Chapter Four

Cammi

Saturday, September 30

When Cammi Lovett got up on Saturday morning, she went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, and then she went downstairs to watch Netflix on the computer. On Saturdays the screen rules were different. She could have an hour of screen time in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, but to get her hour in the afternoon she had to spend an hour reading or exercising first. She had to earn her second hour.

Cammi had her own weekend screen rules. If she got up before her parents—which she almost always did—she had free screen time until one of them woke up. It seemed like a fair rule to her, although she couldn’t quite say why. She could also eat as many cookies as she wanted, because if her parents didn’t see the cookies, then the cookies didn’t exist.

While Netflix was loading up, she checked her phone for texts. There were three from Becca sent this morning, the first one at six thirty a.m. Becca made a big deal about getting up early every day, not just school days. It was part of her program for Building a Better Becca, which she had started at the beginning of last summer. At first Cammi had sort of liked the idea. For her birthday in May, she’d been given a subscription to Girls’ Life magazine, and reading the articles had made her realize that she was behind in all sorts of things, like knowing what kind of jeans she looked best in and how to moisturize (you needed different products for your face and the rest of your body, it turned out, and it was important to moisturize your hair, too).

The only problem with building a better Cammi? It was boring. Moisturizing was extremely boring, and so was reading about the do’s and don’t’s of breaking up (she’d never even had a boyfriend!) and going shopping for the shoes that would make her shine. All the shoes in the pictures had high heels, which Cammi thought was crazy. Where was she going to wear high heels? The Oscars?

But the most boring thing of all was listening to Becca go on and on about her plan to impress for success. That was the motto for her Building a Better Becca (and a better Cammi) program. Becca believed that when you worked hard to impress other people, you were destined to be successful. By mid-July Cammi had started asking her, “Successful at what? Why do we have to be successful? We’re only eleven.” Becca swatted all of Cammi’s questions away. “Just stick with me and you’ll see,” she’d said.

Of course Cammi had stuck with Becca. Who else was she supposed to stick with? They lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same pool, rode the same bus to school, were in the same grade, and this year they both had Mrs. Herrera for their lead teacher. It was like they were living the exact same lives.

Except that they weren’t. For one thing, here it was eight forty-five and Cammi was just getting up. Plus, she was going to watch One Tree Hill on Netflix, a show that Becca disapproved of because it was junky, even if it was from a million years ago. That was one of Becca’s mom’s words. Junky. As in “a bunch of junk.” As in “a big waste of time.” But what was wrong with wasting time every once in a while? Or eating Chips Ahoy cookies for breakfast on Saturday mornings?

Cammi scrolled through Becca’s texts. Need to plan the Carson campaign, she’d written in the first one. Cammi rolled her eyes when she read this. Carson Bennett was the cutest, most popular boy in their class. To him, girls like Becca and Cammi were bugs on the windshield of life. But for some reason, Becca thought she had a chance to become Carson’s girlfriend or even just his friend. Why don’t you come over at 10? the next text, sent at 6:59, read. In her last text, Becca’s plans get specific. Bring your GL mags with you. We can make a scrapbook for stuff like clothes and what to do with our hair. I bought some makeup at Target yesterday, so we could experiment as long as we wash everything off before my mom sees.

Cammi wondered how Becca managed to buy makeup without her mom noticing. Well, that was the funny thing about Becca’s mom, she thought. Either Mrs. Hobbes was totally on Becca’s case for the littlest things (“Becca, I see three hairs in the bathroom sink, and they look like yours!”) or she was kind of weirdly absent. She was also the only mom Cammi knew who drank wine at lunch or took long afternoon naps. “Her grandmother was from Europe,” Becca liked to say whenever there was an open wine bottle on the kitchen counter in the middle of the day or they found her mom asleep on the couch. When they’d been little, Cammi had accepted that as a reasonable explanation. Now she’d seen enough movies and watched enough TV to think Riiiiight whenever Becca used some ancient European relative to explain her mom’s strange behavior.

