“Oh. Sorry I was making so much noise,” I said.
“Me too,” she said. “Since you’re making it on my locker.”
“Your locker?”
The girl rolled her eyes. Then she shoved me aside.
“Mandy?” someone called. Two other girls were hurrying toward us. They stopped at the locker.
“This jerk,” said Mandy, pointing at me, “was trying to break into my locker. Can you believe it?”
“I was not trying to break in!” I exclaimed.” I thought it was my locker. Isn’t it number 106B?”
“No. It is not 106B,” said Mandy. “It is 106D.”
I peered at the faded number on the locker. Sure enough.
“What an actress,” said one of the other girls. Then she turned to Mandy. “See if she got anything. Is anything missing?”
Mandy wrestled the door open. “No.” She paused. Then she glared at me. “But thanks a lot for breaking my mirror.”
I could see where Mandy had fastened a makeup mirror to the inside of her door. (A fancy nameplate over the mirror said MANDY RICHARDS, which is how I know her name.) My whamming had caused the mirror to fall off of its nail. Now it lay on the floor of the locker in a million pieces.
“Oops,” I said.
The three girls were looking at me like I had three heads. I mean, really, they were so condescending and snotty.
“I’ll buy you another mirror,” I said quickly. “Here.” I opened my purse to get out some money. And inside (this is the part I can hardly bear to think about) I found a fuzzy toy puppy. A note was attached to its tail. It could only have been from Jill. Some sort of surprise she’d planted for me.
“What is that?” exclaimed Mandy.
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
Mandy took the puppy out of my purse and held it between her thumb and forefinger. Her friends started to laugh.
“No need to pay for the mirror,” said Mandy. “I’ll take this instead.”
“You—” I started to say. I paused. “Don’t you ever put your hand in my purse again. That is private.”
Mandy frowned. Then she stepped forward, but suddenly one of her friends grabbed her and jerked her back.
“Don’t, Mandy,” she said.
And Mandy didn’t do whatever it was she’d started to do, but her eyes were flashing. Luckily, the other girl distracted her. She pulled the note off the tail, opened it, and read it aloud. “‘Here is a little good-luck friend for you,’” she read. She glanced at Mandy. “A good-luck friend?” She looked back at the note. “‘Keep it with you always. Your puppy pal, Jill.’”
Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned and ran down the hall. Believe me, I have truly never been so embarrassed. Not in my whole life.
Of course, since then I’ve seen Mandy and her friends about a hundred times, and they always snicker and call me Puppy Pal. (Mandy’s snicker is accompanied by those flashing eyes of hers.)
I think I am going to kill them. After that, I will kill Jill.
Later Wednesday night 10/1
At last a moment of peace. I think I’m the only one who’s awake in our house right now. Jeff went to bed almost two hours ago, and Carol has been in her room for about an hour. I just saw the light disappear from the crack under her door. She might be watching TV in bed, but I don’t think so. Carol was exhausted tonight. Plus, she kept harping on me about homework, which I don’t have. But she didn’t believe me. “It’s the beginning of the year,” she said. “You should have a ton of homework right now.”
The thing is, she was right. But the teachers haven’t been giving us much work. I think they’ve been crazed this year, spending all their time dealing with new students. But did I say this to Carol? No, I just got all defensive, like I usually do with her. I said, “If I had homework, don’t you think I’d be doing it?”
“Dawn,” she said warningly.
“You’re always picking on me.” (Carol just looked at me.) “Well, you are!”
“I am not picking,” Carol said in this staccato voice. And then she marched into her room. She doesn’t understand me, and I don’t understand her.
Thursday afternoon 10/2
It’s a quiet time, and I’m home alone. Carol and Jeff and Mrs. Bruen are all out together. Carol decided Jeff needs new school clothes, and instead of being thrilled at the prospect of shopping, Jeff threw a fit. He said he doesn’t need anything new, that all his ripped jeans and too-tight shirts are fine. Now, it’s true that you can wear just about anything you want at Vista, but honestly. Jeff looks awfully raggedy some days. Anyway, he said Carol has no idea what fifth-grade boys wear, which is probably also true, so he insisted that Mrs. Bruen go along, since she’s known him for so long. I think the whole thing is a mistake.
