Falling in Like #11

  Falling in Like #11

  Melissa J. Morgan

  Spotlight (2006)

  Rating: ★★★★☆

  Tags: Fiction, Social Issues, Juvenile Fiction, Friendship, Schools, Emotions Feelings, Love Romance, Contests, School Stories, Middle School, Middle Schools, Blogs

  Fictionttt Social Issuesttt Juvenile Fictionttt Friendshipttt Schoolsttt Emotions Feelingsttt Love Romancettt Conteststtt School Storiesttt Middle Schoolttt Middle Schoolsttt Blogsttt

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  Seventh grade is a really big year. Especially if, say, for instance, your camp crush, the one who wanted to be "just friends" has finally decided to take an interest in you—now that you've been flirting with someone new. That's just Priya's dilemma. But all the girls seem to have their own share of problems and solving them without their closest camp friends by their side is no fun at all."

  About the Author

  Melissa J. Morgan started going to sleep away camp when she was eight years old and didn't stop until her first job after grad school refused her request for eight weeks of summer vacation. She's since quit that job to become a full-time author. The only reason she didn't go back to camp is that her husband refused to join her. Melissa lives in New York with him and Bugle, their Chocolate Lab.

  Falling in Like

  Melissa J. Morgan

  Penguin USA, Inc. (2012)

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  chapter ONE

  chapter TWO

  chapter THREE

  chapter FOUR

  chapter FIVE

  chapter SIX

  chapter SEVEN

  chapter EIGHT

  chapter NINE

  chapter TEN

  EPILOGUE

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Text copyright © 2006 by Grosset & Dunlap. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006013230

  eISBN : 978-1-101-04305-9

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  PROLOGUE

  Posted by: Val

  Subject: Candy War! & TRAUMARAMA!

  Happy November, ladies of the Camp Lakeview 4A/4C Bunk Alliance! As your official blog “Scream Queen,” I’m checkin’ in to say I hope you all had a fab Halloween. I’m so glad we are still staying touch. Thank you to our counselors, Becky and Andie, for setting up this two-bunk blog for us!

  OK, here are the results of our trick-or-treat contest:

  A big sugar high-five for Jenna! She won with 178 pieces, and that’s not counting the sixteen booger-flavored Bertie Botts that her twin bro Adam snuck into her sack. Chelsea was a close second with 152. Grlz, you totally put the “puke” in Camp Lakepuke!

  Now for Best Costume:

  The winner is . . . Brynn, the White Witch of Narnia. She got “lucky thirteen” e-votes. As you can see from her pic, she looks . . . chilly!

  So, do you guys want to do anything “together” for T’giving?

  On to my TRAUMA: Last Friday my Aunt Juanita had back surgery, so my mom flew to Maryland to take care of her for a few weeks. This means I have to stay fulltime with my dad, my stepmom Sharin, and my stepsister LaToya. As if that weren’t bad enough . . . our brand new low-flow toilet overflowed . . . and guess whose room it flowed into!

  SO . . . I’m bunkin’ with LT until my room is fixed. She has gone completely kookoo over my “invasion” of her “personal space.” She says it isn’t “fair” and I agree. I think it would be more fair if every shoe she owned got soaked with pee water! (J/K)

  I hope you ALL will write lots of posts and e-mail/IM me so I can “retain a pleasant attitude” (my mom’s words) until my mom comes home. I am trying really hard to roll with this but I’m pretty sure I’ll need some support from my CLFs (Camp Lakeview Friends.)

  So, what’s up with everyone else? I know you’re all busy but we want to know what you’re busy with!

  KIT,

  Val

  chapter ONE

  Alyssa sat at a computer in her middle school’s media center and read Val’s blog post. Poor Val was having a pretty tough time with her stepsister. Val didn’t even like hanging around LaToya at her dad’s house on weekends. Now she was stuck there 24/7 until her mom came home.

  Alyssa wanted to write Valerie back right away to show her support, but the study hall bell was due to ring and she didn’t want to be late for her art class. Today they were going to sketch an actual artist’s model, and Alyssa could hardly wait!

  I’ll write Val tonight from home, Alyssa decided. With a glance at the clock above the mega-colorful mural of pioneer life, she powered the PC down. Then three . . . two . . . one! The bell trilled, signaling the end of the period.

  Grabbing up her backpack and her charcoal-colored puffy down jacket, Alyssa left the media center. Her beaded chandelier earrings tickled her jaw line as she joined the chattering throngs of students in the main hall. She had “artist” written all over her look—along with the paint-flecked black T, she also wore a black jeans skirt, black boots, and a cool black knitted cap she had found in her mother’s old packed-away clothes. Her fingers sported cranberry-red polish, and her matching lip gloss was a total score from her favorite ninety-nine cent store.

