Discovery Girls

Your responses to the “Get Inspired By” challenge in our August/September issue were incredible! We received so many great stories it was tough to decide on just four to publish here. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did!

Here’s the prompt we supplied:

In the crowded lunchroom, our table stood out as an island of boredom in a sea of coolness. I carried my tray over to bang it hard of the table. 

“I’m ready for change,” I said.

Mike and Mia’s spooky twin eyes turned towards me. “What kind of change?” Mike asked.

“I’m ready to bring us to the next level,” I said.

“What level is that?” Mia asked. “The one that comes after boring, I said. “Listen, I have a plan.”

Mia asked warily, “So, Emilia—what is your great plan?” as she sorted out the edible parts of her cafeteria food.

“We are going to become the tricksters of the school,” I said.

“The what?!” the twins cried, soggy mashed potatoes forgotten.

“You do know, Em, that we know zip about tricking someone—right?” Mike said, worriedly.

“Well, Mike,” I said, smugly, as I pulled out a book from my backpack, “Today is your lucky day.”

“101 Tricks to Play on Your Family, Friends and Teachers,” Mia read slowly. “One: Put brown paint on the chair of chosen victim. If not wooden chair, choose a color that will camouflage best.”

“I figured we should start with number 57—it is really easy and no one could possibly trace it back to us.” I whispered.

Unfortunately, Mia didn’t see it that way.

“Are you nuts?!”she cried out after reading the entry.

“What is it?” Mike asked.

Luckily for me and my great plan, the bell rang right then and there.

Mike, Mia and I dumped out our uneaten cafeteria food, and went our separate ways. After I was tortured with numbers and pi, Romans and gladiators, verbs and adjectives, the bell finally rang.

And so, I did as I always did when I got out of school—I ran to M&M’s treehouse. Mike and Mia were already there and I knew I was in trouble by the identical looks of disbelief on their faces.

So, I begged.

“Please, please, please, please, please say you will do it or my life will be over! I will take all the blame if you please, please, please go along with it." 

Mia just pointed to the big 57 in my book and read aloud, “Get three live piglets. Pour maple syrup all over them and write on them the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’ and, on the last piglet, ‘4’. Let loose in school.”

Then, Mike surprised me. “Come on sis—we are bored and it’ll be fun!”

“Fine,” Mia said, warily. “But how are we going to get three live piglets in Snooze  Town?”

I smiled.

“The Farmer’s Market.”

And so that was how M&M and I found ourselves on Sunday morning shopping for live piglets. We looked in the pet adoption area, the meat section and in 143 cars. Not a single live piglet. Then we heard it.

“FRESH MEAT! FRESH MEAT! CHOOSE YOUR OWN CHICKEN! FRESH MEAT!”

We ran toward the voice and soon saw a sight that both gladdened and saddened our hearts. Everywhere we looked we saw tiny little pens. And in each pen was a pig or chicken.

“Excuse me—could I have the live piglets please?” I asked a large round man holding a knife. “It is for my school project.”

The man grunted and wiped his hands on a towel not much cleaner than he was.

“Ten.”

“What?” I asked nervously, eyeing the knife in the man’s hand.

“Ten piglets or nothing,” the man said, irritably. “I don’t have room for ’em all, so you take all or none.”

I glanced at Mike and Mia. It was a depressing sight since both were shaking their heads vigorously.

“Fine,” I said. “All.”

M&M stared as I pushed each pig into my old wagon.

“Well,” I said, as I scrambled to catch one mischievous pig, “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Look, we’ll just put them into the tree house till morning—if we wake up at six, it will give us an hour or so to put the pigs in and sneak back out to our houses,” I said, confidently. “Nothing could possibly go wrong.”

The next morning, after a long, sleepless, night, I stumbled over to the M&M tree house. Mike and Mia were already there with the syrup and magic marker.

“All right,” I said, in a hushed whisper. “Mike and I will take the pigs. Mia will get the rest of the stuff, OK?”

“Sure,” the twins whispered back.