Wait—the phone is ring
The phone call was from Mary Anne. I miss my stepsister, but you know what? This is a terrible thing to write. However, since no one but me ever reads my journals I know I can say it safely—I don’t miss Mary Anne or my other Connecticut friends as much as I thought I would. I mean, I love them and I miss them and everything, and I’m glad the custody arrangements are for Mom to have Jeff and me in Connecticut for vacations and in the summer. But my friends do seem far away, as far as Stoneybrook is from Palo City.
Well, I was going to continue writing but Jeff and Carol and Mrs. Bruen just came back. They haven’t even been gone an hour. This is not a good sign.
Thursday night 10/2
Boy, did Jeff make a scene this afternoon. He probably already wrote about it in his journal. And I have a pretty good idea what his entry looks like. Jeff is not very concerned with privacy. He leaves his journals everywhere. Once he saw me reading his (he had left it open right out on the coffee table in the living room), and he didn’t even care. It was full of paragraphs like this:
I HATE DAWN SHE IS SO STUPID. I DO NOT EVEN WANT TO PLAY WITH HER OR HER STUPID FREINDS WHO NEEDS SISTERS. I WISH I WAS A ONLY CHILD
Anyway, I still do not know exactly what went on during the shopping trip, only that a total of one pair of tube socks was purchased. And then everyone came home in a foul mood. I could have asked what happened and someone would have told me, but I didn’t really want to stir things up again. Besides, I can figure out what happened. A ten-year-old boy went clothes shopping with his stepmother and his housekeeper. Period.
I’ve been thinking. This afternoon Mary Anne asked me about the We Kids Club. And you know what? I’m a little confused about it, just like I’m a little confused about a lot of things right now. Okay. So the We Kids Club was never as organized a sitting business as the Baby-sitters Club is. We never held regular meetings or assigned officers like the BSC did when I was in Connecticut. We tried to do that once, and it lasted all of about three weeks. Sunny and Maggie and Jill and I simply decided that baby-sitting is important to us, not officers and meetings. So in our haphazard way we got sitting jobs and we carried them out and we had fun. But lately we hardly meet at all. And you know something? Just like I don’t miss Connecticut too much, I don’t miss baby-sitting all that much either. I wonder why. And I wonder why my friends and I haven’t been getting together so often. I mean, getting together for meetings. We get together to do other things all the time. We’re always hanging out. Not so much at Sunny’s anymore because of her mom. And not so much at Jill’s anymore because of … well, because of Jill. Sometimes we hang out at my house or at Maggie’s spread. More often we go to the movies, or shop, or stand around at the mall eyeing cute guys. (Girls always think boys so rudely check out girls. Well, girls check out guys all the time.) What is happening to baby-sitting and the We Kids Club?
You know what? Jill would love to continue the meetings and baby-sitting. That sort of goes along with her idea of hanging out, which includes cookie-baking and popcorn-making. However, Maggie
Oh, boy. My thoughts are all over the place. I’m giving myself a headache. I better go to bed. But what is happening to my friend
s?
Friday 10/3
Hmm. I hardly know what to say about what happened in school today. It’s thrilling. It’s also really surprising, considering the Puppy Pal incident. Maybe the nice upper-classmen are behind it, not the mean ones.
I just reread what I wrote and realize I’m not being clear, so let me start over and explain things better. Okay. When I got to school on Friday morning I went straight to my locker. (My locker. Not Mandy’s. I’ll never make that mistake again.) And sticking out of the vent at the top was a folded piece of paper. I opened it. It turned out to be an invitation to a party. This is what it looked like:
SHHH! It’s a secret.
Come meet your fellow students and get acquainted.
