The New Girl Read Free

hear the shrieks of encouragement as kids (including my brother Mark) played kick ball while waiting for the first bell to ring. I could see people on the swings pumping their legs to go higher and higher. I saw clusters of other kids just standing around, doing nothing but looking at other kids looking at them (which included me).
    That’s when the butterflies in my stomach came right back. In fact, they turned from butterflies into great big swooping bats banging around inside me. Because I couldn’t help thinking, what if none of those kids on the playground liked me? What if the only people who talked to me all day were Erica, Caroline, and Sophie? Which would be okay…but I didn’t want them to get sick of me, not on my first day. Then I’d have a whole year of no one liking me but those three. That would be terrible! I mean, for them.
    It was right then that something truly awful happened.
    Kevin let go of my hand and also Erica’s and ran toward the jungle gym, I guess because he saw some kids his own age playing on it.
    To me Kevin just looked normal. I mean, the fact is, he wears his pirate costume all the time, such as to the grocery store, to story hour at the library, and to Dairy Queen for his favorite cone, vanilla twist butterscotch dip, which he is always careful not to spill on his red sash.
    But I heard some of the kids standing in a cluster nearby—they were girls, big girls, too, maybe fifth-grade girls—start to laugh. When I looked over at them, I saw that they were laughing…at Kevin! That had to be what they were laughing at, because they were looking right at him.
    They were laughing at my brother.
    And then they looked over at me. Then they started whispering to one another. Which meant they could only be whispering about me. But why? What was I doing wrong? I wasn’t wearing pirate pants and boots beneath my down parka.
    Then I remembered: I was wearing a skirt with jeans. I’d insisted on wearing a skirt with jeans, in spite of the fact that my mom had tried to talk me out of it.
    Oh, this was terrible!
    And that’s when it hit me. Maybe what Erica had said was really true—the Finkles were funny. Maybe the Finkles were too funny…too funny to fit into someplace new. Like a new school…a new neighborhood…a new anywhere.
    Oh, why had I let my parents talk me into moving? Why had I let them convince me to start at a new school, where I didn’t really know anyone and where people might think Finkles were funny?
    And why—why, oh, why—had I worn a skirt with jeans on my very first day at my brand-new school?

RULE #2
If a Bunch of Fifth-Grade Girls Thinks Your Little Brother Is Cute, Just Go Along with It
    Before I could turn around and run all the way home—which was the first thing I thought of doing when I saw them pointing at me and whispering—the big fifth-grade girls started coming toward us.
    “Uh-oh,” Sophie whispered.
    “Uh-oh, is right,” I whispered back. “Run!”
    But it was too late to run, since the fifth-grade girls were already coming toward us. They were so close, I could practically smell the bubble gum they were chewing.
    “We’re going to die now,” I said faintly, clutching Erica’s arm. “Good-bye. It was nice knowing all of you.”
    “Th-they can’t kill us,” Sophie stammered. “Mrs. Jenkins, the principal, outlawed killing people on the playground last year.”
    While this was good to know, I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence that these girls were the kind who actually obeyed rules, even those made by the principal. I held on to Erica’s arm, feeling a little sad about the fact that I was going to die so soon. I felt like I had so many things left in life that I wanted to do. I had never kissed a boy yet. Not that I really wanted to, but Uncle Jay’s girlfriend, Harmony, said kissing was a lot of fun.
    And I had also never had one of those blizzard things at Dairy Queen. The ones with the bits of Heath Bar looked good. It was sad I