And so, half dragging, half pushing, Mike, Mia and I soon found our sweaty selves in the schoolyard.

“Let’s put them in the hallway and get out of here!” Mike said, frantically.

“I’ll give you a boost,” Mia said.

“One, two, three!” I whispered.

“OK,” I said, when Mike and I were in the hall. “I will write down the numbers and pour the syrup on them. You make sure that they get away from us!”

I then carefully wrote out one number on each pig’s back: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 7, 9, 10.

“Go, little piggies! Run!” Mike whispered, after I had slathered all 10 piggies in the sticky maple syrup.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here!”

And after boosting Mike up, we all did exactly that.

Two hours later, I walked to school a nervous wreck. I need not have worried. Turned out, the janitor caught them all before school.

And after making my way to our table which stood out as an island of boredom in a sea of coolness, I decided on something.

“Guys,” I said, “we are not cut out for pranks. Let’s face it—in terms of pranking, we are a negative 9.”

“Well,” Mia said, thoughtfully. “It was fun while it lasted.”

“Yeah,” I said, softly as I stared at the popular table. “It was fun while it lasted …”

Mia rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Tracy,” she said. “Look at us. Any attempt to make us cool is ultimately going to end in an apocalyptic disaster, okay? Get real.”

I sighed. The three of us were a walking America’s Got Talent freak show, minus the talent. Mia’s thick black hair had been streaked with orange and green. Dark eyeliner circled her eyes and her grey, paint-splattered skinny jeans gave that Goth-girl impression that if you said a word to her, she would knock your lights out with a fingerless-gloved fist. Mike always spiked his hair with at least a bottle of hair gel every day. It was rumored that if he got caught in a tornado, his hair would come out looking just the same as it had before. Unlike his sister, though, Mike preferred button-downs, khaki slacks, and fake Ray-Bans. I was the mousy-haired geek of the group, with last year’s summer camp tee shirts and jean Bermudas. We were the lowest of the low in our school; the outcasts who no one ever even thought about.

“We don’t have to be popular,” I stressed. “We can just make our personalities more exciting.”

“And how is that?” Mike asked, his eyes focused on the stock market quotes that scrolled along the bottom of his beloved iPad.

I snatched the high-tech electronic out of Mike’s hands. “Look around,” I said, pointing to a table of jocks across the cafeteria. They were yelling and clanking lacrosse sticks, while a crowd of girls sitting behind them gazed starry-eyed and lovesick.

Mike’s nose wrinkled at the sight of the sports-obsessed boys. “You’re kidding me, right?” he asked. “One of them started a fight in biology when we were dissecting frogs the other day. Do you knowhow hard it is to get a gut stain out of a Brooks Brothers shirt?” 

“Well we don’t have to hang out with them, Mister Oblivious!” I rolled my eyes. “But do you see how much fun they’re having?”

“Personally, I don’t see how whacking each other in the head with a lacrosse stick is fun,” Mia mumbled as she sipped her chocolate milk. “But whatever floats your boat.”

I let out a long, dull moan and put my head in my hands. “It may be fun for them,” I said. “But we can have our own kind of fun!”

“Checking MSNBC every two minutes to see if the DOW has dropped in value does not count as fun,” Mia pointed to Mike. “And neither is watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the umpteenth time.” she looked at me.

“Well dragging us to every modern art gallery in Baltimore doesn’t count either,” I raised my eyebrows.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Mia slammed down the bottle of chocolate milk.

I shrugged. “We could go shopping.”

“Only if it’s to Lacoste.” Mike said.

“Or Roxy.” Mia added.

“So we can’t agree on that,” I sighed. Then an idea sparked in my head. “We could go to the aquarium!”

Mia and Mike almost laughed. “The aquarium?” Mia snorted. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I nodded my head.

“Tracy, we’ve all been there a million times,” Mike said. “It’s for little kids and tourists. Plus, the admission is, like, thirty dollars a person. Not including tax.”