The upperclassmen want to get to know you and a few others.
But only a few others—
you, the select few.
Food and drink served.
The fun starts at 10:00 on
Saturday night.
Don’t be early!
An address appeared at the bottom of the invitation. But no name. My first thought was that it was from Mandy and it was a joke. I mean, why would Puppy Pal be invited to a cool party put on by the upperclassmen for a select few eighth-graders?
But just then Sunny ran to me and grabbed me. She jumped up and down, squealing. “Look what I got! Look what I got!”
Sunny held out an invitation identical to mine.
Frowning, I held mine up for her to see.
“You got one too!” she cried.
“Yeah, but—”
“Hey! Hey, you guys! Look!” Maggie rushed to our sides, breathless. She held up another invitation.
“I—” I started to say.
Sunny couldn’t contain herself. She cut me off, grinning. “I know for a fact that not everyone got one,” she said. “Lucinda Dayton didn’t get one, and neither did Dakota Wilde.”
“Or Polly Guest,” added Maggie.
“This is so cool,” cried Sunny.” It’s the big time. A party given by the upperclassmen and they want to meet us.”
“And the party doesn’t even start until ten,” added Maggie. “Extremely cool.”
I started to feel more hopeful about the party.
Until lunchtime.
Friday afternoon 10/3
It was at lunch that. I found out that Jill had gotten one of the invitations too. I waited until she had left the table to buy a carton of milk. Then I said, “If this party is for cool kids, how come Jill got invited?”
Sunny waved her hand. “Oh, they probably thought they had to invite her. You know, because of us. They must have found out that we all hang out together and they didn’t want to hurt Jill by leaving her out.”
When I looked unconvinced, Maggie said, “You should hear who else was invited, Dawn.” And she began to reel off a list of the most popular eighth-graders.
“Really?” I said.
“Yup.” Maggie nodded smugly.
Jill returned with her milk then.
“So?” Sunny said to us.
“So what?” I replied.
“So are we going?”
“Going to what?” asked Jill.
“The party,” said Sunny.
“The one we just got the invitation to? Are you crazy?” said Jill. “We can’t go to a party like that.”
“Why not? We were invited,” said Maggie.
“They are eleventh-and twelfth-graders!” cried Jill. “They’re, like, four years older than us. Some of them are eighteen already.”
“So what?” said Sunny. “I want to go. Besides, like Maggie said, they invited us. So they must want us at the party.”
“It doesn’t mean we belong there,” said Jill. “Just think. They’re going to be doing all sorts of stuff—”
“How do you know what they’ll be doing?” asked Sunny.
“Come on, you guys,” I said, interrupting them. “We don’t have to decide this now. We have all today and tomorrow to think about it.”
“Well, if we do go, we should probably bring something,” Jill went on.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We can’t show up at a party empty-handed. My mom says. We can bake cookies. Or make fudge.”
“Fud—” Maggie started to say, an incredulous look on her face.
“We can talk about it later,” I said again. “End of discussion.”
I snuck a look at Jill’s face then. She seemed puzzled. She always seems puzzled lately. Ordinarily, that would have made me feel protective of her. But today I felt annoyed. And then I got mad at myself for feeling annoyed. What kind of friend am I?
Even later Friday afternoon 10/3
I wonder that a lot lately. What kind of friend am I? Actually, I think I mean what kind of person am I? What kind of friend, sister, stepsister, daughter, stepdaughter? I’m not always a very good person. I know that. I also know that most people are not “good” all the time, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I don’t like being a bad friend, daughter, sister. But sometimes I can’t help myself, and then I feel guilty.
Jill is driving me crazy.
Whoa. I just overheard the most amazing thing. I didn’t mean to. Not exactly. I mean, I didn’t intentionally eavesdrop. I just picked up the phone when it rang, and Carol picked it up at the same time on the downstairs extension, and when I heard the caller say, “This is Dr. Barnat,” I somehow didn’t manage to hang up the phone. Dr. Barnat is Carol’s new gynecologist. And here she was calling Carol at 5:30. After office hours. Something was up. I really intended to hang up the phone, but at the last minute my hand wouldn’t cooperate with my brain, so I was still on the extension when I heard Dr. Barnat say, “Well, your EPT was correct. You’re pregnant. Roughly three weeks pregnant.”
