Awesome Blossom by Lauren Myracle
Three months into fifth grade, the flower friends are closer than ever. Sure, they’ve had to overcome their share of drama, but now life is finally normal for the foursome. Right? Wrong.
There’s a mysterious new girl at school who has them all confused. Violet remembers what it’s like to be new and thinks Hayley has total flower-friend potential. The other girls aren’t so sure, especially when they spot her giggling with mean Modessa.
But Hayley’s not the only unknown. Lately, it seems like everyone has a secret. Milla’s secret: She’s been asked out on an actual, real-life date with a boy (eek!). Yasaman’s secret (it’s a big one!): She accidentally-kind-of-on-purpose read a personal note between Ms. Perez and Mr. Emerson. And then there’s the biggest mystery of all: Who’s been giving adorable plush hedgehogs to Katie-Rose?
As Katie-Rose would say, Geez-o-criminy! It’s a drama-filled week for the flower friends. And for new friends. And even for—yip—boyfriends. But the flower friends are up to the challenge, because together, they can do anything.
ALSO BY LAUREN MYRACLE
Luv Ya Bunches: A Flower Power Book
Violet in Bloom: A Flower Power Book
Oopsy Daisy: A Flower Power Book
Shine
Bliss
Rhymes with Witches
ttyl
ttfn
l8r, g8r
bff
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Thirteen Plus One
Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
(with John Green and Maureen Johnson)
How to Be Bad
(with E. Lockhart and Sarah Mylnowski)
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Myracle, Lauren, 1969–
Awesome Blossom : a Flower power book / by Lauren Myracle.
p. cm.
Summary: Fifth-grade best friends Katie-Rose, Milla, Yasaman, and Violet are determined to save a new student from Modessa’s evil influence, but Katie-Rose is busy not flirting with Preston and all four are distracted by trying to organize Yasaman’s sister’s birthday party.
ISBN 978-1-4197-0405-5
[1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Birthday parties—Fiction.
4. Schools—Fiction. 5. California—Fiction.] I.
Title.
PZ7.M9955Awe 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012035668
Text copyright © 2013 Lauren Myracle
Illustrations copyright © 2009–13 Christine Norrie
Book design by Maria T. Middleton
Published in 2012 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.
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Contents
Sunday, November 13
Monday, November 14
One: Camilla
Two: Violet
Three: Yasaman
Four: Katie-Rose
Tuesday, November 15
Five: Camilla
Six: Katie-Rose
Seven: Yasaman
Eight: Violet
Nine: Camilla
Wednesday, November 16
Ten: Katie-Rose
Eleven: Violet
Twelve: Yasaman
Thirteen: Camilla
Fourteen: Violet
Thursday, November 17
Fifteen: Yasaman
Sixteen: Violet
Seventeen: Katie-Rose
Eighteen: Camilla
Friday, November 18
Nineteen: Katie-Rose
Twenty: Yasaman
Twenty-one: Camilla
Twenty-two: Violet
Twenty-three: Katie-Rose
Saturday, November 19
Acknowledgments
About the Author
are indeed the bestest of bubbly buddies ever. They’re BBBs! That makes Milla smile: BBBs instead of FFFs, which is the abbreviation the girls usually use to describe themselves, which stands for Flower Friends Forever. Why flower friends? Because of their names. Katie-Rose and Violet, those need no explaining. Yasaman is trickier, but not much: “Yasaman” means “jasmine” in Turkish. As for Milla? Well, a camilla is a sweet pink flower that grows along the edges of streams. And there you have it! Four best friends, all with flower names. Take “BFFs,” switch out the “B,” put in an “F,” and what do you get?
