The Ultra Violets Page 17

  Maybe our super-save in the cafeteria boosted his confidence a bit! Iris thought happily.

  Definitely he’s been following my daily style Tweeks! twought Cheri, twilled at the progress of her stealth makeover.

  As Albert reached the four girls, Cheri spoke-sang, “Hey, hey, hey, Albert. Loving the new frames. Aviator, am I right?”

  Scarlet bit her tongue to stop a snark attack. Albert Feinstein really was not her type, and she totally didn’t get what the other three saw in the math geek.

  “Hi, Albert,” Iris said between licks of her boysenberry lollipop. Despite their life-and-shirt-changing moment in the cafeteria, she didn’t think he even knew her name.

  Albert smiled awkwardly at Iris, and he mumbled something to Cheri about the math assignment. Then he walked right past them up to Opal at her locker. The other three girls watched, fascinated, and Scarlet scrambled for her smartphone. She sensed a GoobToob moment in the making.

  At the sight of Albert, Opal propped the sunglasses on her head like she had in gym class. The streak of ivory hair fell across one of her brown eyes, and from where Iris stood she thought she saw a cloudy mist float across both of them. Clasping her hands in front of her, pointing her toes together, and coyly batting her lashes at Albert, Opal said:

  “Whazzup?”

  Albert cleared his throat and stammered. “Oh, um, w-what’s happening, Opaline?”

  “What’s happening?” Opal said back, looking him up and down. “Not much.”

  Iris didn’t get it. Wasn’t this the same boy Opal had confessed her crush on at the sleepover party? Why was she acting so cool now? Was she just embarrassed in front of her friends?

  “Guys,” Iris whispered to Scarlet and Cheri. “Let’s, you know, give them some privacy.”

  “Nuh-uh,” said Cheri, enraptured. Now that she could see the fruits of her makeover, no way was she missing a minute of love in the afternoon. She stroked WuWu’s silky ears and sighed.

  “Double nuh-uh,” said Scarlet, who was just plain curious. She planned to watch the video later for tips on how to talk to boys, since all she knew how to do so far was bully them.

  So Iris turned back to her locker and pretended to be getting her books.

  “I just w-wanted to say,” Albert was s-still s-stammering, “that I think it’s really cool, the class t-trip to BeauTek. Mr. Knimoy told me about it.”

  “Oh, that,” Opal said. Just the mention of it reminded her all over again of how she had to break this news to her mom. She rubbed her eyes. Maybe she was getting another headache. “It’s, like . . .” Opal let the sentence trail, and headed off down the hallway, lost in her own thoughts.

  “Okay, um, see you in class!” Albert called after her.

  Scarlet switched her camera phone off and shoved it back in her pocket as she, Iris, and Cheri followed behind. “That was kind of a letdown,” she said. “Zero fireworks.”

  “Maybe you can fix it in editing,” Cheri suggested, though she was disappointed, too. The dark denim was a move in the right direction, but obviously she had a lot more work to do on Albert if he was ever to win the heart of the fair Opaline!

  “IDK,” Iris said to Scarlet and Cheri as they entered their classroom. Opal was already at her desk. “But I think something might be off with Opal. Maybe the Helio-goo is changing her after all. Did you see the way she was pulverizing people in PE?”

  “For shizzle!” Cheri said, giving WuWu the Shih Tzu a pat to keep him safe in her bag. Even Scarlet had to admit that Opal’s extreme dodgeballing had crossed the fine line from awesome to scary.

  “Right when we’re getting all super-violety,” Iris said, tugging at her hair anxiously, “she’s going super-violenty.”

  As Iris headed off to her seat in the back by Opal, Scarlet turned to Cheri. “Bummer,” she said. “I know I boss Opal around sometimes, but I really like that girl.”

  Cheri arched a skeptical eyebrow at Scarlet, who protested, “And not just for her lunch!”

  While she was waiting for class to begin, Scarlet replayed her video of Albert and Opal. When she’d been watching in the hallway, her attention had been on the semi-bumbling mathlete captain. But this time Scarlet focused on her friend. She, too, noticed the stark white line streaking through Opal’s hair. It was hard to tell for sure on the small phone screen, but Scarlet thought she also saw Opal’s brown eyes cloud over.

