Holey, Mole-y

Holey, Mole-y is the ninth book of the All About Us series by Maryam Wells. It was released on July 5th, 2011. It is published by Xilbris Publishing. 
Niki is featured on the book cover.
==Summary==
Niki is concerned about a mole growing on her shoulder, mainly because it won't look good in tanks, camis, and tube tops, so the other girls encourage her to go see a dermatologist about it. She does this and comes back with some unexpected news: the doctor took a biopsy to determine whether or not she has a case of skin cancer. During the five days it takes for the biopsy results to come back, the other girls are all worried and very solicitous of Niki. At first Niki downplays any danger, then she gets irritated at her friends' constant efforts to do something for her. Mrs. Merrick tries to get her daughter to open up about what she's going through but Niki won't say much because she thinks that, judging from the past, her mom won't be able to handle such a major problem. But Sierra finally calls Mrs. Merrick up and asks for her help after Niki has pushed her friends away. At the Loft, Mrs. Merrick meets her daughter and talks to her. Niki confesses her fears and say she's tired of being strong. She also say she feared her mother couldn't handle bad news. Mom tells Niki she'll help her through the crisis no matter what, if she will allow it. Kristy can't take waiting for news about the biopsy results and goes to the hospital despite Niki's asking the girls not to come. When she gets there she says a prayer in the chapel that Niki walks in on and overhears. The two girls talk about the effect this experience has had on their faith. Niki says a prayer herself before departing. Maybe, she says, the closeness and understanding this ordeal has brought her with her mother and friends is a good thing. Back home, Alicia, Sierra, Steven and Sean wait anxiously until Niki arrives with the good news that her mole wasn't cancerous.
While Niki deals with cancer scare, Amy Hunter's bother, Nathan has a crush on Sierra. Also, Alicia deals with a mean teacher, her parents, and her struggles with her learning disability.
==Quotes== 
Oh, don't look so shocked. Even the shallow pray. - Niki
I'm sixteen. I don't wanna spend the rest of my life in hospitals. I'm scared and I don't want to die... - Niki to her parents.
==Excerpt==
Chapter 1
Nikki Merrick was going through all of her trendy blouses and dresses from her closet, looking for the perfect outfit to wear for her date Friday night. It was a Wednesday afternoon; around 6:15 PM. Her radio was playing Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield, the song she heard every time she watched an all-new episode of The Hills on MTV. She started liking the song because she was a fan of Pop music since Britney Spears came out with Baby, One More Time back in third grade in 1999. 
  While I was listening to the song, I pulled out a Sea Green Pleated Fit & Flare Dress from my closet and modeled it in front of her full-length mirror. It was a cute dress but it wasn’t cute enough for my hot date. Then, all of a sudden, I hear my bedroom door knock. I thought it was my maid, Lucy. 
 “Come in, it’s open!” I yelled from my 
The door opened. 
“Hey, girlfriend.” It was my best friends Alicia Alcott, Sierra Jennings, and Kristy Castelli. They came in from their after-school activities. 
Alicia was rehearsing music with her band D-Squared; Sierra had to finish an article she was writing for the school newspaper, Silver Hills Digest, which she don’t about; and Kristy was at basketball practice. They were more than just her best friends, they were her lifelong sisters—Due to the fact that she's an only child and her parents didn’t have more children after Nikki was born. She have known them since Kindergarten to our sophomore year at Silver Hills High, the school they go to. 
“Girls, I need your help. I have a—” 
“We know. You have a date for Friday Night!” Kristy interrupted me. Since we started high school in the fall of 2004, just after graduating from Silver Hills Middle School, she had become a bona fide serial dater. She like going out on dates every Friday Night with a different boy. She wasn’t ready for a serious relationship; She just like having fun with the boys. 
“As of this Friday Night, you have a date with Brandon Keller, the star of the boys’ varsity basketball team,” Alicia said, checking her date book, as Nikki would call it: The Boy-pedia. It has every information on every boy at Silver Hills High, who were available for Friday Nights to the movies or for a bite of Pizza. 
“Brandon Keller is one mega hottie. Oh, girls. I’ve never been this excited of any date in my life.” 
“Yeah, he has a great butt,” Sierra agreed. 
“But, that’s why I need your help on finding me the perfect outfit for Friday night!” 
Then I rushed back into my closet to show the girls her top three outfits for her date. 
“So what do you think of this one?” Nikki asked pulling out my black and brown sequined panel mini dress from the closet. 
“Can I borrow that?” Alicia asked. 
“Alicia?” 
“That’s hot!” Kristy laughed. 
