Cheer-Streaked: A Westbridge Over-Drama

8: Rollercoaster Of Freakiness

It was almost an hour later when Mr. Kraft finally stepped up to the stage mic. "Young scientists, may I have your attention, please?" A hush fell over the throng of dorks as Mrs. Quick wheeled a cart full of pretty ribbons into the room. "Thank you. Now, after a long, arduous decision making process - one involving dice - we have the prize rankings for your entries."

"This is it," Sabrina squeaked, crossing her fingers.

"You are too lame," I whispered... but I crossed mine, too. What? I put some work into this and I was expecting payout.

"Fourth place and the yellow ribbon goes to... Harvey Kinkle, for his project displaying the effects of time on... cheese."

A smattering of applause as Kinkle jumped up and pumped his fist in the air; it was all I could see of him from where we were. I also noticed Sabrina grinning like an idiot because her boyfriend placed; what a touching display of Spielbergian schmaltz.

"Yes, yes, how wonderful," Mr. Kraft said, smoothing his Colonel Mustard moustache before continuing. "Third place, and this mediocre trophy, goes to... Larry Worcestershire and Ophelia Jones, for their working model of a dynamo!"

More clapping, blah blah blah. "Settle down, settle down." He coughed and shuffled his cards. "Second place, this handsome trophy, and a coupon for a free large pizza pie at The Slicery goes to... Libby Chessler and, uh, friend, for their project on the creation of aromatic oils!"

My jaw dropped; our crappy project actually got us second? I mean, I'm used to getting first place in everything, but with Sabrina involved I was sure we wouldn't even place. I glanced at Mr. Kraft as the students applauded us, and he shrugged, mouthing, "It's the best I could do."

"Libby, we did it!" Sabrina shouted, turning to me.

"Yeah!"

And before I knew what I was doing, we were hugging and jumping up and down, laughing. We won! Even though we just threw the project together and got it here at the last minute, we beat out Harvey and his moldy cheese and all those other guys! And it was all thanks to Sabrina - her lame idea actually turned out to be just what we needed.

"Libby?" she laughed.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing?"

What were we doing?

As we let go and coughed uncomfortably, I noticed Birkhead out of the corner of my eye looking at us funny (nevermind how funny she looked under her solar-powered jewelry-cleaning hat); a little further down, Jill and Cee Cee were whispering urgently.

"What are you trying to do to me, freak?" I said quickly, smoothing out my jacket.

"I don't know," she hissed, looking at me the way... well, the way I usually look at her when she's just done something unforgivably strange. "I was going for a high-five when you initiated the gigglefest."

"I got caught up in the moment." Searching for something to do so I didn't feel so weird, I straightened out our bottles. "Don't start thinking I don't hate you or anything, 'cause... well, I do."

"Oh yeah, of course," she laughed. "Why would I think any differently?"

Luckily, before I could respond, Mrs. Quick showed up and handed us our red ribbon, trophy and coupon, beaming at us like she just came back from a spa day. "Congratulations, you two! See, I knew you guys would learn something from this!"

"Yes, ma'am," I nodded, slapping on my patented pleasantly-sweet smile. "And we're very sorry for interrupting your class. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn together instead of serving useless detentions."