Bingo! Or … fingo? No, that’s something Katie-Rose would say. Katie-Rose is the spazziest of the FFFs, and while Katie-Rose’s spazzy energy GETS THINGS DONE, Milla is more of a quiet sort of girl. Not shy, exactly. Yaz is the shyest of the flowers, though not as much now as she used to be. Milla is okay with peacefulness and smooth sailing and untroubled waters. Milla likes the idea of being an unassuming flower growing sweetly by the edge of a sweetly burbling stream, and so, like Yaz, she is totally up for some plain old normalness after yesterday’s tornado of swirling, twirling, bubble-gum-popping four-year-olds.
The morning goes without a hitch. Milla sees Max, her semisecret semi-boyfriend (boyfriend! Eeek!) and smiles at him. He grins back. She flutters her fingers at him. He waves back. It is all very happy-making.
Then comes lunch, and at first, everything does seem normal. Milla sits with Yaz, Katie-Rose, and Violet, and together they create a delicious bouquet of chatter and interruptions, silliness and shoulder thwacks. All that plus an abundance of apple slices, organic Greek yogurt, and yummy-in-the-tummy gummi bears, which Katie-Rose has a whole bag of, and which she shares liberally.
Katie-Rose packs her own lunch. That’s why she often shows up with stuffed-to-the-brim plastic bags of candy. Occasionally she throws in a PB&J or a handful of cheese sticks for good measure, but she’s just as likely to fill her entire Betty Boop lunch box with snack bags of Fritos and SunChips. It is incredible, really, how much food Katie-Rose packs in, especially given how tiny she is.
Only sometimes, when Katie-Rose eats too many gummi bears (or green apple sour loops or grape Pixy Stix or Oatmeal Creme Pies), she gets even more hyper than usual. Like now. She’s telling a story about her brothers’ obsession with farting (gross!), and she’s talking crazy fast, at least a thousand words a minute as opposed to her usual hundred words a minute, and a droplet of spit, real live spit, flies out of her mouth and lands—sploop!—on Yasaman’s tabouleh.
“Ew,” Yaz says, nudging the tabouleh away.
“And then, if you don’t say ‘safety,’ you have to go touch the toilet or get punched, whichever the other person says,” Katie-Rose goes on.
Violet looks at Milla. “What is she blathering about?”
“Some new middle school game?” Milla says. “Where if you, um, make a smelly, you have to say ‘safety’ or”—she wrinkles her nose—“go touch the toilet?”
“Make a smelly?” Violet says. She laughs.
Milla blushes. She, for one, is glad to be safely in the fifth grade, where such games don’t exist. Or smellies. Or at least not too many smellies, except for when certain boys are around. Boys like Chance and Preston, who throw erasers and wear skater-dude duds and tilt their chairs onto the back two legs and sometimes fall over. And laugh hysterically.
Max does none of those things, thank goodness.
“She spit in my tabouleh,” Yaz says. She looks from Violet to Milla.
“—and then, if you do say ‘safety,’ but the other person doesn’t hear, you have to touch the toilet and go tell the girl you have a crush on what you just did!” Katie-Rose says, wide-eyed. “Can you believe that?”
“No,” Violet says. “There are too many loopholes in that game. I would just lie and say I didn’t say it. Or lie and say I did. One or the other.”
Katie-Rose reaches for another handful of gummi bears and gets them within inches of her wide-open mouth before Violet slaps her hand. “Hey!”
“Drop the gummi bears, and no one will get hurt,” Violet commands.
“But—”
“You heard her,” Milla says.
“You spit on my tablouleh,” Yaz says.
“I did not!” Katie-Rose protests.
Yaz points to the offending droplet. It is a miniature crystal of saliva, teardrop shaped. It would be pretty if it weren’t made out of spit.
Katie-Rose’s face falls, and she lets the gummi bears fall, too. “Safety?” she says in a small voice.
“I’m not going to make you touch the toilet!” Yaz says. She adjusts her headscarf. “Yuck! Just … no more spitting, ’kay?”
Katie-Rose heaves a sigh. “Fine, but sometimes you all are so boring.”
“Did you want Yaz to make you touch the toilet?” Violet asks.
