Quiz Queens Read online

  For Jessica Chase. She knows why.

  Copyright © 2017 K.L. Denman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Denman, K. L., 1957–, author

  Quiz queens / K.L. Denman.

  (Orca currents)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1396-0 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1397-7 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1399-1 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca currents

  PS8607.E64Q59 2017 jC813'.6 C2016-904466-1

  C2016-904467-X

  First published in the United States, 2017

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950078

  Summary: In this high-interest novel for middle readers, boy-crazy Kiara convinces studious Jane to create a questionnaire to help find her soulmate.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts,and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  Author photo by Jasmine Kovac

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  I have solid plans. Not just for today or tomorrow, but for the next ten years. My plans are going to take me places. And yet, here I am in the same old place, listening to Kiara. She’s been my best friend since second grade, and she’s great. She is. But lately I’ve started to wonder what we have in common.

  We’re doing what we usually do after school, hanging out in her room. She has spent the last twenty minutes talking about the utter cuteness of Omar Bari’s eyes. She thinks they are so deep. Then she compares them to the amazing wonder of Liam Parks’s biceps. Liam does have freakishly large biceps. I’ve told Kiara I don’t have time to waste on guys. They only cause trouble. But does she listen? No. She is not a listener—she’s a talker. Her parents regularly threaten her with duct tape. They’ve never actually taped her mouth shut, but they keep rolls of tape on hand.

  My method to shut her up is to shut myself down. I stop making eye contact. I don’t give her the smallest Uh-huh. It usually works. Like now, she finally flops onto her bed with her tablet. I sit at her desk, push my glasses into place (they’re always sliding down my nose) and get started on my homework. Three whole minutes of silence pass.

  “Omigod, Jane. Can you believe this?” Kiara taps the tablet screen. “It says my animal spirit totem is the coyote. As if.”

  “Another online personality quiz?” I ask.

  “Yeah. And it’s so wrong.” She tosses back her ponytail. “I should have got the deer. At least they’re pretty. Or the wolf. Wolves are cooler than coyotes.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know why you keep doing those things.”

  “Because they’re fun.”

  “How are they fun?” I ask. “You hardly ever like the results.”

  Kiara looks surprised. “No way. Remember the fairy one I did yesterday? It said I was a flower fairy, and it described me perfectly. It said I’m sweet as nectar and love being around happy people. Totally accurate.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, but look what it took to get that. Three times doing the quiz and changing your answers until you got the fairy you wanted. Just like the dog one before that. You flipped when it said you were a golden retriever because you wanted to be a poodle. Or the Disney Princess one that said you’re Cinderella and then Snow White before you got Jasmine.”

  Kiara shrugs. “So? You know how they work. It’s multiple choice. Sometimes it’s hard to decide which answer to pick. Let’s say there’s a picture of a grassy meadow, a beach and a full moon. I can’t choose which one I like best if I like all of them.”

  “But,” I argue, “aren’t you supposed to go with your first instinct?” I can’t believe I say that. I’m not big on following instincts.

  “Yes.” Kiara nods. “But it doesn’t always work.”

  “Because,” I say, “they don’t work. They’re garbage.”

  She frowns and smooths the cover on her bed. It’s pale purple with big white flowers. “They aren’t garbage. They help me get to know myself. It’s like Ms. Kalkat says. Fourteen is an age when people are figuring out who they are.”

  Ms. Kalkat is our teacher for Career and Personal Planning class. We’ve been learning about personal growth. Thanks to Sherry, my mother—or no thanks to her—I feel done with personal growth already.

  “So”—Kiara throws me a defiant look—“I’m going to do the spirit-totem quiz over, and I’ll prove it.”

  “Have you even read what it says about the coyote spirit totem?” I ask.

  “No.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Then how do you know it’s wrong?”

  “Fine. I’ll read it.” She picks up her tablet and starts reading aloud. “Coyote spirit messages may appear as jokes to remind you not to take things too seriously.”

  “Hmm,” I murmur. “What else?”

  She keeps reading. “Its ways are indirect, but the coyote is a teacher with a sense of humor and hidden wisdom. Coyote wisdom reveals the truth behind illusion. Don’t be tricked by appearances.” She snorts at this. “As if I would be.”

  “That actually sounds pretty cool.”

  “You think?” Kiara is doubtful. “I’d still feel better with a deer animal spirit. Deer are beautiful.”

  “I like the part about revealing the truth behind illusion.” I should tell her why I like it. I’d like her to see that all the so-called truth in these quizzes is an illusion. But I’m tired of arguing about it.

  “And look at this,” Kiara says. “Coyote wisdom often uses trickery to deliver its message. That’s interesting.”

  Coyote wisdom is interesting. Trickery to deliver a message? I’ve got to remember that. Maybe I could use it to cure Kiara’s quiz craziness? In a way, trickery is what I’ve got planned for Sherry. “Did I tell you about the real quiz I found online?”