  Other kids rushing to their next-period classes surrounded Alyssa. Up ahead, Beckah and Rose, her art class BFFs, zoomed into the art room. Alyssa dodged around some pokey boys and dashed in after them.

  As she crossed the threshold, she skidded to a halt.

  Wow.

  A statuesque young woman was perched on a stool next to Mr. Prescott’s wreckage of a desk. She was dressed in monochromatic indigo—a navy blue boatneck sweater and a pair of dark blue jeans, and her profile was very distinct—high forehead, ski-slope nose, a little overbite, and a pronounced jaw line. Her neck was as long as a giraffe’s, practically. Alyssa assumed she was their model. All in all she was an art student’s dream model, dramatic and exotic looking.

  Sweet! />
  Alyssa entered her sanctuary. The art room was her favorite place in the entire world. The walls were covered with student artwork, intermingled with prints by some of the greats—Degas, Cezanne, O’Keeffe, and the Tar Beach illustrations of Faith Ringgold. She inhaled the scent of creativity—a mixture of oil crayons, chalk, oil paints, and clay dust. She said her hellos to Beckah and Rose as she took her chair across from them. The three buds were clustered in the middle of a big, long table they shared with seven other students.

  There were a total of twenty-five students in the class. Everyone was pulling out their sketchpads and making a big deal out of selecting which pencil to use, even though they were all standard-issue #2s. Some of the boys were snickering as they glanced at the model, and Alyssa just rolled her eyes. Middle-school boys were so immature.

  “This is going to be cool!” she said to the girls, pulling a ginormous rubber eraser from her heavily-stickered purple plastic art box and setting it next to her pencil. Mr. Prescott, her art teacher, liked to say that there were no mistakes in art. Maybe not, but there certainly were do-overs.

  Beckah nodded excitedly. “I can’t imagine posing in front of a roomful of people. I’m going to feel weird staring at her,” Rose whispered.

  “She’s a model,” Alyssa argued. “She’s used to it.”

  “I would hate it,” Rose insisted.

  “That’s why you’re not a model,” Beckah said.

  The bell rang, and Mr. Prescott bustled in from the hall, balancing a stack of long, flat boxes of oil pastels and a stack of papers against his chest. His goatee, heavy eyebrows, and buzz cut floated above his tower like a caricature drawn on a balloon.

  “Good morning, mes artistes,” he said, as he plopped everything down on his very messy desk. Alyssa wondered if it was true that there was an entire three-year-old pizza on the bottom layer of sketches, canvases, memos, posable wooden figurines, unopened paint cans, and art books. That was the rumor.

  “This is Willa Ackel, our model for this morning.” The model smiled at Mr. Prescott and then at the class. “We’ll begin sketching in a moment, so Willa, you can hang out. But first, let me tell you artists about a contest you are all invited to enter.”

  Alyssa raised her brows as she smiled eagerly at Beckah and Rose. An art contest? Rock!

  “Some of you have heard of Works, our school arts quarterly,” Mr. Prescott continued. “The first issue for this academic year will be out in a couple of weeks.”

  Alyssa nodded. Works was a great journal. She had pored over the last year’s issues. Some of the art was good enough to hang in galleries. And the poems and short stories were fantastic. She hadn’t had the nerve to submit anything of her own. After all, she had been a brand new middle-schooler.

  Mr. Prescott continued. “Last year, the editors kept getting submissions from the same few people over and over. So this year’s staff decided to run a contest to encourage more people to contribute. The prize will be a showcase in the next issue. There will be five pages of art from the visual arts winner, and five pages of stories, essays, or poems from the language arts winner.”

  “Whoa,” Beckah murmured. “That’s seriously cool.”

  “There are a few rules,” Mr. Prescott said, “and you can only submit one entry. The deadline is in two weeks. If you’re interested, please pick up a flyer after class.”

  Interested? Who wouldn’t be?

  Across from Alyssa, Rose crossed her eyes and wrinkled her nose as if to say, No way. But Beckah mouthed at Alyssa, I’m in!

  Alyssa whispered back, “Me, too!”

  “All right, let’s get to work,” Mr. Prescott said, clapping his hands together. He smiled at Willa, who sat taller on her stool.

  Alyssa settled in, raising her arm over the blank piece of paper. She glanced over at Willa, making mental notes about her proportions as she got ready to make the first, defining line.

  But to her surprise—and that of everyone else in the class—Willa climbed on top of the stool, raised her hands high over her head, arched her back, and gazed up at the ceiling.

  “Oh,” Mr. Prescott said raising his bushy eyebrows. “Interesting choice.”

  I totally love it, Alyssa thought. It was a magical moment—Alyssa could actually see her finished sketch in her mind as she looked from the model to the blank page and back again. It was as if she were working with Willa, and together they would make every pencil mark on Alyssa’s sketch paper.

