Project (Un)Popular Book #1

1

Spirit Day Photos

In a perfect world I would’ve digitally removed the booger from Derby Esposito’s nose days ago. Because if you didn’t zoom in close and look for the booger, it was arguably the best picture anybody on Yearbook staff at Rocky Mountain Middle School had taken on Spirit Day. It totally captured the mood and the moment. I’d framed Derby perfectly beneath our school banner, and caught him jumping off the stairs near the trophy case in midflight, his smile in perfect focus as his noodle-hair wig and full-body cape swirled around him. I mean, it told a story: Nerdy caped boy with noodle hair enthusiastically loves his school.

“Nobody will see it. And it might not be a booger,” Venice said, leaning forward to inspect the computer screen. “I think it looks like cupcake frosting. Maybe other people will think so too.”

Venice was sweet like that. She always assumed the best about everybody. Nobody was going to think that was frosting.

“All these rules really hold me back artistically,” I said. “Without them, I could be delivering much better work.”

Venice gave me a hug. She felt the same way. But there really wasn’t anything I could do. Seriously. Removing that booger would have meant automatic detention. I mean, even though we were the yearbook’s junior photographers, Venice and I didn’t have much power. We weren’t allowed to change any of the photos without getting written permission from three people: Anya, our yearbook photography editor; Ms. Kenny, our yearbook faculty advisor; and the person whose image we wanted to alter. I thought getting written permission from three people to remove a single booger felt lame. But Yearbook had a firm image-editing policy. Last year some of the junior photographers had gone rogue and used high-quality image-editing software to adjust a few seventh graders’ facial expressions. Also, somebody added a tiger to three basketball game photos. It wasn’t like they made the tiger a jersey and turned it into a player. The tiger just sat in the stands, holding a soda and waving a foam finger. But the edited photos hadn’t gone over well. Fingers were pointed. People got blamed. And that was why my best Spirit Day photo had to include Derby Esposito’s booger.

It’s amazing how a couple of people who came before us and behaved crazily could make it so we had to follow terrible rules.

“You need to stop stressing out about every little detail,” Venice said, clicking on a photo I’d taken of Drea Quan.

“Look at how amazing her hair looks upside down,” Venice said.

I’d caught Drea mid-cartwheel at last week’s pep rally. She played the flute in the band. I was really surprised and impressed she could hold her instrument and do gymnastics.

“Your work is magical,” Venice said. “It belongs in magazines.”

I leaned my head against Venice’s shoulder. She was the most awesome best friend ever. Seriously. I couldn’t imagine sixth grade without her.

“Don’t forget to fill out your performance evaluations,” a voice said. “Ms. Kenny will collect them right after the bell.” But I didn’t even respond to that statement. Because I was really focused on looking at a photo that Venice had taken of a bunch of eighth-grade boys trying to climb the flagpole.

“Thanks, Leo,” Venice said.

I rolled my eyes when I heard that. I didn’t need Leo Banks to remind me of anything. Venice and I were both excellent students. We weren’t going to blow off turning in our first self-evaluations. I looked up and watched him wander off to join his friends at the business table. Why couldn’t Leo be more like them? Javier, Eli, and Luke never bugged us. I think it was because they were normal seventh graders who looked cute and worked hard on their advertising and financial assignments. Unlike Leo, who, for some reason, was a seventh grader who didn’t look cute and tried to offer annoying input almost every class.

“I bet Anya takes a bunch of these,” Venice said, clicking through the last photos in the folder.

“I hope so,” I said. So far she’d been a superharsh judge of our work. She had found something wrong with every single photo Venice and I submitted. Weird shadows. Improper centering. Low-flying birds. Her reaction surprised me a ton. Because Anya, along with Ms. Kenny, had been responsible for picking us to be on Yearbook in the first place.

When Anya whooshed into the room, you could totally feel the energy change. Instead of taking her assignment folder and hanging out with Sailor and Sabrina like she usually did, she walked right over to where we were sitting and bent down to look at our computer. When I say that Anya whooshed, I mean that she actually went whoosh. Every time she arrived somewhere she let out a dramatic breath.

“Hi, Anya,” Venice said, adjusting the brightness on her flagpole photo, trying to lighten the sky.

