Teen Idol Read Free Page B

person is seriously disturbed.
    And fortunately, there are enough people who
want
Ms. Kellogg and the rest of the administration to know their business that they don’t really have time to poke their noses into the business of the people who don't.
    Like Cara Schlosburg, for instance. Cara totally doesn’t care if the whole world knows about her problems. Cara writes
tons
of letters to Annie. I answer all of them, though we don’t print them in the paper, because even if we didn’t include her signature (she signs each and every one of her letters), everyone would know they were from her anyway. Like a typical one is:
Dear Annie,
    Everyone calls me Cara Cow, even though my name is Cara Schlosburg, and they all moo when I walk by them in the hallway. Please help before I do something drastic.
    Only Cara never has done anything drastic yet, that I know of. Once this rumor went around that she had cut herself, and she was out of school for three days. I was really worried she had slit her wrists or something. So I asked my mom to find out what had happened for me, because my mom and Mrs. Schlosburg are in the same aquasize class at the Y.
    But it turned out that Cara had given herself a home pedicure and shaved too much dead skin off the soles of her feet and accidentally removed fresh new skin and couldn’t walk till it grew back.
    That’s the kind of thing that happens to Cara. A lot.
    It’s also the kind of thing that makes my mom go, "You know, Jen, Mrs. Schlosburg is really worried about Cara. She says Cara tries so hard to fit in, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. The other kids just keep making fun of her. Maybe if you took her under your wing?"
    Of course I can’t tell my mom that I
have
taken Cara under my wing. I mean, as Ask Annie.
    Anyway, when I got called to the office the day after Kurt Schraeder kidnapped Betty Ann Mulvaney, I figured it was either something to do with a Cara letter or that, alternatively, it had to do with Betty Ann.
    Because even though Mrs. Mulvaney had been her typical self about the whole thing, shrugging it off, you could tell it really kind of bothered her. Like I noticed her gaze often strayed toward the place on her desk where Betty Ann used to sit.
    And she made this giggling announcement before each class, that if Betty Ann’s kidnappers would just return her, there’d be no hard feelings and no questions asked. I had even caught up to Kurt in the lunch line and asked him if he was going to do a ransom note or whatever just because I thought if Mrs. Mulvaney saw the whole thing was a joke, she might feel better about it.
    But Kurt was all, "What? A what note?"
    So then I had to explain to Kurt, all carefully, about what a ransom note was and how the joke—since that’s what I assumed he was doing, kidnapping Betty Ann, and all—would be funnier if he sent Mrs. Mulvaney a note instructing her to, for instance, waive the weekend homework or distribute Brach’s caramels to everyone in class, in order to ensure Betty Ann’s safe return.
    Kurt seemed to really like this idea. It was like it had never occurred to him before. He and his friends went, "Whoa. Genius, man!" and high-fived one another.
    Which got me kind of nervous. I mean, these guys weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. I had no idea how Kurt even got elected senior class president, except, you know, he was the only person who had bothered to run.
    So just to be sure they even still
had
Betty Ann, I went, "Kurt, you didn’t do anything stupid, did you? Like throw Betty Ann in one of the quarries or something. Did you?"
    Kurt looked at me like I was crazy. He went, "Hell, no. I still got her. It’s a joke, see? The senior prank, Jen. Heard of it?"
    I didn’t want Kurt to think I didn’t find his prank hilarious. So I just went, "Yeah, funny joke," and grabbed my tacos and ran.
    So you can see that when I got called to the office, I pretty much had a feeling that if Cara hadn’t locked herself in a