Free Drive Me Crazy by Terra Elan McVoy Page A

Mack likes, if only to stay on trend?
    Fiona shouldn’t have left her backpack in the lunchroomin the first place. She should have been more responsible. Thanks to her, now Kendra Mack and everyone else had access to both our secrets. Thanks to her, everyone knew I had a crush.
    “Oh, that looks like plenty,” Howie says, reaching for the heaping pile of chocolate I’ve grated. I feel embarrassed, a little, until Nono reaches over and grabs a pinch to pop in her mouth.
    “Extra never hurt.” She winks.
    “This is gonna be sooo good,” Lana says, watching Howie slowly mix the shaved chocolate into our fluffy icing. I move out of the way in a daze as Nono opens the oven to take out our admittedly delicious-smelling cupcakes. Brick Hasselback starts guiding us on to mixing the raspberry jelly for the middles, while the cupcakes are cooling. One of his assistants comes to whisk our cutting board away in the transition, but before she does I press my finger into the remaining shreds of chocolate, needing to taste something sweet.
    I know I should’ve tried to stop Kendra Mack. With the bus moving, though, I couldn’t stand up and go back there. And getting the diary away from Gates Morrill would’ve been impossible. Being confused about how I felt was what really kept me in my seat, though. There were so many layers of mad and sad and sick and awful heaping up insideme, and I thought the bus ride would never end.
    Finally, it was Kendra Mack and Gates Morrill’s stop. They said good-bye to their friends and ambled up the aisle, still laughing. Right as Kendra Mack passed by my seat, she looked straight down at me.
    “Oh,” she said, surprised and then amused. “We didn’t see you.”
    I wanted to say that noticing other people and their feelings didn’t seem to be one of her specialties, no. Or anything that would make her feel sheepish.
    “Fiona thinks those things,” I said instead, a coward. “But I don’t. I didn’t even know she did until right now.”
    Kendra Mack snorted and hoisted her expensive purse farther up on her shoulder.
    “Yeah, well, if you ask me, it’s pretty chicken to hide your true thoughts in a little diary like that. Not to mention false. And immature. You should be outraged, actually.”
    “I—”
    “Miss Mack, other children need to get home too,” our bus driver called.
    “I’m coming.” But Kendra Mack turned back to me first. “Maybe you’re actually growing up and she’s holding you back, right?”
    I couldn’t say anything. That Kendra Mack was being slightly nice to me—that she even knew who I was—wasenough of a shock. The rest of it was even harder to attach thoughts to.
    That night I avoided Fiona’s texts and attempts to chat, and the next day I still didn’t know how to feel. I was mad at Fiona for what she’d said about me and couldn’t help wondering what other bad things she had written. What else did Kendra Mack know, instead of me? Still, I knew I’d wronged Fiona by not standing up for her. Fiona was the kind of friend who patiently listened until you’d gotten everything out, even the things you hadn’t known you’d felt until you started saying them, so I knew even though I was mad—and she might be too—talking it through was the best thing to do.
    By lunch I was brave enough to face her. I was heading for the table where we usually sat, relieved to see her waiting for me, when Kendra Mack hollered, “Hey, Cassie Parker, where you headed?” like I’d been sitting with her group all year long. I paused for just a step before turning my back on the table, and my best friend.
    “And now for our assembly,” Brick Hasselback says, wielding a serrated knife. Up on the screen, there’s an overhead view of his hands as he slices a cupcake in half. He smears one side with raspberry jelly. He places the other half gently over it and uses a mini ice cream scoop to mound the chocolate-flaked icing on top.
    “And there you have it,” he says