Uncovering Sadie's Secrets

by Libby Sternberg

  So, I wasn’t in such a great mood when I showed up at St. John’s at eighty-thirty a.m. in my perky plaid jumper and white Peter Pan blouse. As I rolled the dial on my locker lock, Kerrie came up to me. We had already exchanged numerous calls and email messages throughout the weekend filled with speculation on the reason for the Sadie-Doug rendezvous, and she had promised me she would find out for sure by Monday morning.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to keep myself from grabbing her, shaking her by the shoulders and screaming out—What did you discover? Tell me, for goodness sake! Tell me!

  “So what’s up?” I asked.

  “I tried Marsha twice last night and couldn’t get her,” she said, trying not to look me in the eye. Marsha was a junior who was friends with Adam. She and Kerrie had been on Student Council together the year before and still talked from time to time. Marsha was very popular and knew everything about everybody. But you had to be careful talking to her because she would reveal what she heard about you as easily as she would reveal what she heard about others. It was just as well if Kerrie hadn’t been able to get hold of her. Talking to her twice in one weekend about Doug and me would surely switch the rumor mill into overdrive.

  “That’s okay,” I said, grabbing my morning books and putting my lunch bag in my locker. “I’ll figure out what’s going on. It’s not like Doug and I are going out, anyway.” Did Kerrie roll her eyes when I said that? I couldn’t tell.

  The morning bell rang and we went to our respective home rooms. It would be lunchtime before we were able to catch up with each other again.

  But I was true to my word. I spent the morning trying to “figure out what was going on.” Whenever I passed Doug in the hall, he smiled at me, a big open smile even in front of his friends.

  On a scale of one to ten, with one being “don’t want to be seen dead with her” and ten being “setting a date with the minister,” those smiles qualified as a solid five. Maybe even a five point five, depending on how you looked at it. Meanwhile, I didn’t see him send one grin Sadie’s way. Of course, I couldn’t see them together all morning.

  That changed at lunchtime. The cafeteria was in the basement of the old school building. Shock-therapy bright with white tiled floor and white walls and fluorescent lighting, it was as noisy as the inside of a drum at the end of the William Tell Overture. The sound of 100 kids chattering and clinking silverware and ripping open paper bags was enough to put any rock concert to shame.

  I headed for my usual table, near the door that led to the auditorium hallway, where Kerrie and Nicole were waiting for me. Carmen Smith was with them and so was Hilary Stone. Carmen was a black girl from Liberty Heights, and Hilary was from somewhere near the Pennsylvania border. She was absent a lot when the weather was bad. We all hung together in a loose group. We liked to think of ourselves as the “anti-clique clique” because, although we stuck together as shoulders-to-cry-on when things got tough, we didn’t always eat lunch or hang out together as a lockstep unit. In other words, we played well with others.

  “Hilary wants to know if we want to be in the school play,” Kerrie said, rushing past me to get in line to buy her lunch. She always bought her lunch while I always brown-bagged it.

  “Try-outs are this afternoon,” Hilary said, coming over to me. “And I thought we could be like moral support for each other.” Translation: Hilary wanted really badly to try out but she was afraid to do it on her own.

  “What’s the play?” I asked. “And what do you have to do?” I plopped my lunch on the table and started to open my bag. Peanut butter on whole wheat (thanks to Connie), apple, granola bar, bottled water. I started eating.

  “It’s a musical,” Carmen volunteered. She was already eating what looked like a ham sandwich with tomato and cheese and lettuce. Wow, it looked good. “The Mikado.”

  “Gilbert and Sullivan,” Nicole said, nodding her head. “Don’t you have to sing something in the try-out?”

  “Yeah, but anything you want. Nothing special,” Hilary said. I suspected she had an audition piece she’d been working on for months. Hilary was really bitten by the stage bug. She even looked like an aspiring actress, with auburn hair in a pixie cut framing perfect features that (against school rules) she highlighted each day with mascara and eyeliner and a touch of rouge. She was so skillful with the make-up brush that she never got caught. “Mrs. Williston said we should try to get as many people to try out as we can. She needs choristers. And especially guys.”

  Hmmm. Guys. That was a good excuse for revving up the old conversation machine with Doug. Might be worth a try. I scanned the room looking for him. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he had lunch at the same time I did.

  “You could sing just a Christmas carol or something, or even the National Anthem or a verse from one of the songs we sing in chorus,” Hilary pleaded. “If we don’t get enough people, we can’t do the show.”

  “Look, I don’t mind coming to give moral support, but I can’t commit to a rehearsal schedule,” Carmen said. “Williston will have you there every night the week before the play, and I promised my mother I’d be home more this year after doing band all last year.” Carmen had deliberately cleared her schedule so she could have time for Advanced Placement courses. She was taking AP History this year and counting on going into AP Physics next year. She wanted to be a rocket scientist.

  I noticed Doug entering the room from the opposite side. He was laughing and talking with Adam and some other guys I didn’t know well.

