Grow Up, Tahlia Wilkins!

CHAPTER ONE

It’s official—my traitorous chin is growing a zit.

Well, I guess I’m not exactly positive—I could probably count on one hand the number of pimples I’ve had—but I’m pretty sure the throbbing feeling just below my lower lip did not come from some bee that managed to fly into Mrs. Brown’s classroom and sting my face without anyone noticing.

The timing could not be worse. I do not want to have a pimple right in time for the most important event of my life—Noah Campos’s pool party.

A.k.a. the event that will make or break my entire summer.

Since Noah is the most popular kid in the seventh grade, the pool party is all anyone’s been talking about for the last month of school. Anyone who has been invited, that is. Pretty sure Alexa Arnecki, the girl who still brings dolls to school, and Keith Green, the kid who wears pajama pants to class and serenades people on their birthday, won’t be there.

It’s my chance to prove to everyone that I am not the same girl who wore a one-piece bathing suit with knee-length board shorts and goggles to Noah’s start-of-summer pool party last year. No sirree!

I cringe at the memory. I’d worn the board shorts so that my legs wouldn’t get burned in the sun, and I’d worn the goggles because I thought we’d be doing flips into the pool and I didn’t want to get water in my eyes. But when I got there, all the other girls were in cute bathing suits. Even Hannah Bean, who’d worn oversized soccer jerseys to school every single day last year, had on a fun two-piece suit for the party.

How was I the only one to miss the memo? Hadn’t we all just learned in Mr. Richard’s sixth-grade class how important it was to cover up to prevent too much sun exposure?

Everyone had laughed at me and asked if I was planning on going tide-pooling. I even heard them whispering about my “baby goggles” for the rest of the party.

I cannot let that happen to me again.

But now, my throbbing chin threatens to ruin everything. What if a whole zit cluster pops up? A pack of pimples does not scream new and improved. It screams, Look at these planets on my face! And it’s just my luck. Now I have less than twenty-four hours before the party to destroy my soon-to-be pimple solar system. Greeaat.

I run my finger over the throbbing area before swiping open the front-facing camera on my phone to stare at my chin. The camera angle makes my face look like a thumb.

Yup, it’s a growing pimple, all right. A biggie too. And it gets redder and redder the more I poke at it, trying to force it to go back down.

Am I supposed to know how to get rid of this bulging life-ruiner? I’ve never seen Noah Campos poking around on his face. Maybe he knows of some secret anti-acne formula.

“Ahem. Tahlia?”

I look up to see my teacher, Mrs. Brown, staring at me from the front of the classroom with her arms crossed.

I gulp. I’d almost forgotten I was still in class.

“I know it’s the last day of school, but I still need your attention until the bell rings, yes?” She raises an eyebrow. “No phones.”

I quickly set my phone screen-down on my desk and give her my best “I’m genuinely sorry” expression.

Mrs. Brown nods and continues on with whatever she was saying.

I look over my shoulder to see my best friend, Lily, rolling her eyes. Lily’s dark hair is pulled up into a bun, and her purple braces match her purple-striped shirt. I think the purple-on-purple combo makes her seem even younger than she is. She’s already the youngest in our grade, so the bright colors make her look like a little crayon. Sometimes I wish she’d outgrow all the matchy-matchy, but I’d never tell her that.

Lily and I met on the very first day of kindergarten, and we’ve been practically sisters ever since, so she knows me well enough to see I’m definitely not sorry for ignoring Mrs. Brown. And why should I be? We took our end-of-the-year tests two weeks ago, and we haven’t learned anything since. My pimple emergency is much more important than listening to Mrs. Brown go on about how much of a “pleasure” it’s been to have us in her class. Teachers have to say stuff like that, even if they don’t mean it—and in this case, Mrs. Brown definitely doesn’t. I personally saw Amir Abdi jam a pencil up his nose and try to take a pop quiz without using his hands. Twice. That was not a “pleasure” to watch.

“And that’s why I know you’ll all do great next year on the eighth-grade side of campus,” finishes Mrs. Brown. “It’s been so nice getting to know you all.”

From her seat behind Lily, Jackie Berg raises her hand and starts talking before Mrs. Brown has a chance to call on her.

“When do we get our class schedules for next year?” Jackie asks, flipping her long hair behind her shoulder.

Jackie used to hang out with Lily and me every weekend in elementary school—in fact, when we started classes this year, she even rode her bike to school with us. But ever since she started straightening her hair and wearing shoes not meant for pedaling, she stopped biking and started having her parents drop her off. Now she spends the weekends with popular kids like Noah Campos.

I tried asking my parents to drive Lily and me to school, but they laughed me out of the room. So I’m doomed to helmet hair and dirty sneakers.

“Sometime in August,” Mrs. Brown answers.

I pick at my chin. I think I read somewhere that yogurt is good to smear on pimples. Or was it mayonnaise? I can’t remember now. Ugh! School just needs to be over so I can figure this out.

“Anyway”—Mrs. Brown looks up at the clock on the wall—“I know the last bell is about to ring and you’ll go racing out of here, but enjoy your summer and make sure to come visit me and the rest of your seventh-grade teachers next year!” She claps her hands together with a big grin.

