The Sisters Club

by Megan McDonald

  Everybody tried to act normal, like Alex was just having a friend over, no big deal. But really, you could tell everybody was holding their breath for the big night, all because it was A BOY.

  I don’t get what the big deal is about boys. I mean, they have huge feet and their ears stick out. They snort in class and make armpit noises and call girls names like Maggot and Pootney. It’s not like some prince was coming to dinner. (Well, maybe the FROG prince.) After all, the kid was a Beast.

  I thought about trying to make something special. Really I did. After all, I still felt kind of bad about the Sweater Pot Holder.

  Then I had a brainstorm. A brilliant, boy-coming-to-dinner brainstorm.

  I saw it on Mom’s show. Fondue Sue did a whole episode on fondue — the dinner you melt in a pot! You get these long forks and dip stuff like bread or strawberries into cheese or chocolate. It even has funny names like Chocolate Cherry Fun-due.

  Fondue was perfect for the big dinner:

  It’s French. (Alex would be all over that.)

  How hard could it be to melt stuff?

  If you drop fondue in the pot, something funny happens! (I can’t wait to tell Joey!)

  FONDUES AND FON-DON’TS

  Starring Alex

  Me: (Entering with the Boy and looking at all the bowls on the table.) Wait! Stevie? What’s this? We’re having croutons for dinner? (Not another Macaroni Disaster!)

  Joey: Not just croutons. There’s cheese glop, too.

  Stevie: Fon-due. It’s French.

  Me: French? Of course! We’re eating French tonight. Yum! French cheese glop.

  Scott: Should I sit . . . where?

  Stevie and Joey: (At the same time.) THERE! Next to Alex.

  Joey: And me!

  Dad: Fondue is French for “to melt.”

  Joey: I thought it was French for “to kiss.” (I try to turn Joey to stone with my thought waves.)

  Mom: (Trying to save the day.) Mmm. Look at this cheese and bubbly tomato sauce and chocolate for dessert. Where did you learn to make all this?

  Stevie: Mo-om. I saw it on your show.

  Me: (To Scott.) Um, my mom has a cooking show on TV.

  Scott: Oh, yeah. My mom said she watches you, Mrs. Reel. (Scott looks at Stevie.) So you made all this? Looks . . . interesting.

  Stevie: Thanks a lot.

  Mom: Stevie, why don’t you tell Scott, and us, how this works?

  Stevie: OK, you pick up one of these long forks. Then you get bread or a marshmallow or fruit, stab it with your fork, and dip it into one of the sauces.

  Me: What are they?

  Stevie: There’s Cheese Fiesta Fondue and Pizza Fondue. This I call Chocolate Meltdown, and that one’s Yin-Yang.

  Joey: Yin-Yang?

  Stevie: Chocolate and Marshmallow.

  Joey: Those aren’t toe marshmallows, are they?

  Me: (Oh, no!) Joey, shhh! (Please, please, please don’t let anybody ask what toe marshmallows are!)

  Stevie: I made sure to use marshmallows that Alex didn’t put between her toes.

  Me: (Can’t they keep quiet about anything?) (To Scott.) Just ignore them.

  Stevie: Eat the regular stuff first. Like the bread and vegetables. Then you get non-toe marshmallows for dessert. Or orange slices to dip in the chocolate.

  Me: (With a glare.) I hope that’s the only orange thing tonight.

  Joey: And guess what? (Looks at Scott.) If you drop your food in the cheese, you have to kiss all the girls at the table!

  Me: Joey! (What are those two up to? I’m going to kill them later!)

  Scott: Um, she’s not serious, is she?

  Stevie: That’s the rule!

  Me: You guys! (To Scott.) Aren’t little sisters really annoying?

  Scott: (Nodding.) I know.

  Joey: Does your sister call you Scott Towel?

  Me: JO-EY! (Alex Reel, promising young actress, found dead of embarrassment at the dinner table last evening. . . .)

  Joey: I didn’t make it up, you know. About dropping your fondue and kissing all the girls. Stevie learned it on Mom’s show.

  Mom: It’s true. (Not Mom, too!) It’s an honest-to-goodness custom that goes with eating fondue. Remember, honey?

  Dad: Boy, do I.