  “All right,” I said with a shade too much enthusiasm. “Come on, Hilary, let’s round up some men for Mrs. Williston. I’m game!” I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me down the length of the lunch room, passing a puzzled-looking Kerrie juggling a food-laden tray. “It’s showtime!” I said to her by way of explanation as we passed.

  Spontaneity is a good thing. If it hadn’t been for the idea of roping in some guys to try out for the show, I never would have screwed up the courage to talk with Doug that day, or probably any day after it.

  When we made it to his table, he looked up and smiled at me again. A huge neon sign flashing “five, five, five” in my brain nearly blinded me and sent me reeling, but Hilary was on a tear so she covered for me easily.

  “Mrs. Williston really needs guys to try out for The Mikado,” she said and I swore I saw her bat her eyelashes. Hilary was one of the few students who actually looked good in the uniform. Heck, she looked like a model for the uniform. “If she doesn’t get enough, she doesn’t want to do it. She doesn’t want to use a lot of girls dressed up as guys.”

  The guys all started looking down and around—in fact, everywhere but at Hilary—and it was clear that this idea was going over like the proverbial lead balloon. But then she added some deal-sweeteners. “There’ll be a huge cast party at the end of the show, and Mrs. Williston is getting passes out of first bloc classes for everybody on the day after the show, plus she said she might need to schedule some rehearsals during the day and she’d make sure it was all right with the other teachers.”

  It was as if little bells were ringing in each guy’s head. Ping! No first bloc Algebra? Sounds good. Ping! I could get out of old Rathbone’s History of Civilization? Sounds good. Ping! Cast party with music and girls and. . . Heh-heh.

  I was nearly deafened by all that mental pinging.

  One of the boys spoke up. “What time are the auditions?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “Three. Right after school. And she promised it wouldn’t interfere with any athletic schedule.”

  “Are you going to try out, Bianca?” Doug asked me. He talked to me! Yippee skippy! I did a little dance.

  Well, not really. I smiled.

  “Yeah. I thought I’d give it a shot,” I said. “Maybe get in the chorus.” I had no desire to be a leading lady. Too much pressure. Although I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to be, I had ruled out Star of Stage and Screen as well as rocket scientist.

  “Come on, Doug, Bill, Ryan,” Hilary pleaded.
“It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll try,” Doug said at last, and I thought it was significant that he was the first to speak after I had volunteered my own intentions to try out. I could see a causal relationship between the two.

  “Three o’clock!” Hilary said, triumphant.

  As we turned to go back to our lunches, I caught sight of Sadie. She was coming into the lunchroom late and she looked as if she had been crying. That had to mean she was detained by a teacher or called into the office for something.

  In addition to her binder and books, she held a note in her hand. It must have been an office visit, with the principal or assistant principal or guidance counselor. Her nose ring and earrings were gone, and she had pulled her hair back into a stubby pony tail at the nape of her neck. When she saw me, she smiled and I remembered Connie’s admonition to make friends with her. Given that I was on an information-hunt, it seemed like a good idea.

  “Sadie! Come on down to our table,” I said to her, and she accepted the invitation with the same enthusiasm as a lost traveler in the desert taking an offered glass of water. As she passed Doug’s table, he called out a cheery hello and I forced myself not to think of where it fell on the scale.

  If Kerrie was surprised when I showed up at our table with Sadie in tow, she didn’t show it. She just scooted her books out of the way so Sadie could sit down, and went back to finishing her cream of chicken soup.

  “I better hurry,” Sadie said to us before heading off to the food line. We only had fifteen minutes of our lunch period left. As soon as she took off, I looked longingly at the books she had left behind. There, smack on top, was the piece of paper she had been carrying, folded over. I couldn’t just unfold it and read it. That would be outright nosiness.

  So I accidentally bumped her books close to the edge while moving my stuff around to make room, and before I knew it, her things were on the floor.

  “Bianca, you’re such an oaf!” Kerrie chided me.

  “I’ll get it, don’t worry,” I said, bending over to pick up the fallen items. Quickly, before raising my head above the table, I scanned the note. It wasn’t a detention or disciplinary letter at all. It was a short typed note from the principal, Mrs. Weston, to “Amy Sinclair” notifying her that her daughter Sadie was showing exceptional progress in math and computer skills and that her teachers were recommending she be advanced to the next level.

  “We have been unable to reach you to schedule an appointment to discuss this matter, so would you please call us at your earliest convenience,” the letter ended. Hardly the stuff of moping looks and tear-stained cheeks.

  I stacked the books neatly on top of the table, being careful to place the note in its folded position exactly where I had found it.

  A few moments later, Sadie returned with a tray full of food. She had opted for the hot lunch, a full meal of roasted chicken breast, mashed potatoes, lima beans, applesauce, a brownie, and both a milk and a bottle of iced tea. It looked like she was stocking up for a rainy day. As soon as Sadie sat down, Carmen turned to her and wasted no time finding out what we all wanted to know.