I did hang up the phone then, but only because I nearly dropped it. EPT. I know what that stands for. Early pregnancy test. Early pregnancy test.
Oh. My. God.
Carol is pregnant. I am going to be a big sister again. We are going to have a baby in the house.
Oh. My. GOD.
I am so amazed that I had to take a little break here and go get a drink of water and then throw some of that water on my face. I want to start making phone calls. I want to spread the news. You hear something like this and all of a sudden things that had recently seemed important (like deciding whether to go to the party) don’t seem so important anymore. I know I can’t go calling people without talking to Carol first, though.
Wait. She’s off the phone. More later.
Friday night 10/3
Well, I just do not understand Carol. She isn’t mad at me for eavesdropping. But
This is confusing. I’m going to start over again.
Okay. It is now Friday night. Supper is over. Jeff asked if we could eat on trays in front of the TV, and Carol said that would be all right. Now Jeff has gone to bed, and Carol is puttering around her room. We’ve already said good night. I’m alone, thinking over what happened this afternoon.
After I hung up the phone, and after I had recovered somewhat, I ran downstairs. Carol was already off the phone. She was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, looking stunned.
“Carol?” I said. (She didn’t answer.) “Carol?”
“What? Oh, Dawn. I didn’t hear you.”
“Carol, I have to tell you something. I really didn’t mean to do this, but I overheard part of your conversation with Dr. Barnat. I answered the phone when I heard it ring, and I picked it up just in time to hear Dr. Barnat say you’re three weeks pregnant.” Carol just looked at me. “I hung up then,” I said. “Honest. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I know it isn’t—”
“Never mind,” said Carol. “Don’t worry about it.”
I was so relieved not to be in trouble that my excitement about the baby bubbled over then. “Carol, you’re going to have a baby!” I cried. “We’re going to have a baby! I have a great name if it’s a girl. Ashley. Isn’t that a good name? Or better, we coul
d spell it A-S-H-L-E-I-G-H.”
Carol just sighed. “Honey, let’s not get too excited right now.”
“Why not? Is something wrong?”
Maybe that’s what the rest of the conversation had been about.
“No, no,” said Carol quickly. “It’s just that this isn’t quite the way I’d imagined this happening. I mean, with your father away. I wanted to tell him the news in person, and he’s not going to be back for six days. Plus, I wanted him to be the first to know. So Dawn, you have to keep this a secret. Please. Please don’t tell a soul. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I promise.”
The more I thought about this later, though, the more it didn’t seem right. What’s the big deal about telling Dad in person? I have a horrible feeling something else is going on.
Saturday 10/4
This morning Maggie, Sunny, and Jill came over. We holed up in my room. The party is tonight and we had to decide whether to go to it.
“Of course we’re going to go,” said Sunny stubbornly.
“We have to,” I added, although I didn’t feel very certain about this.
“Well, we really want to,” Maggie said. “But let’s be realistic. Do we actually think our parents are going to let us go?”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
“What would we tell them?” I finally asked. “I mean, where would we say we’re going? To a secret party three miles from here given by a bunch of older kids?”
“Well …” said Sunny.
Jill finally spoke up. “It is an impossibility,” she said firmly.
Sunny rolled her eyes. I shot a glance at her, but of course Jill had seen the eye-rolling for herself.
“Don’t look at me like that, Sunny!” Jill exclaimed. “Come on. Get real. What are we going to tell our parents? We have to tell them we’re going somewhere.”
Nobody had any ideas. About getting to the party, that is. But Jill had another idea. “You guys, we can have our own party,” she said. “It’ll be fun. Just the four of us. Like we used to. Please?”