  Me: Then you had me and lived happily ever after. OK, can we please talk about something else now?

  Stevie: Does anybody need a paper towel — I mean napkin?

  Mom: Why do we have paper towels for napkins? There should be blue napkins in the cupboard, Stevie. (Joey and Stevie burst out laughing.)

  Joey: I set the table. I really think we need paper towels. Good thing I put out paper towels for napkins, huh, Stevie? (Scott turns bright red.)

  Me: Jo-ey! (Boy is she gonna hear from me later!) (To Scott.) See what I mean? Sisters are the worst.

  Scott: (Covers mouth with hand and coughs.)

  Stevie: At least we don’t go around kissing paper towels, right, Joey? (I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again!)

  Joey: And talking to a sock monkey like it’s a person.

  Me: (OK, that’s it. I’m gonna wrap my sisters up and send them air mail to the moon!) You guys! Mom, Dad, may they please be excused?

  Joey: I’m not done yet. I only had one crouton. One crouton is not dinner.

  Stevie: I made this whole dinner. I don’t want to be excused.

  Dad: Girls. How about . . . Let’s talk about the play. Have you two seen the rose garden I’m making for the outside of Beast’s castle? Each flower is handcrafted out of tissue paper.

  Me: That’s cool, Dad.

  Dad: Scott, tell us about playing Beast. What’s it like? Do you have your costume finished?

  Joey: Are you going to be really, really hairy?(Joey bumps Scott’s arm for like the tenth time.)

  Me: JO-EY!

  All during dinner, I kept looking at Alex, who was looking at Scott Towel like she was all gaga in love — like she actually wanted him to drop his fondue! I mean, what are the chances you’ll actually marry the person whose name you write over and over a hundred times in your seventh-grade notebook?

  Zero to none.

  Gaga Alex didn’t seem at all like the sister who used to come to Sisters Club Meetings.

  “Stevie?” Alex asked. “Are you actually going to eat that? Or just hold it there for a year? You’re causing a traffic jam, you know.”

  “I’m concentrating,” I told her (on not dropping my fondue so I won’t have to kiss anybody!). I dipped my zucchini carefully into the fondue pot. The plan was for Scott Towel to drop his fondue, NOT me.

  Dad cracked one of his really bad jokes. “Honey,” said Dad, in front of everybody, even the Boy. “I just want you to know, I’m so fon-due you!” Like “fond of” you. Get it? Ha, ha, ha. Dad must be from the Planet Cardigan, like those grandpa sweaters Mr. Rogers wears. We’re talking Old School.

  Mom actually thought it was funny. Alex had a look on her face like she wanted to crawl under the table and disappear.

  “Ee-uw! Dad! You made me dip my zucchini in chocolate!” I said.

  The Boy spoke. “This is all good,” he said.

  “For melty, lumpy cheese glop, you mean,” said Joey.

  “This tastes much better than the fondue I made on TV,” said Mom.

  “Stevie, you’re getting to be quite the cook,” said Dad. “Good for you.”

  “Good for us,” said Alex. Everybody laughed, even Mom.

  I think they actually liked the fondue. Even Alex said it was way better than Chinese takeout. I couldn’t help it, though — I kept half-expecting to find a rubber ear à la Joey floating in the cheese glop.

  I guess she was too busy with her Bump-into-Scott routine. We planned it that Joey would sit next to Scott Towel. Even better, it turns out he’s left-handed and Joey’s right-handed. “Like normal people and NON-boys,” Joey pointed out. So it was perfect for bumping elbows.

  “If you’re left-handed, it means you’re creative,” said Alex. �
�An artist.”

  “I think it just means you bump into stuff more,” said Joey. “See?” She bumped Scott’s elbow, trying to get him to drop his fondue off the fork.

  After that, every time Scott Towel (a.k.a. Scotch Tape) reached for the fondue, Joey went BUMP!

  The Boy scooched his chair closer to Alex.

  As soon as Mom and Dad weren’t looking, Joey bumped his elbow again, then played innocent. Still nothing happened.

  The Boy gave Joey a “Cut it out” look, but he didn’t say it out loud. He just took a sip of water.

  I tried to signal Joey, to make my eyes say, “It’s not working! Do it again!”

  That’s when it happened.