  Maybe Iris is right, Scarlet thought, wrinkling her nose. Maybe the Heliotropium is finally taking effect on Opal, too. Beneath her desk, Scarlet’s feet danced a little jig. It reminded her that, so far, the changes had been mostly good, if confusing, for her, Cheri, and Iris.

  But what changes were in store for Opaline?

  Worst. Hair Day. Ever.

  FROM @CHERICHERI: NOTHINGZ CUTER ON A BRAINEE math captain than cool comfy cotton tees. wit plaid shirt over unbuttned. #middleschoolstylee

  From @chericheri: nobodee works hightop bball sneakers like mathletes. unlaced tongues out!!! smart n hot #middleschoolstylee

  From @chericheri: r u a math boy with braces? bling yr grill wit gold flash meets classy. longer hair = 2 run fingers thru! #middleschoolstylee

  From @albertfnumbers to @chericheri: Hey, are you talking to me?

  • • •

  After Cheri witnessed the non-sparks between Albert and Opal, she upped her Tweeking, posting little fashion tips in 140 characters or less. Targeted directly at middle school math boys. She figured that would narrow the field. Albert was brilliant, but sometimes boys could be so obtuse about these things.

  Obtuse meaning “a person lacking sensibility and awareness.” And not “an angle greater than 90 degrees but less than 180,” which was also its definition. Just ask your friendly neighborhood geometrician.

  On the subject of geometry, just that morning Cheri had joined Mr. Grates in another one of his funky math raps. Standing in front of the class, she hit her flow defining angles, vertexes, and rectilinear, quadrilateral, and polygonic figures, all while Mr. Grates kept interjecting, “Swaggy Swaggy Swaggy!” She even managed to rhyme “parallelogram” with “wham bam, thank you, ma’am,” which was pretty {wham} impressive!

  In his new high-top sneakers and distressed jeans, Albert sat in the audience class, watching her, dumbstruck. The cascades of berry red hair. The glints of bubblegum pink nails. The mastery of geometric axioms!

  She was magnificent.

  Do boys swoon? If they do, Albert did. By the time MC Cheri had shut down the club finished the presentation, he had forgotten all about Opaline blowing him off in the hallway the other day. Brilliant, witty, stylish: Cheri and him had so much more in common.

  And later, after school, when he saw Cheri, bathed in sunbeams, behind the elliptical Chronic Prep building over by the fluffula tree, he worked up his courage and walked over to her.

  He only tripped three times on his untied laces.

  “Bonjour, Cheri,” he said when he finally reached her, surprised at his own boldness. And his recall of French greetings. He placed one hand up against the fluffula trunk and leaned in to talk to her.

  “Bonjour, Alber,” Cheri said with a smile, dropping the “t” like you did in French. Frolicking around on a leash at her feet was Rococo Chanel, coincidentally a French poodle. Cheri always liked it when her day matched her dog. “Having some trouble with those sneakers?” she asked, excited to see that Albert had followed at least one of her Tweeks.

  “You know me,” Albert said. “Every day I’m shuffling!”

  Cheri giggled. It was so funny when nerds tried to act cool! “Just tuck in the laces,” she suggested, squinting past him. Iris was supposed to meet her here so that she could give Rococo his own makeover. And hopefully Iris would also have some fresh bubblegum. Cheri gav
e hers a few chews, then blew out a small pink bubble.

  “Um,” Albert was saying, “it was really nice of you to send me all those Tweeks.” Rococo Chanel gnawed at one of his loose sneaker laces, and he was trying to shake the little dog off without kicking him.

  “Oh, the Tweeks,” Cheri said, sucking back the bubble. “They’re, you know, for anyone interested in math. And fashion. Who follows me on Tweeker.” It started to dawn on her that it was possible Albert could have misunderstood her intentions. She thought back to all the times she’d shared her answers in math class. All the Tweeks. To protect Opal, Cheri had never actually mentioned a single thing about Opal. With all the attention and links to sample sales that she’d been sending him, Cheri couldn’t really blame Albert if he thought that the girl crushing on him was . . .

  Oh, sugarsticks, Cheri thought in a panic.

