The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

Interior Design. She’d printed them out on some heavy paper.

“Olive, wow! They look incredible.”

She smiled, but quickly turned as some kids walked by us. “Vote for the office!” she shouted. “Vote BFF!”

“If we’re last in their minds, they’ll think of us first,” she said to me, smiling even bigger.

“Huh?”

“If we’re the only group promoting ourselves right before the voting, we’ll be fresh in everyone’s heads.”

“Ahhh, I get it. Olive, you’re—”

“A great bookmark maker?” She thrust a fistful at me. “I know, but get to work. We don’t have much time before the bell.”

I was going to say she was a genius, but that worked, too. We both held out bookmarks as students passed by. Some kids took them and stuffed them into their pockets or backpacks. Some were clearly trying not to make eye contact. Other kids took them, then threw them on the ground once they got a few steps away from us. A handful of bookmarks were scattered all around the trash can, and who knows how many were inside it. I tried to offer one to an eighth grade girl, but she just laughed and shook her head.

“Why don’t you stand over there so we’re spread out,” Olive suggested. “And smile!”

I wasn’t used to Olive being so pushy, but I dutifully moved to the other side of the walk and tried again. “Vote BFFs?” I said to the next person, and after a couple more, I’d managed to take the question mark out of my voice. “Vote BFFs!” I said, much louder now. Olive gave me a thumbs-up from across the sidewalk.

Most of the students weren’t paying any attention to us, but a few said they’d vote for us, although they may have just said that to be nice. I didn’t see any other teams outside, but then a couple teams had handed things out last Friday.

I noticed a guy from the basketball team running into the school with a big roll of white paper and a Ziploc full of markers. I couldn’t keep myself from smirking. If that was the competition, we had nothing to worry about.

As we stood out there, frantically pressing bookmarks into every open hand, I really had to give Olive a lot of credit. She’d worked harder on this project than any of our others. I’d underestimated her—big-time. Maybe she’d just needed the opportunity to show her stuff, and with Rachel out of the picture, she’d had it.

Then bus number ten rolled up, our bus, and I saw Tony get off, followed by . . . speaking of Rachel. I thought she wasn’t riding the bus anymore?

“Hi, Rakell!” I heard Olive yell. “We’re going to do it! Vote BFFs!” Olive kept yelling manically, to no one in particular and everyone all at once. The bookmarks rained down from her hands like fall leaves from a tree as the last bus emptied out.

Tony walked up to me. “Good luck today,” he said. “You know you’ve got my vote.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing our bookcase in action,” he said with a big smile. It was good to see Tony smile.

“Oh, it looks great,” I said. “You know, the award’s yours, too, if we win.” Every time I said that, I felt like I had to throw salt over my shoulder or something, like even mentioning the voting was jinxing it.

I glanced over at Rachel, who was crouched down by the trash can, carefully picking up each bookmark from the ground.

Oh, nice, I thought, I guess she wants to make sure they all go directly into the trash.

“What do you get if you win?” Tony asked, snapping my attention back.

“Oh, uh, a trophy, and a pizza party.” I thought about the Principal for a Day thing. We’d never worked out which one of us would do it, but Olive wouldn’t want to anyway, would she?

“I’m more excited about the frozen yogurt truck,” Tony said, “and especially about the day off.”

“Yeah, do you think he’ll really give everyone a day off?”

Tony shrugged. “Dunno, but I’ll vote for you anyway.” He started toward Rachel. “Well, save me a piece of pepperoni!” he called over his shoulder.

Rachel held the stack of discarded bookmarks out to Tony. Then the two of them distributed them, actually gave them out, to kids by the door.

She was helping me? I could hardly believe it!

And then Tony stuck the rest of the bookmarks into his coat pocket and reached out and took Rachel’s hand, and they walked like that, hand in hand, into the school.

I remembered seeing Tony talking to Rachel at her locker, remembered thinking he might be trying to patch things up between us. Was that true? Or was he really just trying to be her boyfriend? And did Olive know about any of this and not tell me, like she didn’t tell me Rachel was texting her about our meetings?

When the bell rang a moment later, Olive was at my side, snapping her fingers in front of me. “Earth to Maggie,” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Not a ghost, I thought, but I did see something I definitely didn’t expect and, to be honest, it was a little scary. Olive grabbed my arm, and we ran into the school.

I was in a fog the whole day. I had a pop quiz in science on the solar system and couldn’t remember Mars. I walked right into the boys’ bathroom and had to back out, covering my eyes and yelling, “Sorry!” I even wrote the wrong year on one of my papers, like I was trying to go back in time.

Everyone around me was wearing green and brown, because today’s “theme” for Spirit Week was School Colors. I was wearing my favorite blue sweater and jeans because I felt good in them, and I wanted to feel good on judging day. Besides, I would never wear the school colors, not those particular shades of green and brown together, ever. They were a hideous combination.

During study hall, when it was