Dear Pen Pal

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  Zoe doesn’t, though. She decided it was a really stupid idea—mostly because she didn’t come up with it, and Summer’s going to get community service credit for organizing it and she won’t—so she’s been busy trying to sabotage the whole thing.

  Yesterday at lunch Summer got to our table—all fifteen of us middle school kids eat at the same table—just in time to hear Zoe tell Brent Hershey and Danny Cortland that nobody quilts anymore but hicks, and that she didn’t want to have to be part of some stupid hick project.

  You should have seen Summer’s face! Zoe’s always saying snarky stuff like that, and making fun of Summer’s hand-me-downs, which isn’t fair because when there are eight kids in your family and your parents are divorced and your mom is trying to make ends meet by running a diner, of course you’re going to wear your older sisters’ hand-me-downs. Duh! Summer’s usually pretty good about ignoring Zoe, but I guess getting called a “hick” practically to her face must have pushed her over the edge, because she let Zoe have it. Zoe poked her nose in the wrong wasp’s nest this time, that’s for sure. Or beehive, maybe. I loved that part in your last letter when you explained how you and your friends call girls like Zoe “queen bees.” Where did your mom read about that again? My mom wants to order the book for her store.

  Summer told Zoe that just because her mother is the mayor of Gopher Hole doesn’t put Zoe in charge of anything at all, and it doesn’t it give her the right to criticize everybody and everything either. The teachers pretty much just stood back and let Summer spill it all out. I think they’re as sick of Zoe’s snooty attitude as the rest of us. By the time Summer was done telling Zoe exactly what she thought of her, even the boys were laughing, and Zoe looked shocked. Shocked enough, I hope, to quit book club. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Gopher Hole may be tiny, but there’s always something interesting going on, that’s for sure.

  Your friend,

  Bailey

  I smile, picturing the scene at school, which Bailey drew in a cartoon strip across the bottom of the page. Good for Summer.

  Scrounging some paper and a pen from one of the drawers in the kitchen, I write a letter right back to Bailey, telling her all about my editorial and what happened in the cafeteria today. I enclose a copy of the Walden Woodsman, so she can read it for herself, then put everything in a big envelope and address it. Just as I’m taking the envelope to the front hall table to leave for my dad to mail for me, the doorbell rings.

  “Jess!” I fling the door open and grab her in a big bear hug. “You’ll never believe what happened at school!” I start blurting out the details before she’s even inside. All of a sudden I stop. I’ve been thinking so much about myself that I’ve completely forgotten why she wanted to come over this afternoon.

  “Oh, shoot, I’m sorry—I should be letting you do the talking.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she says, managing a smile. “Really, I am so proud of you, Emma! And how cool that your dad stuck up for you like that.”

  I nod. “I know. I’m making lemon bars for him, as a thank-you.”

  Jess follows me back to the kitchen and I put the kettle on because that’s what my mother always does in a crisis. A good cup of tea never hurts and usually helps is her motto.

  “So, tell me everything,” I say, placing two mugs on the table.

  Jess toys with her tea bag, dunking it up and down, up and down in the empty mug. “What’s to tell?” she says finally. “It was horrible.”

  “Start at the beginning,” I urge, taking a seat.

  “Well, I guess that would have been at MadriGals last Friday. We were practicing ‘Sumer Is Icumen In’ for our spring concert, and Savannah raised her hand and told Mr. McNamara that I wasn’t pronouncing the words properly.”

  “That’s the song you were telling me about that’s in Middle English, right?”

  “Yeah. And I was singing it just fine. Savannah only said that to get back at me.”

  “Get back at you for what?”

  “For telling Frankie and Adele the truth about how she lied to get Darcy to go with her. About her blind date, I mean. Peyton’s friend didn’t ditch her—she ditched him after she asked Darcy. Savannah didn’t want anybody to know because it was a pretty lame thing to do. I guess he’s one of the really popular guys at the Essex School, and she’s worried she’ll never get asked out by any of his friends if they hear about what she did.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So anyway Mr. McNamara made me sing all by myself, and of course I got nervous and flubbed up and then he got mad at me and told me there wasn’t any room for a weak link in an a cappella group, and that I needed to be sure I was pulling my weight.”