  Sticks? Rococo Chanel answered. Fetch? Where?! The French poodle scampered around Cheri and Albert excitedly, circling the fluffula trunk. And their legs. With his leash.

  “The way you rapped about polygons today,” Albert said, tottering a little closer to her as the dog leash tightened around his high-tops, “was mind-blowing. Literally. I think I snapped a synapse.” He gave a nasal laugh. Cheri had no idea was he was talking about.

  “I might have some double-sided tape in my locker,” she offered, “to glue it back together?” Over his shoulder, way back at the school doors, she could see Iris’s violet ringlets. And Scarlet’s swinging black ponytail as she tangoed alongside her. And Opal’s dark sunglasses.

  Oh swell no, Cheri thought in a panic.

  What happened to the sugarsticks? Rococo demanded, wagging his tail impatiently. I was told there’d be sugarsticks! The poodle doubled his laps around the tree trunk, and their legs, until he had run out of leash.

  “You’re so sweet,” Albert said, bending closer. Cheri realized with alarm that they were bound at the ankles. “And so funny. Have you ever considered joining the mathletes? I can get you in.”

  Cheri opened her mouth to answer, and the last thing she saw was the glint of gold on his braces. The next thing she felt were his lips. On hers. His eyes closed, but hers popped open in shock, her lashes brushing against the lenses of his fly new eyeglasses.

  It wasn’t that bad, really. He tasted like spearmint toothpaste. Though she immediately regretted wearing her long-lasting lip gloss: That just made the kissing stickier.

  With both hands, Cheri gave Albert a gentle nudge. He continued smooching on her. She furrowed her brow and pushed a little harder. He still didn’t back off. “Mmpf!” Cheri mmpfed. She had no choice. She coughed her gum into his mouth and stabbed one elbow down on his shoulder, like Scarlet had taught her.

  Their lips made a gooey smwack! sound as they came apart at last. Albert stumbled back in his loose high-tops over Rococo Chanel’s leash and landed in the grass. Cheri staggered and flailed, too, hugging the tree trunk to keep from falling down on top of him.

  “Oopsie,” she huffed, trying to catch her breath and free Rococo from the tangle as Albert struggled to his feet. “Albert,” she said, her cheeks flaming as red as her hair, “I’m flattered, really I am. But the thing is, I have this friend, and she—”

  “BFFs!” The scream cut through the schoolyard, bouncing off the Plexiglas wall and the solar panels of Chronic Prep. Albert covered his ears and whirled around toward the source. A brown-haired girl in black sunglasses was on her knees in the middle of the yard, pointing at Cheri. As she shouted, her hair rose up around her, one white streak crackling in the wind.

  Albert didn’t remember it being windy.

  “BFFs!” Opal screamed again, tearing off the sunglasses and clutching at her head as if she was in pain. Terrified by the sight, Scarlet had moonwalked back toward the school doors. But Iris tried to approach her. Why Cheri had been sucking face with Albert Feinstein, she had no clue. But she could only imagine how upset Opal must be!

  Then again, she did just kind of blow him off the other afternoon?

  “Opal . . .” Iris said, slowly walking toward her. When Opal whipped around to face her, Iris no longer saw the shy girl from the sleepover, one of her best friends. White clouds raced over Opal’s brown eyes, veined through with electric orange currents. Her hair floated straight up in the air and snaked around in the wind. As Iris stretched a hand out to comfort her, her fingers felt such a jolt that she was shocked off her feet. Flat on her back, Iris stared up at the sky.

  Dark clouds covered the sun, and it began to pour.

  Albert didn’t remember the forecast calling for rain.

  “Hold this,” Cheri commanded, over at the fluffula tree. She slapped Rococo’s leash into Albert’s hand. Then she stumbled across the schoolyard in her platforms in the rain.

  “Opal!” Cheri cried. She had recently started wearing a teensy bit of mascara along with the lip gloss, and it ran in gritty rivers down her cheeks. “It’s not what you think! It was an accident! I was only making out, I mean making over, him for—” She reached out to Opal and was thrown back by the electrostatic force field, too. Tendrils of black smoke curled up from her burnt manicure. Her beautiful ruby waves broke out in a hideous case of the frizzies.