The black and brown sequined panel mini dress did look good on me, but she sure didn’t see it. Nikki tossed it on my bed and pulled out another one from the closet. A Coral Textured Asymmetrical Bodycon Dress that looks great on Alicia when she is performing in front of a crowd. 
“That’s gorgeous, Nik,” Sierra complimented. 
She threw her second choice on my bed and pulled out her last choice: A dark purple open panel mini dress. 
“Simple… chic… perfect!” 
All the girls agreed, dress choice number three wins. 
Alicia and Sierra noticed the reason dress choice number 3 won. It was a long sleeved dress, when Nikki Merrick, a long time California resident always wore tank tops, tube tops, camisoles, and bikinis on the beach. Why wouldn’t she wear any sleeveless dresses for my date Friday night? 
That was the question the girls kept asking themselves. 
Nikki was the most trendiest girl at Silver Hills High and the wealthiest girl in town. She would wear any clothes that showed off her skin or any top that exposed my fit, toned shoulders. But now, her friends think she's wearing clothes like she was covering up something. The only time Alicia wore clothes to hide her skin, was when she got six flea bites on her right arm from going outside the backyard where stray cats came to hang out at. 
“Nikki, are you hiding something?” Alicia asked. 
“No!” Nikki scoffed, thinking that Alicia was crazy for asking me that I was hiding something. 
“I just want to wear this dress for my date. I’m not hiding anything, for god sakes!” She said defensively. 
Nikki thought Alicia was off her rocket, thinking that Nikki had something to hide about herself. 
  “I think this dress could use some edginess,” Nikki thought. 
“Alicia, do you still have you faux-leather jacket from BEBE?” she asked, while searching her new shoes from Vince. 
“Yeah, it’s still in my closet,” Alicia said gloomy. Sierra and Kristy suspect that something was up with Alicia when her tone of voice had changed. 
“Are you okay, Al?” Kristy asked. 
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just worried about Nikki’s fashion choices.” 
The girls have been lifelong best friends since Kindergarten. When Alicia and her family moved from Alabama to California, she became instant best friends with Sierra and Kristy, but became enemies with Nikki; Nikki really didn’t like her at first. But when they entered first grade, we became less enemies and more civil towards one another, until becoming good friends in the third grade. We would often sleep over at each other’s houses, watch TV, eating junk food and attend each other’s birthday parties. By the fourth and fifth grade, we had become Silver Hills Elementary’s foursome friends. 
  When the girls were 10, Alicia and Sierra had Mrs. Evans class from fourth grade to one half of their fifth grade year until Mrs. Evans moved to a new classroom and was replaced by a male teacher for their last year. Alicia’s reason for mistrusting a male teacher was because she had a male teacher who was a major bastard towards her and that she vowed to never have a male teacher. That was when he moved her, Sierra, and the rest of the fifth graders to the back of the classroom and left the third and fourth graders in the front, much to Alicia’s dismay, because she sat in the back throughout her second semester of fourth grade. 
Alicia and Sierra had Mr. Goldstein for the rest of fifth grade while Kristy and Nikki had Ms. Grayson down the hall of their school. Although they weren’t in classes together, we still found time to eat together at lunch and play on the monkey bars. 
  Finally, Nikki pulled out her new Vince shoes and tried them on my cute feet. 
“So, do these shoes make my feet look hot?” Nikki complimented. 
“Slammin’ shoes, Nik,” Alicia agreed. 
“Now, all I need are some statement earrings and Alicia’s black faux-leather jacket and I’ll be ready to go on the most awesome date of my life,” Nikki said, taking off her shoes. 
Besides the housemaid, Lucy, Nikki lived with my father, Aaron who was a famous heart surgeon at Silver Hills Community Hospital and her mother, Elizabeth, was a interior designer at Silver Hills’ designing firms. We lived in a beautiful Mediterranean-style house in Silver Hills about 725 square feet with a beautiful pool where she and her friends could hang out in the summer time. With their wealth, she could afford anything she wanted for under $400 to $8,000 dollars. She has her own credit cards in her yellow clutch that cost $600 she bought at H&M. 
  The Merrick Villa (Which Alicia always called it) held the biggest parties in the city. Like her 13th birthday in 2003, the end-of-the-school-year pool party, and important business parties. 
 “I don’t know why you obsessed with finding the perfect outfit for a date,” Kristy grimaced. She believed that obsessing over an outfit was shallow and degrading. 
“Duh, Kris. I want Brandon Keller to notice me as the most beautiful girl in the world; otherwise he might pay to that bitchy Amy Hunter.” 
