Dear Pen Pal

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  Zach glances over at me. “How about it?” he says. “Maybe a little pizza will make you feel better.”

  Becca doesn’t look thrilled with this idea, but it doesn’t matter because I’m not going anyway. I shake my head. “I doubt it,” I tell him. “I’m gonna go home and lick my wounds.”

  He grins. “Right.”

  “Plus, I’ve got math homework to finish before book club.”

  “Okay, see you at school on Monday, then.”

  He slaps me on the back of my sweaty head and I leave him to deal with Double Trouble and head off to the locker room to shower and change. I’m still grumpy in the car on the way home. My mom and Courtney know to leave me alone when I get this way, and even Stanley has learned by now that I’m not in the mood for a pep talk when I lose a game. Especially a crucial game like this. I still can’t believe I lost us a shot at the championship!

  Once we’re home, I go directly inside and up to the turret without speaking to anyone. No one tries to follow me. I stay up there for a long time, staring out the windows and replaying the game over and over again in my head. What an idiot! I should have seen that wingman coming! A few tears leak out, finally, and I let them, glad that nobody’s around to see. After a while, I start to feel a little more normal. The turret always has that effect on me. So I head back down to my room to tackle my math homework. I promised my mother I’d try and finish it before book club.

  I’m totally not in the mood for a book club meeting, but tonight is kind of special. For one thing, it’s our first meeting with Eva Bergson. Emma suggested we invite her to join us, and we all took a vote and agreed. She promised Emma she’d bring her Olympic medal to show us, and I don’t want to miss seeing that. Who knows when I’d ever get another chance?

  Plus, on top of that, we’re meeting at Colonial Academy. Tomorrow is the start of their winter vacation, so Mrs. Crandall was able to get special permission for us to have a sleepover at Witherspoon, Jess’s dorm. Today is Maggie’s first birthday, and since Jess and Megan are Maggie’s favorite babysitters, they didn’t want to miss out on the party.

  “Look at that moon on the snow,” says my mother a while later, as we’re driving over to meet our friends. “Could it be any prettier?”

  I grunt in reply, and my mother sighs. “Come on, honey, I know it’s been a tough day, but you’ve got a fun evening with good friends to look forward to, so cheer up.”

  “I’ll try,” I mumble.

  “That’s my girl.” We get out of the car, and she puts her arm around my shoulders as we walk up the path to the dorm.

  “Come in, come in!” says Jess’s housemother, who is waiting in the hallway to greet us. Maggie is in her arms, and she has one of those little paper birthday hats perched on her head. “Nice to see you again, Cassidy. And you must be Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Please, call me Clementine,” says my mother.

  “Only if you call me Kate.”

  “Kate it is.” My mother looks over at Maggie and her face lights up. She goes nuts over every baby she sees these days. “And is this your daughter? She’s adorable!”

  Mrs. Crandall passes her to my mom. “I hear you’re going to be having a little one of your own before long.”

  My mother grins and pats her stomach. “You just can’t keep anything secret these days, can you?”

  Not that it’s a secret anymore at all. My mother is six months along now, and her stomach is really sticking out. You’d think a former supermodel wouldn’t want to get fat, but she is totally thrilled about her belly. She’s always trying to get me to feel it when the baby is kicking, but I get the creeps just thinking about it. It’s like having some weird pet in the house, or a real-live version of that spooky movie about aliens. It totally grosses me out.

  “Here, Cassidy, would you like to hold her?”

  Before I can say no, which I was definitely going to, my mother thrusts Maggie into my arms. I grip her awkwardly under the armpits. We stare at each other. She gives me a big grin, revealing two little front teeth, and wriggles happily. Just when I’m starting to think she’s kind of cute, she sticks her fist in her mouth and sucks on it, then pulls it out and slimes my face with it.

  “Mo-om!” I shriek.

  My mother and Mrs. Crandall just laugh.

  “I can see we have some work to do to get you up to speed in the baby department,” says my mother, taking Maggie back from me. I scrub at my cheek with my sleeve.

  “You girls are going to be in Witherspoon’s living room tonight,” says Mrs. Crandall, pointing down the hall. “Why don’t you put your sleeping bag and things in there, Cassidy, then come join us in the kitchen. We’re just going to have a quick little party, since it’s nearly Maggie’s bedtime.”