  The Boy had a hunk of bread on the end of his fork. He dipped it in the cheese and started to lift it out. He waited for a second while the cheese went drip, drip, drip, and just at that exact moment, I saw Joey go in for the kill.

  BUMP!

  His cheesy bread slipped and fell and landed — PLOP! — right smack-dab in the middle of the cheesy cheese.

  I looked at Joey. Joey looked at me.

  Scott Towel was still chasing his cheese lump around the pot, hoping he wouldn’t get caught.

  “LOOK!” shouted Joey, pointing to the lump in the pot.

  “Empty fork!” I shouted. “Empty fork!”

  “Uh-oh. Bad news,” said Dad. “Looks to me like he dropped it.”

  “I didn’t — really it was — she bumped me!” He pulled his fork out of the fondue pot and knocked over his glass of water.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s OK,” Mom said, handing him paper-towel napkins to sop up all the dripping water.

  “Alex first!” Joey shouted. “Kiss Alex first!”

  Scott Towel turned tomato-red, worse than Pizza Fondue. He pretended to wipe up some more water drips and disappeared under the table. Nobody knew what to do. Alex looked like she might cry. Joey pushed back the tablecloth to see what he was doing under there.

  Finally, Scott pulled his head out from under the table. On the way back up, he accidentally bumped into Joey’s ear — with his lips!

  Everybody was silent. Like the whole family had turned to stone.

  “Bluck! Frog lips!” Joey yelled. She actually said frog lips! No lie. Then she got up from the table and ran to our room.

  Without dessert.

  I, Middle Sister, Glue Girl, ran after her.

  I had to make sure Joey was OK (not to mention saving my own life). After all, neither of us ever thought this would end up with Joey getting a big, wet, boy ear-smooch.

  “Open up!” I banged on the door to our room. Nothing.

  I looked down the hall, at the stairs, trying to think of how to get Joey to open the door before Alex caught up with us. “Hey, Joey! Let me in! Hurry up, before Frog Lips plants a wet one on me.”

  Click! Joey opened the door.

  “Phew, that was close,” I said to Joey.

  “It’s too late for me,” Joey said, still swiping at her ear with her sleeve.

  “Just think of it like . . . a doggie slurp,” I suggested.

  “Ye-ah. A Scotty dog!” She gave her ear one last swipe, then went back to scribbling in that notebook of hers.

  “Look what I’m making!” She held up a NO KISSING sign. A pair of lips with a big red circle and stripe through it.

  Against my better instincts, we laughed ourselves silly just thinking about the look on Scott Towel’s face.

  “Maybe I should draw an ear with a red line through it, too,” Joey said.

  I cackled some more, to cover up for feeling guilty about starting the whole Fondue Freak Show.

  All of a sudden, we heard Wham! Wham! Wham! on the door. Definitely Alex. It was her “You better open the door” knock.

  “Nobody’s home!” Joey called.

  “Let me in!” yelled Alex.

  “Not by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins!” I called. That got Joey giggling all over again.

  Alex burst in. “You guys are so not funny!” Alex said. “I ask you to be nice and you go and ruin everything, you . . . you . . . purple-hued maltworms!”

  “What did we do?” I asked innocently. Like I didn’t know.

  “You two embarrassed me big-time in front of my friend. He looked like he wet his pants, ’cause you made him spill that water . . .”

  “Scott Towel wet his pants!” Joey said. I bit my cheeks to keep from laughing.

  “And now Dad’s taking him home, and we didn’t even get to practice the play or anything.”

  “At least you didn’t have to practice kissing!” said Joey.

  “I hate you!” said Alex. “I hate you both! I don’t care what anybody says about sisters. I’m never speaking to you again. Ever.”

  I knew Alex was mad — but I didn’t know Volcano Alex was about to erupt. I mean, really explode.

  “I quit!” Alex shouted at us. “Do you hear me? I quit the Sisters Club! Forever and ever!”

  Since Alex wouldn’t talk to me, I thought I’d listen in on her talking to Sock Monkey. As in spy. I was lying on the floor (under the bed) where I could hear most of what she was saying through the old iron grate, where the heat comes through.

  “Are you living under the bed now?” asked Joey.

