“Did your dad go out for the evening and celebrate?”
“No… ,” I said.
“No? Doesn’t believe in St. Valentine’s Day, huh?”
“Well, he brought home some chocolates,” I said. “A customer gave them to him.”
“Aha! Sounds like he has a girlfriend,” said Mrs. Sheavers.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
She smiled as though we had a secret. “Not even that woman who works with him? Janice something?”
Then I got scared. If Mrs. Sheavers knew for sure that Dad didn’t have a girlfriend, maybe she would start giving him chocolates.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
And suddenly Donald said, “Do you know how elephants get cool?” Donald’s like that. He’ll completely change the subject. His mouth was full of Oreos, but he just spit the question out.
“They suck up water in their trunks and blow it over their backs,” I said. Rosalind tells me this kind of stuff.
“But how do they cool themselves if they’re not near a river?” asked Donald.
“Fan themselves with their ears?” I said.
“And what else?” asked Donald.
“I don’t know.”
“They blow snot out of their trunks and cover their bodies with that,” said Donald.
“Donald!” said his mother. She put down the cookie she was eating.
“It’s true,” said Donald. “If you were riding on an elephant and it got hot and there wasn’t any water, it would turn its trunk around and you would be covered with snot.”
“Stop it,” said his mother.
“Let’s go look up elephants,” I said quickly, afraid she was going to ask me more questions about Dad.
Donald and I got out his science encyclopedias and looked up elephants. I would have looked up anything—even snakes or centipedes—just to get away from Mrs. Sheavers.
At dinner that night I asked Dad who had given him the chocolates.
“A woman customer,” he said, passing the lasagna to me.
“Same woman you took to a play a couple of weeks ago?” asked Lester.
“Yes. Sharon Jeffers. Nice lady. Lost her husband about a year ago.”
I don’t know why, when a woman’s husband dies, people say she “lost her husband,” like he’d wandered away from her at the mall or something.
I remembered what Mrs. Sheavers had said. “Is Sharon Jeffers your girlfriend, Dad?” I asked.
“Just a friend,” said Dad.
I wondered when Dad and Lester were going to get real girlfriends, not just girls who were friends.
I checked with the Secret Six the next day to see how much money we’d saved. We only had twelve dollars and eleven pennies. I began to worry that Lisa Shane would never have enough money to get away from her cruel parents. What if Lester did get a girlfriend—not just someone he felt sorry for? What if he forgot all about Lisa and her problems?
But when I came home from school, Lester was on the phone with Lisa as usual, and I heard him say, “It looks like someone beat you with a baseball bat.”
I slowly hung up my jacket, listening.
“Don’t give me that!” said Lester. “. . . They were too! There were even bruises on your knees!”
“Because I’m concerned about you, that’s why,” Lester was saying. Then he saw me listening. He picked up the phone and went around the corner toward the bathroom.
I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. The next day at school the Secret Six met back by the fence at recess. I told them about the bruises on Lisa Shane’s legs and how Lester said it looked like someone had beaten her with a baseball bat.
“Somebody should do something about that!” said Jody. “Her dad sounds mean enough to kill her.”
“That’s why we have to help her get to China!” I said. “Lester’s worried too. I don’t think we should wait until we save up twenty dollars. I think we should send what we have right now.”
“Why don’t we each bring something to school tomorrow to go in a box, and you can mail it to her along with our money?” said Megan.
“What should we bring?” asked Dawn.
“Food,” said Rosalind.
“Medicine for her bruises. Salve or something,” said Sara.
“Clothes?” Dawn asked.
“I don’t know her size or anything. Maybe something she could wear in China,” I told them.
When I was at the Sheaverses’ after school that day, I asked Donald’s mother if she had ever been to China. I wondered if she could tell me what they wore.
“No, but I know how to eat with chopsticks,” she said. She opened a kitchen drawer and took out several pairs of chopsticks. WONG’S RESTAURANT was printed on the sides.
Mrs. Sheavers put some bite-size shredded wheat in a bowl and showed me how to hold the chopsticks to pick up pieces of cereal. Donald pretended he was a robot with his sticks. One piece… two pieces… three pieces… Up from the bowl and into his mouth.
“Uh-oh,” said Donald. “Something’s wrong with my automatic arm!” His hand picked up the next piece and put it in his ear.
“Stop that!” said his mother, and took his chopsticks away. “You can keep yours, Alice,” she said.
When I went home later, I washed the chopsticks and wrapped them in tissue paper. I decided I would put them in the box for Lisa Shane.
On Friday all sorts of little packages appeared at school, and I stuffed them in my book bag. It was so full, I could hardly close the zipper. There were lumps and bumps all over.
“It looks like a pregnant cat,” said Rosalind.
“Is that what a cat looks like that’s going to have kittens?” I asked.
“I think so,” she told me.
“I am never, ever going to have babies!” I declared. “I don’t want bumps sticking out all over me.”
“Me either,” said Rosalind.
When I got home from school, I took my book bag to my room. I waited until I heard Lester playing CDs in the basement. Then I spread everything out on my bed to see what the Secret Six had collected.