  The Crandall’s apartment is filled to overflowing with book club members, Jess’s dormmates, and relatives of the Crandalls. I spot a tall girl standing by Mrs. Chadwick and Becca, and recognize Savannah Sinclair from her picture. The few times I’ve been over here to visit Jess, I’ve managed to miss meeting her. I drift over, curious to see the notorious Julia up close. She’s trying not to stare at my mother, but I can tell she’s impressed. Sometimes it’s useful to have a famous parent.

  Maggie is perched in her high chair across from us, busily ripping open presents. She gets a stuffed toy from Jess—a chicken—which she grabs and starts waving in the air, making excited baby noises.

  “Maggie loves to go for stroller rides over to Half Moon Farm and help hunt for eggs,” Jess explains to the gathered crowd.

  Beside me, Savannah Sinclair whispers something to the girl who’s with her, and they start to laugh.

  “Shut up,” I whisper.

  Savannah turns and sizes me up. “You must be Cassidy,” she drawls. “Y’all don’t look anything like your mother, do you? Pity.”

  I glare at her.

  The next box is light blue, and tied with a cream-colored ribbon.

  “Ooo, fancy store,” says Gigi. “Lucky baby.”

  Maggie and her mom open it. Inside is a silver cup engraved with Maggie’s name. Mrs. Crandall pulls out the enclosed card. “Compliments of Senator Sinclair and family,” she reads. “Why, thank you, Savannah.”

  “Nice personal touch,” I whisper to Savannah. “Babies go crazy for those silver cups, I hear.”

  Now it’s her turn to glare.

  Maggie gets a bunch more toys from the dorm students, a plastic play kitchen from her grandparents, and a crate of organic baby food from Mrs. Wong. The last present is from Megan.

  “How beautiful!” cries Mrs. Crandall, whisking some sort of little overall thing out of Maggie’s sticky grasp. It reminds me of something, and then I remember the Chinese dress Megan wore at our book club meeting at her house a few months ago. Maggie’s new outfit is made of the same kind of stuff, only red instead of turquoise.

  “Gorgeous fabric, Megs,” says my mom. “And I love the buttons! Where did you find them? They’re perfect!”

  Mrs. Crandall looks over at Megan, stunned. “You made these overalls?”

  Megan nods modestly.

  “Oh my goodness. They’re amazing. You should be a fashion designer.”

  “That’s the plan,” says Gigi, giving Megan a wink. I see Mrs. Wong watching the two of them. She has a funny look on her face.

  While Maggie plays with the wrapping paper, shredding it and flinging it all over the kitchen, Mrs. Crandall serves up cake and ice cream.

  “Have fun with your stupid club,” Savannah says as she passes by me, holding her paper plate. Her voice is poisonously sweet. “Jess tells us y’all are going to have a taffy pull. I can’t imagine anything more exciting for a Friday night, can you, Peyton? It’s almost as thrilling as making cheese!”

  Giving her an equally fake smile, I stick my foot out. Savannah trips over it, spilling ice cream and cake all down the front of her shirt. “Oops,” I tell her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to spoil your grand exit.�
�

  “Stay out of my way, you little snot,” she warns.

  I cross my arms defiantly. “Make me.”

  My mother swoops in between us with a wet dish towel. Apologizing profusely, she dabs at the chocolate ice cream dripping down Savannah’s shirt and shoots me the evil witch mother eye of death. I move hastily out of range, but I’m feeling a whole lot better than I have been all day. Score one for Cassidy Sloane.

  A few minutes later, the kitchen has cleared out and all the guests are gone. Mr. Crandall carts Maggie off to bed, still clutching her stuffed chicken, which is already covered in frosting.

  “Jess tells me you’re reading Jean Webster this year,” Mrs. Crandall says. “I loved Daddy-Long-Legs when I was a teenager, and now I’m reading Just Patty, too, since Jess is enjoying it so much. There’s a lot about St. Ursula’s School that reminds me of Colonial Academy.”

  “You’ll have to start a book club with Maggie when she’s old enough,” Mrs. Delaney tells her.

  “Definitely.”

  “Thank you for letting us use your kitchen, Kate,” says my mother. “We’ll be sure and leave it clean.”