Cammi heard the upstairs toilet flush and scrambled to shut down the computer. She pulled her copy of Wonder out of her backpack and opened to a random page. They were reading Wonder in LA, and Cammi thought you could tell a lot about people by how they reacted to it. Henry Lloyd had brought in pictures of people with the main character’s condition he’d printed out from the Internet, and a lot of the boys had started yelling stuff like, “Dude, how rude is that?” and “Who puked up that face?”

Bart Weems had looked at the pictures and shaken his head. “If we weren’t reading Wonder, I’d be totally grossed out,” he’d said. “But if I pretend these are pictures of Auggie, they don’t bother me so much.”

Cammi had wanted to go up to Bart Weems and shake his hand, but unfortunately, Bart chewed his fingernails and his fingertips always looked waterlogged and mushroom-y, so Cammi didn’t actually want to touch them. Maybe she could write about that for the journal entry she was supposed to do for LA this weekend. She wouldn’t use Bart’s name, of course. But she could write about how you could like someone and see that they were a great person but still sort of be grossed out by them. She knew it wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to admit, but she felt like Mrs. Herrera would understand.

Her phone buzzed. Cammi didn’t have to look to know it was Becca. She sighed. No offense, but she was starting to think it was time to take a Becca break. Her entire life, Becca had been making plans and Cammi had been following them. Some of Becca’s ideas over the years had been great—the lemonade stand they’d had this summer, where they made enough money to buy matching phone cases—and others had flopped big-time, like when they set up a sidewalk beauty parlor and dyed Flora Foote’s hair with cherry-flavored Kool-Aid. Good or bad, interesting or really stupid, Cammi always ended up going along with Becca’s plans because—because why? Because that was her role in life, she guessed. Because Becca pushed and pushed and pushed until it was just easier to say yes to whatever scheme she’d come up with than to resist.

But this whole Carson Bennett campaign might be where Cammi finally put her foot down. Really, she was supposed to help Becca find ways to make Carson fall in love with her? Come on. Why couldn’t Becca see that boys like Carson didn’t like girls like Becca and Cammi?

Or maybe he just didn’t like girls like Becca. Had Cammi ever considered that?

She fell back as though the force of this idea had pushed her into the couch cushions. Did she actually have any evidence that Carson Bennett didn’t like her? Not like like, but like as in “didn’t actually find her all that irritating” or “had friendly feelings about her.” Last year they’d done a Spanish project together and gotten a B-, which was not a great grade for Cammi, but Carson had high-fived her and yelled, “All right, pardnah!” (This was something Carson could get away with, saying “pardnah” instead of “partner,” even if it was super dumb. If someone like Bart Weems had said it, the whole class would have gone quiet until someone started snickering behind their hand, and then everyone would have laughed until they were rolling out of their seats.)

Maybe she should text Carson, just to say hi. She wouldn’t say anything stupid (definitely not Hi, pardnah! or even Hi, partner!). She could text something like Hey, have you studied for the Spanish quiz on Tuesday? It was the sort of question that didn’t have any secret meaning, and it wouldn’t be a big deal if their conversation didn’t go anywhere. She could just act like she was trying to figure out how much time she should spend on getting ready for the test.

Cammi had to admit that it felt a little disloyal to text Carson, especially since she was totally ignoring Becca. Carson was Becca’s crush, not hers. But she wasn’t trying to get Carson to like her, not like her like her. She just wanted to see if Carson saw her as someone separate from Becca Hobbes. Someone who was kind of normal and fun and maybe even had her own plans and ideas. Good plans and ideas.

She could hear her dad in the kitchen, making coffee. She didn’t want to text Carson in front of him, so she slipped her phone into her back pocket and tiptoed out of the family room and up the stairs. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have her phone in her bedroom, but technically, only her mom remembered to check and her mom was still asleep.

