Chapter Two
Becca
Friday, September 29
On Monday Mrs. Herrera had promised her homeroom class a pizza lunch on Friday if they could read a total of a thousand pages by the end of the week. Becca thought that when you had someone like Stefan Morrisey in your class, a boy who read one two-pound book per day, a thousand pages was no problem at all. When she pointed this out to Mrs. Herrera, however, several of her classmates had tried to shut her up. But who wanted easy pizza?
Anyway, Becca herself could easily read at least two books between Monday and Friday, so Mrs. Herrera doubled the number of pages. The class, which included two other star readers (Ellie Barker and Ben McPherson), still met the goal easily, and so at eleven fifteen Friday morning, Mrs. Herrera put in the order.
Thirty minutes later, the pizzas were lined up on the long table at the back of the room, and Becca almost fainted, they smelled so good. But when Mrs. Herrera opened up the boxes, she discovered the pizza place had gotten the order wrong.
“Instead of three large pepperonis and two large cheeses, they brought four extra-large pepperonis and one small cheese,” Mrs. Herrera said as she examined the pizzas. She turned to look at the class. “Everybody but Aadita eats pepperoni, right?” she asked, and everyone nodded.
But then Carson Bennett, the most popular boy in their class, raised his hand and said, “My mom won’t let me eat pepperoni anymore because of the nitrates. Or nitrites. I’m not quite sure. Besides, I’m thinking about becoming a vegetarian.”
Aadita’s face lit up with a shy smile. She had been the class’s only vegetarian up to now, and Becca could tell she wouldn’t mind some company.
Becca’s hand shot up. She had no idea how it happened. She hadn’t meant to raise her hand. She loved pepperoni. But when Mrs. Herrera said, “Yes, Becca? Do you not eat pepperoni?” Becca had shaken her head. “I can’t. I’m a vegetarian too.”
Her best friend, Cammi, raised her hand (in Mrs. Herrera’s class you always raised your hand, even when you were discussing pizza, and even if your question was for someone other than Mrs. Herrera). “Since when are you a vegetarian? You had a turkey sandwich for lunch yesterday.”
“I decided last night,” Becca said, and she said it with so much conviction that she almost believed it herself. “I saw a documentary about how farm animals are treated. It was pretty horrible.” She turned to Carson. “I think it’s great you’re a vegetarian too.”
Carson ignored her. Boys like Carson usually ignored her, but Becca hadn’t really cared about it until this year. Suddenly, and much to her dismay, she cared a lot. She had been trying to figure out how to get Carson’s attention since school started, but so far none of her ideas had worked. He hadn’t wanted to be her study buddy in history, even though Becca was excellent at history and Carson had a hard time getting Cs, even on the easy stuff like the Friday quizzes. She made a funny video of her dog, Biggley, and tried to make Carson watch it on her phone, but he’d just given her a confused look and said, “Why would I want to watch that?”
Becca raised her hand. “Mrs. Herrera, since one thing Carson is worried about is nitrates, he should definitely eat the cheese pizza. I’ll be happy to share it with him.”
“What about Aadita?” Mrs. Herrera asked. “Up until just now, she was the only official vegetarian in this class. Suddenly I have three.”
Becca could tell Mrs. Herrera wasn’t happy with her. She was pretty sure Mrs. Herrera knew she was lying about being a vegetarian. Becca felt a little sick. She’d been working so hard to make Mrs. Herrera like her, and now she’d blown it! Over a stupid pizza. Becca blinked back tears. Five weeks’ worth of hard work, down the drain. And now Mrs. Herrera would probably call Becca’s mom. Becca caused a commotion in class today, she’d say. I’m very disappointed.
Becca’s stomach started to hurt. She’d never had a teacher disappointed in her before. She didn’t even know that was possible.
Up until sixth grade, Becca Hobbes had always been her teachers’ favorite. It really wasn’t that hard; in fact, it just took a few simple tricks. First, never talk back or talk when the teacher is talking. Second, always do your homework and turn it in on time. Third, make sure to compliment your teacher twice a day, once in the morning and again when the last bell rings and you’re walking out the classroom door.
People called her a brownnoser or a Goody Two-shoes, but Becca ignored them. She knew it was her job to keep the adults in her life happy, and she was very, very good at it. She was good at bringing her mother a cup of tea in the morning and listening sympathetically as she complained about how early Becca’s father got up in the morning and how late he came home at night, and how she had a headache again and needed more sleep. Becca was good at helping her little sister get ready for school and cleaning up the breakfast dishes so that her mother wouldn’t lecture her when she got home about how mothers weren’t servants, they were people too, and everyone needed to do their fair share around the house. She was good at leaving a few minutes early in the morning to fetch Mrs. Quentin’s paper from the bottom of her driveway and deliver it to the elderly woman’s front porch before she walked to the bus stop. She knew that when Mrs. Quentin saw Becca’s mother, she’d gush about what a nice, thoughtful girl Becca was, and that would make Becca’s mother happy.
Becca’s life was about keeping adults happy. And when Becca was at school, that meant it was all about keeping the teachers happy.