Milla, who would prefer not to be discussing toilets and spit, glances around Rivendell Elementary’s commons. The commons is a large, open space scattered with tables, fold-out metal chairs, and battered sofas. It’s where the two fifth-grade classrooms come together for assemblies, and it’s where, on Monday afternoons, all the grades gather for group sing. It’s also where Rivendell kids eat when it’s too chilly to go outside.
She spots Natalia Totenburg prying a bit of food out of her ginormous and elaborately wired headgear. She spots Preston sprinkling pepper into Chance’s milk. She spots Modessa, Rivendell’s power-hungry queen bee, as well as Modessa’s followers, a snarky beanpole of a girl named Quin and a girl in pink cowboy boots named Elena.
Elena used to be nice, but now she’s not. Now she’s one of the three Evil Chicks, which is what Modessa, Quin, and Elena call themselves. In one of far too many episodes of the Modessa Wars, the flower friends tried to keep Elena from joining Modessa’s evil forces. They reasoned with her. They said, “Don’t be a dummy-head! Modessa and Quin are mean!” They reminded her again and again that she was a NICE GIRL, and Milla even used secret eye signals to say, “Do you need rescuing? Because here I am! Ready to rescue you!”
But nothing worked. They didn’t rescue her. They failed. The hardest part to swallow is that Milla knows in her heart that Elena isn’t happy, can’t possibly be happy, and yet … there she is, still with Modessa and Quin.
The FFFs failed to save her, and it continues to fill Milla with regret.
Well, there’s nothing she can do about it now, so she moves her gaze to the next table. Immediately, her sadness turns into surprise. “Who …,” she tries to say. “Who … who …?”
“Are you an owl?” Katie-Rose asks.
Milla points a finger at a nearby table. “Who’s that?!”
Yaz, Katie-Rose, and Violet turn their heads, and their expressions tell Milla that they see her, too: a new girl, with curly red hair, pale skin, and a crop of freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. She has pierced ears, which isn’t exactly a novelty among Rivendell’s fifth graders (Violet has pierced ears), but which certainly isn’t the norm. She’s sitting by herself, a single star in the midst of a galaxy of constellations.
“Oh yeah,” Violet says. “I meant to tell y’all.”
“Tell us what?” Katie-Rose says.
“Her name’s Hayley,” Violet says. She looks at Milla. “She’s going to be in Mr. Emerson’s class with us.”
“She is?” Milla says.
“How do you know her and we don’t?” Yaz says.
“I don’t know her,” Violet says.
“Then how do you know her name?” Katie-Rose says, regarding Violet and pooching out her lips in a disapproving way. “How do you know she exists?”
“She exists because there she is,” Violet says. “And I was at the office when she first got here. She just moved to Thousand Oaks. She’s from … somewhere.”
“Wow, so helpful,” Katie-Rose says.
“What is she like?” Milla asks. “Did you talk to her?”
Violet gets a strange look on her face. “Uh-oh,” she says. “Trouble.” She gestures with her chin, directing the flower friends’ attention back to Hayley. “Look.”
Katie-Rose, Yasaman, and Milla re-swivel their heads. Milla’s eyes widen.
“That is so wrong,” Milla murmurs, because one minute ago, Hayley sat alone. Now Modessa and Quin are sitting on either side of her. They’re talking to her, and she’s talking back. And now Elena, the third Evil Chick, is pulling out the remaining chair at Hayley’s table. She plops down and props her elbows on the table.
“No,” Milla says. “No, no, no.”
“Looks more like yes,” Katie-Rose says. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Poor girl!” Yaz says. “She should not have let them sit with her! She doesn’t know them yet, or how mean they are.”
Modessa smirks and jabs her finger in the direction of Hayley’s chest, saying something Milla can’t make out.
“She’s about to find out,” Milla murmurs.
“Hmm,” Violet says in a tight sort of way. “Is she?”