Sierra and Alicia rolled their eyes once I mentioned Amy Hunter to Kristy. 
“Nik. If a guy doesn’t like you for you, then he’s not worth it. Just give him to Amy.” 
“And let her gloat at me? Forget It!” 
The girls have been rivals with the stuck-up, snobby Amy Hunter and her cousin, Allison Holmes since their freshman year at Silver Hills High. They were the ones competing with me over boys and fashion and tease Sierra for being a nerd, Kristy for her tomboyish image, and bullying Alicia for her being nice, a aspiring singer, and her crush on her bandmate and new student, Ryan Frankel. Amy and Allison were more than just cousins. God, they’re mothers are identical twin sisters. Amy’s mother married a guy with brown hair, while Allison’s mother married a guy with blond hair. They have both gotten… well… the P word with Amy and Allison at the same time. Amy was born first, then Allison two months later. Amy is a brunette (Thanks to her mother and her brunette father) and Allison is a blonde (Thanks to her mother and her blond father). 
  The time was coming around 5PM, which meant that Sierra and Alicia had to go home and start her homework; Kristy had to go waitress at her parents’ family restaurant, Castelli’s Pizza Shack. That left Nikki alone in her room getting ready for her date with Brandon Keller. 
Later that night, at Castelli’s Pizza Shack, Nikki was sitting at the booth of the restaurant, enjoying a slice of pepperoni & spinach pizza with Brandon Keller. God, was he gorgeous! 
“You’re looking very pretty tonight, Nikki,” he complimented her as he took a bite of his mushroom pizza. 
“Um, Thanks?” 
I had styled my hair in a messy-curly style, very popular these days, and she was looking very edgy-chic. 
“So, what’s it like to be the wide receiver?” she asked. 
“Cool. Ladies say that wide receivers always get the girls.” 
Brandon Keller had everything a wide receiver could have: Popularity, bulging biceps, rock-hard chest, short dark brown hair, stunning blue eyes, and a killer smile—a Keller smile. 
Nikki twirled her blond curl in an attempt to put him under a Nikki spell to get him to kiss him. 
Nikki always had a way with guys, since middle school. But a few months ago, she drooled over a hunky, sexy senior named Devon McGregor, who was almost as sexy as Brandon. Instead, he showed his true colors by almost date raping me at his house. He slapped her on her left cheek and tried to unbuckle the belt of my $300 light blue satin dress, while she fought back by scratching his left eyelid with a car key and fled his house. 
The whole thing left her traumatized, she ended up alienating her friends; she was pushing every guy away; and worse… she went to school in shapeless outfits that were totally unflattering. 
  She was so upset about what was happening to her, she ended up re-arranging her closet and washing her hair non-stop. 
Sierra came by to see if Nikki was okay, then she spilled the beans. 
She could never forget the shocked look on her face when she told her what Devon almost did to her. 
  Nikki ended up crying her eyes out and Sierra ended up comforting me. Little did she know, she convinced her to tell her parents, Sierra’s mother, who was a lawyer, and our school principal, Mrs. Castelli (Kristy’s mother) about what Devon did to me. 
Devon was kicked out of school and arrested, because she pressed charges so that Devon doesn’t do this to another girl. 
Ever since the Devon nightmare, Nikki had to be careful around liking a guy, when it came to Brandon. These days boys seemed to be obsessed with sex while girls like me are obsessed with appearance, make-up, and hair. 
Then all of a sudden, she sees Amy and Allison coming by her booth. 
“Hello, Nikki,” She greeted. 
“Hi, Brandon,” Then her voice changed for Brandon. She and Allison never liked me and my friends, just the boys we’d liked all along. What pissed me off was when Amy showed up in the same outfit and the same hairstyle as me. She was nothing more of a fashion thief, stealing my fashion ideas and my hairstyles. 
“Hey, Brandon, my cousin and I were going to the movies, it’s the first Spy Girl, wanna come with us?” Amy asked. Her jaw hit the floor when that bitch asked Brandon to the movies, when she could see that he was on a date with Nikki. 
“Look here, Hunter. Brandon’s on a date with Moi.” 
“Oh! I thought tonight’s your date with Sebastian?” 
“You’re dating Sebastian?” 
“I don’t know a Sebastian!” Nikki snapped. 
“Neither did I?” Allison asked. Unlike Amy, Allison was the more dumber cousin. 
“Or was it Chad Forrester, you had plans for tonight?” Amy continued. 
“Chad Forrester?” Brandon asked. 