“Okay,” Anya said, leaning in a little bit closer. “Please don’t freak out, but we need to talk about something that’s not very pleasant.”

I immediately thought about Derby and his booger. I looked at Venice. Why had she let me include that photo?

“Is it about our photos?” Venice asked.

Venice was bold like that. She always wanted to get straight to the point.

“Venice,” Anya said, frowning a little at the flagpole photo on the screen. “Perry,” she said, looking down at me with a serious face. “I want to help you guys get to the next level. And do you know what I see when I look at the photos you submitted this week?”

All I could think about was Derby and his unfortunate nose contents.

“What?” Venice asked.

“Room to improve,” Anya said.

Ring.

Those were pretty crushing words. Maybe it was a sixth grader/eighth grader thing. Or maybe it was because she acted like my disappointed boss. But Anya O’Shea made me really nervous. Even her clothes made me feel that way. Once a week she liked to wear a bright white double-wrap crocodile-skin belt. Usually she wore it with jeans. But today she was wearing it with an electric-pink skirt. I’m not saying it looked bad. Or that she wore it too much. It’s just, I never would have considered buying an accessory that had once been a white crocodile.

Venice and I dropped our evals into the wire basket on Ms. Kenny’s cluttered desk and then hunkered down at the back table. We had given ourselves fairly positive reviews. We were great at labeling and stickering all our materials. We turned everything in on time. We consistently worked extra hours after school and on weekends. Plus, our first signature unit was 80 percent complete.

Venice reached out and looped her pinky around mine. Looking down and seeing our matching fingernails felt pretty reassuring. We’d taken turns painting each other’s nails two days ago, following some very detailed instructions I’d found online. So our fingertips looked really stylish, and also like caterpillar heads, except for our right pinkies, which were emblazoned with a cool squiggly triangle called an Akoben that Venice said was an African symbol for strength. Anya sat down across from us and glanced at our nails but didn’t give us a compliment. Her nails were plain. So I figured she was the kind of person who didn’t know how to fully embrace nail art. She tucked a piece of her ridiculously shiny blond bob behind her ear and set two folders down in front of us. One was labeled Venice and the other was labeled Perry. “You know I’m a fan of your work,” she said. “That’s why you guys are here.”

Things felt really formal all of a sudden. Usually Anya sat next to us. Did she really need to sit across from us and present us with labeled folders? I mean, did we really need to pretend we were in a business meeting?

“Let’s pretend we’re in a business meeting,” Anya said.

I felt Venice reach out and gently touch my leg with her right pinky. I knew what she was doing. She was sending me secret squiggly strength. Venice was so good at sending me tiny messages. Seriously. She was the most awesome friend ever. Plus, she always smelled like cinnamon.

“Okay. Some people show up to Yearbook thinking that it’s an arts-and-crafts free-for-all.” Anya picked up a black marker and wrote the word fun on a piece of paper. Then she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto the big rectangular desk next to us.

Venice and I both watched as Anya picked up a stapler and dramatically pounded the paper ball a few times. I thought Ms. Kenny would come over and say something. I mean, it’s very intimidating when an eighth grader starts slamming around office products. But Ms. Kenny didn’t interrupt anything. She actually gave Anya a thumbs-up and said, “Check back in with me when you’re finished.”

“Absolutely,” Anya said. She picked up the flattened fun paper and threw it on the floor. Then she crushed it under the heel of her ankle boot. “This isn’t playtime anymore.”

“Crap,” Venice said.

This really surprised me. Venice hardly ever used that word. She was classy.

“You shouldn’t say crap in a business meeting,” Anya said, reaching for the folder labeled Venice.

“But I think I just sat in gum,” Venice said.

I felt terrible for Venice. Because she was wearing awesome gray jeans. And a butt-gum mark would definitely ruin the look she was going for.

“That’s nuts,” Anya said loudly. “Everybody knows that gum is banned from the workroom.”

The room grew quiet.

“Who put gum on the chair?” Anya asked.

Everybody looked our way. Even Ms. Kenny.

