Dress Coded Read online

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2020 by Carrie Firestone

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  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Firestone, Carrie, author.

  Title: Dress coded / Carrie Firestone.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020] | Summary: “An eighth grader starts a podcast to protest the unfair dress code enforcement at her middle school and sparks a rebellion”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019033840 | ISBN 9781984816436 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984816443

  Subjects: CYAC: Dress codes—Fiction. | Protest movements—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Podcasts—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.F55 Dr 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033840

  Ebook ISBN 9781984816443

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket art © 2020 by Tyler Feder

  Cover design by Maggie Edkins

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For the unlikely rule breakers

  The ones who keep going

  The ones who change minds

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  Off-Air

  Letter to Fourth Graders

  Backstory

  Letter to Parents

  Will’s Texts

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  Definitions

  A Brief History of Fisher Middle School’s Dress Code

  Fingertip

  It’s Okay to Trick Your Friends if It’s for a Good Cause

  The List of Things We Had Planned to Do on the Eighth-Grade Camping Trip to Strawberry Hill State Park

  My Plan Works

  Danny Brings the Pizza

  Lunch Bunch

  By Nine O’clock in the Morning

  Talking to a Seventh Grader About a Difficult Topic

  If You’re Not a Big Fish, Your Mom Won’t Feel Like Frying You

  Gilbert Pettibones Waffle the Third

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  Treehouse Slime Factory

  My Fountain Brother

  A 217-Person Group Chat

  Letter to Scott Kleinman

  Sometimes Apples Are Just Evil

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  How Does That Make You Feel?

  Oh, the Places I Won’t Go!

  Razor Burn

  The Parent Meeting at the Library Takes a Turn

  Mother’s Day

  The Petition Spreads Like Poison Ivy

  Weekly Bulletin

  Most Trips to the Mall Involve Pretzels

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  A Cairn Is a Pile of Stones

  Letter to My First-Grade Daisy Troop

  When Your Best Friend Is a Boy, Sometimes Conversations Will Be Awkward

  Contact Information

  White Dresses Group Chat

  Seniors Aren’t as Scary as They Look

  Cherry Pie

  Before the Tree House Was a Recording Studio for Podcasts, It Was:1

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  @dresscodedapodcast

  Shrine to Ms. Milholland

  Have You Actually Tried on a Garbage Bag?

  Carnival Colors

  Mr. Blue and Miss Yellow

  Uncomfortably Numb

  Letter to My Deceased Grandpa, Danny Boy

  When You Actually Miss Having the Nickname Snot Drop Because the Alternative Is More Humiliating

  My Heart Talks to Megan Birch Behind My Back

  When You’re Having an H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks Day, You Might as Well Take a Puck to the Face

  Consequences

  In the Morning

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  I See Why Americans Spend Billions on Insomnia Medications

  Dress Shopping with a Stomachache

  When Encountering a Headless Bird Is the Highlight of Your Day

  The Best Day of My Life (so Far)

  My Biggest Fear

  What Could Be Worse Than the Stomach Bug?

  Consequences

  Keepers of the Garden

  Almost Normal

  How We Try to Find My Brother

  When Prince Willister and Princess Molliflower End Up Eating Cookies in the Dark

  When a Watch Becomes a Warning at the Perfect Moment to Save You from a Potential Fistfight with a Teacher

  Things Mom and I Do to Kill an Hour Because Dad Is Home with Danny and We Need a Break

  How Do You Say “heartbreak” in Spanish? (asking for a Friend)

  How I Fell in Like with Navya

  Out of Sorts Is Another Term for “my Brother Has Always Been Mean to Me”

  Things Dad Was Planning to Do During His Two Weeks Off

  Things Dad Is Actually Doing During His Two Weeks Off

  What Did You Say?

  The Bully Box

  Signs for Justice

  Rules for Getting Caught

  Sometimes All You Need to Know About Someone Is Tucked Inside a Green Folder

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  I Hear the Cheers

  Letter to Parents

  The Signs for Justice Group Chat Is Now Back to Being the White Dresses Group Chat (for Obvious Reasons)

  Detention Is Another Word for “my Worst Nightmare Come True”

  Bear Sticks

  What Matters to Ashley’s Mom

  It’s Hard to Call Adults on the Phone and Act Professional

  Good Ghosts

  Since Time Began, High School Girls Have Tried to Make Middle School Girls Feel Comfortable by Telling Them They Are Gorgeous (it Usually Works)

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  Scattered Ashes

  Goals

  A Different Agenda

  The 217-Person Group Chat Gets Ugly

  Guts Are Gross. Why Should We Be Trusting Them?

