10 Not Exactly a Kiss

The next morning I took one last look at the puzzling clue, then rushed downstairs and ate breakfast. No time to figure it out now. I had another mystery to solve.

My mom drove me to school, and I hurried to room A-12 and walked up to my English teacher's desk before the bell rang. Mrs. Mintin was reading the school newspaper. "Excuse me," I said, waiting for her to look up. "Um, I left my sweater on the back of my chair yesterday. Did anyone turn it in?" I tried not to wiggle impatiently like I had to go to the bathroom.

She stared at me over the top of her reading glasses. "No, but a friend of yours took it with her after class. She probably looked after it for you and will return it today." Mrs. Mintin looked back at her paper like the discussion had ended.

Fine with me. Now I could get my mom off my back. "Alexa took it?"

"I'm not sure. I haven't memorized all of the students' names yet. Please take your seat." Maybe Alexa had taken it and just forgot to tell me. I sat down, feeling better about everything.

For a second-and-a-half.

"Hey, Skylar." Brendan Tadman slid into the chair next to mine.

OK, I thought, this is cool. But why is Brendan Tadman talking to me?

He leaned across the aisle with a curious expression on his face. Like he was trying not to laugh. "Interesting place to hang your sweater. At least I think it's yours."

Oh-oh.

"What are you talking about?" I looked at him with a queasy feeling rolling around in my stomach.

"Beige? Kind of big and thick?"

I saw embarrassment in my immediate future. "That sounds like mine. Uh—where is it?" I felt my cheeks turning pink, then red.

Brendan looked toward the window and laughed. "Put it this way: sweaters seem to be growing on trees near the cafeteria."

Terrific.

I didn't have time to check between classes, so at the ten o'clock break I hurried toward the lunch area. There was a big patch of lawn in front of the outdoor tables with three palm trees and some tall pines and oaks growing around the sides. I looked up. Sure enough, someone had flung my ugly sweater way up into one of the oak trees. I had to find out who had chucked it up there. Probably a certain blonde from Florida.

I hurried back to Mrs. Mintin's room, poked my head inside the door, and looked around. She was sitting at her desk grading papers. It took me a minute to get my guts up and walk inside. I had to stand in front of her desk for like seven seconds before she looked at me. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Mintin, whoever took my sweater yesterday threw it up into one of the trees by the cafeteria."

She squinted at me over the rim of her glasses and patted her hair, which was stiff with spray. "Well, why don't you wait until lunch and ask the janitor to help you get it down? I'm sure he has a long pole or a ladder."

"OK. But I need to know who left with it yesterday. Alexa is the girl in the second-to-last row with long, curly strawberry blonde hair and freckles. It wasn't her, was it?"

Mrs. Mintin shook her head. "No. It was the pretty blonde who sits in the back row." She opened a desk drawer and glanced at a seating chart. "Emelyn Peters took your sweater. I thought she intended to return it."

I felt my fingernails dig into my palms. "No, that isn't what she intended at all."

Lunch was going to be fun.

After fourth period Alexa and I headed straight for the cafeteria and talked while we walked. "So there's this gross bunch of guys remodeling our house."

Alexa looked at me. "Gross how?" She pushed open the door and I followed her over to the tray table. The air was thick with steam and French fry grease.

"Sweaty bikers. They stink. And that's the least of it."

"Stink as bad as those green beans?" Alexa asked, making a face as we passed a metal warming bin heaped full of limp vegetables. The guy behind us slid his tray forward and made a disgusted grunt.

"Worse," I said. We walked over to the lasagna counter and a stocky lady wearing a stained red apron served each of us a gooey rectangular slice. I took a breath, thinking about the construction workers. "They're rude. And they make me nervous. Like I'm working for them, instead of the other way around. They act like it's their house, not mine. And there's something fishy about them. The foreman, Smack? He seems like he's always snooping—"

"Smack?" Alexa laughed, reaching for a salad.

"His real name's Barney."

"Aha. Nickname. So why don't you just ignore them?"

"Wish I could, but they're all up in our stuff for one. And they seem like they're up to something besides remodeling our house."

Alexa looked at me. She bit a nail. "Like what?"

"I'm not sure. But something about them seems bent."

"Not good," she said, stepping up to the cashier and opening her purse.

"No. It's not," I agreed, reaching into my wallet.

"Why did your parents hire them, then?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

"They made a low bid, and they came highly recommended by our neighbor. Who my mom had known for about five seconds."

"Huh. Kind of fishy."

"Yeah."

"You'll figure it out," Alexa said, paying the cashier and leading the way outside.

I wished I were as confident.

We sat down at an empty table and I took a bite of lasagna. Molten cheese burned my mouth and I gulped water, trying to cool it off. A few minutes later I was playing with a dangling strip of fried skin with my tongue.

I'd hoped to get my sweater out of the tree without attracting too much attention, but by the time we tracked down the skinny janitor the lunch area was packed. I spotted him emptying a garbage can in the corner. His straggly blond ponytail was turning gray, and his blue jumpsuit had Frank embroidered on the pocket in white stitches. Frank put a new liner into the can.

"Excuse me," I said, "but can you please help me get my sweater down? It's caught in a tree." The janitor seemed to think this was funny. "My English teacher said you might be able to help me. Like do you have a pole or a ladder or anything?"