  “Real quiz?” Kiara squints suspiciously. “You mean something boring like a math quiz?”

  “No. Actually, it’s not a quiz. It’s a questionnaire.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “Let me explain. Sherry’s boyfriend dumped her, like they all do. So she’s a mess. Again. It doesn’t make sense. She keeps falling for the same type of guy over and over. It’s insane.”

  Kiara nods sympathetically. “Your mom is…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, but I can fill in the blank. My mom is pathetic.

  “So anyway,” I continue, “I’ve given up trying to make her stop seeing guys. She says she can’t. But I figured there had to be something I could do. So I looked online at some psychology stuff. And I found this questionnaire. It’s supposed to help people get to know each other. I mean, truly know each other. They got some complete strangers to ask each other these questions, and guess what happened?”

  “What?”
>
  “Some of the strangers fell in love.”

  Kiara stares. “Like, actual love?”

  I nod.

  “Wow.”

  “I know, right? So I want to give it to Sherry. After she’s had a few days to recover. If she agrees to try it with the next guy,” I say, “who knows? Maybe she’ll be able to screen out the losers before she falls for them.”

  “And find her true love?”

  I frown. “I don’t know about that. I’m hoping it stops the endless drama.”

  “Do you think she’ll do it?” Kiara asks.

  “Hard to know. But what about you? If you must do quizzes, why not do professional ones?” I definitely plan to be a professional. “There are lots of them online.”

  “Jane, you’re a genius.”

  I grin. The cure was that easy? “I try.”

  Kiara sits up and leans toward me. “I’d like to see that questionnaire.”

  “Yeah? I printed it out. Just a sec.” I reach into my pack and pull out my Sherry folder. I like to stay organized. Someone has to.

  The questionnaire is a mere two pages, and Kiara takes it eagerly. “This is it? It can’t be too hard.” She’s smiling at the paper like she just met an actual flower fairy. “I could use this.”

  “For what?”

  She reads out random questions. “Would you like to be famous? What’s your perfect day? Ahh! This is perfect!”

  A queasy ripple of worry spreads through my gut. “Kiara. What are you talking about?”

  She glances at me, eyes shining. “I don’t know if I’m ready to fall in actual love. But actual like would be good. But I can’t decide between Omar and Liam. And I can’t tell if they like me.” She waves the questionnaire. “So if I could somehow get them to do this… ”

  Chapter Two

  Kiara doesn’t want to return the questionnaire. She only agrees after I give her the link to the site where I found it. Then I start packing up to leave.

  “You aren’t staying for supper?” she asks. “I want you to help me figure this out.”

  I open her bedroom door, and the aroma of her mom’s famous chiles rellenos wafts in. I hesitate, but only for a moment. “I can’t. I need to check on Sherry.”

  “Like how she checks on you?” Kiara scoffs. But then her eyes soften, and she shakes her head. “Sorry, Jane. I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s okay,” I lie. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. But I’ll call you later, right?”

  Sherry is where I expect her to be. She is slumped on the couch in her pajamas, clutching a video-game controller. She’s not playing the game. She’s simply staring at the blank screen.

  “Hey, Sherry,” I say.

  No reaction.

  “Sherry? Mom?”

  She stirs. “What?” Her eyes focus, and she looks at me. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  Wow. She’s got it bad. “School ended three hours ago. It’s suppertime.”

  She’s only mildly surprised. She mutters something under her breath and waves a hand. “I’m not hungry.”

  I don’t answer. I go into the kitchen and find some canned soup. I divide it between two bowls. While it heats in the microwave, I make toast and unwrap cheese slices. It’s no chiles rellenos, but it’ll do. When I bring a bowl to Sherry, she ignores it.

  I return with the plate of toast and cheese and tell her, “He’s not worth it. You know that.”

  She sighs and finally glances my way. I’m struck by how weary she looks. Without her makeup, Sherry is showing signs of age. Not that thirty-two is very old. But if this keeps up, she won’t be able to tell men I’m her sister. Then again, the men she dates aren’t all that smart.

  “Eat something,” I say. “You’ll feel better.”

  She picks up a spoon. “I thought he was different.”

  “You always think that.” I get my Sherry folder out of my pack and pull out the list I need. “You said that about Eddy, Darnell, Scott—”

  “Jane.” She cuts me off with a sour look. “Stop.”

  I shrug and give her a moment. That’s all the encouragement she needs. “And he was so handsome,” she continues. “He was hot.”

  “So is your soup,” I say. “But if you don’t hurry up and eat it, it won’t be.”

  Obediently, she swallows a mouthful. “He even had a job.”

  “Yeah. And you do too. Which you skipped out on today.”

  Her gaze sharpens. “I called them.”

  Sherry works as a cashier in a supermarket. She’s taken a lot of broken-heart sick days. She reports having a migraine. Or that our toilet has exploded. Or she tells them I’m sick. I’m never sick. For work excuses, having a kid is convenient. “And were they okay about it?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Good.”