Her room was a mess, something she’d deal with after she sent Carson a text. It would keep her mind off waiting for him to text back. But wait—what if he didn’t text back? Then what?

Then nothing, she decided. It wasn’t like he’d come up to her in homeroom on Monday and say, Hey, I got your text but I decided not to reply because you’re a big social zero. If Carson didn’t text back, Cammi would just pretend she’d never sent a text in the first place. No biggie.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and flopped down on her unmade bed. Carson was already in her contact list, because Becca had decided they should have all the popular people’s numbers in their contact lists. That way, if Carson or Petra or Garrison ever texted one of them, they wouldn’t have to text back, Who is this?

Hi, this is Cammi. Are you going to study for the Spanish quiz this weekend, she wrote, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her ears, or are you going to wait until Monday night.

She tapped send and then realized with horror she had put a period instead of a question mark at the end of the sentence. Would Carson think she was an idiot? Okay, she told herself, take a breath and calm down. What was the likelihood that someone like Carson Bennett would even notice? He wasn’t Ben McPherson, after all, Mr. Brainiac of the universe. To be honest, Cammi wasn’t even sure Carson was smart.

She was kicking the clothes on the floor into a pile when her phone pinged. Barely thirty seconds had passed since she’d sent the text. Cammi’s hands started shaking. Had Carson Bennett really replied that fast? No, it was probably Becca again. Cammi sighed and rolled her eyes. Why couldn’t Becca go five minutes without sending her a text? Could she be any more annoying?

But when she picked up her phone, the name at the top of the screen wasn’t Becca’s. It was Carson’s.

Carson Bennett had texted her back.

Carson. Bennett.

Yeah, I got a D on the last test and my moms really made, he’d written. You want to come over tomorrow and study? Unless you got a D too!

Cammi took a deep breath. This could be a prank. She could say yes and Carson might text, You thought I was serious? He could be hanging out with his friends—his pardnahs—and they might all be laughing hysterically right this very minute. Still, what choice did Cammi have?

Yeah, that sounds good, she wrote. What time?

She squeezed her eyes shut. Took another deep breath. Waited.

How about after lunch? Maybe like 1?

Cool, Cammi texted back. See you then.

Cool. C YA!

Cammi stared at her phone. Was this really happening? She took a screenshot and was about to send it to Becca, but then she thought better of it. Becca would insist on coming over and planning what Cammi should wear and forcing her to brainstorm a list of ten conversation starters. She’d want to plot out a strategy for getting Carson to ask Cammi to the Fall Ball. She’d probably want to dye Cammi’s hair with cherry-flavored Kool-Aid. She’d probably ask to come along. No, Cammi decided. She’d better keep Becca out of this.

She clicked on Becca’s last text. Sorry, she wrote. I’m not feeling so good. My mom says I better stay home this weekend.

Then she fell back against her pillow and started to laugh. She was going over to Carson Bennett’s house tomorrow! Where next? The White House? Buckingham Palace?

Carson Bennett’s house? Cammi sat up straight. What if she went over there and said stupid things and Carson ended up hating her? Okay, don’t panic, she thought. Carson likes sports. You like sports. You could talk about how cool it is that Mrs. Herrera has a football signed by Jim Brown. Cammi hadn’t actually known who Jim Brown was until she asked her dad, who told her he had been a running back for Cleveland in the 1960s and was one of the greatest football players ever. Maybe Cammi could spend time this afternoon doing some research on Jim Brown and use it as a conversation starter. So I guess you probably know all about Jim Brown, she’d say casually, and if Carson said no, he didn’t really know all that much, then Cammi could impress him with her extensive Jim Brown knowledge.

Down the hall, the toilet flushed in her parents’ bathroom. Cammi scrambled out of bed, shoving her phone in her pocket. Her mom was up. Time to go downstairs and restart her morning. She grabbed the September Girls’ Life on the way out of her room. A little football talk, some lip gloss… Tomorrow could be a very interesting day.