Diary of an Almost Cool Girl - Book 1 Read online

  Mom could see that I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable with all this attention. She breaks in, “Maddi, Star is in your room, you should go and say hi.”

  My mind races! Star is in my room. Who said she could go in there? My room is full of my private stuff. I race down to save my privacy.

  TOO LATE!!!!!

  Star is laying on my bed reading my diary! She looks over the top of the book as I burst into my room. Before she even says, “Hi Maddi,” I rip my diary from her hands. She tries to snatch it back, “Come on Maddi, it was just getting interesting!”

  Star is an imposing sight, tall for her age with her dyed jet black hair long on one side and almost shaved on the other side. She has multiple earrings and a fake tattoo on her arm (at least I think it is fake) and a stud in both of her eyebrows. I clutch my diary to my chest and screech, “How dare you read my diary, it’s private!”

  “Not anymore,” she responds with a smirk. “Don’t worry Maddi, I’m not interested in your dull little school dramas, my life is much more interesting,” snarled Star.

  At that moment Mom arrived, “Come on girls, we are going for lunch.” Good timing Mom, Star and I were about to have our own version of wrestle mania.

  On the trip to lunch, Mom and Demi chatted constantly, while Star and I sat in the back seat – in total silence!

  In the restaurant, things continued much the same, until in a moment of unexpected meanness, Star tips her glass of juice into my lap. I squeal as the cold liquid hits my thighs. Finally Mom and Demi stop talking. They both grab some napkins and start to try and soak up the mess. The waiter comes over too and helps clean up the juice. He even replaces Star’s drink.

  Star keeps saying that she is sorry. I know she doesn’t mean it. Mom says, “Don’t worry dear, accidents happen.” Star gives me her best fake smile and winks at me. I feel like tipping my juice over Star’s head but show some restraint and decide to wait for a better chance for revenge.

  The meals arrive, Star and I both have nachos with little side dishes of sour cream and chilli sauce. The chilli sauce is in a bottle that looks like a soda bottle. Star announces that she needs to go to the bathroom and I see my chance. As the waiter goes past I ask if I can I swap my chilli sauce for extra hot chilli sauce. I think he feels sorry for me and rushes off to change the sauce bottles. I quickly swap it with the bottle next to Star’s plate.

  Star returns and grabs the extra hot sauce bottle and dumps the whole lot over her nachos. She must be hungry, as she quickly scoffs two large mouthfuls of food into her mouth. Suddenly her eyes widen and she starts to cough. I guess that the extra hot chilli sauce is starting to take effect. While she is distracted I hand her the second bottle of chilli sauce, she thinks it is her soft drink and takes a large gulp. Her eyes bulge like some type of wild cartoon character and she explodes. A mouthful of sauce and nachos flies across the table. A bit hits Mom, but most of it splashes onto Demi. Needless to say, after that, lunch is over.

  The ride home is pretty quiet, except for me munching my nachos and Star’s occasional coughing and whimpering that her mouth is on fire. The waiter put my nachos in a take-away container and with a wink said, “Careful with that sauce.”

  Demi and Star head off in their car as soon as we got home. Mom gave me a stern look and asked if I had anything to do with what happened at lunch. I just smiled and replied, “I think those nachos had a dash of karma.” Mom screwed up her face, trying to work out what I had meant. Then she shrugged her shoulders, gave me a kiss and went downstairs.

  Monday

  D is for disaster!

  D is also for devastated!

  Today after school the worst thing ever happened. Mom called me into the kitchen, Dad was already sitting at the breakfast table. Dad’s normal happy smiling face had disappeared, replaced by a very sad mask. A glance at Mom revealed that her expression closely matched Dad’s.

  A million things raced through my mind!

  Had they discovered I changed a C in Math on my last report card into a B with skillful use of a fine black marker?

  Could it be that zombies are real and we are the last humans left?

  Or, was I adopted and today I was to be returned to my rightful parents…the King and Queen of some European country?

  Wrong!!!!!

  Much worse!!!!!!

  Mom and Dad haven’t been getting along very well for the last few months and they have decided to separate for a while. There were tears all round, but Mom and Dad assured me they both still love me and we would still be a family, although Dad would be going away for a while.

  I felt sad when Dad left that night, as did Mom. We cried on each other’s shoulders. Dad had promised to contact us each day and Mom said she believed Dad would be back. She said it was the stress of his job causing him to be sad. True to his word, Dad calls or emails us every day and I just hope we’ll all be back together one day.

  I don’t want to say…D is for divorce!

  2 Weeks Later…

  Tuesday

  I haven’t written in my diary for a while. I’ve been missing Dad and so has Mom, so I’ve spent more time keeping her company. For a while Mrs. Absolutely Positive lost her shine and sparkle, but we have both settled down now. Dad still contacts us every day and even though he isn’t here, he is still part of my life.

  The funniest thing happened at school today in Math. My History teacher’s nickname is Mr. Oscar…because he is always super grumpy! He reminds me of Oscar the grouch from Sesame Street. He even has those big googly eyes behind his glasses, just like the Oscar puppet.