“Well then,” I said smartly, standing up from the table. “I guess the only thing left to do is go to the school dance.”

The twin’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.” said Mia.

“I am!” I said. I rushed over to the dance attendance list posted on the stucco cafeteria wall. Then I grabbed the permanent black Sharpie marker, and to the two pairs of horrified eyes that watched me, I scribbled down Mia Fink, Mike Fink, and Tracy Powell under the squiggly cursive signatures of popular girls and the names of jocks in hardly recognizable handwriting.

It was done. I recapped the Sharpie and put it away.

When I got back to the table, Mike and Mia were angry.

“How could you do this to us?” Mia yelled, shaking my shoulders.

“It was that or the aquarium,” I said. “And clearly, the aquarium was outvoted.”

“You know that kids like us never go to dances!” Mike shouted. “We’ll be the laughingstock of the entire grade!”

“At least we’ll be noticed.” I pointed out.

“But I don’t have a dress to wear!” cried Mia.

“Today’s Wednesday, right?” I asked. “And the dance is on Friday. We can go shopping tomorrow.”  

“And I have a, um...” Mike trailed off.

“You don’t have anything going on, Mike,” I said.

The twins groaned. I smiled. There was no way they were going to get out of this.

The next day, we walked to our local shopping mall after school. Mia looked especially depressed, on top of her black vintage concert shirt and heavy mascara. Mike hid his eyes under his fake designer sunglasses and stared at his iPad like it was the only source of hope left in his world.

“So where do you want to shop for dresses?” I asked Mia.

“I don’t want to shop for dresses,” she groaned.

“C’mon,” I said. “There has to be at least one dress in the entire mall that you’d like.”

“Doubt it,” she replied. Then her eye caught something. “Ooh, look at that!” her face lit up.

Mia was pointing at a baggy, black dress in the window of Pacsun with a lace collar and back. “I like that,” she said.

“We’re looking for nice dresses, Mia,” I told her.

“It’s nice enough,” she whined.

“No, it’s not. Let’s go,” I said. Then I dragged her into Nordstrom.

The slew of dresses at Nordstrom were endless. Some were long, sparkling prom gowns.

“You cannot make me wear that,” Mia stated as I eyed one of the gowns. It was long and flowing, with shiny pink satin, and sparkling fake gemstones that bordered the deep neckline like a ribbon.

I laughed. “That’s a prom dress, silly. Of course I’m not going to make you wear that.”

“Then what are you going to make me wear?” she asked suspiciously.

I thought about it for a minute. Suddenly, I spotted the perfect dress!

“How about this one?” I asked her. The dress had a white, satin top that was covered in torn lace and had a black skirt that puffed out almost like a tutu.

Mia crossed her arms. “It’s okay, I guess,” she said.

“Well, what don’t you like about it?” I huffed. “It’s black, it’s punk, it’s got lace...”

“It’s a dress!” she yelled.

I sighed. “You’re going to have to wear a dress someday, you know.”

“I guess I am,” she muttered.

“Go try it on,” I shoved her the dress. “You might like it.”

When Mia came out with the dress, she was smiling.

“I love it!” Mia said. She twirled around, the streaks in her hair flying like a rainbow. Honestly, it did look very nice on her.

“That’s good,” I replied. “Because there’s probably not much more in this store that you and I are going to agree on.”  

Ten minutes and thirty-five dollars later, we both walked out of the store with a feeling of satisfaction. Mike met us at Starbucks.

“How’d it go?” he asked.    

“Awesome!” Mia started babbling before I could say anything. “I got this amazing dress that’s black and white and has lace and it’s so…”

“Hold up,” Mike said, raising his arms. “You’re not turning into one of those snooty, popular girls, are you?”

We all broke out into side-splitting laughter. Then we all packed up and walked home.

Finally, it was the night of the dance. Mia and Mike came over to my house to get ready. Mike walked in through my door in a rented tuxedo and Mia was wearing her dress with black Converse.

I stared at Mia. “You can not go wearing those shoes,” I said.

