Meanicures

  EGMONT

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  First published by Egmont USA, 2010

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © Catherine Clark, 2010

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.catherineclark.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clark, Catherine.

  Meanicures / Catherine Clark.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Maine seventh-grader Madison and her two best friends, who are being mocked and belittled by former members of their group, decide to conduct a ritual to purge their tormentors from their lives, with unexpected results.

  eISBN: 978-1-60684-249-2

  [1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Cliques (Sociology)—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Maine—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C5412Me 2010

  [Fic]–dc22

  2010011313

  CPSIA tracking label information:

  Random House Production • 1745 Broadway • New York, NY 10019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  For Amy Baum

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  First Things First

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Last Things Last

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  First Things First

  Don’t look at me like that.

  No, really, please don’t, because I’m having a bad hair day. And, speaking as the daughter of Maine’s number one all-natural, organic, chemical-free hair product queen, I would know. In fact, I know more about bad hair days than the average twelve-year-old should ever know.

  Still, don’t look at me and act all judgmental. So what if it was my idea to try to get the mean girls out of our lives? Can you blame me? Much?

  The thing about Cassidy, Alexis, and Kayley was this: in fifth grade we were friends. Even when we moved to middle school in sixth grade, we still did lots together and stayed close.

  But then this year?

  Ever since the start of seventh grade, Cassidy, Alexis, and Kayley hadn’t talked to us very much, and when they did, they usually made fun of us.

  They acted like we’d never all been in Girl Scouts together, or gone on that horrid overnight camping trip where we nearly got devoured by blackflies.

  Like we’d never all signed up for a 10K charity walk because they were handing out giant chocolate chip cookies to anyone who enrolled the day of the event, and then suffered our way through it with major blisters because we didn’t have the right shoes.

  Like we’d never sung Christmas carols outside in a hailstorm, because our music teacher thought it would help us build character.

  We felt these things had bonded us—or at least me, Taylor, and Olivia—for life. I guess the others didn’t feel that way.

  The mean girls weren’t just done with us, though. It wasn’t just that they acted like all those things had never happened. They acted as if they were better than us, and it was their job to keep reminding us of that fact.

  Well, we couldn’t just sit there and take it. Could we?

  Chapter 1

  I should have been suspicious from the start. I don’t do well on Mondays. None of us do.

  Olivia dreaded Mondays so much she had started wearing her days of the week underwear in the wrong order, to try to skip over the day completely.

  Too much information? Sorry.

  Honestly, though, she was so spacey that I’d be surprised if she ever wore the correct day. (That’s why I sometimes called her “Oblivia.”)

  Taylor and I had just arrived at school, and just like we did every day, we locked our bikes to the rack outside the west entrance.

  But unlike every day, I dropped my key ring into the mud. When I bent to pick it up, the knees of my jeans and my sneakers got muddy.

  You could say that it was not a good omen. We have a lot of mud here in Payneston, because it rains way too often, but I’m usually fairly coordinated. I even used to take ballet, and in sixth grade and for a couple of weeks of seventh I was on the school cheerleading and dance team.

  I took off my helmet, shook out my long hair, and glanced at the crowd assembled on the sidewalk in front of school. It was about eight forty-five, and classes didn’t start until nine.

  “Here comes Cassidy,” Taylor warned me.

  I glanced up from cleaning my keys on the wet grass to see my former BFF, Cassidy, and my other former friends, Alexis and Kayley, headed toward us. They were dressed like clones, in low-cut jeans faded to the same exact shade, matching hoodies in different colors, and Converse sneakers. Cassidy’s long blond hair was swinging from side to side as she walked. She looked so happy and perfect, like she was on the front of a catalog or something.

  I looked down at my own outfit, feeling self-conscious about my skinny-leg jeans, corduroy jacket, T-shirt, and chunky black shoes. Why was I trying to be different? “Of course. It’s Monday, and I’m muddy,” I said. “They’re coming over to make fun of me. What else can go wrong?”

  “I’m not afraid of her,” said Taylor. It’s fine for her to say that. Anyone brave enough to hurtle over a vault, or leap while on a balance beam, has to be strong, even if she is the size of a fourth grader. Before school, I’d swung by Taylor’s house, the way I did every morning until winter came and it was too cold to ride. Taylor rode her bike like she did the uneven bars. Very, very riskily. I usually struggled to keep up with her.

  She and Kayley trained and competed on the same club team at the Mainely Gymnastics Center. They used to be such good friends, and they were both so talented, that people referred to them as Team Tay-Kay. You know, one of those cute nicknames that follow athletes all the way to the Olympic Games?

  We had this minivan caravan that went to gymnastics meets, with TEAM TAY-KAY written in white shoe polish on the windows. Only, Team Tay-Kay didn’t exist anymore. Now, as soon as a meet was over, they took off in opposite directions. Now there was Team Taylor. And Team Kayley.