  “Savannah is such a weasel!” I tell her. The feud between the two of them has really heated up since that weekend at Jess’s house. I give my friend a sympathetic look. “So then what happened?”

  She shrugs. “So then I had to go back to my room and try not to cry while Savannah and I were getting ready for the dance. I was so mad at her! She looked amazing, of course,” Jess adds miserably. “The dress she and her mom picked out in New York made her look about twenty.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a Wong original,” I point out. Megan doesn’t know that Jess likes Darcy—Jess is worried that if we tell Megan, Becca will find out, and Becca doesn’t have a great track record keeping quiet about this kind of stuff—but when I called a couple of weeks ago and told Megan that Jess needed a confidence booster for the dance, what with it being her first one at Colonial Academy and everything, Megan jumped on it. Using the dress Gigi gave her as a pattern, she made Jess her very own kei pou. She sewed it from this incredible embroidered silk that her grandmother brought her from Hong Kong, kind of like what she used for Maggie’s overalls, only it was midnight blue instead of bright red. Jess looked beautiful in it.

  The tea kettle starts to whistle and I get up and turn off the burner. “What did you do with your hair?” I ask her, pouring boiling water in her mug.

  “My mother put it up into a French braid for me, and stuck flowers in it.”

  “What kind of flowers?”

  Jess starts dunking her teabag again. “I don’t know. Rosebuds, I think. And what’s that stuff called? You know—Gypsophila paniculata?”

  “Don’t look at me,” I say with a shrug.

  “Um—oh, baby’s breath.”

  I nod as if to say, Of course, naturally, I should have recognized the Latin name. “What time did Zach pick you up?”

  Originally, after Savannah scooped Darcy out from under her nose like that, Jess wasn’t going to go to the dance. She was too upset. But we talked it over, and I pointed out that if she didn’t go, she’d be letting Savannah win. And Savannah didn’t deserve to win.

  I was all for leveling with Darcy, but Jess begged me not to. It would be too humiliating, she’d said. She was worried that if I told my brother that she liked him, and that there’d been a mix-up in the barn, it would feel even worse if it turned out he didn’t like her back. Besides, what if Darcy really did want to go with Savannah?

  “She’s pretty, after all,” she’d said.

  “Not half as pretty as you,” I’d told her, which was true. “And nowhere near as nice.”

  In the end, Jess decided to go ahead and ask Zach Norton. Fortunately, he said yes, which I figured he would. Zach’s always liked Jess. Not as a girlfriend—it’s hard to tell who Zach likes, even though Megan keeps hoping maybe it’s her—but definitely as a friend. And I told Jess that when my brother saw how fabulous she looked, and how much fun she was having with Zach, he’d be sorry he ever agreed to go with that traitor Savannah.

  “So what happened when you got there?”

  “The dance was in Dorchester, our dining hall,” Jess told me.

  “The building with all that fancy wood paneling?”

  Jess nods. “Yeah, they cleared all the tables away, and the seniors decorated it really nicely, with tons of fresh flowers and one of th
ose spangly disco ball things on the ceiling.”

  “Cool.”

  “Oh, and they put a big wreath around Harriett Witherspoon’s portrait and propped it by the entrance. Zach said it looked like she’d just won a horse race or something.”

  I laugh. “So did Darcy see you? Did you get to dance with him?”

  Jess shakes her head sadly. “No, and no. Savannah kept him as far away from me as possible all night.”

  We’re both quiet for a minute, thinking about this. When Jess went back to the dorm the night Savannah asked Darcy to go to dance with her, they’d gotten Pip settled and then later that evening Jess had confronted Savannah.

  “I was planning to ask Darcy,” she’d told her roommate.

  Savannah just told her that the early bird gets the worm, and how was she supposed to know, and that Jess should have been quicker. She didn’t apologize or anything, and she didn’t offer to uninvite Darcy either. I guess she’d already ditched her blind date by then.