Mia put her hands on her hips. “Who says?” she asked.

“I tried to talk her out of it,” Mike interrupted, adjusting his bowtie in the bathroom mirror. “She was awfully persistent.”

“But I hate heels!” Mia groaned.

“Try these on,” I said, handing her an old pair of black shoes with a tiny heel that I outgrew a few months ago.

Mia raised an eyebrow. “They’re heels.”

“C’mon, Mia,” I pleaded. “They’re less than an inch tall and they have one of those cushy footbed things. Just wear them for an hour.”

Mia rolled her eyes. “If you absolutely insist.” she said, snatching the shoes from my hand.

After we were ready, my mom dropped us off at the dance and we walked into the cafeteria where it was being held. Instantly, we were overwhelmed by an ongoing wave of cool and popular. Girls were dressed in the most glamorous, expensive dresses they could find and boys were trying to help each other with their clip-on ties. Music blared deafeningly over the speakers. A few kids glanced at us, like What the heck are they doing here? but didn’t give us any other notice.

“I’m going to the snack table,” Mike yelled over the noise, and fell into the crowd. I thought Mia would follow him, but she clung to my side.

“Aren’t you going to go dance?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me?” she said in disbelief. 

“That’s what we came here for,” I shrugged.

“Ugh.” she groaned, and ran off.

I walked around for about half an hour, occasionally stopping to look at something or eat a chip. Mia and Mike were nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Mia burst through the crowd, looking like a deer in the headlights. She was limping.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Mia held up something thin and pointy. “This!” she yelled.

I took the pointy thing from her. “What is this?”

“The heel of these stupid shoes!” she screamed. “It broke! I can hardly walk!”

“Oh no!” I cried, looking at the heel of the damaged shoe. “Do you know what to do?”

“Let’s go the bathroom,” she volunteered, grabbing my wrist. “There’ll be more light there.”

In the bathroom, I could see that the shoe was broken beyond repair. The heel was dented and snapped and the shoe’s strap was lost.

“Can we do anything?” Mia asked, peering over my shoulder.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh, well.” she sighed. I threw the shoe in the trash.

Mia was about to leave the room before I stopped her. “I need to wash my hands.” I said.

I walked to the sink and turned it on. Nothing happened or came out.

“Is it broken?” Mia asked.

“Dunno.” I answered. I jiggled the handle a bit. Then I heard a gurgling noise, and a spray of water flew out of the sink, soaking my dress!

I was too shocked for words. My dress had been ruined! I looked in the mirror in disbelief. Water stained the entire front of it.

“Oh my gosh!” Mia gasped.

I felt like I was about to cry. “Go get Mike,” I told her. “I’ll call my mom. It’s about time we went home.”

Ten minutes later, we sat on the front steps of the school, waiting for my mom’s minivan to pull into the drive.

“I guess we learned a pretty important lesson back there,” Mike said.

“Never go to a school dance again?” Mia replied sarcastically. 

“Well, it was a good experience just to try it.” I pointed out.

Mia shrugged. “Yeah. We could’ve really liked it and never found out. Thanks, Tracy.”

“You’re welcome.” I smiled as mom pulled into the parking lot. We all stood up and clambered into the car. And as we drove home, I thought about something. We had been happy with our friendship. We didn’t have to try to make it different. We all liked each other, just the way we were. And that wasn’t going to change. 

“You just be quiet, Mia!” Mike said to her. “I want to hear this plan.”

“OK,” I said. “First, we’ll need 3 colored wigs, a printer, hot pink printer paper, and 1000 paint-filled water balloons.” Mia banged her head on the table. 

“Got it. What else?” Mike asked as he finished writing my list on his napkin.

“Hope,” I said flatly.

“Hope?” Mike and Mia asked at the same time. Creepy.

“That’s all we need.” I sat down and took a bite of my apple.

“You can’t possibly think this will work,” Mia said. I smiled. This is going to work, as long as Mia doesn’t rat us out, I thought.