  We didn’t only travel to gymnastics meets. There were trips to Portland for dance team and cheer camp—me, Cassidy, and Alexis. Silly overnights in hotels, staying up late to watch movies and trying to sneak around the hallways (our moms always caught us because we laughed too loudly).

  Olivia mostly only took trips to the Humane Society to adopt new pets, but that wasn’t a sport. We’d go along, mostly to look at the cute kittens. I desperately wanted one.

  I’d dropped out of cheer earlier this fall. I just wasn’t all that interested in it anymore. Dance didn’t start again until winter and I wasn’t sure whether I’d try out for that, either.

  So much had changed in such a short time.

  “Madison?” Taylor said as the other girls walked up. “Your hair—”

  “Looks very interesting this morning,” Cassidy said.

  “I know, I know
. I have helmet hair.” I ruffled my hair with my fingers, trying to make it less flat. Why did Taylor never have this problem?

  “Well, don’t sweat it, that happens to everyone,” said Alexis, giving me a strange look. She was half Japanese and half African American, and she had gorgeous light brown skin and curly hair. She seemed to be able to wear any color and look good in it.

  Me? I was the opposite. I had strawberry-blond hair and pale, freckled skin. Alexis and I were the same height, though—five foot five—which worked really well when we made pyramids.

  “I mean, it’s just great you still ride your bike to school,” Alexis said in an “aren’t you cute” tone.

  “It’s good for the environment,” I said. Living with an organic fanatic, I’d had enough drilled into me about the environment to last a lifetime. A couple of lifetimes.

  “Um, Madison, you want my hat?” offered Taylor. “I think I have a hat in here.…” She was rummaging through her backpack.

  “Okay, okay, enough about helmet hair, Madison. I’ve got good news for you,” said Cassidy. “Great news, actually.”

  “You have good news,” I repeated. “For me. Seriously?” Maybe Cassidy, Alexis, and Kayley had decided to transfer to St. Ignatius Academy, on the other side of town. Maybe their parents had all gotten new jobs in, say, Singapore. Was that far enough away?

  “Well, yeah,” Cassidy said with a laugh, like wasn’t I being ridiculous. “You’re not going to believe this. We were just talking with Hunter Matthews.”

  “Right …” I said slowly.

  “You know how you used to have a crush on him, right?” asked Cassidy.

  I hated that “we used to tell each other everything” stuff. “What? I did not,” I said.

  “You did, too!” said Taylor.

  I glared at her. How was she helping?

  “Hunter totally wants to ask you something,” said Cassidy.

  “Yeah, right.” I glanced over at Hunter, who was sitting on the brick wall, fiddling with his cell phone. Hunter wasn’t exactly a friend. In fact, he was an eighth grader who rarely said hello to me. I sat in front of him in algebra, a class that was mostly for eighth graders and a few seventh graders like me. Hunter usually did obnoxious things like breathe extra-hotly on my neck because I’d once asked him not to, so now he knew it annoyed me. He once told me that I looked like a hedgehog when I dressed in a brown fuzzy sweater (which was rather hideous, now that I think about it).

  You know how sometimes you just really, really want to believe something? And so you do? “Seriously? He wants to ask me something?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. He said something about the eighth-grade dance!” Kayley said.

  What? Me? Me? I’d never been asked to any dance before. I looked at Taylor. “Should I?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “If you want …” She shrugged.

  I was feeling brave. Don’t ask why, because I don’t know. These flashes of bravery come to me from time to time, like lightning strikes. What if it was true and I didn’t act on it?

  I walked slowly toward Hunter and stopped in front of him. “Um, hi. I heard you might talk to me? Want to talk to me, I mean.”

  He was still texting and he didn’t look up. “Yeah. Just a sec.”

  I waited a couple of seconds. Then I said, “Hunter?”

  “Just a sec,” he said again.

  He wasn’t good at math. He probably had no idea what “a second” even meant. I was too impatient and curious to wait another minute. “If you were going to ask, um, the answer’s yes.”

  He finally looked up and stared at me blankly, his sandy-brown hair falling into his hazel eyes.

  “The dance,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Yeah? Cool. See, I can’t go to the dance unless I get a C in math. I can’t even play in the football game before the dance if I don’t get a C. So I can borrow your homework?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “That was what I needed to know,” he said. “You said yes. I’ll give it back after homeroom.”

  Math homework. He wanted to cheat off my math homework, not ask me to the dance. Of course.

  “Um …” I sorted through my backpack, trying not to show him how embarrassed I was for getting things wrong.

  “What happened to your hair?” he asked. “Looks green. Sort of like seaweed? You might want to get that checked out.”

  He just compared my hair to seaweed. I wanted to grab Hunter’s phone to call my mom right then. I would tell her: I am no longer willing to be a test subject, and I think your seaweed shampoo recipes are full of salt and a lack of scientific knowledge, and do you realize you’re the reason I will never, ever have a date?