It was easy enough to do, especially because Becca usually got 100s on her tests and quizzes and liked to volunteer in class when nobody else would. She was eager to be the first one to give her oral report or to miss five minutes of recess when a teacher needed someone to erase the whiteboards or straighten up the reading center. As a result, her teachers had always loved her and said things like, “I wish more of my students were like Becca Hobbes.”
And sometimes they even e-mailed her mother telling her what a good girl she was, and that made her mother happy, which made life a whole lot easier for Becca.
Mrs. Herrera was different. Mrs. Herrera didn’t seem to have a favorite student. Becca had been working on her steadily since the beginning of school, paying her three compliments a day rather than her usual two and bringing in special treats that she left on Mrs. Herrera’s desk—pencils that read WORLD’S GREATEST TEACHER and bags of mini Oreos. She stuck Post-it notes on the treats that said things like, This is for all the hard work you do! xoxo, Becca. Mrs. Herrera always thanked her, but she still didn’t act like Becca was her favorite. She’d never e-mailed Becca’s mother to say how much she appreciated Becca’s efforts and her thoughtful gifts.
Up until the pizza party, Becca had refused to give up. In fact, she thought she might be making progress. Mrs. Herrera had twice asked her to run up to the office to drop off some forms in the last two weeks, and last week she had complimented Becca on how neat she kept her language arts notebook. Becca was already planning what to get Mrs. Herrera for Christmas, something her teacher would love so much she’d put it in her special collection of special things, next to her signed copy of Hatchet and her grandmother’s tortoiseshell comb. She was pretty sure a really good Christmas present would clinch the deal.
Well, she’d have to come up with an entirely new game plan, Becca thought now, sniffing back her tears. But first she needed to solve the pizza problem.
“Aadita can have pepperoni and just take the pepperonis off. In her culture, cows are holy, but pigs aren’t, so it’s okay if there’s pepperoni juice on her pizza,” she told Mrs. Herrera. “Personally, now that I’m a vegetarian like Carson, pepperoni juice would probably make me throw up. I mean, you could even wipe the juice off with a napkin and I’d still get sick to my stomach.”
She turned and smiled at Carson, but Carson didn’t smile back.
Cammi raised her hand again. “Could you please stop saying ‘pepperoni juice’? I’m losing my appetite.”
A bunch of other people said they were losing their appetites too, and Lila Willis said she’d just remembered she’d seen the same animal documentary that Becca had seen and now she didn’t want to eat meat anymore either. Lila was one of the three really popular girls in their class, and in Becca’s opinion she was almost as mean as Petra Wilde, but that didn’t stop Carson from giving her a big smile and saying, “Way to join the team, Lila!” Something he had definitely not said to Becca.
As soon as Lila said she didn’t want pepperoni, no one else wanted it either, except for Ben McPherson, who never cared what other kids did. “Is it okay if I start?” he asked Mrs. Herrera, who nodded. “Who else will eat some pepperoni?” she asked the class, and when no one else said they would, she looked irritated. “Well, I just wasted a lot of our special treat money,” she said. “You might have become vegetarians before I placed our order.”
Aadita raised her hand. “I’ll eat pepperoni if I can take off the pepperonis,” she offered. “I think that would be okay.”
Carson raised his hand. “Maybe I could have pepperoni without the pepperoni too. I could use a napkin to sort of clean the pizza up.”
Everyone decided to have pepperoni pizza without the pepperoni. Becca wanted a piece of pepperoni pizza so badly she thought she might fall over, but now she couldn’t have one, even if she took the pepperoni off and wiped the pizza off with a napkin.
“I’ll just skip lunch,” she told Mrs. Herrera, hoping her teacher would notice the great sacrifice she was making for the class. “Carson and Aadita can have the cheese pizza. Could I go to the book nook? I can alphabetize the books while everyone else is eating.”
“I have some things you could eat,” Mrs. Herrera said, opening her bottom desk drawer. “Here’s an apple and some cheese crackers. Oh, and three packs of mini Oreos.”
They were the same packs of mini Oreos that Becca had given her. One still even had Becca’s Post-it note on it.
It was the sight of all those uneaten Oreos that made Becca realize she would never be Mrs. Herrera’s favorite. Mrs. Herrera would never e-mail her mother to say she wished all her students were just like Becca Hobbes. Becca’s mother would want to know if Becca had started misbehaving in class. Was Becca turning into Leda French, a girl on their street who’d dyed her hair blue and started wearing clunky black boots in ninth grade?
Seeing those cookies made Becca realize that Mrs. Herrera wasn’t a very nice person. A nice person would have at least taken the Oreos to the teacher’s lounge and let Becca think that she’d eaten them. Mrs. Herrera just left the packs of cookies—one with Becca’s note still attached!—where anyone could see them. It was humiliating.
A nice person would have e-mailed Becca’s mother by now.
That was when Becca changed her plan. Now you couldn’t pay Becca enough to be Mrs. Herrera’s favorite. From now on, she would be Mrs. Herrera’s unfavorite. She would make Mrs. Herrera pay.