The Secret Language of Girls (18 page)

Kate is pretending to watch a video on Saturday morning, but really she is staring at her knees. She is worried that they’re fat.
Her mom keeps telling her that she’s not the least bit fat, but that’s what moms get paid to say. It’s bad enough Kate has bone-straight, plain-brown hair and a bad habit of biting her cuticles. The last thing she needs is fat knees.

Maybe she can find some knee exercises in one of the magazines Tracie has piled beneath her bed. Tracie has six magazine subscriptions and knows everything there is to know about makeup and exercises to improve your figure. Sometimes Kate picks up one of Tracie’s magazines and tries to read it, but she doesn’t get the articles. What is an eyelash curler? And why would anyone wash her hair with eggs and rinse it out with vinegar?

Well, Kate decides, there’s no use crying over fat knees. She finds her basketball and goes out to the driveway to practice her layups. Kate’s dream is that one day they will let girls play in the NBA. She plans to be the
first girl NBA player with a multimillion dollar contract to endorse tennis shoes. She has already planned what she will say in her commercial.

“Hi there, folks, I’m Kate Faber, basketball champion. You know, when I was a kid, I could have been a cheerleader, but I decided to play basketball instead. Now I’m a famous millionaire! So wear Zippo shoes and be a star, just like me!”

Kate hopes Marylin will see her commercial and feel terrible. Or else call her and say, “Kate, I’m really sorry about what happened in sixth grade. Can we be friends again?”

In Kate’s imagination the phone makes a satisfying click when she hangs up without saying a word.

Outside, Kate’s street is empty, and the hollow ring of the basketball against the pavement startles the birds from the tree in her front yard. Kate lunges toward the basket,
pushes off on her left leg, and angles the ball against the backboard for an easy two points. The roar of the crowd echoes inside her head. Kate makes a bow to the azalea bush.

“Thank you,” she says graciously. “Michael Jordan taught me everything I know.”

She glances toward Marylin’s house and wonders if she might be watching from her window. Not that Kate cares. She wouldn’t be friends with Marylin again for all the shoe endorsements in the world. Any person who considers Mazie Calloway her best friend is not worth the time of day, in Kate’s opinion. It is a shame that Marylin grew up to be such a shallow person, but there’s nothing Kate can do about it now except forget Marylin ever existed.

The weird thing is, Kate is pretty sure she saw Marylin in front of her house this morning. But by the time Kate opened the front door and looked out, no one was there. Now she
wonders if she dreamed it. Kate did a report about dreams for school a few weeks ago, and she learned that dreams are the language of the subconscious. Sometimes Kate wishes her subconscious would just shut up.

“Hey, Kate, want to play make it, take it?”

Kate turns around to see Petey McIntosh leaning his bike against her mailbox. He appears to be stuffing something white into his jacket pocket, but Kate can’t tell what it is.

“Sure, Petey,” she says. “If you think you’re up to the competition.”

“You better believe it, babe,” Petey says as he walks down the driveway.

Kate puts the ball into the air and watches it sail through the hoop without touching the rim.

“So what’s Marylin doing today?” she asks casually as she retrieves the ball. Not that she cares. Later she has plans to play basketball with Andrew, and tomorrow she and Paisley are going to the movies. Frankly,
Kate doesn’t need Marylin McIntosh in her life.

Petey shrugs. “Stupid stuff. Mazie Calloway is teaching her how to use an eyelash curler. It’s pretty weird.”

“Yeah, that’s weird all right,” Kate says. She shoots again and this time misses the basket completely.

“Marylin, I need to talk to you.”

Marylin looks up from the hand mirror she’s been staring in. Is her mother mad at her for using an eyelash curler?

“An eyelash curler isn’t makeup, Mom, okay? You never said anything about me not trying to make my eyelashes look longer.”

Marylin’s mother sits down next to her on the couch. Marylin wishes Mazie had stayed for lunch. Her mother never yells at her when she has company.

“I don’t care about your eyelashes,” her mom says.

“Then can I wear mascara?”

Marylin’s mom lets out a small groan. “Marylin, this is important!”

Kate got the note and figured out our plan. Kate’s mom called my mom. I’m doomed,
Marylin thinks.

“It’s just a joke, Mom,” she says, defending herself.

“What’s just a joke?” her mom asks. “You know, Marylin, sometimes I think we don’t speak the same language anymore.”

“Habla Español?”
Marylin giggles.

Later Marylin sits on her bed and tries to write in her diary. She uses a black pen because her purple pen doesn’t seem right for what she has to say. Then she discovers she has no words for what she has to say.

“MPAGAD,” she writes. “My parents are getting a—.” But she can’t even think it. And there’s no one she can say it out loud to. How in the world could she call up Mazie Calloway
and tell her? You have to be careful what you say to Mazie, Marylin has learned over the past few months. When Marylin told Mazie that Mr. Kertzner and Aunt Tish were engaged, Mazie spread it all through the sixth grade, like they were doing something incredibly weird. Just think what Mazie would do if Marylin told her about her parents.

