Write This Down by Claudia Mills Page B

Isabelle’s father to drive us to the crafts store to get huge pieces of felt to wrap around ourselves to make the crayon tubes plus the pointed crayon hats, and the felt ends up costing as much money as store-bought costumes would have. Still, we’ll look cute trick-or-treating all in a row.
    â€œI hope we see Jack,” Isabelle says, once we’re back at her house trying to cut the felt without ruining it, given that we have no money to buy more. Jack Turner is the smartest boy in our science class.
    I don’t expect to see Cameron. I try to imagine him in a costume, and fail.
    â€œDo you think any boys are going to be asking girls to the dance?” Brianna asks.
    Kylee and I exchange glances. The dance is on the Friday before Thanksgiving, so still three weeks away. She and I have been to only one dance, the spring dance at the end of sixth grade, which was completely awful. It was just for sixth graders, sort of a “get ready for seventh grade” dance. None of the boys asked any of the girls to dance, or at least no one asked Kylee or me. Candor compels me to report that I did notice Olivia dancing a slow dance with Ryan Metcalf, who is widely regarded as the cutest boy in our grade, though in my view vastly less cute than Cameron. What most of the boys did instead of dancing was get into a popcorn-throwing fight over by the refreshment table, where we were all standing because we had to be doing something so we were scarfing down snacks that weren’t even good. Then the popcorn-throwing fight turned into a punch-spilling brawl. Kylee got punch spilled on her best silky white top (the one we spent an hour together choosing), and the stain never came out.
    â€œMaybe,” Isabelle says. “I heard that Ryan already asked Olivia.”
    Why am I not surprised?
    In sixth grade, I didn’t know Cameron yet because he was off on his family trip around the world. Now that I do know him, the thought of the dance is less hideous than it was before. Though I don’t think Cameron is the type to go to a school dance, just as I don’t think he’s the type to go trick-or-treating. He’s not the type to do anything that everybody else is doing.
    â€œWhat if Henry Dubin invites you?” Brianna asks Kylee.
    â€œI’ll say that … that … I have important knitting I need to do that night,” Kylee decides.
    â€œI don’t think any boys in our grade are cute enough to go with,” Brianna announces, which means she doesn’t think Cameron is as cute as I do. Then again, nobody does.
    We finish up the costumes in time to order pizza, and on Sunday night we do look pretty great as Scarlet (Brianna), Spring Green (Isabelle), Dandelion (Kylee), and Cerulean (me), all lined up in a row. As I expected, I don’t see Cameron out trick-or-treating; in fact, none of us see any boys we know. But we each get a huge, wonderfully disgusting pillowcase full of candy.
    *   *   *
    On Monday, some teachers and kids come to school in costumes because it’s actually Halloween. I’m not wearing a costume, though, and neither is Ms. Archer.
    I feel even tenser than usual as I wait for her to hand back our graded reviews. I made some changes before I turned mine in last Friday. Writers have to be able to respond to criticism, even criticism from annoying people like Olivia. I thought up some things to justify the bottom-line conclusion of the band’s suckiness: the over-amped sound, the drummer’s distracting facial grimaces clearly done on purpose in a mistaken attempt to get attention.
    But my heart wasn’t in it. Because here’s the worst part.
    Olivia was right.
    My review was mean. It was intended to be mean. I went to the gig already knowing the review would be mean before I even heard the band play, and when I heard them play my honest opinion was that I thought they were good. Mean, you might say, was the whole