Twelve dollars and eleven pennies; a jar of salve; a gray Ocean City sweatshirt, size large; a folding paper fan made in Taiwan; a bar of soap; and a box of Pop-Tarts.
I added my pair of chopsticks and the thong beach sandals from Aunt Sally. Then I looked in all my dresser drawers. I searched the kitchen cupboards. I found a tube of toothpaste, a pair of white socks—one size fits all—a little box of raisins, a comb, and a bag of rice.
I got a small cardboard box from our storage closet and put all our stuff in it. Then I took a sheet of tablet paper and wrote a letter:
Dear Lisa,
We hope this will help you buy an airplane ticket and go where your father will never find you. Don’t tell your mother, either, or she’ll probably tell him where you are. Here is some salve for your bruises and some other things you can use in China.
Sincerely yours,
The Secret Six
I taped the box shut. Then I found Lisa’s number on the back of our phone book, where Lester had written it. I looked up Shane in the phone book and went down the column until I found the address that went with that number.
I didn’t know how much it would cost to mail the box, though, so I pried the bottom off my piggy bank and took out all the money. I stuffed it in my jeans, and the next morning, when Dad was at work and Lester was still sleeping, I slipped out the door and walked five blocks to the post office.
It took only a few dollars from my piggy bank money to mail it. I know I’m supposed to be saving that for college or something unless it’s really, really important. But if saving a girl from being beaten with a baseball bat isn’t important, I don’t know what would be.
I felt good all weekend. I wanted so much to tell Lester what a wonderful thing the Secret Six had done for his friend, but we wanted it to be surprise. I guess one way you know you are growing up is if you can keep a secret.
br /> On Monday all the girls wanted to know if I had mailed the package yet, and I told them I had.
“I’ll bet we’ll go to heaven for this,” said Dawn.
I looked at her. “Are we going to die?” I asked.
“I mean, when we do die, we’ll go to heaven. God will write it down in his book,” Dawn told us. “He puts those kinds of things down on one side of the page and the bad things on the other.”
It sounded sort of like Santa Claus to me.
“What kind of bad things do you suppose He’ll write down?” asked Sara.
“If you swear or cheat,” said Megan.
“If you lie or steal,” said Dawn. “Then you definitely won’t go to heaven.”
“Even if you lie only once?” I asked. I don’t know a lot about heaven.
“If you ask God to forgive you, you’re okay,” said Dawn.
“What if He forgives you and you do it all over again?” Jody wanted to know.
“Then you have to get forgiven again,” said Megan. Megan and Dawn know the most about God.
“You mean you can just keep cheating and stealing and getting forgiven and doing it all over again?” asked Rosalind.
“I think there’s only a certain number of times; I’m not sure,” said Dawn.
I decided I had a lot of learning to do before I could grow up to be kind and good, but at least I was getting smarter. Number one: I’d learned to keep a secret about the Secret Six; two: I was helping to save Lisa Shane’s life; three: I was learning about God and heaven.
I wondered how long it would take for the package to get to Lisa’s. I knew it probably had to go from one post office to another, and from there to Lisa’s house. Maybe tomorrow, I thought. Or maybe the day after. But right this minute I’ll bet God was writing in his book, Alice Kathleen McKinley was kind to Lisa Shane.
14
LIAR! LIAR!
AS I WALKED HOME FROM SCHOOL THAT afternoon I still felt good about myself. Saving Lisa Shane was probably the best thing I had ever done in my whole life.
What was the worst thing? I remember hiding my plate of Brussels sprouts under the sink at Aunt Sally’s once and being scolded for that. And I scratched Lester once. More than once. I guess all that would be in God’s book too.
Donald had walked home with some boys this time, and I was glad it was a Monday and I didn’t have to go to his house. But when I walked up the front steps, I didn’t even have time to open the door. Lester opened it for me.
“Al, you idiot!” he yelled. He grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.
“What?” I said, staring up at him.
“What have you been going around telling people?”
“What?” I said again.
“About Lisa!” he yelled. “She got called into the counselor’s office because someone called the school and said that her father had beaten her with a baseball bat and she had bruises all over her legs.”
Who could have called? “I didn’t call the school!” I said. “I don’t even know the number!”
“Well, who did you tell?” He wouldn’t stop yelling. “Lisa was mortified! The counselor said that a little girl’s mother had called and said that you’d told her daughter that Lisa had bruises all over her legs and that her father did it.”
“I heard you say she had bruises!” I said hotly. “You said it looked like someone beat her with a baseball bat!”
“Al, she got those bruises in soccer practice! Will you please stay out of my business? Why did you say it was her father?”
“You told me yourself! You said her parents hated her and her father beat her every day and she could only eat scraps off the table and cried herself to sleep at night!”
Lester stared at me as though I had an eye in the middle of my forehead. “You believed that? Al, I was joking! Of course her father doesn’t beat her!”
Now I was yelling. I swung my book bag at him and hit him on the knees. “You lied to me!” I cried. I didn’t care if God was watching or not. I’ll bet He was too busy writing down all the lies Lester had told. “You said she was adopted and her parents hated her and…”
I remembered all the money and stuff we had sent her and how I’d walked five blocks to the post office. I just kept swinging at Lester with my book bag, and my eyes were so teary, I couldn’t even tell if I was hitting him or not. “I felt sorry for her, and all my friends felt sorry too, and all the time you were lying!” I cried. “Liar, liar, liar!”