  Bea’s Last Meal with Braces

  The Letter I Would Never Send, Because I’M Not Cruel

  Kids, Those Acrostic Poems You Learn to Write in Second Grade Might Come in Handy Someday

  Things Great Teachers Say in the Hallways Between Classes

  What Great Teachers Mean When They Say Those Things

  Hugging It In

  You Rock

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  The Dan Plan

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  Middle School Is Hard Enough

  If You’re Going to Be a Toad, You Might as Well Be Golden

  Bored of Education

  Dress Code d: A Podcast

  The Opposite of a Campout

  The Tent Villagers

  The Letter in My Head

  Couchman Uncovers Our Birthday-Suit Grand Plan

  The Camp-In Is More Fun Than We Thought It Would Be

  Terrible People

  Remember Friends

  Creepy-Crawlers

  If You Ever Play Truth or Dare, Take the Dare. Trust Me.

  Even Frogs Have a Breaking Point

  The Letter I Slide Under My Brother’s Door

  The Milholland Plan

  Bad Ghosts

  Really Bad Nerves

  Lip Balm on Friendship

  Dress Coded: A Podcast

  The Thing About Souls

  Yearbook Day

  Princess Molliflower and Prince Willister Have Much to Celebrate

  Middle School Is Not That Bad

  Danny’s Letter

  Girls in White Dresses

  All’s Well in Bearville: A Podcast

  The Amended Fisher Middle School Dress Code

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  DRESS CODED: A PODCAST

  EPISODE ONE

  This is my first podcast and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve only listened to two podcasts in my life; one was about famous guitarists, and the other was about Southern cooking. Neither prepared me for what I’m about to say. But I feel like this is the best way to tell the real story about what happened to make the entire Fisher Middle School eighth grade hate Olivia Bonaventura.

  It’s time for the truth.

  ME: My name is Molly Frost, and this is episode one of Dress Coded: A Podcast, the real story behind the dress-code disaster at Fisher Middle School. The whole incident happened in the Fisher flower garden, right next to the mountain of kindness rocks, Mrs. Tucker’s pet project. I was there. I saw the whole thing. And now I’m sitting here with Olivia. Hi, Olivia, do you want to give the background?

  OLIVIA: You can give the background, Molly.

  ME: Are you sure? It’s your story.

  OLIVIA: You were a witness.

  ME: Okay, well, it all began last Wednesday. I woke up late in a panic because I was already missing first period and my mom was at an appointment, so I had to cut through the woods to the back path of our school. When I got to the garden, which, for you non-Fisher listeners, was planted to honor the six Fisher graduates who died in wars, I stopped to tie my shoe. I looked up, and that’s when I saw you standing in front of Mr. Dern and Dr. Couchman. I still remember Dr. Couchman’s face was bright red and Mr. Dern was pointing his finger at you, and you were crying.

  Silence.

  OLIVIA: Molly, can you pause it for a minute?

  OFF-AIR

  I’m already beginning to think Dress Coded: A Podcast was a mistake. Olivia seems very uncomfortable.

  “Are you okay?” I say, checking to make sure the recorder is off.

  She nods. “Maybe we should just forget about this. Pearl says the story will die by high school graduation.”

  “Olivia, I can’t let everyone hate you for something that wasn’t your fault. It’s just not right. People need to know what happened.”

  I don’t say this to Olivia, for obvious reasons, but when Mr. Dern and Dr. Couchman were yelling at her because of a royal-blue tank top with spaghetti straps, I witnessed a piece of her soul leave her body. Until that day, I had thought souls left bodies at the time of death, all at once. But when I saw Olivia’s face, her arms crossed in front of her, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and the rose-colored hives blooming upward and outward across her chest, I knew everything I had ever believed about souls leaving bodies was wrong. Souls leave bodies in tiny gasps, like when you hold the lip of a balloon tightly and let out the air a little bit at a time.

  That’s why I texted her two days later. I had planned to talk to her at school, but she refused to go.

  LETTER TO FOURTH GRADERS

  If I could write a letter to my fourth-grade class, I would keep it short, because we didn’t have long attention spans in fourth grade. I would say this:

  Dear Fourth Graders,

  I know you all think boob is a funny word, and it is. But it won’t be for long. Okay, maybe it will still be funny for the boys in eighth grade. But for eighth-grade girls, there’s nothing funny about boobs. They hurt sometimes when they’re growing, and they don’t always grow in evenly, and sometimes they grow in all at once. It is possible to go visit your grandma in Florida for spring break and come back with big lumps of flesh poking through your shirt, and before you know it, you’re standing in a garden while two grown men yell at you and make you cry because your shirt no longer fits. And if that’s not your story, you may wake up every single day, peek down your shirt, close your eyes tight, open them, and then look to see if anything has popped up overnight. And when it hasn’t, you will put on the bra you don’t need and wear a baggy shirt, because you don’t want people to notice you still look like a fourth grader (no offense). And then you and your friend with the big lumps of flesh will walk around in your ill-fitting shirts with your shoulders rounded because you have grown to hate the word you once thought was so funny. Boob. The biggest four-letter word of middle school.