  “No problem. I’ll be next door in our living room, so just let me know if you need anything.”

  It turns out molasses taffy is a nightmare to make. It’s a really involved process, what with boiling the sugar and butter and molasses mixture to just the right temperature, and it’s incredibly sticky. Mrs. Bergson finally comes to our rescue.

  “I made this with my mother when I was a girl,” she says. “The first thing you have to do is butter your hands.”

  “Eeew,” says Becca, and I agree, but we all submit to the greasefest.

  Mrs. Bergson pairs us up with our moms and gives us each a wad of candy. “Use your fingertips,” she tells us, demonstrating with Gigi how to pull the taffy into long ropes, then double it over and pull again. We all pull and pull and pull until Mrs. Bergson decides the candy looks like the right color and temperature, and then we lay it on the counter and cut it into bite-size pieces.

  When we’re finished and butter-free and the kitchen is clean again, we leave a plate of candy on the counter for the Crandalls, then head down to Witherspoon’s giant living room. Mrs. Delaney sets our taffy on the coffee table in front of the fireplace, and we help ourselves, flopping into the comfortable leather armchairs and sofas surrounding the hearth.

  “Thith thtuff ith thticky,” I mumble, laboriously chewing on a piece.

  “Tathtes good, though,” Emma adds.

  “I gueth we thould finith our taffy before we dithcuth Jutht Patty,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, and we all start to giggle.

  “Yeth,” says Mrs. Chadwick. “Abtholutely.”

  “Since discussion is out of the question, perhaps now is a good time for handouts,” says Mrs. Wong crisply. She isn’t eating any taffy, of course.

  Mrs. Hawthorne nods, licks her fingers, and pulls a file folder from her bag. Chewing vigorously, we look over the sheets she gives us.

  FUN FACTS ABOUT JEAN

  1) Jean Webster was petite, just five feet two inches, and athletic. She loved horseback riding, tennis, and hiking, among other activities.

  2) She was an avid letter writer, and illustrated her letters to friends and family with little line drawings, just like Judy Abbott did in Daddy-Long-Legs.

  3) Jean kept notebooks filled with story ideas, as well as with the best things she found while reading—bits of dialogue, phrases, description, and so on. She took the names for many of her characters in Daddy-Long-Legs from tombstones. In a funny anecdote she once recalled, “I sincerely believed that I had chosen names so long dead that not one of them could rise up to smite me. The book, however, had not been on sale a week before I learned that one of my names was that of a person very much alive—as well as the name of one dead for many years—and that the alive person was highly indignant. I am very sorry.”

  4) Jean was fervently in favor of women’s suffrage, and never passed up an opportunity to march in parades in support of votes for women, often with her fellow Vassar alumnae. Her grandmother, Pamela Clemens Moffet (Mark Twain’s sister), was a political activist who served as a delegate to the National Convention for Suffragists in Washington, D.C.

  “Wait a minute,” I say when I get to this last one. “Back then women couldn’t vote?”

  “Duh,” says Becca, “even I knew that. Don’t you pay attention in social studies?”

  “Women didn’t win the right to vote until 1920,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “It required an amendment to the U. S. Constitution.”

  “The nineteenth,” adds Emma.

  I shoot her a look. Emma can be such a know-it-all sometimes.

  “Women weren’t considered citizens,” Mrs. Hawthorne continues. “Remember in Daddy-Long-Legs, when Judy wrote to her benefactor about repaying his kindness by becoming a ‘Very Useful Citizen,’ and then she corrects herself and changes it to ‘Very Useful Person’ because women couldn’t be citizens?”

  “That’s terrible!” I exclaim.

  “And in Just Patty, their Latin teacher Miss Lord supports women’s suffrage and makes the students go to lectures on Friday afternoons about women’s rights,” says Becca triumphantly. She looks over at me as if to say, See? I’m smarter than you think.

  I shrug and reach for another piece of taffy.

  “Actually, Wyoming granted women the right to vote in 1869,” says Emma. “Fifty years before the rest of the country. Bailey told me that in her last letter.”

  “Really?” I reply. “That’s it, I’m moving to Gopher Hole. I just can’t believe that everybody else was so stupid until 1920. It’s so unfair!”

  “Jean Webster obviously agreed,” says Mrs. Hawthorne.