Milla doesn’t understand, so she studies Hayley and the Evil Chicks more closely. She sees that Modessa is no longer smirking. She’s grinning. Quin seems confused, as if she’s teetering between smirking and grinning. Elena does neither. She leans forward and listens intently to whatever Hayley is saying.
And how weird. It’s Hayley—not Modessa, not Quin, and not Elena—who’s doing all the talking now. What happens next is even weirder, because Hayley adopts a take-no-prisoners expression and jabs her finger at Modessa.
The flower friends suck in their breath as one.
There is a heavy moment in which anything could happen. Modessa could draw back and narrow her eyes. She could make some mean, horrible remark—she keeps mean, horrible remarks in her pocket like other kids keep coins or rumpled tissues—and make Hayley burst into tears. She could even storm off in a big and dramatic way, leaving Hayley humiliated and alone.
But instead, Modessa busts out laughing. Real laughter, by the look of it, as opposed to the cruel, witchy, Evil Chick laughter Milla would have expected. Next, Elena laughs, and finally Quin. Hayley laughs along with them, just for a moment. Then her laughter trickles off and she smiles a mysterious, closed-lipped smile.
Weird. Very, very weird. It sets Milla on edge, because “Modessa” and “non-cruel laughter” are not terms that normally go together.
Milla catches her lower lip between her teeth. It appears that the gift of “plain old normalness” isn’t in the cards for the flower friends, not even for a day.
is explaining a writing assignment. Violet wants to hear what he’s saying, because she loves writing, so she glares at Thomas, who thinks it’s far more important to play with his annoying “sonic screwdriver” (whatever the heck a sonic screwdriver is!) than to pay attention to Mr. E.
As far as fifth-grade boys go, Thomas is basically a good guy … not that that’s saying much. The best thing about Thomas, in Violet’s opinion, is that he is Max’s friend, and Max is Milla’s semisecret semi-boyfriend. Therefo
“Dude,” Thomas whispers to Max. “Check it.” With his thumb, he pushes a switch on his sonic screwdriver. The end of the screwdriver expands and unfolds, making four small blades spring open like petals. When Thomas nudges the switch again, the blades twirl rapidly, emitting a low hum.
“You love it, don’t you, dude?” Thomas says to Max.
Max sighs. He is the sort of fifth grader who likes to pay attention to his teacher, too. “Yes, Thomas. I love it. I love it so much, I want to marry it.”
Thomas chortles. “Dude! That is so wrong!”
Max sighs again. Violet sighs, too. The truth is, she’d be struggling to pay attention to Mr. E even without the distraction of Thomas and his sonic screwdriver. Why? Because she can’t get that new girl—Hayley—out of her mind, especially since Hayley is now in Mr. Emerson’s very classroom with her.
Right after lunch, while Mr. Emerson was drilling everyone on math facts, Rivendell’s principal escorted Hayley to Mr. Emerson’s room. Gone was Hayley’s cryptic smile from lunch. Her hands were jammed into the back pockets of her jeans, and her shoulders were hunched.
She’s nervous, Violet thought. Then again, a roomful of strangers is staring at her. Anyone would be nervous.
“Ms. Dub,” Mr. Emerson had called out to their principal, because that’s what he calls Ms. Westerfeld. Because of the “W.” Sometimes he calls her Ms. Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Three Principals in a Tub, but only to his students. “What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Emerson, students, this is Hayley Green,” Ms. Westerfeld said in her smooth principal’s voice. “Hayley is new to Rivendell. Today is her first day, and I know you’ll make her feel welcome.”
“Fantastic,” Mr. E said. “Glad to have you, Hayley.”
“Hayley, why don’t you go on and find a seat?” Ms. Westerfeld said, gesturing vaguely in Violet’s direction. Violet’s stomach tightened, but she wasn’t sure why. There was an empty desk between Violet and Cyril Remkiwicz, but why should Violet care if Hayley sat there? At any rate, it wasn’t as if Violet had any say in the matter.