Free Please, Please, Please by Rachel Vail Page B

and promising that even if we had boyfriends we’d tell them sorry, I’m sitting with my best friend. She was planning Tommy for herself and Jonas for me, then.
    Olivia unwrapped her box of pretzel sticks and offered some to me. For the first time ever, I accepted. “I was wondering why your name was finally erased from Ms. Cress’s board,” she said.
    “That’s why.” I chewed. The pretzel sticks tasted great.
    “I guess we won’t be having a class trip to see you in The Nutcracker this year, then,” Morgan pointed out.
    I took a deep breath and didn’t answer. I tried to smile like, so what? I don’t care about that. The Nutcracker music from the entrance of the Polichinelles blared in my head.
    Morgan crumpled her lunch bag and tossed it over me into the garbage can. We all watched it arch in perfectly. She leaned toward Olivia and asked, “You ready to go outside?”
    Olivia chewed faster, swallowed, and said, “Yeah.”
    After they both left, I stopped smiling and leaned toward Zoe. “I’m so caught.”
    “I know,” Zoe whispered back and stood up. “Let’s go talk.”
    “What am I going to do?” I asked Zoe on the way, trying to block out the Nutcracker music inside me. “No way Olivia won’t tell her mother.”
    “Shhh,” Zoe said. “Wait till we’re safe.”
    When we got into the girls’ room she checked under the stalls—no feet. “OK,” she said.
    I smiled.
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” I shook my head. “I feel like we’re in a movie, checking under the stalls like that.”
    Zoe laughed, then whispered, “The nuclear weapons are in the black attache case.”
    Roxanne came in, so we both shut up. She went straight into a stall. When she came out and was washing her hands, she looked back at me in the mirror. “You quit dance?”
    “Wow. News travels fast,” I said.
    She tore a paper towel out of the dispenser, dried her hands, and started to leave. “Can I get the social studies from you, Zoe?” she asked.
    “Sure,” Zoe said. “Be out in a few.”
    “Thanks.” The door banged Roxanne in the behind as she left. We could hear her say “Ow,” in the hall, and we smiled at each other.
    “You’re so nice,” I told Zoe. “No wonder everybody likes you.”
    “Please,” Zoe said.
    “What? You were sixth-grade president. And fifth.” I was nominated last year for sixth-grade secretary but I lost. My parents helped me make posters with white marker on black oak tag. They were unique, and my dad’s printing is excellent because he’s an architect, but, well, no big deal. Secretary is a lousy job anyway.
    “Yeah, well,” Zoe said. “Giving out your homework always helps.”
    I shrugged and smiled, but then covered my face with my hands, breathed twice, then looked up at her. “Olivia’s mother and mine talk every day.”
    “Yikes.”
    “Well,” I said, trying to be confident, the new me. “I’ll just have to keep my mother from talking to her.”
    “All weekend?”
    “At least until I explain.”
    “You’re gonna tell her you forged your permission slip?” Zoe’s eyes opened huge.
    “I haven’t actually come up with a plan yet,” I admitted. “I just feel like, something will come to me. You know? Something will happen, and I’ll tell her, and it’ll be fine.”
    Zoe shook her head without taking her big blue eyes off me. “OK,” she said. “Sounds good to me.”
    “Can you sleep over Saturday?” I asked her.
    “I thought you were sleeping over my house.”
    I shook my head. “I have to sit by the phone all weekend. Right? Well, actually, except Olivia’s mother volunteers at the science museum Saturdays until three. So we could still go pay our installment on the rings then. I’ll be done with dance and home by noon, and my mom could pick you up and drop us off at Sundries and then pick us up at three. OK?”
    “Um, OK,” Zoe said. “Whew, complicated.”
    “And then we could do whatever at my house on Saturday and be there in case the