  “So did Harriet Witherspoon, the founder of this school, and the one for whom this dorm is named,” says Mrs. Chadwick, gesturing at the wood-paneled room we’re sitting in. “She was a famous suffragette.”

  Becca’s mother is actually looking like her own normal drab self again tonight. Well, mostly. She’s dressed in a plain black sweater and matching pants, and only her shoes—shiny gold boots whose tips are peeking out from underneath her pants—hint at the “whole new me.”

  “That’s right!” says Mrs. Delaney. “Remember, Jess? It was in the school brochure. She was jailed for protesting in front of the White House.”

  “Harriett Witherspoon obviously understood that a worthy cause is a cause worth fighting for,” says Mrs. Wong approvingly.

  “Were you a suffragette, Mrs. Bergson?” asks Emma.

  Startled, Mrs. Bergson starts to laugh. She laughs so hard she begins to cough. Gigi passes her a glass of water and thumps her on the back, smiling broadly.

  “I’m not quite that old, Emma,” Mrs. Bergson croaks, and Emma turns beet red.

  “Me neither,” adds Gigi, her eyes twinkling. “Just in case you were wondering.”

  “Sorry,” mumbles Emma.

  Mrs. Bergson waves her hand dismissively. “No, no, my dear, I know you didn’t mean it as an insult. And actually, I’m flattered that you think me so feisty. I hope I would have been brave enough to be a suffragette like Miss Witherspoon. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for the things you believe in.” She gives Emma a significant glance, and Emma looks down at the floor and smiles.

  We talk for a while about the characters in Just Patty. Everybody thinks I’m just like Kid McCoy, the tomboy from Texas, and that Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale could be Julia Pendleton’s twin.

  We all agree that one of our favorite parts was when Patty Wyatt and her friends Priscilla and Constance plotted to get rid of Mae and the other roommates they didn’t like.

  “And didn’t you love the way they named their hall ‘Paradise Alley?’” says Emma. “You should come up with a name for your hall, Jess.”

  “How about ‘The Torture Chamber’?” I suggest, and everybody laughs. Everybody but Mrs. Chadwick, who winces. What is her problem?

  “Oh, I
almost forgot,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “I brought something else to show you girls tonight.” She pulls another file folder out of her bag. “While I was researching this month’s ‘Fun Facts,’ I discovered that Jean Webster’s papers and manuscripts were bequeathed to Vassar College. I called the Special Collections librarian and he sent me photocopies of some pictures of her.”

  We crowd around the coffee table as Mrs. Hawthorne spreads out a stack of pages.

  “She’s so pretty!” says Jess.

  “And look at her clothes,” adds my mother. “Aren’t they stylish?”

  Gigi nods. “Very elegant. Probably French.” She gives Mrs. Wong a meaningful glance.

  “Don’t start, Mother,” Mrs. Wong warns.

  “Start what?” Gigi replies, her eyes wide with innocence.

  “The Paris thing. Megan is too young for those high-octane fashion shows.”

  “Nonsense,” says Gigi. “It would be educational.”

  Megan’s grandmother wants to take Megan to Paris this spring, but Mrs. Wong won’t let her go. Megan’s not happy about this at all. I guess I wouldn’t be either, even though I could care less about some dumb fashion show. A trip to Paris would be awesome.

  “Here’s one of Jean with a dog,” says Emma, plucking a photograph out of the pile. “See, Mom? Every writer needs a dog.”

  “No dog, Emma,” says her mother firmly.

  Emma sighs, and puts the picture back.

  Mrs. Delaney looks at her watch. “I hate to say it, but I’d better get going here. Mornings come early on the farm.”

  “I’d like to thank you all so much for including me,” says Mrs. Bergson. “I don’t know when I’ve had a more enjoyable evening.” She holds up a finger reprovingly. “And don’t forget to vote!”

  We all laugh.

  After we wash the sticky taffy residue off our hands, our moms help us move the furniture out of the way and spread out our sleeping bags and pillows.

  “Now, you girls behave yourselves tonight,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “It was very kind of Mrs. Crandall to bend the rules a bit and let you have a sleepover.”

  “And try and keep it down,” adds my mother. “Some of the girls upstairs have to catch early flights tomorrow.”