Eighth-Grade Superzero Read Free Page A

all that. A lot of girls do too.
    “It’s Reggie,” I say.
    “Yeah, right,” he says, not looking at me. He turns a little so he can face the girls’ table next to us; it looks like he’s filming their legs. A couple of them are wearing skirts, so knowing Vijay, he’s probably aiming a little bit higher.
    Sparrow clears her throat. “So, um, Reggie, we’re doing an exposé on cafeteria food, and we have a proposal for you.” (Giggles.) “You’re … a
celebrity,”
she says (giggle), “and you can put that to good use. We want to do on-air taste tests of cafeteria food. You can be our Puke-O-Meter.”
    Ruthie snorts. “And you think we can’t hit new lows,” she says. “I salute you, Erica.”
    “Thanks,” chirps Sparrow. Then she thinks about it for a minute. “Whatever.” She turns her back on Ruthie while Vijay lines his camera up with Ruthie’s chest area.
    “I’m not interested,” I say. “At all.”
    Sparrow starts to say more, but she gets distracted by something a few tables away. “Come on, Vijay, it looks like there might be a food fight.” She scampers off on her little bird legs. Why she wears miniskirts every day and Mialonie Davis doesn’t is one of the world’s great mysteries.
    Justin walks into the cafeteria; half the girls start giggling and the other half touch their hair. Donovan runs over tohim and I see that the back of Donovan’s shirt says B OOTY H unter . I hope Blaylock busts him.
    It used to be the four of us: me, Donovan, Ruthie, and Joe C. We sat together at lunch. We’d play two-on-two chess in Underwood Park. Donovan taught us poker. Then one day he just didn’t show up. We went over to his house to see what was up, and his mom was all, “He’s out with his friends.” I thought
we
were his friends.
    “It would be nice if those two didn’t rule the school this year,” I say. “If we were all about looking out for one another instead of hierarchy.”
    “Yuck, ‘rule the school,’ “says Ruthie. “That’s so … Western, so imperialistic.”
    “Whatever, Secretary-General,” I say. She’s gotten worse since we did Model UN. “This is school. Someone is always at the bottom of the food chain. I just don’t want it to be me anymore.”
    “Nobody likes people who spend their time wanting to be liked,” she says. “That’s one of the laws of … humanity or whatever.”
    “Easy for you to say. You
like
being weird.” I duck and say “Remember Dr. King!” as Ruthie lunges for me.
    “Make change, be change,” she says, eating one of my peach halves.
    “Why don’t you run for president?” I shoot back. “You’re all about Change with a capital C.”
    “Ha! A revolutionary like me do something so … mainstream? Besides, you people are not ready for me full-strength.” Ruthie’s parents have a storage room full of posters that say thingslike “End Poverty Now,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “They LIED.” They use them every six months or so when the whole family marches on Washington for one of the many things they march and yell and write letters about.
    “You could pull a Brian Allerton,” I say. “If another candidate gets all subversive, people might pay attention.”
    “That is
not
what being subversive is about.” Ruthie pulls out a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies and hands it to me. “What did that do for Clarke anyway? And where’s Brian now? Total establishment.” Blaylock came down hard on Brian, and word is that his parents paid a boatload of money to get him into private school.
    “Did you bake these cookies, or did your mom?” I ask.
    She gives me a look and mutters, “My mom.”
    I wolf them down.
    “I gotta pee,” says Joe C.
    “Thanks for letting us know,” shoots back Ruthie. “Here, take some of this stuff with you,” she adds, giving him some of our lunch trash. “And you know I’ll be watching you.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recycle, reuse,
repetitive,”
he says, getting up. “See you