Lester grabbed my book bag and threw it down the hall. He pushed me over to the couch and made me sit down. “Tell me exactly what you told everybody. Lisa’s really mad at me.”
“We just wanted to help her, Lester!” I said.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“The Secret Six.”
“Who?”
“Rosalind and Sara and Megan and Dawn and Jody and me.”
“Man, oh, man,” said Lester, and rested his head in his hands. “So you told them all that stuff… .”
“And we sent her some money too!” I said angrily.
Lester’s head jerked up. “You sent her money?”
“Twelve dollars and eleven cents. You said she hardly got anything to eat and—”
“Her father’s a banker! Her mom’s a professor!”
I started to cry all over again. “It’s your fault for lying, and God’s going to write you down in his book!” I wept.
I heard Lester let out his breath. “Okay, start from the beginning,” he said. “When did you send her the money?”
“Saturday,” I sniffled. “In a box.”
“A box? You sent money in a box?”
“With the other stuff,” I said.
Lester’s face looked like it was made out of rubber. The eyebrows kept rising higher and higher. “What other stuff?”
I tried to remember. “Well, there was a bar of soap and some socks and a sweatshirt and toothpaste…”
Now Lester’s eyes looked like marbles. Big marbles.
I went on: “. . . and some chopsticks and a fan and beach sandals and a box of Pop-Tarts and a bag of rice.”
“A bag of rice?”
“To eat in China.”
“China?” Lester yelped.
“You said that’s where she was going, Lester! To work in a rice paddy!”
Lester couldn’t speak for a moment or two. Finally he asked, “How did you get her address?”
“You wrote her number on the back of the phone book. I matched it with an address under the name Shane.”
“Al, do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused? If the counselor didn’t already know Lisa and her family, she might have called the police! Lisa had to ask the whole soccer team to go down to the office and explain that she got those bruises in a pileup when they had their first practice last week! How could you be so dumb to believe all that stuff?”
“How could you tell me so much that isn’t true?” I yelled back, and tried to hit him again, but he caught my hand.
“Whether you believed it or not, you had no right to go around telling everyone things that aren’t any of your business!” he said.
“If a girl’s getting beaten up by her father, it’s everybody’s business!” I told him.
“Can’t you tell when I’m joking?”
“I’ll never believe another thing you tell me, Lester! Never, ever, ever!” I bawled, tears running down my cheeks. “If you say you’re failing high school, I’ll just say, ‘Yeah, right!’ If you say your bike got stolen, I’ll say, ‘Ha! I’ll bet!’ If you tell me you’re dying, Lester, I’ll just laugh and say, ‘Ha! Big joke.’ I won’t listen to you ever again.”
We both sat glaring at each other.
“So whose mother called the school?” I asked finally. I didn’t even want to talk to Lester ever again, but I had to find this out.
“I don’t know,” Lester growled. He hardly even opened his mouth as he spoke. “Jody somebody. Her mother’s a nurse.”
Bo
y! I thought. Wait till I see Jody! We promised never to tell! Jody wasn’t my friend anymore and Lester was mad at me and Lisa was mad at Lester and the Secret Six would be really mad at me when I told them we had sent our money to a banker’s daughter who wasn’t going to work in a rice paddy after all.
I jumped up suddenly and stormed to my room. “I hate you!” I yelled. I banged my door and lay down on my bed and cried. God was probably so busy writing down all the bad things I’d said to Lester that He couldn’t even take care of the starving children in India.
How could Lester lie to me and call it a joke? How could I have believed him? How could Jody break her promise? What would Lisa think of me when she opened the box? She was already mad at Lester because of me. When she opened our package and found a box of Pop-Tarts and some socks and… And then I remembered the letter. We hope this will help you buy an airplane ticket and go where your father will never find you, I’d written. Here is some salve for your bruises… I’d forgotten to tell Lester about the ointment.
Lester and I hardly spoke to each other at dinner. I just stared down at my plate, and Lester silently stuffed food into his mouth.
Finally Dad said, “Have you two taken a vow of silence, or are we going to have a little conversation tonight?”
Lester just grunted. “Go ahead and talk if you want, but Al’s said enough for a while. Whatever you tell her, Dad, it will be all over the neighborhood in five minutes.”
Dad looked at me and then at Lester. “Have I missed something?”
“Yes,” said Lester. “Be grateful.”
“It’s all because he’s a liar!” I said bitterly. “He tells me things and then gets mad because I believe him.”
Dad sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t ask. I’ve had a hard day too.” We all ate for a while without talking.
The phone rang and Lester leaped up to answer, but it wasn’t Lisa. It was a man wanting to clean our gutters. Lester came back to the kitchen and scooped up some ice cream for himself, but he didn’t offer to dish up any for me.
Dad was still eating his meat loaf. He took another bite and said, “I was going to fix rice for dinner, but I couldn’t find any. I was sure I’d bought some the last time I was at the store. Do either of you know where it went?”