"Sure, kid. What tree?" Frank had a giant, bobbing Adam's Apple. The corners of his mouth curled up and he shoved his hands into his pockets. We walked past the outdoor tables and I pointed out the oak.

"That one right there." My sweater hung off the end of a branch like a piece of rotten fruit. I heard girls giggling and opened up my Porta-detective kit. Pulling out a little round mirror, I cupped it in my palm, aiming it over my shoulder. I turned slowly sideways, scanning the lunch area behind me. Pat Whitehead and a snotty blonde named Trish Adams were eating at a table nearby.

"Hey look. Skylar's got a hot date!" Pat shouted. I wasn't about to let her intimidate me. Turning around, I looked at her and rolled my eyes. Trish made devil horns at me and opened her mouth, showing me a chewed bite of food. Emelyn was sitting at Dustin's table and she laughed at me as hard as she could. I waved nicely at her.

Then I turned my back and ignored them.

But the janitor didn't. "Hey!" Frank barked, attracting all sorts of attention. "Simmer down!" he yelled. Now the entire lunch area watched us walk up to the tree. My cheeks were burning. Then Frank made everything worse. He actually shimmied right up the trunk like a monkey.

Brendan Tadman cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Hey, are there any bananas up there?" Pat pointed at me and nudged Trish, and then they both cracked up. My cheeks were burning and I knew my face was as red as a tomato. Dustin actually looked like he felt sorry for me, so Emelyn tugged on his arm to make him pay attention to her instead. The janitor plucked my sweater off the branch and tossed it down to me. I caught it, and some of the kids who were watching hooted and clapped.

Lucky me. I had my sweater back.

After that Alexa and I walked to the bathroom. "How embarrassing was that?" I asked angrily, yanking a brush through my hair. "All because my mom made me wear that stupid sweater."

"Don't worry, everyone's already forgotten about it."

"Sure they have," I said. I knew Alexa was just trying to make me feel better by the way she fumbled around in her purse, fishing out her lip gloss instead of looking me in the eye. "I wish." I checked to make sure I didn't have lasagna stuck in my teeth, then put on some sheer pink Lipslick.

Walking into Science a few minutes early, I sat down at a lab table in the back of the room where the other chairs were empty. The class began to fill, and I didn't see any of my friends. Then I couldn't believe my luck. Dustin Coles walked in, his big green-brown eyes glancing around the room until he chose an empty seat—the one right next to mine! His wavy brown hair curled over his collar in back, and there were new blond streaks where the sun had highlighted it. Double yum.

OMG. His head turned toward me in slow motion, like in a PG-13, right before the boy kisses—

"Hi Skylar." He smiled at me. Not exactly a kiss, but definitely better than nothing. And when he said my name, it sounded really good.

"Hi." I hoped my face wasn't turning red. Dustin tapped his pen against the table and looked around the room. I tried to think of something interesting to say so I could keep talking to him but my brain farted out on me.

A second later the teacher walked in. Mr. Bidden was tall and stooped, and he had thin gray hair and a hooked nose. His skin was pale and wrinkled and covered with moles. The collar of his shirt was too big for his skinny neck, and he wore a white lab coat over his clothes. With the gray-green chalkboard behind him, he looked like a poster for some creepy hospital that would give you a worse disease than you came in with.

He set down a thick file and scowled at us. "We will study anatomy for the first two weeks of this semester. Please open your books to chapter one. Then read the directions for the first lab and choose partners. You need to form four-person teams and appoint a leader."

I read the first lines of the instructions: Pick partners you are comfortable with. Students who object to the graphic nature of this experiment may opt out and complete a virtual version of the anatomy lab online. I tried to swallow, but suddenly I couldn't work up any saliva. Graphic? What were we going to have to do? Scenes from a horror movie I'd watched recently flashed through my mind.

I glanced around, hoping to see something familiar or pretty. A plant or a fish tank—something alive or calming. The metal tools on the sterile white counters were doing nothing for my nerves. Dustin read the directions and then looked across the room, trying to spot some of his friends. I guess none of his buds were in our class. He turned to face me. "Want to be one of my partners?"

No way. If anyone had told me Dustin Coles would ask me to be his lab partner I never would have believed it. I figured he'd try to pick the other popular guys to team up with, but he wasn't looking around anymore. I nodded, hoping my face wouldn't turn beet red and give me away. "OK. Do you want to be the team leader?"

"Sure," he agreed. "No problem." A skinny guy in a plaid shirt sat across from me. The blonde girl next to him wore glasses and looked too young to be in our grade. "How 'bout you guys," Dustin asked. "Want to team up?"

The girl nodded gratefully and the thin kid smiled and said, "Yeah." I could tell Dustin already had two new fans.

"I'm Dustin Coles," he said, confidently. "What're your guys' names?"

The girl looked at Dustin and her cheeks turned pink. "Cindy Kowalski."

"Mark Oglethorpe." He straightened in his chair.

"Skylar Robbins," I said, feeling silly that we were introducing ourselves so formally. My mom would have loved it.

"Welcome to the A Team," Dustin said, knocking knuckles with Mark, who was grinning his butt off to have the coolest guy in school choose him for a partner. Suddenly I didn't feel silly anymore. We spent the rest of the hour scribbling anatomy notes while Mr. Bidden lectured, and left the class with permission slips for our parents to sign by Friday.