Venice stood up, revealing a wad of something dark brown stuck to her behind. I couldn’t believe it. The wad looked exactly like a dog turd. But I didn’t want to say that out loud. Poor Venice. The whole class was looking at her butt and it had something unspeakably gross stuck to it. Other than being hit by a school bus, this was basically the worst thing that could happen during the first month of school. She swept her hands over her rear end to try to dislodge whatever was attached.

“Don’t touch it!” I said, jumping to my feet. “I need paper towels.” I had to save my friend. The faster we cleaned her pants, the better.

“Oh, that’s mine,” Leo said in a very calm voice.

I stopped looking for the paper towels. What kind of weirdo jerk brings dog turds to school? Seriously. Who does that?

I watched Leo hurry over to Venice. He looked super tall in his extra-dark jeans. I felt so annoyed watching him. Venice looked very unsure of what to do. Which made sense. When we’d talked about how awesome being a sixth grader was going to be, we never imagined anything would get stuck to our butts.

“We shouldn’t let art supplies migrate from the art supply area, Leo,” Anya said in a friendly but stern voice.

“Sorry,” Leo said. “I must’ve dropped it.”

He swiped his long bangs out of his eyes and then stood in front of Venice for what seemed like a year.

“Um, can you hand me my gummy eraser?” he asked, looking down at his sneakers.

I’d never even heard of a gummy eraser before, but I wasn’t startled by the fact that they existed. Because I was in middle school now--a place filled with stuff that was totally new and different and possibly weird-looking.

Venice started to turn pink. She pulled the glob off her butt and thrust it toward him. The wad was indented with the stitching of her butt seam. I thought maybe she should have squashed it in her hand before she gave it to him. It seemed overly personal to give the yearbook’s advertising manager an imprint of your rear end. But she handed him his gummy eraser just like that.

“That was so weird,” Venice said, making a goofy face at Sabrina, who was making a goofy face back.

“We don’t have time to mess around today,” Anya said. “Let’s move forward.”

As soon as Anya opened the folder labeled Venice, I felt so much more fidgety. The folder was filled with photos Venice had turned in when we applied to be junior photographers. Venice and I didn’t really take pictures to be evaluated. We did it to express ourselves. Even applying to be on Yearbook staff had almost given me full-body hives. I mean, assembling my photos for other people to judge made me feel almost naked. And Venice totally understood. She felt the same way. Taking pictures was fun. But sharing them with other people for critical viewing made us feel super nervous and fragile. Hopefully, Anya would understand that.

“Is Ms. Kenny part of this?” Venice asked.

She sounded hesitant. Which made sense. It felt like we were about to get slaughtered.

“Ms. Kenny is tied up with business stuff today. She already knows what I’m gonna say. Cool?” Anya asked, sliding a stack of Venice’s photos onto her desk.

“Um, cool,” Venice said.

But I didn’t say cool, because I didn’t feel entirely cool about this. Sometimes Anya felt more like the teacher than Ms. Kenny. Which was a little weird, because Anya might not have even been thirteen.

“I want to talk about strengths and weaknesses,” Anya said. Her eyes scanned Venice’s photo of a barn with incredible intensity. Deep down, we really wanted to work with Anya and hear her advice. She was super talented and had won a bunch of photography competitions. One picture she’d taken of a jellyfish had been a finalist for National Geographic Kids magazine and appeared on their website.

“I love your black-and-whites. You do such a good job with landscape,” Anya said, pointing to a row of pine trees lining a hiking trail near our favorite park.

“I have a real passion for trees,” Venice said, leaning in closer to look at her own photos for the thousandth time.

Anya nodded and went to another photo. “Do you want me to tell you your strength here?” she asked.

She didn’t even give Venice time to answer before she blurted it out. “You really consider the sky.” She pulled out another picture. One Venice had taken of a field of brown cows with long clouds stretching over them.

“Totally gorgeous, and I don’t even like cows,” Anya said.

Venice nodded. “I prefer horses.”

“Are you ready to hear your weaknesses?” Anya asked.

I thought that felt pretty advanced. But it seemed like it was gonna happen whether we were ready or not.

“You need to move in closer,” she said. “It’s a common weakness. But think about how much hotter this hot guy would look if we saw more face area and less bicycle area.”

“Um, that’s my brother,” Venice said.

“Congratulations,” Anya said. “You clearly come from great genes.”