1
120 years later
“Candace!”
Candace Wells nearly dropped her phone trying to shove it into her pocket. Totally
not glooming over photos of her best friend and her next-best friend having fun camping without her.
“Nadiiiiiine!” Candace screamed back, swinging her best friend into a hug. Sure, she’d seen Becca’s pics from when she and Deen went to the movies together, and the mall. And that was totally fine, Candace supposed, even if they hadn’t invited her. But an actual camping trip? She’d just pretend she didn’t know about any of it. She’d fall back on what she was supposed to know about Nadine’s last weeks of summer vacation. “How was—-were—-the Philippines?”
“I don’t know the grammar!” Deen bounced as they spun around. Similar back--to--school reunion dances were happening up and down the hallway. “But the trip was great! My lola cooks even better than my mom! Candy Cane! Look at your hair! Is it . . . ?”
Candace broke into a grin. “DPS, Goldengrove Unleaving!”
They both squealed. The Dyed Poets’ Society box had promised “lyrical locks” with their poetry--themed colors. Candace’s new look was a teeny--weeny Afro in a rich golden yellow that made her brown skin look warm and sunny.
“Cool,” Sergio said. Sergio had surprised everyone and delighted several of them with a growth spurt over the summer. His spiky black hair only added to his height. And apparently, he’d been working out, if you were into that kind of thing. Candace caught the look on Deen’s face. Oh, she was definitely into that kind of thing.
Deen blushed.
“Nacho cheese hair,” Nate crowed. Nate was Sergio’s reverse shadow—-white, with dirty--blond hair, slender, and a half foot shorter. He looked like a clothes hanger holding a plaid flannel shirt over a faded black tee and jeans, even in the August heat.
“Ignore him,” Deen said, rolling her eyes. “It’s gorgeous. I was going to go for the Baudelaire, but it was just too many colors and I ran out of time.”
Right. Because of the glamping trip with her brother, Mac. And Becca.
“No worries,” Candace said. “We can do it this weekend. And I’ll wait for our This Is Us drawing, so it can be in full color.” Every year on the first day of school, Candace drew a This Is Us picture. She had a whole book of them, starting in kindergarten, in which she and Deen had grown from little stick--figure doodles into full figure drawings, now that Candace knew more about shading and proportions. They had joked it could be a flip--book about growing up.
“Oh. I can’t,” Deen said. “I’ve got church and then I’ve got blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.”
Which, to be fair, was probably not what Deen was actually saying, but it’s what Candace heard. She and Deen always hung out on the weekends. Summer was a bit different because of family vacations, but this wasn’t summer. This was This Is Us time.
“Church is Sunday morning,” she said.
“True,” Deen said. “But—-”
“Unless you go camping,” Candace muttered, and turned to her new locker, number 235. She began fumbling with the combination.
“Oh, Cans, you saw . . . It’s not what it looks like,” Deen said.
“Fun? It looked like fun. But if you don’t want to hang out, just say so.”
Now was when Deen was supposed to apologize and they’d work things out. When she’d say,
Of course! Come to church with my family! We’ll make a day of it! like they used to when it was just the two of them. But the longer Deen stayed quiet, the harder Candace stared at her locker.
“Hey, girlfriend!” Becca appeared on the scene. She was wearing the same shoes as Deen. Even the laces matched.
“Candace . . .” Deen said.
But Candace wasn’t listening. She could feel tears stinging her eyes. Her face was hot. She unlatched her locker.
And it exploded.
Okay, not exploded, but basically exploded. The door flew open and banged against the neighboring locker. And something, some . . .
thing . . . burst out of the locker like those joke cans of soup with spring snakes inside.
Candace threw her arms up and screamed. The thing screamed too. It was black and white, and she was hoping it wouldn’t be red all over, because if it was, it would mean her face was being scratched by talons and she would be horribly scarred for life all because she was in the eighth grade and had a monster in her locker.
Candace wheeled backward and landed on the ground with hard thump. Sergio, Nate, and the other kids were shrieking and shouting, laughing, pointing.
And then a tall Black kid opened the hallway window. And the bird flew away.
“Happens more than you’d think,” he said, and reached down a hand to help Candace up. “Birds in the school. Lockers, not so much. Are you okay . . . Candace, right?”
“Right,” Candace croaked, letting him pull her to her feet. “Thanks . . . Mitchell?” He was from the other eighth--grade class, the one that ran parallel with Candace’s own, but with a different teacher in a different room. Walden had two of every grade, K through eight. Everyone knew everyone, but only kind of, because of it.
“Yeah!” Mitchell said, looking pleased that she knew his name. He dropped her hand. “No problem.”
Mitchell swung the window shut and ducked into his classroom. The bird was long gone. She hoped she hadn’t hurt it with all the arm waving and terror.
“What’s the ruckus?”
Mr. Jones, Candace’s new teacher, stuck his head out into the hallway.
“There was a bird in my locker,” Candace explained. She was still kind of shaken. Mr. Jones noticed.
“How about you take a moment to get yourself together. Join us when you’re ready.”
“When I’m . . . what?”
Mr. Jones pointed at her head. She reached up and felt feathers in her new ’do. Oh, great.
“I’ll grab you a hall pass. You can go to the office and ask the janitor to sanitize your locker.”
“I bet it pooped in there,” Becca said helpfully. Nate snorted. Sergio grinned.
“Are you okay?” Deen asked.
“Yeah.” Candace chuckled nervously. “I’m fine. It just startled me.”
The bell rang and the boys fled. Becca tucked her arm through Deen’s.
“Remember those birds over your brother’s tent?” she said, laughing as if whatever she was talking about was the funniest thing in the world.
“See you in there,” Deen said over her shoulder. And then Candace was alone.
She pulled her phone from her back pocket. By some miracle, it wasn’t cracked or broken by her fall. Then she reported the bird to the front office and was rewarded with a canister of industrial disinfecting wipes and a pair of rubber gloves.
“Either that, or wait until after school,” the office admin lady said. “Budget cuts.”
Candace trudged back up the stairs with her cleaning supplies. Why had she thought eighth
grade would be so great? Kindergarten—now, that was great. If she were still in kindergarten, she wouldn’t even have a stinking locker, or a cell phone to show her pictures of her friends having fun without her. Instead, she’d have a wooden cubby and a hook in the classroom, and Mrs. Davis or the class aide would clean up any bird poop or other mess that came her way.
Eighth grade meant so much more responsibility.
It stank.
Candace banged her hand against the locker door to check for more bird monsters. Nothing. She stepped onto the rim of the locker to peer into the top cubby. Darkness. And a faint scent of . . . Doritos and pop?
Cringing just a tiny bit, she reached a rubber--gloved hand into the abyss . . .
And yelped. Something was in there. And it wasn’t bird poop.
She took a deep breath and reached back inside, patting around like a cat under a bathroom door, and hit something. She dragged it forward into the light.
It was a notebook.
A regular composition--style notebook, kind of retro--looking, with a purple cover and a strip of black tape on the spine. In the white box that said subject on the front, someone had written in purple ink: What You Need to Know. For Girls Like Me.
Inside, the first page was a handwritten table of contents with entries like
Body StuffDeath StuffHair StuffHomeworkFriendsCandace’s mom had told her about body stuff and death and hair. Everyone had something to say about homework. But friends?
She flipped to the Friends section.
And there, in fat bold letters, were the words
These People Are Not Your Friends.
The
Not had been underlined twice.
Whoa.
It felt like a sign.
Copyright © 2025 by Sherri L. Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
