’m dying to see her house. Jackie says it’s like a mansion…but this was fun too.”

  “Jackie told me they were going to practice the pom routine with McKenzie’s older sister. She’s on varsity poms at Westdale High.”

  “I know. That would’ve been great,” Alli said.

  “I just can’t believe how supercool and fun McKenzie and Jackie are,” Cami said, yawning. “We’re so lucky the four of us ended up in the same homeroom. Sixth grade is turning out to be awesome.”

  “Totally,” agreed Alli. “When the four of us make poms, it’s going to be great.”

  “You mean the five of us.” Cami sighed. “Don’t forget about Abigail.”

  “Oh, yeah, Abigail too,” Alli mumbled, as they both rolled over and said, “G’night,” to each other.

  Don’t forget Abigail?! How could they forget me? We were SPF. I squeezed my eyes shut really tight hoping to keep the tears from coming out.

  One Thing That Happened as I Lay in the Dark Listening to AlliCam Sleep

  Tears slid sideways onto my pillow until I had to turn it over because it was so wet.

  One Thing My Dad Did Saturday Morning after AlliCam Left

  Took me out for doughnuts, just him and me, even though I wouldn’t tell him what was wrong.

  Something That Happened Saturday Afternoon That Almost Made Me Forget What I’d Heard AlliCam Say

  Alli called to tell me that her dad had gotten three movie passes from one of his golfing buddies. The passes were about to expire, and the guy couldn’t use them. Alli’s dad said he’d drive us if we wanted to go see something. Cami’s mom had already said yes, and I knew my mom would say yes too.

  The only thing I didn’t know was whether Alli would’ve called me if her dad had gotten four movie passes instead of three.

  One Weird Thing That Happened at the Movies

  When I went out to the lobby to use the bathroom before the movie started, I saw Jackson Dawber standing in the popcorn line with his older brother Max and one of Max’s friends.

  Everyone knew Max had just gotten back from a summer at some boot camp for bad kids. Last year he was only a freshman, but already he’d threatened the school secretary when she gave him a detention for his tenth tardy, gotten suspended for starting a food fight in the cafeteria, and gotten kicked off the baseball team for swearing at his coach during a game. The principal told his parents if he didn’t go to the boot camp, he couldn’t come back to high school. But from what I saw, camping out with the bad kids hadn’t done much good. Max and his friend were pelting Jackson with pennies and kind of shoving him around. They thought they were being funny, but I could tell by the look on Jackson’s face that he wasn’t having any fun. I ducked into the bathroom before Jackson saw me.

  I would’ve forgotten the whole thing except on Monday morning, when I got on the bus, Jackson was throwing goldfish crackers at a little second-grader sitting in the seat across from him. What a jerk! Why would he pick on someone when he knew what it felt like to be teased like that? Jackson was an even bigger jerk than I thought.

  Friendly Letter Reply #2

  Dear Abby (oh, sorry, I mean Abigail),

  We should give Old Hawk a break. So what if she makes us decorate mailboxes? It beats diagramming sentences. I think it would be fun to secretly make a mailbox for her. Then write letters to her anonymously and stick them inside. What do you think?

  Tree climbing is NOT an extreme sport. It’s a job. My brother would be a senior this year, but he dropped out of school to work. He climbs trees and cuts them down for people. It’s a dangerous job, but he’s really good at it. He says he
loves climbing around in the tree branches like a raccoon.

  As for baseball, I think I’ve seen your brother play. He’s the pitcher, right? That’s why he says you throw like a girl. He probably thinks anyone who doesn’t throw the ball a hundred miles an hour throws like a girl. I bet if he tried to climb a tree, my brother would tell him he climbs like a girl.

  Talk to you later,

  Gabby

  Three Reasons I’m Really Getting Nervous about Pom Tryouts

  1.On my way to science class today I saw Cami, Alli, Jackie, and McKenzie practicing the pom-pom routine. They might as well start calling themselves the Laker Girls. All four of them were shaking their hips faster than a hula girl at a luau.

  2.Jeannie and Marcy asked me to practice with them at lunch. I couldn’t really say no since I sit with them every day, so I said yes. That was a big mistake. I spent the entire lunch period trying to show them what beat of the music the routine starts on. They think I’m really good. The problem is Old Hawk shaking the feather duster she uses to clean her bookshelves would be better than Jeannie and Marcy. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration.) But these girls have no idea what we’re up against. They should be scared, very scared. Instead, they’re all gah-gah over the fact that I can actually remember the whole routine.

  3.THE POM-POM PRINCESS Alicia NEVER practices. She doesn’t have to. Because of her sister, she’s a legend in her own time. All she has to do is show up to tryouts. And she knows it. Her overwhelming confidence is causing me to hyperventilate with hopelessness.