  BACKSTORY

  I used to be better friends with Olivia and Pearl.

  Olivia was in my fifth-grade class, and Pearl was in my sixth-grade class. They were both lunch-table friends, as opposed to sleepover friends or the even closer double-sleepover friends. We talked about homework and sat together at assemblies and picked each other first (or at least second or third) for teams at recess. I knew Olivia had a secret crush on Rahul, and Pearl and I fake-dated a few of the same boys. Fake-dating in fifth and sixth grade means telling everyone you’re dating, then making sure you don’t make eye contact with your fake boyfriend until you break up a week later.

  I’ll never forget the time Nick was about to pull the chair out from under me just as I was sitting down and Olivia punched him and saved me from falling. She got sent to the office for that and I felt really bad, but she assured me it was worth it.

  I lost touch with Olivia in seventh grade because I hadn’t seen much of her in sixth grade and because Olivia got into seventh-grade honors. I lost touch with Pearl because Pearl isn’t allowed to have Snapchat, which kind of makes her a social outcast (I wish it didn’t have to be that way), and because Pearl also got into honors.

  I didn’t get into honors because I’m a pretty average person in every way. I wouldn’t say I try my best at school, lacrosse, clarinet, or life in general. But compared to my brother, Danny, I’m a rock star.

  Pearl and Olivia are pretty good friends. If I had to guess (because I haven’t really talked much to Pearl or Olivia this year), they’re sit-on-the-bus-together-on-field-trips friends and maybe sleepover friends, but probably not double-sleepover friends.

  I hung out with my lacrosse team for a while in seventh grade, because it was easy to make plans after practice and half of us still weren’t allowed to use our phones unless it was for an emergency, so making plans in person was our only option.

  I can assure you our forbidden phones were ringing off the hook when Fisher Middle School went into active-shooter lockdown last spring. Mrs. Pullman thought she heard Chris Reynolds say he was hiding a bomb. We’re still not sure if he actually said that, but we went on lockdown and Chris Reynolds got suspended. My mom has said “I love you, Molly” at drop-off every morning since that day, even when she’s in a miserable mood because of Danny. At least twice a month, she’ll remind me: “If there’s a shooter, don’t necessarily do what the teachers tell you to do. Listen to your gut. Run if your gut tells you to run. Hide if your gut tells you to hide.” I don’t really trust my gut, but I don’t tell her that.

  Since eighth grade started, Navya, Ashley, and Bea have been my closest friends. The y’re not in honors either, but Navya is the best lacrosse player on the team, Bea is so talented at art she gets fifty dollars a day face-painting at birthday parties, and Ashley has a pool and a hot tub. They like hanging out with me because I’m funny.

  That’s pretty much all anyone needs to know about what my life was like before I saw Olivia getting dress coded in the Kindness Garden while Pearl stood there holding a pair of Pink sweatpants.

  Oh, I did want to mention my brother, Danny, has been sucking up all my parents’ energy, because he’s addicted to vaping. In their free time, my parents enjoy searching Danny’s room and backpack, hiding their cash so Danny can’t take it to buy pods, and calling doctors to ask how long it will be before Danny gets popcorn lung and dies.

  I know at least twenty kids in the eighth grade who have gotten vaping pods from Danny.

  That’s how he gets his cash.

  He doesn’t need Mom and Dad’s money.

  LETTER TO PARENTS

  Dear FMS Parents:

  It is with deep regret that I write to inform you our camping trip to Strawberry Hill State Park has been canceled. As you will recall, I sent out a letter on February 25 promising a wonderful trip if our eighth graders simply followed the dress code outlined in the student handbook. For the better part of the semester, your children have done a fantastic job. Recently, however, a student violated the dress code and after we gave her ample opportunity to comply, she refused. Unfortunately, rules are rules.

  In an effort to provide a safe, distraction-free learning environment, we encourage your children to continue following the policy stated in our FMS handbook. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused your family.

  Sincerely,

  Jim Couchman, EdD

  WILL’S TEXTS

  My best friend Will texts me: I hate camping, but that was messed up. I thought Olivia was normal.

  Will is my neighbor. Our backyards touch, and our dads built the tree house when we were eight and inseparable. I barely see him anymore because he’s addicted to some video game I’ve never heard of and because our parents don’t hang out as much since my mom is stressed-out about Danny.