  Anyway, in his normal grouchy way he made everyone shift their seats so we weren’t sitting with our friends. I ended up sitting between Bethany Barker (MG – short for mean girl) and a boy called Justin Smithers. I haven’t had a lot to do with Justin, but have heard some of the “less kind” boys call him “Dustbin” rather than Justin.

  That unfortunate name goes back to last year in my English class. Our teacher was a very young and pretty lady who was always beautifully dressed with perfect make-up and hair. So obviously I called her Miss Barbie!

  Miss Barbie was quite a good teacher but was rather obsessed with neatness and cleanliness. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of a lesson to straighten the pencils and books on a kid’s desk. She even had a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk that she used every time after she touched our work books.

  After lunch and playtimes she would spray an air freshener around the room. And she would always say the same thing, “We really don’t want to be smelling all those sweaty bodies and foot odors all afternoon, do we children?”

  Sometimes on particularly hot days she would tip some of her perfume onto a tissue and hold it up to her nose to protect her delicate senses from her foul-smelling students. So you get the picture…Miss Barbie is one delicate princess!

  In her classroom the desks are always perfectly arranged in groups of six. One day as Miss Barbie moved around the room, I saw her nose begin to twitch and then her perfect face transformed into a grimace. With a puzzled look she slowly moved around the room, stopping at each desk and sniffing gently. “Does someone need to go to the bathroom?” she asks in her delicate sweet voice. She obviously thinks one of us has let off a smelly fart. Naturally nobody responded. Everyone put their heads down and focused on their work. Miss Barbie continued to sniff around the room.

  “There is a really bad smell in here somewhere,” she announced loudly with her sweet voice turning shrill as her delicate senses are assaulted by the smell. This time a few kids responded that they can smell something bad too. Miss Barbie starts a more intensive sniffing campaign, moving from one group to another.

  Finally she returned to the group next to mine. In that group are 3 girls and 3 boys, one of the boys is Justin Smithers. She calls each of the kids out to the front of the class, one at a time, for a whispered conversation. I manage to just hear the words, “Are you sure you don’t need to use the bathroom,
” as she talks to each of the kids. Miss Barbie does another circuit of the room before returning to the same group.

  This time she starts going around the group instructing each student to open their desk. Miss Barbie has a quick look and a big sniff and then moves onto the next desk. She’s found nothing so far and there are only two kids left, Justin and another boy.

  Following Miss Barbie’s instructions, Justin opens his desk wide and Miss Barbie takes a big sniff. She recoils in horror and takes two steps back. Her perfect face is pinched up into a scowl. She holds her nose as she uses a ruler to poke around in Justin’s desk. With the tips of her fingers she lifts a plastic wrapped item from the desk, it oozes and drips and a disgusting stench floods the room.

  Miss Barbie runs from the room, still clutching the stinking mess in her hand and making retching noises as she leaves. Five minutes later, Mr. Sausage Nose – the principal, walks in and announces he will be taking the class as Miss Barbie has gone home sick.

  After class the kids are giving Justin a bit of a hard time for causing the stink. He explains that he hadn’t finished his hot dog at lunchtime so he had hidden it in his desk, intending to eat it in class while the teacher wasn’t looking.

  It could not have stunk that bad…just from lunchtime. We saw that it was starting to decompose, turning to mush!

  Justin’s mouth opened wide, he went white, “Oh no, it wasn’t my hot dog from today, it was a hamburger from about 3 months ago! I forgot about it.”

  Apparently Justin couldn’t smell it because he had his nose broken twice playing football and the injury had totally destroyed his sense of smell. And that is unfortunately how Justin got to be called Dustbin by some of our nastier class members.

  Anyway, here I sit between Justin and Mean Girl, as Mr. Oscar fires lightning fast questions around the room. I follow the standard “avoid being picked to answer questions” tactics, appearing to listen intently and making no eye contact with the teacher and nodding wisely when someone else answered correctly.

  When suddenly Mean Girl jabs me in the ribs with her sharp and boney elbow. I give an involuntary “oomph” as I double over in pain and surprise. That’s when I make my mistake, I panic and look up to see if Mr. Oscar has heard me. Bad mistake! Our eyes lock! EYE CONTACT! Oh no….

  “Right Maddi, next question is yours,” snaps Mr. Oscar. Panic overtakes me, my pulse is beating faster than a speeding bullet. Here comes the question, I hold my breath, trying to focus. “What is the bluzen dinky xyt24 62536477flmkjqu,” he asks. At least that is what it sounded like to me.

  My… “I don’t know” response gets a swift reaction. “I’ll see you at lunchtime for some extra work, Maddi.”

  I steal a glance at Mean Girl and she gives me a self-satisfied smirk while poking her tongue at me.

  Justin asks for a loan of a blue coloring pencil and I hand it over with a smile. As I work on my assignment, I notice that Justin is using my pencil for NON-coloring purposes. First he uses the non-sharpened end to give both his ears a good clean out, then he does a bit of exploration of his right nostril. It’s hard to be sure but I think I see a little green thing on the end of my pencil.

  Justin returns my pencil with a “thanks”.

