Free The Queen of Cool by Cecil Castellucci Page B

can and shakes his head.
    “What a shame,” he whispers. “I would have liked to study those dust bunnies. You guys have no respect for the science.”
    “Science schmience!” Tiny says, squirting him. “We were being attacked, man!”
    And then she disappears into the cave. I follow her, almost running. And even though we are acting like two-year-olds, jumping, crawling, and giggling, we are actually working. It goes by quickly, and we won’t get in trouble anytime soon because we are doing our job.
    And our job is actually fun.
    “Here you go,” Tiny says, handing me the Blue Team field book on the way down to the parking lot.
    “Oh, I totally forgot. I didn’t even look in the cases and take notes,” I say. “I should go back. I still have half an hour before the zoo closes.”
    “No sweat. Sheldon did it while we were running around,” Tiny says.
    “You did?”
    “You were on a serious mission,” Sheldon says, shrugging.
    Tiny elbows my hip. “You’re supposed to say
Thank you, Sheldon.
”
    “Oh yeah. Thank you, Sheldon.”
    It bothers me a little that he took the notes. Even though we’re supposed to all take turns entering our observations, I’ve been the one doing the work in the Blue Team book since the beginning of the internship. It’s been my job.
    And I think I actually like it.
    “You keep it,” he says. “You’re like the Mistress of the Field Book.”
    When I get home, I examine the book. Sheldon’s observations are keen but unorganized. He crosses out a lot, and his writing is extremely small and unreadable.
    I open the book to a blank page, and I take out my ruler. I make lines and headings and redo his work.

    At lunchtime, my spoon of raspberry low-fat yogurt only makes it halfway to my mouth when Perla starts speaking.
    “So after I have my own reality show, I’ll totally do like what other celebutantes do. Get parts in movies and, like, have my own fashion line.”
    “Who’s going to design the clothes?” I ask.
    “What do you mean?” Perla says. “I’m going to have my own reality show. I’ll be famous. I’ll be PERLA!”
    She takes her hands and sweeps the air in front of her, like her name is already up in lights.
    “I mean, you don’t have any skill in design. I mean, what are
you
going to actually be
doing
? Will you be overseeing the line? Or will you be designing stuff yourself?”
    “What is this? The Inquisition?” she says.
    “No, Perla, I’m just wondering,” I say. “I mean, what if your reality star plan doesn’t pan out?”
    “
Pan out
isn’t in my vocabulary,” Perla says. “I’m going to make it.”
    I think about Tiny, who actually went to a theater and walked on the stage and then raved about it all afternoon. She didn’t sit around waiting for someone to hand her a career in entertainment on a silver platter. Of course, then again, it wasn’t real. Those theater seats were empty. But she
did
something. She was
proactive.
    And Sheldon, going on and on about the newest images from Saturn or Mars or Jupiter or Uranus. He lugs out his telescope at night and actually looks at the stars. He subscribes to the astrobiology feeds and e-mails boring articles to Tiny and me. He gives us the night sky report every day. He observes the animals, figures them out, and tries to move like they would so he can understand them. So he can try and make sense out of LIFE.
    Tiny and Sheldon are
doers.
    “You know what we are? We’re slackers,” I say. “We don’t do shit. We have nothing going on.”
    “Please, girl. Speak for yourself,” Perla says. “I’m like . . . a
bohemian.
”
    “You don’t even know what that word means,” I say.
    “Neither do you,” Perla says. “And besides, I don’t have to
know
what something means in order to
be
it.”
    Perla glares at me.
    “Look,” she says. “I don’t need your negative energy all bringing me down and stuff.”
    And then she walks away from me.
    Like I’m poison.
    How did this happen?