Dear George Clooney

  Yes, that Ashley Anderson.

  I stared at her profile photo, feeling confused, suspicious, and oddly flattered all at once. Why would Thing One want to friend me?

  I moved the arrow to IGNORE.

  Then I thought, Maybe, when she saw Phoebe and me with Jean-Paul, she realized we aren’t total bottom-feeders after all. Maybe this is her way of saying so.

  I moved the arrow to CONFIRM.

  Then I thought, This is the girl who nicknamed you Pancake! The girl who loves to embarrass you in front of the entire class!

  I moved the arrow to IGNORE again.

  Then I thought, But I’ve already confirmed Claudia as a friend. If I ignore Ashley, she’ll find out and might make my life even more miserable.

  I let out a groan. Who knew Facebook could be so complicated?

  Suddenly Rosie cried from upstairs, “Violet? I forgot to put on my pull-ups and I peed!”

  “Coming!”

  I stood up, looking one last time at Ashley’s friend request.

  Just before I dashed upstairs to change Rosie’s sheets, I pressed CONFIRM.

  — 13 —

  “Did Ashley friend you last night on Facebook?” I asked Phoebe, after we’d dropped off Rosie at kindergarten.

  “No. As if.”

  “She friended me.”

  Phoebe raised her eyebrows. “Tell me you hit IGNORE.”

  “Of course.”

  Phoebe’s eyes narrowed. “You know I can check when I get home. As your Facebook friend, I have access to your friend list.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I hit CONFIRM.”

  Phoebe stopped walking. “You friended her? After the way she’s treated us?”

  I shrugged. “I sort of took it as a good sign, you know?”

  “Violet. This is the girl who nicknamed you Pancake. Who called me Piggy –”

  “Hey, guys, check it out.”

  Claudia was beckoning to us from the landing halfway up the stairs, where she was putting up posters. Relieved to have a subject change, I hurried to join her.

  SADIE HAWKINS DANCE, the poster read in capital letters. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 7:00 P.M.

  “What’s a Sadie Hawkins Dance?” I asked.

  “It’s where the girls have to ask the boys,” she told us, rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t my idea. Paula Michalowski came up with it.” Claudia was on the Social Committee, so she was very in-the-know.

  “Who was Sadie Hawkins?” asked Phoebe.

  Claudia shrugged. “Some girl who couldn’t get a date the normal way, I guess. Anyway, you guys should come. I’m going to invite Jonah.”

  “I suppose I could invite Andrew,” Phoebe said as we climbed the stairs. Andrew was the guy who’d done the presentation on Scottish clans. Phoebe had known him since they were both in diapers because they’d gone to the same daycare. “And you,” she continued, “could invite Jean-Paul.”

  “No,” I replied firmly, “I couldn’t.”

  Before Phoebe could argue with me about what she liked to call “your cynical and completely unrealistic pact with yourself,” Ashley and Lauren materialized in front of us like specters, blocking our path.

  “Oh, hey, Violet,” said Ashley. “Phyllis.”

  “Phoebe,” Phoebe answered hotly. “We’ve only been going to the same school since kindergarten.”

  Ashley ignored her and turned her attention to me. “You have a good day off yesterday?”

  “Great.”

  “Saw you with Jean-Paul,” she said. “You guys just happen to run into each other, or what?”

  “Nope,” Phoebe said smugly. “We hung out with him. For hours. Right, Violet?”

  “Right.”

  Ashley gave us a thin smile. “He’s sooo nice, don’t you think?”

  Phoebe and I glanced at each other, our senses on high alert. We could both smell a trap.

  “Yeah,” I replied warily.

  “That’s one of his best qualities. He’s nice to everyone, even if he has no interest in them whatsoever.”

  “Oh,” replied Phoebe. “You mean he’s been nice to you, too?”

  I tried to swallow a laugh, and it came out as a snort instead.

  “Anyways –” Ashley started.

  “Anyway,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s anyway. Anyways isn’t really a word.” Yup. It was like my own personalized form of Tourette’s Syndrome.