  I reply, “Pop it on my desk.” After a while I ‘accidently’ knock the pencil off my desk onto the floor. I don’t want to hurt Justin’s feelings, but there is NO WAY that I am going to put my fingers on that germ-covered pencil ever again! The cleaners can have that one, they wear gloves when they pick up stuff from the classroom floor, so I know they won’t catch anything.

  Mean Girl must have seen me drop the pencil off my desk because she suddenly swoops down and picks it up. Why at this precise moment in world history does Mean Girl decide to be nice to me? I’m wracking my brain to think of reasons why I don’t want the pencil back…without revealing the truth. If she knew why I didn’t want the pencil back, she might use that information to tease Justin.

  No need to worry! Mean Girl waggles the pencil at me and sneers, “Was this yours? Well not anymore, this is my favorite color.”

  As well as being a bully and a generally unlikeable person…Mean Girl has another off-putting habit. She chews on things – her fingers, her ruler, the ends of her hair and today she has something else to chew on…the end of my pencil.

  GROSS! She has a good chew and I can’t help but snigger. She hears me and turns and sticks even more of my pencil into her mouth to chew on. I laugh even more. A confused look shows on Mean Girl’s face, me laughing was not the reaction she expected.

  I decide not to tell her why I am laughing, not today…maybe another time when she is being a bully. It’s so funny that I even manage to get through my lunchtime detention with a smile on my face.

  Thursday

  Science is looking interesting today. Mr. Facebook is taking our lesson in the actual science lab! There are beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners and bottles of chemicals labeled with A, B, C and D on each of the tables.

  Naturally Shelby and I grab a table together. Our table is at the far back corner of the room near a window. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to hear Mr. Facebook from our table as he is demonstrating what to do from the front of the room.

  Mr. Facebook is on fire (well not really on fire) and teaching a great lesson. He has us mixing chemicals and stuff and creating all kinds of exciting reactions like clouds of colored steam and popping bubbles bursting out of beakers.

  The whole class is really involved and having fun. To be honest, we are all being a bit too noisy because the activities are so exciting.

  Mr. Facebook announces that our last activity can be a little dangerous and to listen and watch carefully. He starts giving instructions on how to measure out quantities of different chemicals.

  In our far corner, Shelby and I are struggling to hear his instructions. When he measured chemical C…we couldn’t tell if he said 15mls or 50mls. So I went to the front to ask him. Just as I got there, he pulled out his phone, obviously he had heard a Facebook notification. “Excuse me,” I asked politely, “did you say 15 or 50?” His attention is firmly fixed on his phone now and he answers, “Yes” to my question. Even I know that “yes” isn’t the right answer. I repeat the question.

  Mr. Facebook is now typing away on his phone and if possible…giving me even less attention. “50!” he snarls, followed by, “get back to your table and do your experiment.”

  I go back to the table and tell Shelby he said 50. She looks doubtful but what can we do? We start to combine our chemicals into the one large beaker. First chemical A and then chemical B. We hesitate as nothing has happened. The group at the next table have just finished pouring in chemical C. From their beaker we see a puff of smoke and hear a loud pop.

  That doesn’t look too scary, so I grab the 50ml of chemical C that we have already measured out and pour it into the beaker (containing the other chemicals). I’m holding the beaker in my left hand, watching it closely. I can see the mixture of chemicals bubbling up, heading towards the top of the beaker. If the group next to us had a puff of smoke…we have our own little nuclear bomb mushroom cloud happening. The bubbly chemicals are about to spill over the side of the beaker! No way am I going to let that toxic brew touch my fingers! The only place I can see to dump it is in the waste paper basket next to our table.

  I toss the beaker like an extreme basketball shot. The beaker lands in the basket and seconds later there is an extremely loud bang, followed by even more smoke pouring from the bin. The smoke is quickly drifting across the classroom. The loud bang has finally managed to draw the attention of Mr. Facebook from his phone. He gazes in stunned horror at the room rapidly filling with smoke. Finally he screams, “Get out, FIRE!” Everyone panics and runs for the door. Mr. Facebook hits the fire alarm on his way out of the building.

  The Principal looks crazed, ordering everyone to evacuate all the school buildings. Soon our class is joined on the athletics field by the whole s
chool. I sit listening to the sound of approaching fire trucks.

  Once the all-clear signal is given, Mr. Facebook marches me up to Mr. Sausage Nose’s office and firmly lays the blame on me. I sit in the chair outside his office, waiting for my mom.

  When Mom arrives I try to explain what happened. But Mr. Sausage Nose keeps interrupting me, saying how no other group had any problems. Mr. Facebook had told him that I wasn’t listening and that is the reason why I added way too much of the chemical. When I tried to tell Mr. Sausage Nose how the teacher was on the phone instead of answering my question, he went on to praise Mr. Facebook for having the sense to use his personal phone to ring the fire and rescue. He said that if it hadn’t been for his quick thinking and action…I could have burned down the whole school. “That’s why he had his phone out Maddi, you must be confused,” he said sternly.

  “Mom, this is so unfair, it’s really not my fault. I’m telling you the truth!” I shouted.