“I don’t know either! Amy you’re making shit up as usual,” She hissed. 
“I think I better go. Thanks for the date.” Brandon ended up leaving. "That Amy Hunter," she muttered. "I could just slap the shit out of that lying bitch!" 
“All right, Amy. Who’s Sebastian and Chad Forrester?” 
“Neither. I made them up to spoil you date with Brandon. Did you actually think he would be interested in you?” 
Amy and Allison laughed as they left the pizza shack. Nikki's face turned bright red. She just want to stomp on her. Stealing her style was bad enough, but ruining her date, that’s just plain worse! 
 
Chapter 2
Around 6:30PM, Sierra Jennings was doing her homework with Alicia Alcott; it was biology with from their evil, bitchy teacher, Mrs. Crawford. Alicia had a bored look on her face when it came to reading anything related to biology. 
Then Sierra found out she was doing Algebra 1, while the whole damn time she was doing biology. 
“You’re doing Algebra 1?” she asked her. They were more than just doing their homework; they were stuffing their faces with cheetos, onion ring chips, and cans of orange and grape soda, also talking what’s on their minds. 
“I’m flunking the first Algebra and I’m not doing good in biology,” Alicia revealed 
“No wonder you’re flunking, you have bad grammar,” Sierra teased. 
“Come on, Si. I’m not in a good mood,” Alicia’s attitude had good moody. 
“What’s going on with you, I haven’t seen you this moody since… Oh my god, your thing came!” 
“No, my thing didn’t come. My parents are ganging up on me since my last report card. I got a D in Algebra and another D in biology.” 
Alicia was a “C” student at school, while Sierra was a straight-A student. 
“Well, you got an A in another class,” She said. 
“Yeah, I always get straight-A’s in dance class, Yipee!” 
It seems like all Alicia wants to talk about was her bad report card and the way Mrs. Crawford and her parents were treating her. 
“Did you notice that Nikki wasn’t wearing any sleeveless dresses for her date tonight?” Sierra asked Alicia, trying to change the subject. 
“Yeah, it was weird. The only time she wears short-sleeved dresses was when she was in air-conditioned places,” She explained. 
The girls were the only ones with a tight-knit friendship. While Alicia hangs out with Nikki over boys and fashion or with Kristy over boys and sports, me and her can hang out over what’s bugging us. 
She was there for Sierra when her parents, Sam and Susan Jennings split up when she was 13 and they both weren’t thrilled when their older siblings started dating. Sierra’s older sister, Will (Short for Willow) started liking Alicia’s older brother, Trent when they were juniors at Silver Hills High. Then they broke up while the girls, along with Nikki and Kristy graduated from Silver Hills Middle School. They went on dating other people following the senior year of high school and their freshman year. 
They didn’t reconcile following graduation, but managed to stay in touch with each other. 
“Si. I have something to tell you,” Alicia told Sierra in a calming tone of voice. 
“You’re breaking up with me?” She teased again. 
“Come on, I’m serious!” Alicia’s tone of voice changed. 
“Mrs. Crawford has been on my case. When she called me to her desk, about me Stephen King book, which I don’t have, she thought I was lying for my mother or something.” 
Sierra was speechless. She couldn’t believe that her own biology teacher would be so mean towards Alicia; This brought back memories of when their old teacher Ms. James, from second grade, would be a bitch towards Alicia, hurting her feelings. Alicia has a tendency to be the sensitive person. 
“What a bitch!” Sierra exclaimed. 
“I know. And people would bully me in there. I don’t know if I could take it.” 
Sierra has never seen Alicia look so down, this sound like a song she should write about. Alicia was an aspiring singer and songwriter, and a dancer. 
Alicia and Sierra took a break from their homework party and Sierra went to Alicia and comforted her as she was feeling so low from almost being scarred by our biology teacher and classmates. 
“And I really didn’t like being in L3,” Alicia continued. 
“Really? I like being in L3,” Sierra said. 
Alicia revealed to Sierra that in L3, there was a guy whom she didn’t like and was in every class she was in. Her biggest fear was people were going to hate her. 
“I 
==Notes==
*This episode dealt with one topic: Cancer Scares and Self-Harming.
*Alicia goes through double-bullying with students and teacher.
*Alicia is diagnosed with Dyscalculia, after failing her CAHSEE Math Exam.
*Alicia self-harms herself after getting into a fight with her parents.
*Kristy comforts Alicia after she was bullied and humiliated in Biology class. 
*Mrs. Crawford bullies Alicia in front of the entire class.
*This
==Outfits from this episode==
Category:All About Us
Category:Books