  “You are such a loser, Pancake,” she said, using my nickname to my face for the first time ever. “And your hair sucks.”

  Thing One and Thing Two swept past us to their lockers. I touched my hair self-consciously; I’d tried the gel thing again and thought it looked pretty good this time, now that my hair had been trimmed.

  At least one thing was settled: Ashley and I might be Facebook friends, but we still weren’t friends in real life.

  The rest of the day was like a Lemony Snicket novel, a series of unfortunate events. First, Jean-Paul wasn’t at school. Then, when we picked up Rosie at the daycare in the basement, she was sitting in the corner again. Alison, the daycare lady, approached me.

  “Violet, could you ask your mother to call me, please?”

  I watched as Phoebe made a beeline over to Rosie and scooped her up. “Why?”

  “She bit Isabelle again.”

  “What happened?”

  “They won’t tell us. They were playing with the doll-house. We heard Isabelle scream, and Rosie’s teeth were clamped down on her arm.”

  “Isabelle must have said something to upset her,” I said.

  “Whatever Isabelle said,” Alison replied slowly, like I was stupid, “biting is unacceptable.”

  On the way home, we got the story out of Rosie. “We were playing house, and Isabelle said I couldn’t have a daddy doll because I don’t have a daddy at home, and I said we do have a daddy, he just doesn’t live with us, and she said that meant we don’t really have a daddy. So I bit her.”

  “You know what, Rosie?” I said. “I would’ve bit her, too.”

  Then, when we stopped in at Mom’s work, we found her comforting Amanda, who was in tears.

  “What’s wrong?” we asked in unison.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Amanda said, even though that was obviously a lie. “Cosmo and I are just …”

  My heart did a flip. I knew it was ridiculous, but even a cynic like me had to hold on to a small thread of hope that True Love might exist for a lucky few, and Amanda and Cosmo were the flame that kept my hope alive.

  “Please tell me you didn’t break up,” I said, my voice a bit wobbly.

  “No, no … but he’s been acting strange lately. He canceled a date last night with the lousiest explanation … and when we do get together, it’s like there’s something he wants to tell me, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Like he’s got some big secret.”

  Phoebe and I looked at each other. Amanda must have been a mind reader because she said, “And don’t you girls even think of spying on him. I mean it!”

  Then she started crying again so Mom shooed us away, saying she’d see us at home later.

  Rosie and I said good-bye to Phoebe at her house because she had her French horn lesson. When we got to our place, Mr. Bright was on his front porch. “Tell your mother to get that muffler of hers fixed, or I’ll have to call the authorities!” he shouted. The muffler on the Rust Bucket had broken over the weekend and made a loud clanking sound whenever Mom drove it.

  “I’ll tell her, Mr. Bright,” I said as I hurried Rosie into our house and locked the door.

  The phone was ringing. I made a run for it, not bothering to take off my shoes. “Hello?” I said, grabbing it just before it went to voice mail.

  “Violet, hi.” A female voice. Not my mom’s voice.

  “Hi. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Jennica.”

  My stomach lurched. Wife Number Two never phoned. She was The Other Woman. Why on earth would she be calling? Unless –

 
“Is Dad okay? Has something happened to him?” Rosie was standing beside me, and I instinctively grabbed her hand.

  “No, no, your dad is fine,” she said. “Terrific, in fact. He’s just been hired to direct this big TV pilot for a new show called Out There. It’s like a cross between Lost and Touched by an Angel. He’ll be shooting on the Tantamount lot.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Cool.” I let go of Rosie’s hand, and she dashed upstairs.

  There was a really long pause after that. I was tempted to run and get the Magic 8 Ball and let it do the talking, but I couldn’t put Jennica through that. The truth was, I still didn’t know her all that well. It’s much easier to be cruel to someone you know.

  “Lola and Lucy ask after you and Rosie a lot,” Jennica finally said.

  “Do they?” I answered, although inside I was thinking liar.

  “They know you’re supposed to come down for March Break.”

  “I wanna go, I wanna go!” Rosie’s voice suddenly came on the line. The little sneak was listening in on the phone in Mom’s bedroom.

