Junior High

Chapter 5

I gasped and immediately cupped the puppy in my arms, looking at my family with wide eyes.

"It's your 'Happy First Year of Junior High School' gift, Bree! What do you think?" Mom asked excitedly.

"I LOVE him, Mom! Thanks so much, you guys! He can be our family dog now!" I exclaimed happily.

I decided to name him Golden because, well, he's a golden retriever.

My sisters and I played nonstop with him for the rest of the day before it was finally time to go to bed.

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When I first arrived in the hallway where the cheer, volleyball, and soccer tryout results were posted, I wasn't even able to see the lists because everyone was crowding around them. They were mostly girls, and I thought that was mainly because everyone was waiting for the cheer results.

I pushed myself to the front of the excited mob and squinted as best as I could to see the names on the lists. I looked at the cheer list first. To my delight, I saw Katie's name on the list! However, I didn't see Isabella's name (which is a good thing, by the way), and I didn't recognize or know any of the other people who had made the team besides the girl named Melissa who had impressed everybody at the tryouts. It wasn't surprising that she had made the team. She had even been assigned captain of the team, which I fully acknowledged. I checked the soccer and volleyball tryout lists, and I found that Katie had made both the volleyball and the soccer teams as well.

I saw Katie hurriedly running through the hallway, trying to get to the tryout results. I waved at her, and she came charging toward me with a really nervous but excited look on her face. Apparently, she had really looked forward to the results.

"Katie, you made all the teams!" I grinned, patting her on the back.

She almost screamed her head off, but since everyone was busy doing their own screaming (or crying and pouting, should I say), no one noticed that much. We talked about it all the way to our first classes, and I congratulated her on making the teams.

"We will be taking our unit assessment tests on Monday," Ms. Keil told us once everyone arrived in Math class. Some of the class groaned, especially Isabella. I chuckled to myself. Good luck on THAT test, sis, I thought smugly.

"So right now I'm going to give you students some time to study for that," Ms. Keil continued despite the negativity from the majority of the class. "This is a free work block. Please use this time wisely."

I immediately got started with taking notes of the concepts that were going to be coming out on the assessment test in my math notebook. Meanwhile, Isabella chatted happily with some friends who were not the Hollywood girls, since they were not in the same class as us.

I was very good at observing things, especially people, so of course I noticed something that caught my attention: Isabella was complaining loudly to her friends, wailing and screeching about how she had lost something a few days ago and still hadn't been able to find it. Really? WHAT was so important?

"Hey! What are YOU looking at, BEANIE GIRL?" Isabella suddenly snapped at me accusingly. I guess "Beanie Girl" was Isabella's new nickname for me now. The class stopped studying and turned to stare at me since Ms. Keil had left the room. Oh, CRUD. MORE drama?!

"Oh, you know, doing the exact same thing you did in math class at the beginning of this week. Scrutinizing me for no apparent reason," I responded calmly.

Isabella gave me a giant eye roll and turned back to continue grumbling to her friends.

At lunch, when I next met Katie after my morning classes, we glanced at Isabella to see if she had a reaction to her failing the cheer team. She had a pouty face on, and her face was red with embarrassment. She couldn't look anyone in the eye, not even the Hollywood girls. Well, that's what she got for going out of her way to make my life MISERABLE. But since I was a NICE person, I didn't get up from my cafeteria table and TAUNT and TEASE her for failing like SHE would have if I were in her shoes. I simply ignored her, because she didn't matter. Even though I didn't get the REAL victory of HUMILIATING her like she deserved, I had still WON our little "WAR".