  “Shhh! Can’t you see I’m eavesdropping?”

  “On who?”

  “Alex and Sock Monkey!”

  “What are they saying?”

  “Mostly just Beauty and the Beast stuff. Stuff about us, too!”

  “What stuff?”

  “The usual. Evil wicked stepsister stuff.”

  “She’s really mad this time, huh?” said Joey.

  “Volcano mad!” I said. “But at least volcanoes only erupt every two thousand years.”

  “What’s wrong with her, anyway? Why’s she acting funny like this?”

  “Mom says maybe it’s hormones. Dad says it’s a midlife crisis, between being a kid and a teenager. Maybe it’s a mid-love crisis! I just heard her say she wanted Scott Towel to kiss her!”

  “No way!”

  “Way!”

  “I wish she would talk to us,” Joey said. “Do stuff, like we used to.”

  “Me too, Duck.”

  “And stop thinking we’re purple mealworms.”

  “Purple-hued maltworms?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Is she really quitting the Sisters Club, you think?”

  “You can’t quit your sisters, Duck. Sisters are forever. Remember?”

  “I miss Alex and the Sisters Club. I even miss her bossing us.”

  I didn’t say anything. But the real truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth was that I missed my sister, too. She could have been talking to me, whis-pering secrets to me. Instead, she was spilling her guts to a stupid old pair of socks with eyes. Telling it she wanted to get kissed. By a B-O-Y! I just didn’t get it.

  “Hello? Earth to Stevie.”

  “I know, I know. You want to show me something.”

  I slid out from under the bed. Joey cracked up. “You should see you. You have dust bunnies all over your hair!”

  “And I found a LEGO fairy, two quarters, and the silver locket from your pioneer doll.”

  “Hey! I’ve been looking everywhere for those! By the way, I lost two quarters.”

  “Did not!”

  “Did, too!”

  I handed Joey the locket and the LEGO and put the quarters in my pocket.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  “Not.”

  “C’mon, Stevie. Please? You have to.”

  I followed Joey downstairs. One sister mad at me was enough.

  Joey had been helping Dad paint the volcano. She took me by the hand and led me around to the back of the volcano. “Look! Look what I did! It’s so funny!”

  I crouched down on my knees and saw where Joey had painted initials with a big red heart around them.

  “Joey, are you nuts? That�
��s not funny. Alex is mad enough at us already!”

  Joey stuck out her pout-face lip. “Well, I think it’s funny. Besides, who’s going to see it? It’s in the bottom corner.”

  “I’m telling you. You better paint over it if you ever want your big sister to speak to you again.”

  It felt terrible to be in a house full of silence. I’d been in Alex’s House of Bad Moods before, but this was different. Like a rubber band that you stretch too far and it snaps. Like a bowl you break by mistake, and it stares up at you in pieces.

  Ever since Mom got her show and Alex got into the play, something had changed. Something felt broken, worse than a sweater that unraveled or a dinner that went haywire.

  Like our whole family was coming apart.

  I decided it was up to me to fix it, to make things right with Alex again. After all, I’m the middle sister. I’m the glue, right?

  Middles are the peacemakers. I read that in a magazine article once. A real, actual magazine article. Not like the ones Alex is always quoting and pretending she read somewhere.

  I remember it said firstborns may be smarter, and last-borns may be shorter, but middles are more likely to live the “exhilarating life” of an artist or adventurer. (Cool!) It named a bunch of other jobs, too. I don’t remember them all, but I remember it ended with firefighter.

  So . . . looks like it’s time for me to go put out some fires.

  I would have to pull a Martin Luther King, Jr., on my family. Only one problem — Alex still wasn’t speaking to me. So I had to start by getting her to talk.

  I waited till Saturday. I woke up early, before Joey or Alex. I went downstairs and made Alex her favorite breakfast. Then I carried it up to her room on a tray, like Mom used to do when we were sick.

  I knocked on Alex’s door. “Alex! Wake up!”

  No answer.

  “I made you breakfast,” I said. “Your favorite!”

  “Blueberry pancakes?” She spoke! It was a start.

  “No.”

  “French toast with blueberries?”

  “No.”

  “Blueberry anything?”

  “Blueberry waffles!” I said. “With warmed-up maple syrup.”