  Opaline stood up in the center of her electric bubble, tiny threads of violet-white lightning fizzing around her. She pointed from Iris to Cheri and over to Scarlet. “BFFs,” she said again, her voice quaking. “You said you were my BFFS. And BFFs don’t kiss their friend’s crush! Or eat their tacos without at least saying the magic word!”

  “Oh, puh-leez,” Scarlet muttered, back at the school doors and out of earshot.

  Iris got to her feet and came as close as she dared to Opal’s dome. It was as if Opal was encircled by hundreds of crackling electric currents. Iris could see Opal, standing in the middle, her hair on end. But she couldn’t quite make out the borders of the dome itself. As soon as one electric line appeared, another one vanished. Like one of those invisible security fences, you might not even know it was there until you’d run into it.

  Unless I color it in, Iris realized, thinking back to scenes she’d seen in movies where spies or thieves sprayed dye into the air to expose the tricky maze of laser beams they’d have to crawl through.

  With a tug of her now uber-wiry, 360-degree violet afro, Iris cast a pale orange glow over Opal, and the outline of the dome became clearer. Currents coursed and sparked all around it.

  “We are your BFFs,” Iris said, her voice shaking, too, as she approached the electric shield and held a tentative pinkie up just an inch from the live current. “Opal, I know it’s been so stressful, starting over at a new school when your mom is always at work and you’re stuck dealing with all these changes.” Iris had never said it out loud before. She’d been trying so hard to be strong, to be independent, to be brave, that she hadn’t even wanted to admit it to herself. But as she spoke the words, she knew this confession was just as true for her as it was for Opal. And she knew their friendship was worth the risk. “It’s been hard for me, too,” she whispered, a lump in her throat. “We’re kind of the same that way.” She looked past the pale orange shield into Opal’s clouded eyes. “But let’s just talk about it, okay?” Iris said, her tears running with the raindrops down her cheeks. “I’m sure Cheri can explain the kissing. And you and Scarlet can do lunch. Her treat!” She tried to smile. “Opal, maybe you’re just finally having a chemical reaction to the Helio—”

  “Ya think?!” Opal cut her off, laughing harshly from inside her high-voltage bubble. The hatred in her voice shocked Iris much more than the electric current had. Opal dropped back onto her knees, clutching at her head again. “BFFs,”
she howled, “stands for Big Fat Fonies!”

  By now Scarlet’s courage had returned, and she edged up to the dome, too. But she knew this was so not the time to correct Opal’s spelling.

  “Or,” Opal shouted, “Bad Freaky Fakes!”

  Well, at least that sort of made sense.

  Scarlet shook her head, speechless. Even her stick-straight hair had fuzzed up, her ponytail resembling a grizzled shish kebab. In the downpour, the three girls stood around Opal, helpless, as she sturmed and dranged (that’s German for had a major hissy fit—this is turning out to be a chapter of many tongues!) inside her thunderdome.

  “What should we do?” Cheri asked. With her sparkly headband, mascara dripping down her cheeks, and lip gloss smeared all over her face, she looked like a weeping beauty queen in the long ago days before waterproof makeup was invented. Scarlet yelped “Gah!” at the sight of her. Then she started to think about next year’s Halloween costume. She didn’t know which was mascarier: Shockwave Opal or Meltdown Cheri.

  “I have an idea,” Iris said. She sounded sad. But determined.

  Standing opposite Opal’s electric dome, Iris put her hands to her head, too, and closed her eyes.

  Across the dome, the pale see-through orange faded away, replaced by not one, not two, but THREE rainbows. Vibrant bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and, most vibrant of all, violet sparkled above Opal’s head.

  And at the base of the dome, miniature unicorns gamboled, trotting in circles around Opal’s feet.

  Opal stared at the sight, gasping. It was a triple rainbow all the way. So intense. A full-on triple rainbow. “OMV,” Opal said.

  Suddenly, it was as if the rainbows sapped all the angry energy out of Opal. Her hair floated back down, once again obeying the laws of gravity. The clouds left her eyes. The electric dome vanished into thin air, taking Iris’s triple rain-bow with it, and the skies cleared.