“So now that we have this list, what do we do?” Mike asked. I waved my hands to signal them to come close. They looked around, then leaned in.

“Mia, I want you to get the paper and the wigs, one for each of us,” I commanded her. “Mike, I want you to get lots of paint in various colors and the water balloons. Then come to my house with the stuff on Saturday afternoon and we’ll make the letters, fill the balloons, and make our outfits.”

“Oh my god. It’s the losers again. What are they doing?” We heard another girl say. Mike shrugged.

# # #

Mike and Mia rang the doorbell. Mia had a long, bright purple wig for me, a shoulder-length green one for her, and a neon-orange Mohawk for Mike. Mike had white water balloons and two plastic bags full of various paint colors in little jars.

“Perfect! We’ll make the posters first and then we’ll fill up the balloons in the backyard. By the way, how did you get all of this stuff with your mom’s permission?” I asked.

“Easy. I told Mom that we had a class project to do. She drove us to the costume store, and then the craft store,” Mia explained. I nodded.

“Lets go into the office,” I said as I lead them there. I switched the pink paper with the white paper and sat on my dad’s chair. I clicked on the Word button and started typing. When I was done, the poster looked like this:

ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS

We need your help! Tomorrow night at 7:30 pm, we need you to bring a costume and paint-filled balloons. We need everyone to be armed all around the school with at least two bags full of the balloons. Throw all of them at the brick so it covers every inch. On Monday, don’t act suspicious. Just keep calm and carry on. Thank you.

Just then, my older sister, Tiffany, came through the door.

“What are you three doing?” she almost yelled.

“Nothing.” I turned at her. She walked off. “OK, let’s print. Mia, how many students are there in the school?”

“Um, 643, not including us,” she recited. Mia has the best memory in class. I clicked the print button, typed 643 in the little box, and then clicked print again.

Sunday night, and everyone we sent the flyer to showed up. I grabbed my bullhorn and screamed, “FIRE!”. Before I knew it, everyone was throwing balloons at the walls. Pink, green, red, blue, purple, black, yellow, orange, white! Colors were everywhere. I took out my super-secret silly string can and sprayed, “Now school is fun” over one of the walls. I picked up my bullhorn and said, “Thank you. Everyone may go now.” In 15 minutes the whole group was gone. I stood back and admired our work. I still had lots of paint left.

“Come on guys. Let’s go in through the door. I have tons of paint and 5 silly string cans.” We walked in and turned on the lights. “Mia, take this bag of paint and one silly string. Go to the 1st–4th grade rooms and ‘decorate’ those. Mike, take these two cans and this bag and go to the specials rooms. I’ll take care of the rest.”

# # #

“This doesn’t feel right.” Mia sounded guilty as we walked down the street. I looked at her. She was staring at her feet.

“I think it was awesome!” Mike said. I didn’t say anything. When we got to school, the mayor was standing there. All three of us exchanged glances.

“You three. Come here.” He pointed at us and motioned to come. We slowly walked over to him.

“Y-y-yes?” Mia stuttered.

“I saw what you three did last night. And I think that this is...” He said in a mayor-like voice. 

Unacceptable? Illegal? I thought.

“Brilliant!” he finished. We all looked at each other.

“Wha...?” Mike started to say.

“It’s so great to see young people making a difference to the school. What you did with the paint was astounding! I totally got it!” The mayor told us...

“You did? He got it. Wait, what did you get?” I asked.

“The whole point of explaining that school can be colorful too. Not that it’s stuffy, plain work, but that it can be exciting and beautiful,” he explained.

“Rrrrriiiiigggghhhhttttt,” the three of us said.

“Well, I’m off to city hall. Keep up the good work, kids!” He said as he walked away. I blinked.

“Well, then. That was strange.” I said.

“Wake up!” Mike and Mia shouted.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Here.” Mia walked over and pinched me. I blinked open my eyes and looked at Tiffany. Sure enough, there was a little red pinch mark on my arm.

Thank goodness! Just a dream! I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

“Listen, I have a plan.”