  “Rosie, is that you?” Jennica asked.

  “Hi, Jenny. How’s Lola and Lucy?”

  “They’re great. Talking up a blue streak. And they miss their older sisters a lot.”

  “See, I told you they missed us, Violet,” Rosie said smugly.

  “Get off the phone, Rosie.”

  “No! Do you really want us to come, Jenny?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even after what Violet did?”

  “Well, that’s partly why I’m calling. We still very much want you girls to visit us. But, Violet, I need two things from you first: I need you to promise you will never do something like that to your sisters again, and I need you to apologize.”

  I was quiet for a long time. Rosie was not. “Please, Violet, please please please say you’re sorry. Mom won’t let me fly on the plane without you.”

  “Rosie. Get. Off. The. Phone.” She must have heard the tone in my voice because I heard a click.

  “Why are you calling, and not Dad?” I asked.

  “Because Ian says you won’t talk to him when he calls. I told him I’d give it a try.”

  There was another long pause.

  “So. What do you say, Violet?”

  I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. Then, very quietly, I hung up.

  I climbed the stairs to our room. Rosie was on the floor, playing with her Playmobil grocery set.

  “Are we going? Are we going for March Break?”

  I picked the Magic 8 Ball up from the shelf and gave it a good shake. “Outlook not so good.”

  “Uh-huh. Yes … yes, I think we can both agree that it’s not okay to bite. But it’s also not okay to dump all the blame on Rosie every single time there’s an incident with this girl….” My mom was heating up a jar of spaghetti sauce on the stove while she spoke on the phone. I could tell she was agitated because she was stirring really hard. Sauce kept spraying out of the pot and landing on the stove top and on her shirt. Rosie and I busied ourselves setting the table while we listened in.

  “Clearly this girl is provoking her. You need to talk to her, too…. Well, according to Rosie, she told her that her dad didn’t count because he doesn’t live with us. For heaven’s sake, half the kids at the daycare must have divorced or single parents, this isn’t the 1950s….” Mom picked up the pot of noodles from the stove, turned off the heat, and drained it in the colander that Rosie liked to wear on her head.

  “Okay. Thank you. And if you want me to come in for a meeting with the other girl’s parents, I’m happy to do it … bye.” She hit the off button on the phone. I could tell she was angry by the way she pursed her lips.

  “Are you mad at me, Mommy?” Rosie asked as Mom dished spaghetti and sauce onto our plates.

  Mom knelt down beside her. “I’m not happy that you keep biting this girl, Rosie. But I also understand that they’re not getting both sides of the story. Honestly, these people are supposed to be trained in early childhood education.”

  We started to eat. I had suggested to Rosie that if she told Mom about the call from Jennica, one of her dolls might mysteriously lose its head. So I was rather impressed by her courage when she announced, “Daddy’s new wife called today.”

  Mom dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate. “Did she?” Mom asked, in an eerily calm voice.

  “She says we’re still invited to their house for March Break. But she wanted Violet to say sorry for the poop first. Please please, I wanna go; they got a pool.”

  Mom looked at me. “Did you apologize?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “I kind of hung up.”

  “Oh, Violet.” She picked up her fork again.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go, anyway.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “How so?”

  “You have to maintain a relationship with your father.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s your father.”

  “So? You were his wife, and you don’t have to ‘maintain a relationship.’”

  “That’s different and you know it. Besides, those girls are your sisters.”

  “Half sisters –”

  “Please, Violet!” Rosie begged.

  “No!” I shouted. “I hate going down there! I hate having to act like everything’s okay. It’s not okay! Jennica ruined our lives. Everything was perfect before she came along.”

  Mom put her fork down again. “Everything wasn’t perfect, Violet. Your dad and I had been drifting apart for a while –”

  I clamped my hands to my ears. “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!” I chanted, standing up so fast, I tipped over my chair. I couldn’t pick it up without taking my hands away from my ears, so I left it there and took the stairs two at a time to my room. Okay, it was not the most mature reaction in the world, but, really, I wasn’t going to listen to my mom as she tried to reinvent history.