Suddenly she thinks of Kate, but Marylin can’t talk to Kate, can she? What would she say? Sorry about not really being your friend anymore, but would you mind if I told you all my problems now that I need you? Kate would probably laugh and hang up on her. Just imagining the receiver’s click in her ear makes Marylin want to cry.

She stands up. “I’m going to wash my hair,” she tells Zuzu, her stuffed panda. “Do you think my eyelashes will stay curly in the shower?”

But Marylin doesn’t wash her hair. Instead she pulls on a sweater and heads toward Kate’s house. Even though the air is cool, Marylin feels hot, as though someone has set tiny fires all over her skin. She walks along the edges of the flowerbeds she passes, hoping to tempt people to come out of their houses and yell at her. She would like to have an excuse to hit someone.

Kate’s house looks the way it has always looked, which surprises Marylin. The last few months she has pictured it with the shutters falling off their hinges and the lawn overgrown with weeds, as though the Fabers wouldn’t bother taking care of things now that Marylin has stopped coming over.

When she opens the Fabers’ mailbox, after looking around to make sure no one sees her, it’s empty.

“Marylin, sweetheart!” Kate’s mom opens the front door. “Come on in and have some
cookies! I just pulled a fresh batch from the oven! I’m in one of my baking sprees. I must have sensed you were coming over.”

“I can’t!” Marylin yells. “But tell Kate it’s a joke!”

Mrs. Faber looks confused. “What’s a joke, sweetheart?”

“Just give her that message, please! Just tell her it’s a joke and not to say anything on Monday!”

Marylin reels around and runs, crashing against shrubbery and nearly tripping on a clump of weeds growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. When she gets to her house, she doesn’t slow down. She runs like she is being chased by the scariest thing in the world.

Monday morning Petey arranges his books alphabetically in his backpack, then checks the front pocket to make sure all his spying tools are in place. At all times Petey carries a
magnifying glass, a tiny tape recorder, a compass, a small notebook to record his observations in, and a folded sheet of paper with Morse code copied on it, in case he’s ever captured by the enemy.

Petey slips the note intended for Kate Faber between the tape recorder and the magnifying glass. Who knows—it might come in handy someday. He has thought about showing it to Gretchen Humboldt, his science partner, to see if she can explain it to him. Petey knows what the note says, but he has no idea why Marylin and Mazie thought it would be funny to give it to Kate.
Fooling with the human heart is no laughing matter,
he might say to Gretchen.

After Petey finishes checking his backpack, he leans down next to the heating duct and presses his ear against it. Usually when he does this in the morning, all he hears is the wheeze and shudder of the coffee maker. But
today the voices of Marylin and his mom flow up through the vent.

“I’m really not in the mood for school today, Mom,” Marylin says. “I just can’t go.”

“Are you sick?”

Marylin sniffles. “No, I just feel lousy after what we talked about Saturday.”

Petey leans back on his haunches. What did Marylin and his mom talk about? How in the world did he miss out on this conversation?

“It’s understandable you feel bad,” his mom says. “But maybe you’ll feel better if you go to school.”

Feel bad about what? Petey wishes Marylin and his mom would quit circling around the subject and say what they mean.

“Going to school would just make me feel worse.”

It comes to Petey in a flash. Marylin must have told his mom about the note on Saturday.
He can’t believe it. Marylin actually feels bad about playing such a rotten trick on Kate. Petey is impressed.

Petey stands up and turns to look at his Albert Einstein poster. Einstein looks back at him with his gentle eyes.
Be kind,
he seems to be telling Petey.
Take pity on your sister.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen, Petey grabs Marylin by the shoulder.

“Come here a second,” he says to her, nodding toward the dining room. “I want to show you something.”

“I’m not in the mood, Petey,” Marylin says.

“It’s important! It’ll just take a second,” Petey tells her.

Marylin follows Petey into the dining room, where Petey unzips his backpack pocket and takes out the note.

“She never got it,” he whispers. “I grabbed it out of her mailbox before anyone found it.”

Marylin’s expression is a tangle of confusion. “What? But how? Who told you?”

Petey shrugs. “I know about a lot of things,” he says, trying to sound mysterious.

Marylin takes the note from his hand. “She never saw it?”

“Nope,” Petey says proudly.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or sock you in the nose.”

Petey puts his hands in front of his face. “Whatever you do, just don’t kiss me,” he says.

“Marylin,” his mom calls, “I really think you should go to school.”

“I told you, Mom, I feel too horrible about everything to go to school,” Marylin calls back.

“But Kate didn’t get the note,” Petey whispers at her. “Remember?”

Marylin gives him a strange look. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Petey shakes his head.

Women.

Robbie Ballard has been hanging around Kate’s desk all morning, throwing her hundred-watt smiles every time Kate looks in his direction. Given that Robbie Ballard has not spoken two words to her since third grade except to insult her, Kate finds these smiles of his a little unnerving.

Mazie Calloway has been smiling at her a lot too, Kate realizes. She looks down at her shirt. Did she spill grape juice on it this morning at breakfast? No, her shirt is stain free. It must be her fat knees, Kate decides. They can see her fat knees through her jeans.