I snicker, even though it feels mean.
Kiera stands next to her mom at the front of theclassroom, doling out cupcakes and going out of her way to give the best ones to the other pretty girls, like Alyssa, who is tall and willowy, and Samantha with her curly golden hair.
As we make our way to the front and Kiera hands Oscar a cupcake with yellow icing, I hear her tell her mom, “I asked for the two-tier cake. Everyone gets cupcakes. What’s special about cupcakes?”
“Kiera,” her mother says through a gritted smile, “cupcakes are easier to serve at school. Besides, cake is cake.”
Kiera turns to me and hands me one of the few cupcakes with black icing. Great. That’s gonna stain my teeth forever, basically.
“Oh, hi Sweet Pea!” Mrs. Bryant croons. “Will we see you on Sunday at the party?”
“Uh...”
“She’s busy,” says Kiera quickly.
Mrs. Bryant clicks her tongue. “What a shame.” She looks at me in earnest. Kiera is beautiful just like her mom. Mrs. Bryant is a petite black woman who wears her hair cut into a short pixie style. Kiera gets her height from her dad, who is a tall white guy with sandy-colored hair and suntanned leathery skin from years spent outside in the oil fields as he worked his way up to an office job. That means he spends most of his weekdays traveling all over the state.
Mrs. Bryant gently reaches for my elbow before I canslink away. “Is your mother doing okay with... with everything?”
I nod. “Just fine, Mrs. Bryant.” Mom has always liked Mrs. Bryant. She says Mrs. Bryant softens Mr. Bryant’s bravado, whatever that means.
“Well, listen,” she says, “if you find the time, we’d love to have you at the party.”
I turn to Kiera, my gaze narrowed. “I’ll talk to my mom.”
Class birthday parties are like the wild, wild west where the rules don’t apply, so I plop down on top of Oscar’s desk, something Mrs. Young—who’s doing a little happy dance with her shoulders as she gobbles down her cupcake—would never tolerate during normal classroom time.
I have a staring contest with my cupcake, wondering how bad the damage will be from the black icing.
“It’s worth it,” Oscar says through a mouthful of cake and icing. “Staining your teeth black is worth it. This stuff is delicious.”
I heed his advice and take a giant chomp out of my cupcake. Mrs. Bryant was right. Cake is cake. “Guess who just got invited to Kiera’s birthday party?”
He gasps and chokes on a few cupcake crumbs.
I pat his back and nod. “Kiera might just kill her mom for asking me to go.” I shrug. “She’s got nothing to worry about. I’d never go anyway.”
“Or you could,” says Oscar, taking a swig of his lemonade. “We both could.” It’s hard to ignore the hope in his voice. Kiera may not be his biggest fan, but if he skips out on this party, it’ll be my fault, not hers.
“I’m not that desperate.”
He nudges me. “Forget desperation. What better way to stick it to Kiera than to crash her perfect birthday party?”
If my life was a movie where I always had the best ideas and knew the perfect thing to say, I’d say Oscar was right. But the whole thought of it makes me uneasy. No way am I cool enough to pull off crashing Kiera’s birthday party without making myself look like the loser—or even getting kicked out! Talk about mortification to the billionth power.
Something about the whole idea, though, is hard for me to shake. It would be kind of great to go to Trampoline Zone. “I’ll think about it.”
“Sleepover at your place tonight?” asks Oscar.
“Sure.” I polish off the rest of my cupcake and check out my reflection in the window looking out onto the after-school pickup lanes outside. Yup, I look like I just ate a fistful of charcoal right out of the grill.
“Wait,” says Oscar. “Your mom’s or your dad’s?”
“Dad,” I say.
Greg walks past us with a cupcake iced with a big heart eye, handpicked by Kiera, I’m sure. He points to his teeth and says, “Zombie teeth. Nice.”
“It’s the latest trend. It’s to die for.”