“Oh, no...not a Sara plan. Please not a Sara plan!” said Mia as her twin brother exchanged that funny look with her.

“Oh, yeah, a Sara plan. So, here’s what I was thinking,” I said confidently, with a look on my face that said “Hey world, I came here to make a change!” The problem is, my plans either end up with Mike, Mia and me in trouble, covered in sticky syrup, or in jail for an hour or two.

“Maybe we could forget about this whole thing and get back to eating our lunch?” asked Mike, sounding as if he had a slight thought in his mind that I would actually do that.

“Oh, Mike. When I start giving up, unicorns become real. So basically I’m saying never.” I said.

“Sooo…what’s the plan?” asked Mia. 

I sat in there in the cafeteria as Mike and Mia continued to eat their lunch. I looked around at the other tables and stopped at the popular table. I studied how they acted. What made everybody worship them? They were no different than me and my friends. Then I noticed something else—all the pops’ clothes were either bought from a designer brand, or at some fancy store. Then it hit me, like a ton of bricks.

“Guys, I have my plan!” I exclaimed, loud enough for the whole cafeteria to her me. As I stood up, all eyes turned to me. “Uhhh, sorry everybody.” I sat down.

“Well, if that’s your plan to give you more attention, it worked,” said Mia.

“No, that wasn’t my plan. But I seriously do have a plan to make us recognized by the pops’ posse.” I said. “Notice how they all are wearing designer brands, and have all the latest clothes and things?”

“Yeah?” said Mike, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, maybe if we dress like them, then we can fit in with them!” I said

“I’m not too comfortable with that, Sara. You know me: queen of the boring outfits club.” said Mia, looking not very confident.

“Mia, it’s always been our dream to be in the popular crowd. This is the only way we can make that dream a reality. Just trust me.” I said, putting my hand on Mia’s shoulder.

“OK, fine.”

BRRRIIIINGG! The school bell rang through the air. Everyone in the cafeteria filed out, including Mike, Mia, and I.

As soon as I got home, I ran straight into the room that I shared with my sister. She wouldn’t be home from high school for about another half an hour, so that gave me time to go through her side of the closet.

I opened the lavender-colored closet doors and looked inside. Not much caught my eye on my side of the closet. But on my sister’s side I found a sequin covered silver top, a bright purple skirt, and tall, black, shiny boots. This'll do, I thought to myself. I hid the clothes under my bed.

The next day, I woke up and got dressed in the clothes I had picked out. I curled my sandy-blonde hair and left it out. I put mascara around my baby blue eyes and ran down the stairs. My sister was just getting into her car when I got downstairs.

When I got to school, I saw Mike and Mia by their lockers, which were on the right and left of mine. Mia was wearing a short, red dress with white leggings underneath and black flats. She had her red hair out like mine. Mike had put his red hair up in a Mohawk with tons of hair gel. He was wearing a black tux.

“Whoa, you guys clean up nice.” I said, looking back and forth at both of their outfits. I turned to open my locker when I heard laughing behind me.

“Looks like the losers are trying to look cool.” said Lianna Harris, the most popular girl in school. She had her whole “crew” behind her, and they were all trying hard not to burst out laughing. Mia quickly buried her head in her locker. Mike looked like he was gonna cry. I had to do something.

“Lianna, at least we don’t act like we rule the school. I mean, when you really look at it, nobody should lead the whole 6th grade. What’s the point?” I said bravely. Mia slowly took her head out of her locker, and Mike’s tears starting going away.

“B-b-but...uhhhh...ugh! You haven’t heard the end of this, Sara! I will ruin you, ruin you!”Lianna quickly spun around, her group doing the same.

“Thanks, Sara.” said Mike.

“That was really brave.” said Mia.

“Guys, from now on, let’s just be ourselves. Agreed?” I said

“Agreed!” said my two best friends in unison. I closed my locker and we headed to class, wondering why we ever wanted to be a part of the pops. From then on, we always were ourselves, not what the popular “image” was.