  I put a little sugar and milk in my tea and take a sip. “So did you actually dance?”

  Jess nods. “Yeah. Zach was really nice and everything, and I tried not to let him see that I was upset. It was hard, though—every time I saw your brother I just wanted to run and hide.”

  I reach over and pat her arm. “Poor you! It’s so not fair.”

  “And I haven’t told you the worst part yet!”

  “What happened?”

  “Kevin Mullins showed up.”

  “What?!”

  She nods again. “Just as we were all leaving. I guess he had no idea there was a dance that night, and he and his mom were coming home from a movie and he told her he needed to drop something off for me. So we all come out of Dorchester, and there he is, heading toward my dorm. Of course he spots me and comes running over with this giant encyclopedia of wildflowers he’d checked out of the library for me. I think it was a Kevin Mullins version of a bouquet. The entire school saw him.”

  I wince. “Ouch. Savannah, too?”

  “Of course. You should have heard her and Peyton Winslow hooting.”

  We’re both quiet for a while. “Still,” I say finally, “I’m glad you went. You would have felt worse if you’d stayed home.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Jess and I talk for a while longer, and when I can tell she’s feeling a little better, I ask her if she wants to help me with the lemon bars. She agrees, and we clear our mugs away. I love baking with Jess. Before she left Walden Middle School, she’d come over at least once a week and we’d make something.

  My father, who has phenomenal treat radar, wanders into the kitchen just as the first batch is coming out of the oven.

  “Whatever it is smells good!” he says.

  “They’re for you,” I tell him. “Lemon bars. A thank-you for sticking up for me at school today. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “I’m happy to stick up for my brilliant daughter any day,” he tells me. “Oh, and I’ve got a surprise for you, too.”

  “You finished your novel?”

  He smiles. “No, not quite. Getting closer, though. I’ve decided that instead of me making dinner tonight as usual, we need to go out and celebrate your literary victory.”

  “Really? Can Jess come too?”

  My dad smiles at her. “Of course.”

  “And do you think maybe we can invite Mrs. Bergson to come with us?”

  “Great idea,” he replies.

  I get to choose the restaurant, so I pick La Traviata, which has really good Italian food, and after Mom and Darcy get home we all pile into our station wagon and head over to pick up Mrs. Bergson. I make sure to scoot in up front between my mother and father so Jess can sit next to Darcy. She goes all shy like she used to, so I don’t know if it helped, and it hardly makes up for not getting to go with him to the dance, but still, it’s something.

  Dinner is really fun. Everybody keeps making toasts—to me, to the United States constitution, to the Walden Woodsman, to free speech. We even make a toast to Mr. Keller, who comes in with his wife and baby daughter just as we’re finishing our meal, glowers at us, and retreats to a table in the farthest corner of the room.

  “Can Jess stay overnight?” I beg my mother.

  “Today, anything you ask is yours,” she replies, then catches Mrs. Bergson’s eye. “Except a puppy,” she adds, and Mrs. Bergson laughs. “How is Pip anyway?”

  “Adorable as ever,” Mrs. Bergson replies. “He needs a walk, by the way, girls, if you want to take him out for one after dinner.”

  Dad drops us off with her at her condo, and we play with Pip for a while, then we walk over to Half Moon Farm to get Jess’s stuff. We’re filming the dim sum episode over at Cassidy’s house tomorrow morning, so she needs the clothes she’s going to wear for that. Mr. Delaney drives us back to my house in the farm truck, and Jess and I eat lemon bars and watch TV for a while until my mother tells us it’s time for bed.

  “You need your beauty rest for tomorrow,” she tells us. “Don’t stay up too late talking.”

  We ignore her, of course. The whole point of a sleepover is to stay up too late talking.

  “So has Stewart kissed you yet?” Jess whispers to me, after I turn out the lights.

  I climb back into the bottom bunk. I always let Jess have the top one when she stays over. She gets as big a kick out of it now as she did when we were in kindergarten. “No,” I whisper back. “I’m pretty sure he wants to, but he just can’t get up the courage.”