On cue, the last bell finally goes off, and a few kids throw their papers up in the air and let them flutter to the floor. I grab my phone and swipe open the camera again to look at my chin as the rest of the class gathers their things and hustles out of the room.

“Leave it alone!” Lily whispers as she comes up behind me.

The very fact that she knows what I’m picking at means that she can see the growing zit, which does not make me want to leave it alone. It makes me want to pick at it until it’s completely gone.

“Easy for you to say. You’ve never had one.” I frown.

Lily rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says, tugging my arm and pulling me out of my desk. “My mom wants me to come straight home after school.”

I sigh and stand. We really can’t dawdle if Lily’s mom wants her home. Her mom is eight months’ pregnant, so whatever she says goes.

Yup, that’s right—pregnant. As in, with a real live baby. I nearly choked on a pretzel when Lily told me the news. My best friend being a big sister? It’s just so weird. And unexpected. But I’ve accepted it now.

Mostly.

Lily and I march out of the classroom and head toward the bike rack. A group of eighth graders are celebrating finishing middle school by taking pictures in front of our school’s sign. They laugh and pose as they take turns snapping the photos, making sure all their friends have a chance to be in a big group shot. It looks fun.

If Noah’s party goes well tomorrow, maybe when Lily and I graduate middle school next year, it won’t be just the two of us taking pictures of each other. We might even have our own group. Sigh.

When we reach our bikes, Jackie is leaning up against the rack and scrolling through her phone.

“Hey, Jackie!” Lily waves.

I try not to groan. Lily is always so nice to her. It’s like she doesn’t even care that Jackie used to be our close friend before she ditched us. She used to be part of our little group. One day we were all eating lunch together, and the next Jackie was across the cafeteria, laughing with her new friends. We hadn’t even been in a fight or anything. She just… left.

Jackie glances up from her phone. “Oh, hey, guys.” She looks back down at the screen and keeps scrolling.

“Are you going to Noah’s pool party tomorrow?” Lily asks excitedly.

Tomorrow will be Lily’s first time going to one of Noah’s parties. She had a stomach bug last year, so she wasn’t there to witness my horrible goggles-and-board-shorts incident. She only heard about it later.

I know I really can’t blame Lily for being sick, but sometimes I can’t help but think that if she had been there, then at least there would have been two of us who didn’t get the cute-suit alert. And I know for a fact that Lily would’ve worn her purple rash-guard, because she doesn’t like when her shoulders peel after being in the sun too long.

Jackie nods. “Mhmm, are you?”

“Yup!” Lily beams. “We’re going to ride over to Noah’s from Tahlia’s house.”

“You’re biking?” Jackie looks at us as if we’ve just told her we step in dog poop for fun.

“No,” I say quickly, even though we were planning to take our bikes. “Riding—as in a car.” It’s the only thing I can think to say to make her stop looking at us with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay,” Jackie says, smiling. “Cool. And no board shorts and baby goggles this year, right, Tahlia?” She smirks.

My stomach sinks.

Jackie was still our friend last summer. She knows how embarrassing the party was for me, because I specifically told her. She even helped me pick out my first two-piece bathing suit afterward so that it would never happen again. I hate that Jackie has all this secret knowledge about stuff I told her when we could trust her, and now she just uses it to remind me she doesn’t hang out with me anymore.

I know it bothers Lily too, but Lily is always so friendly to her. It’s annoying. I wish she would dislike Jackie like I do, but instead Lily acts extra nice to her, as if she thinks it’ll somehow convince Jackie we’re still fun to hang out with. Yeah, right. Like that’ll ever work.

There’s a car honk from behind us.

“That’s my mom,” Jackie says as she slings her backpack over her shoulder. “But I’ll see you tomorrow, sevies!” She gives us a wave before racing over to the pickup loop, where her mom’s car is waiting.

I frown at her use of sevies. It’s what the eighth graders used to call us seventh graders, and it never felt like a compliment. Besides, her saying it doesn’t even make any sense. She’s in the same grade we are. We’re all technically now eighties.

Lily doesn’t seem to mind the term, because she turns to me and asks, “What’s wrong with biking?”

“Nothing,” I say, but it comes out a bit ruder than I mean it, so I add, “I don’t know.” Which is the truth—I honestly don’t. Biking is fun and useful. I have no idea when and why it became uncool.

Lily shrugs. “Me neither.”

She clips on her helmet, pulls her bike out from the rack, and swings her leg over it. I follow her lead.

“Ready?” Lily asks.

I nod.

We take off toward our neighborhood, passing the line of parents waiting to pick up their kids from school. I wonder which car is Noah’s. I’ve never seen him bike to school.

Lily leads us onto the next street and picks up her pace. She loves to go fast. Usually, I do too, but today, even though I know I should be happy that school has ended and summer is starting, I can’t help getting a little bit grumpier with every rotation of my pedals.

But tomorrow’s party will be my chance to make everything right. I’ll wear my new two-piece bathing suit with no board shorts and no baby goggles. That way, even Jackie won’t have anything to poke fun at me for.

As long as the pool party goes according to my plan, and I can get rid of the pimple on my chin in time, then everything will be fine. I just can’t spend another summer as some big joke. I’ll show everyone that I am new and improved.

I let out a deep breath and tighten my grip on the bike.

Everything will be better after the pool party. It has to be.