  I watch her finish her soup and toast, and then I gather the dishes. It’s like this. When I turned twelve, Sherry made an announcement. She said that I was her equal. She put a good spin on it. She said I was more grown up than most adults she knew. This was probably true. She told me she knew I could handle it. To seal the deal, she asked me to stop calling her Mom. She said “Mom” made her sound like an authority figure. Equals don’t need that.

  What it really meant was that Sherry was tired of being my mother. She went on to confide that having a kid stopped guys from getting involved with her. I was disappointed to know for sure that she was a cliché. As her equal, I told her that. She didn’t like it and tried to ground me.

  As her equal, I told her fine, she was grounded too. Since then, we’ve muddled along. She works, pays the bills and shops for groceries. I do most of the cooking—unless I’m eating at Kiara’s—and the cleaning. I also make her return new shoes we can’t afford even when she says they’re for me. We wear the same size, but I would never wear the stuff she likes.

  About five seconds after I’ve done the dishes, Kiara calls. I swear she has a sixth sense about my routine. “Hey,” she says. “How’s Sherry?”

  “Better. She ate supper.”

  “That’s a good sign. So did you give her the questionnaire?”

  “Not yet,” I reply. “She’s not ready.”

  There’s a pause before she asks, “Have you actually read it? The whole thing?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  She sighs. “It’s way complicated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, maybe for someone like you, it’s fine. But it’s got questions about death and being embarrassed and when did you last cry. How is that romantic? It’s depressing.”

  “It’s not depressing,” I tell her. “It’s serious. There’s a difference.”

  “Yeah, I know. But how can I ask Omar and Liam stuff like that? Yuck.”

  It’s nice to hear she’s come to her senses. I don’t say that to her. I say, “You’re right. It’s a bad idea.”

  “Well, not exactly. I mean, the idea is good. But it needs to be customized.”

  “Customized,” I say. “What, like your dad’s cars?” Her dad works at a high-end auto-body shop. He does amazing custom paintwork. I have never met my dad.

  “Yes! That’s it.” Kiara sounds excited. “You take some basic thing and make it better.”

  “Kiara. When I told you about this questionnaire, it wasn’t to get you a boyfriend. It was about you giving up those dumb online quizzes. Or if you have to do them, then do quality ones. Professional ones.”

  “Phffft. You and the professionals. I’m telling you, Jane, this can work.”

  I have that queasy feeling in my gut again. “What exactly are you talking about?”

  “We’ll write our own quiz! You see? And really, you’re almost a professional already. So it’ll be good quality. Practically designer label.”

  I have to laugh. “Designer label, huh? Should we call it the Prada Quiz?”

  She laughs too. “Okay, maybe not. But I really want you to help me. Will you?”


  “Um…” I do not want to help her get a friggin’ boyfriend.

  “Pleeease? Come on, Jane. I already started. So far I’ve got, What is your favorite color? And, What is your lucky number?”

  She does need help. At least some quality control.

  “Pretty please?” she begs.

  Maybe the right questions would make her see how difficult boyfriends are? “Fine.”

  Her delighted squeal hurts my ear. I can picture her jumping up and down. Sometimes that girl has way too much enthusiasm. She’s on the school cheerleading squad. If the rest of them quit, she could handle it on her own.

  “But,” I caution, “we need to think about this. And try to use a scientific approach. Okay?”

  She just squeals some more.

  As usual, Kiara is getting her way.

  Chapter Three

  The assignments in Career and Personal Planning class are easy. Today is no exception. Create a Personal Timeline. I could do that in my sleep. (1) Get perfect grades and graduate high school. (2) Win full scholarships for university. (3) Get a degree in business management for a secure job future. (4) Launch a career that provides respect and a big salary so that I will not end up like my mother.

  I’m finished long before the bell will ring. I look at Kiara at the desk beside me. She’s frowning over the assignment. I’d help her, but Ms. Kalkat passes out detentions like pigeons pass poop. Talk during work time is forbidden. Thanks to Kiara, we’ve had more than our share of poop.

  I decide to use this time to consider Kiara’s quiz. She wants to ask questions that will help her get to know Omar and Liam. My nose wrinkles. Such a lame goal. And what about them? Will they even go along with it? Will they laugh at her? I’d hate to see her get hurt.

  They’re both in our class, so it’s possible to observe them. I’ve been sucked into this, so I might as well do my best. Luckily, both of them are seated at desks to my right. A slight adjustment to my angle is all I need to discreetly check them out.

  Omar does have beautiful eyes. Big, deep brown, thickly lashed. He is using them to ogle Lexi Taylor. She’s sitting directly in front of him, wearing her favorite leopard-print tights. The tights are strained to their limit, keeping that butt contained. Omar seems mesmerized. I am bored.