  “Why don’t you kiss him?”

  “I can’t get up the courage either,” I tell her, and we giggle.

  “How about Zach? Did he try and kiss you after the dance?”

  “Me? Heck, no. He was just his usual friendly self, nothing more.”

  Jess is quiet for a long moment, then asks, “Do you think Darcy kissed Savannah?”

  That’s a question I already have the answer to. “I don’t think so. I overheard him talking to Kyle Anderson last Sunday when they were shooting hoops in the driveway. Kyle asked him how the dance was, and Darcy said it was okay, but that he thought Savannah was kind of fake. And he really doesn’t like Peyton Winslow, either.”

  Jess digests this information.

  “Why don’t you just tell my brother that you like him?” I ask her.

  “I can’t!” she says, her voice rising. “Besides, he probably thinks I like Zach, anyway.”

  “Nope. He asked me that already and I told him you didn’t.”

  “What?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because he only asked me five minutes ago, when you were brushing your teeth.” I pause for a heartbeat, then grin into the darkness. “I told him you liked Kevin Mullins.”

  “Emma!” Jess squeals, leaning down from the top bunk to swat me with her pillow.

  “Girls!” calls my mother sternly from down the hall. “Go to sleep now!”

  “Did you really?” whispers Jess.

  “Of course not!” I whisper back. “I was just teasing you.”

  “It isn’t funny,” she says, but I can hear her trying not to laugh.

  We both start cracking up into our pillows, and it’s a long time until we finally settle down enough to go to sleep.

  After breakfast the next morning, my mother drives us over to Cassidy’s house for the filming. Cassidy’s mom and Stanley come out onto the front porch to greet us.

  “Hail to Emma, the conquering hero,” says Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid, saluting me. Cassidy must have told her about what happened at school yesterday. “Or heroine, I should say.”

  “Thanks,” I reply modestly.

  I haven’t seen Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid since our last book club meeting. She’s gotten really huge all of sudden. Her stomach sticks out almost as far as Mrs. Chadwick’s bottom used to, before she started going to yoga class and becoming “a whole new me.” I try not to stare but I can’t help it. My mother notices and pokes me in the back
and whispers to me not to be rude, but Cassidy’s mother just laughs.

  “I’m quite the walrus, aren’t I?” she says, sounding pleased. “Here, girls, the baby’s kicking, you have to feel this.” She takes Jess’s and my hands and places them against the sides of her belly, which I was expecting to feel squishy but which is really firm and springy, like one of those red rubber balls we used to use to play kickball in elementary school. I practically jump out of my skin when her tummy starts thumping against my palms.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” she says, watching my expression.

  Behind her back, Cassidy pretends to stick a finger down her throat and gag. Her mom’s belly doesn’t gross me out though. It’s pretty awesome to think there’s a tiny person inside.

  Megan and her mother and Gigi pull into the driveway, along with the Chadwicks and Mrs. Delaney.

  “Just a month left to go!” Stanley tells Gigi when she asks when the baby is due. He offers her his elbow and escorts her inside. “I hope you’re going to make some more of those Chinese dumplings today. I’ve been dreaming about them ever since Thanksgiving.”

  “Looks like you’ve been doing more than just dreaming,” Gigi teases him, nodding at his stomach. Stanley’s put on a little weight too.

  “You mean my sympathy belly?” he says, patting it fondly. “Since Clemmie’s eating for two, I figured it was only fair that I do my part.”

  Everybody laughs except Cassidy, who just looks annoyed.

  “Have fun today, handsome,” says her mother, kissing Stanley on the cheek.

  “I promise I will.” He grabs his car keys from the bowl on the hall table and turns to my mom and Gigi and me. “I have to go to a charity golf tournament my company is sponsoring. Sorry I won’t be here for the shoot. Say hi to everybody and save me some dim sum, okay?”

  While Fred Goldberg whisks Gigi off to the kitchen to help supervise the set-up crew, Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid takes the rest of us upstairs for a tour of the nursery.