  I’m in the zone! Alyssa thought, and quickly went to work.

  Priya and Jordan stood like prisoners in front of Ms. Romero’s desk in the science lab. She had her grade book open, and there was bad news.

  Priya and Jordan had C’s in science. C’s were not good enough for their two sets of parents. They had to raise their grades or they would be grounded for the rest of their natural lives.

  “Here’s what I suggest,” Ms. Romero said. “The Tri-County Regional Science Fair is six weeks away, and if you can put together projects good enough to enter into the fair, I’ll give you twenty points of extra credit.”

  That would give me a B, Priya calculated, and J a B-minus.

  “We’re in,” Priya said, speaking for both of them. Jordan nodded like a bobblehead.

  “Totally in,” Jordan agreed. He smiled at Priya. “We need a team name. We’ll be the Titans of Science.”

  “How original,” Priya said, laughing. Their school mascot was the Titan.

  “Wait.” Ms. Romeo raised her red pencil in the air, signaling a flag on the play. “I know you two are best friends. Do you think you will distract each other if you team up together to work on this?”

  Priya and Jordan shook their heads in unison. “No way!” Priya said. “We’ll help each other. We live next door, so we can meet after school every day without worrying about transportation and things like that.”

  Jordan nodded. “We do tons of stuff together. We even planned our camp trip to Washington, D.C., together.”

  “On the other hand,” Ms. Romero continued, cocking her head in that way she had when she was thinking through all the variables of an experiment, “maybe it would be better for each of you to team up with someone who is a little stronger in science.”

  Their faces fell. No Priya and Jordan? No Titans of Science?

  “Please?” Jordan begged. “We’ll do an awesome job.”

  “We totally will,” Priya promised.

  “All right,” Ms. Romero said. “We’ll give it a try. But I want to see your progress, all right? I want you to come up with your project idea and fill out a proposal packet by Friday. That gives you all week. I’ll look at it over the weekend and let you know next Monday whether or not you can proceed.”

  She leaned forward as if to emphasize her next words. “You need my okay to enter the fair.”

  “We will amaze you,” Jordan promised.

  “Just do a good job,” Ms. Romero said.

  Yes! Priya grinned at Jordan. He grinned back. Now they were next-door neighbors, BFFs, and fellow mad scientists.

  “Here’s the proposal packet.” Ms. Romero pulled out a drawer and extracted a thick stack of stapled pages. “Remember, I need it Friday.”

  “Got it.” Priya took the papers from her and unzipped her backpack. She carefully slipped the packet into a dark purple folder and rezipped her pack.

  “Thank you so much, Ms. Romeo,” Priya said. “We won’t let you down.”

  “That’s good to hear,” the teacher said as she closed the drawer, signaling that it was time for them to go.

  They left the science lab together to go their lockers before leaving. They always walked home together. They lived most of life together.

  “So, we need a topic,” Priya said.

  “Gas is always good,” Jordan replied. “How about ‘What burns up more calories, burp gas or fart gas?’ We could light our farts and our burps, and make a cool graph. You know science fair people are into graphs in an extreme way.”


  “You cannot light burps,” Priya insisted.

  “Oh yeah? Ever tried to?” Jordan asked, waggling his eyebrows. “Because we can go home, get some matches, and drink way too much root beer.”

  “You’re on!” Priya cracked up. Jordan started laughing, too.

  “Hi, guys,” said a voice behind them. “What’s so funny?”

  It was Leslie Graff, the star of science class. Leslie wore her black hair pulled back in a ponytail and her glasses were so dirty, Priya couldn’t figure out how she saw through them. It was like she couldn’t even take the time to clean them, because she was too busy doing science experiments.

  Leslie was very serious about school. She was so smart that she had actually found an error in their science book and pointed it out to Ms. Romero. Her backpack was usually crammed full of library books and she always did all the extra credit. Priya figured she would eventually invent a time machine or something.

  “We’re discussing topics for our science fair project,” Priya said, elbowing Jordan not to add any details. Priya was much better at being friends with girls since last summer at Camp Lakeview, and she knew they didn’t usually joke with each other about burping and farting. She didn’t want to gross Leslie out.

  “That’s always a difficult choice,” Leslie said, nodding with a look of authority. Her face took on a dreamy, faraway look. “There are so many possibilities.”

  “Well, what’s your topic?” Priya asked her.

  Leslie’s eyes gleamed. Then she narrowed them as if she were stalking a wild animal. “I have a couple of projects in mind, but I’m leaning toward photosynthesis,” she declared with an air of mystery.

  “Oh,” Priya said, a little taken aback by her intensity. “Cool.”

  “Yes.” Leslie paused. “I think I may have some competition, though. I believe Marco Rubio is also considering a plant experiment.” Her cheeks turned a little red. Then she said, “Not to worry, though. I’ll blow him out of the water.”