  I picked up Rosie’s doll Roxanna from her bed, popped her head off, left her decapitated body lying on Rosie’s pillow, and hid the head in a shoe box at the back of the closet. Then I rearranged all of our clothes in order of the color spectrum, thoughts racing through my head.

  They did not have problems. They had been perfectly, utterly happy.

  Hadn’t they?

  — 14 —

  My bad mood flowed right into Friday. Jean-Paul still wasn’t at school. I got a C on my math test. It was raining cats and dogs on the way home, and I ruined my brown suede Converse shoes when I accidentally stepped into a giant puddle.

  Once we were inside, I picked the mail up from the floor and had a quick look. There were two bills and one brown eight-by-ten envelope.

  From Los Angeles. With a sticker in the top left corner that read From the Office of George Clooney. My heart started to race.

  “I’m hungry,” said Rosie. “Can you make me a snack?”

  “Get your own snack,” I snapped. “I’m not your servant.”

  “You’re a poop-head,” Rosie said matter-of-factly before she tore off into the kitchen.

  I could hardly breathe. Carefully I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.

  Dear Violet,

  Thank you for your fan letter to George Clooney. Unfortunately, due to the volume of fan mail he receives, we must respond with a form letter.

  However, please be assured that George appreciates the time you took to write to him, and as an expression of his gratitude, we have enclosed a signed eight-by-ten glossy of him for your collection.

  Sincerely,

  The Office of George Clooney

  “A form letter?” Phoebe said when I called her. “Violet, I’m so sorry.”

  “Rmph,” I muttered. I was sprawled out on the red couch, beyond depressed.

  “You know what I think? I think George never even saw your letter. I think his manager just handed it off to an
assistant or something.”

  “You’re probably right.” I heard the key in the lock. “Mom’s home. I’d better go.”

  “Right. The official Gustafson Girls’ Night. Maybe that’ll cheer you up,” said Phoebe. “We’ll strategize tomorrow.”

  I put down the phone, dragged myself off the couch, and shuffled into the foyer. “I hope you got a comedy,” I said to my mom. “I could use some laughs –”

  I stopped midsentence. Mom wasn’t alone.

  “Violet, I told Dudley he could join us for movie night. I hope you don’t mind,” she said. The Wiener shifted nervously from foot to foot beside her, clutching a bag of take-out food from Zipang.

  “It’s not called Movie Night. It’s called Girls’ Night,” I said.

  “Maybe I should just go –” Dudley began.

  “No, stay!” shouted Rosie as she ran in from the kitchen with what looked like chocolate ice cream smeared all over her face. “I want you to stay. So does Mom.” She looked at me hopefully. “So does Violet. Right, Violet?”

  I just rolled my eyes.

  “I brought you girls a box of Purdy’s Chocolates,” he said, holding it out to us. “Vanilla creams and caramels.” Purdy’s vanilla creams were my favorite. Purdy’s caramels were Rosie’s favorite. Obviously Mom had fed him this piece of intel. It was a blatant and pathetic attempt to win us over, and I refused to reach for the box. Not that it mattered since Rosie grabbed it out of his hands faster than you could say pushover.

  “You can sit beside me for the movie,” Rosie said to him.

  “Speaking of movies,” Dudley said as we went into the living room with the food, “did you see the one about the cannibal who ate his mother-in-law? It was called Gladiator. Get it? Glad I ate her?”

  Mom laughed. I gazed at him stonily. “Let me guess. Another yard-sale find?” I asked him, pointing at his hideous sweater. This one featured a mallard on the front.

  “No. Someone made it for me. I like this sweater.” He actually sounded hurt.

  “It’s a lovely sweater,” Mom said, patting his arm. Then she turned to me. “I saw your math test on the hall table. You got a C.”

  I shrugged. “It was geometry. I hate geometry.”

  “Now, Violet,” Dudley said, “without geometry, there’d be no point.” He laughed at his own feeble pun. I did not. “Sorry, I forgot. You don’t like puns. But that’s okay. A good pun is its own reword.”