Free The Friendship Matchmaker by Randa Abdel-Fattah Page A

Claire and Jemma walked on with Bethany as if they’d all been the best of friends forever.
    Meanwhile, Tanya started chewing on a pen as we walked, and I couldn’t tell if it was a sign of regression or whether she was having second thoughts about my ability to find her a best friend.
    Because I hated to admit that I was.

Chapter 18
    “Good morning, Lara, marinara,” Omar said as I walked into class the next day.
    “Hey, Omar,” I answered flatly. I wasn’t in the best of moods. I’d just seen Claire, Jemma, Emily, and Bethany huddled together and laughing like hysterical hyenas.
    “I overheard Ms. Pria telling Mr. Laidlaw that she’d just made some copies of a quiz, whiz. She’s testing us on last week’s geography class, pass. What a bummer, dumber.”
    A quiz. Great. Just what I needed.
    Tanya emerged from down the hall, followed by Chris.
    “Hey, Electric Shock, didn’t you have time to fix your hair today?”
    He was right. Tanya’s hair was all over the place. She looked miserable and was obviously trying to ignore Chris.
    Then I gasped. Tanya was wearing a T-shirt with a sewn-on koala. I sighed and slowly shook my head. Regression was sometimes a problem with my clients. But it was my own failure if a client I was working with on a one-on-one basis was going back to old habits.
    I really was very considerate. Not for a second (okay, not for ten to twenty seconds) did I blame Tanya. She had issues. That’s why she was a Total Loner and I was the Friendship Matchmaker. I had to work with the TLs and help them, not blame them for their obvious problems. So she was having an “I love koalas” setback. And she’d run out of styling mousse. That was easily fixed. I’d ignore it for now and intervene when the time was right. Besides, there was Chris to deal with.
    “And what’s with that dumb T-shirt?” he barked. “You look like a tour guide at the zoo.”
    “Ew!” I cried, loud enough for the other kids that were gathering to hear. “Chris, you stink! Didn’t you shower this morning?”
    “I can’t smell anything, sing,” Omar said, sniffing the air. “Oh, well, maybe … yeah, there’s a slight whiff, myth.”
    “It isn’t me!” Chris pleaded.
    “Why don’t you leave Tanya alone and go and make friends with a bar of soap,” I snapped. “You’d do us all a favor if you smelled halfway decent before class starts.”
    Actually, he smelled fine. But since when did there have to be any truth in teasing? It was working. Some kids were snickering and pointing at him. He stormed past me, shoving my shoulder as he passed.
    “Get outta my way, fatso,” he said.
    It was pretty lame given I was skinny and
he’d
banged into
me
.
    Chris got his revenge in class later that morning when we were taking the geography quiz.
    Ms. Pria had made me sit next to Omar. She’d put Tanya beside Bethany, at the table directly in front of Chris.
    When Ms. Pria was pretending to look for a tissue in her bag but really texting (who did shethink she was kidding?), I heard Chris hissing at Tanya to lift up her paper so he could cheat.
    Tanya tried to ignore him, but when he kicked her chair she slowly lifted her paper and let him copy.
    I wished I was sitting closer so that I could have done something to help her.
    But Tanya had only finished page one of the quiz. Chris was getting impatient and turned his attention to Bethany. He started hissing at her too and throwing tiny bits of chewed paper at the back of her head.
    Bethany was even worse than Tanya. She actually wrote out the answers, scrunched the piece of paper up and threw it back to Chris. Ms. Pria, meanwhile, was still texting, only occasionally glancing up.
    It was sad the way they both gave in to Chris like that.
    When we finished our quizzes Ms. Pria collected them and gave us reading time while she marked them. We cheered. Reading time was so much fun. We were allowed to sit anywhere in class with a book and read.
    Of course, with Ms. Pria