  I just smiled at Hunter. “It’s a long story,” I said. A long, long, pathetic story. I handed him my math homework and walked away—bumping right into Alexis, who was taking our picture.

  “Why are you taking my picture?” I asked.

  “It’s candids for the yearbook—we’re taking them of everyone. Go back and stand next to Hunter,” she said.

  “No, thanks—” I started to say, but she had already snapped the photo.

  “Perfect!”

  I slunk away, wishing I were invisible, along with my helmet head and green hair.

  “So? What did he say?” Cassidy asked eagerly, stepping in front of me.

  I stared at her with a blank expression. “He said my hair looked like seaweed.”

  “Ouch.” Cassidy’s mouth twitched as though it was killing her not to giggle.

  Silently I cursed my mother again, using all the bad words I knew she’d ground me for saying. How had I not noticed this before I left home? How had she not mentioned it? You’d think my little brother would have had a field day.

  “You guys could have said something,” I said angrily.

  “I tried—” Taylor began.

  “I just thought you were, you know.” Cassidy grinned. “Trying to show your Panther pride.”

  “How so?” I said.

  “Green’s one of our school colors, right?” said Alexis.

  “You know, you really need to have a talk with your mother about this shampoo stuff,” Kayley commented, with the emphasis on poo.

  “Yes. I know,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m well … aware of that.”

  I suddenly saw Olivia walking toward us. She was wearing her usual funky attire: two-toned Converse sneakers, black skirt over striped tights, and jean jacket. Her wavy brown hair was pulled up in a beaded barrette. She was carrying a little pad of paper in one hand, and a pen in the other, and I suddenly got nervous on her behalf. If she was planning on writing things down, that must mean she wasn’t comfortable talking.

  She had just gotten braces on Saturday, and I wondered how much the mean girls would make fun of her. She had to wear this thing called a pendulum appliance, which made her talk funny because she wasn’t used to it yet.

  “Don’t you have someplace else to go?” I asked Cassidy, hoping she’d leave before she got a chance to hear Olivia try to speak. “Some other person’s morning to wreck?”

  “Yu mnpf dot wck,” said Olivia. “Munez.”

  The mean girls stared at her, smiles widening on their faces.

  “What did you just say?” Alexis asked her.

  Cassidy laughed. “Yeah, what happened to you?”

  “They’re called braces. Everyone’s heard of them. Come on, guys.” Taylor took both of us by the arms and started to pull us away, into the school building.

  Olivia quickly scribbled something on a piece of paper and held it up for us to read. I knew I should have worn my Wednesday underwear!

  Chapter 2

  “You have to help me!” Olivia pleaded a minute later, as soon as we were alone in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor. Her speech was still indistinct, but I could figure out what she was saying.

  “Help you? Look at me!” I cried. Now that I could see my hair in the mirror, I was cringing. All I can
say was, my mom was not even close to figuring out the new edamame formula she was experimenting with for her Edamommy Baby Shampoo.

  She usually hires hair models to try out new formulas on, but every once in a while she’ll get inspired and it’ll be the middle of the weekend, and so I become her test subject. Thank goodness, the seaweed shampoo recipe was perfect now. But you know those no-animal-testing symbols on shampoo? I’d like to have one that says: “No Madison Testing.”

  Still, I have to admire her. I go into a drugstore and look at all the shampoos and conditioners on the shelves, and I think, It’s all been done, Mom.

  She doesn’t see it that way. She’s made a million with her Original Sea Clean products. She even bought a big house for us by the sea. So who was I to question her when she said she wanted to try making edamame baby shampoo?

  But obviously, I should have questioned her. In case you don’t know, edamames are green vegetables, kind of like peas.

  “Couldn’t that be the green paint in here reflecting off my hair? Or the fluorescent light, maybe?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” said Taylor. “But no.”

  I sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You had your helmet on until we got here—I didn’t know!” said Taylor. “And I tried to get you to wear my hat, didn’t I?”

  I tried arranging my hair to hide the green streak. The problem was, there wasn’t just one. The streaks blended into one another. I quickly pulled my hair into two braids and flattened them down. It wasn’t stylish, and I looked like a green Pippi Longstocking, but it was better than before. I pulled Taylor’s black Mainely Gymnastics cap over my head to complete the look. Nerdy, but safe.

  “Okay, that’s better. Now, what do you need help with?” I asked Olivia as we walked out into the hallway, toward our lockers.

  In spite of the braces, she managed to get out that today was the day she was scheduled to host “Panthers Update,” our school’s TV morning news. For some reason the Payneston powers-that-be had decided that every student should host one morning each school year. Not just those who wanted to, but also those who didn’t want to, who would rather run screaming from the building and get hit by a bus than be on camera.