  “You’re from California, aren’t you?” she asked brightly. “Dale Levy said you were.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s right. San Jose,” Sadie said between bites. She ate like it was her first hot meal in a week.

  “Why’d you move east?” Carmen continued. It was amazing how much information you could get through direct questions.

  “My mother has some family here. A cousin,” Sadie said. “And she wanted to be closer. . .”

  Carmen nodded. “Must have been hard leaving California.”

  “Not really,” Sadie said, finishing up the mashed potatoes and opening up the brownie wrapper. “I like it here.”

  “How about your friends? Wasn’t it tough to leave? I mean, after freshman year?” Nicole asked.

  This was great. My friends were doing the interrogating and all I had to do was sit back, listen, and finish my peanut butter sandwich.

  “No. This school is much nicer. And. . . I can write to my friends. . . or call,” she said, but it was such a half-hearted claim that I doubted she had spoken with even one old friend since moving to Maryland.

  I was hoping that Nicole or Carmen or Kerrie would continue with questions about Sadie’s family, her old school, and what she was doing at Doug’s last night, but the effervescent Hilary chimed in with her requests for try-outs for the show.

  “Everybody’s going to do it,” she said breathlessly. Hilary only knew how to speak breathlessly. She didn’t have any other way of communicating. “You ought to come. It would be a great way to meet people.”

  Sadie smiled, and it was a genuine smile, which made me feel both good and guilty at the same time. I was, after all, human, and I knew it must be tough to try to fit in at a new school all the way across the country from what had been familiar. So, my heart went out to her and wanted to make her feel wanted. But on the other hand, I had only invited her to eat with us because I wanted information, so I also felt two-faced. To make up for my moral deficiencies, I decided to be as hospitable as Hilary had been and then some.

  “Yes, you should come,” I said with conviction. “I’ve heard you sing in chorus and you’ve got a great voice.”

  Sadie beamed at that compliment and her face took on the same look she had sported when I first invited her to sit with us—a sort of desperate joyfulness. “Thanks,” she said shyly.

  AT THREE o’clock, we were all sitting in rows in the auditorium, snickering and giggling and kicking at each other’s seats. Doug had come in with some of his friends and Kerrie was skillful enough to get up at just that moment and move us all down a few seats so that he could sit next to me. Which he did. I needed oxygen.

  Well, not really. But I did blush with nervousness as his elbow glanced against mine on the armrest between us. He smiled at me again, and asked me if I had ever been in a show before.

  “Just in grade school,” I said.

  And I gave a stellar performance too, I thought, as one of the shepherds in the Christmas tableau. Of course, it would have been even better if I hadn’t snagged Joseph’s fake beard with my crook and he hadn’t fallen over the creche trying to reach for it, but then again Mary didn’t have to let out a mild expletive when he stepped on her sore toe and pulled down the set when he grabbed for something to keep his balance. It wasn’t my fault he thought the painted canvas stable was steady enough to support him.

  But I kept this nostalgic memory to myself.

  “I was in ‘On the Town’ my sophomore year,” Doug said in a low voice that sent a shiver up my spine. “It was fun.”

  The room hushed as Mrs. Williston called out the first name from the roster of those of us who had signed up. A timid-looking freshman with bright red hair went up to the stage after giving some music to old Mr. Baker, the accompanist. Then she started to belt out “Tomorrow” from Annie and was actually pretty good, but we all hated that song, and were super glad when it was over. Mrs. Williston had the girl read a few lines, then called out the next name, and the next and the next.

  Most of the kids were, like us, new recruits with nothing special planned. Mrs. Williston asked such auditioners to sing the first verse of the school song, which got kind of embarrassing because a lot of us didn’t really have it committed to memory. She gave up on that after a few tries and just asked for the first verse of “Silent Night” from then on.

  Hilary, of course, was the star of the auditions, singing YumYum’s aria with perfect poise. When even Mrs. Williston burst into applause, there was no doubt she had the part. When my turn came, my knees were knocking so hard I was afraid they’d throw Mr. Baker’s rhythm off, but I managed to chirp out a verse of the Christmas carol without completely embarrassing myself. I’d get picked for chorus for sure. I could tell from Mrs. Williston’s “thank you” she clearly wanted me to know I was welcome in her troupe, just not too welcome.

  Almost everyone in
our crowd had auditioned when Sadie came into the auditorium and found us. She scooted down the row of seats in front of us so she could turn and talk to us.

  “I almost forgot about this,” she explained. “I was in the library.” Then she turned to Doug. “Hi, Doug,” she said.

  To reclaim the center of the universe, I started talking, or whispering rather, since people were still auditioning. A senior was on stage bleating out “Send in the Clowns.”

  “Sadie’s from California. Did you know that?” I asked, hoping Doug didn’t know. If he did, he didn’t let on. “The weather must have been great there.”

  “It was okay,” she whispered.

  “I bet you saw a lot of movie stars all the time,” I said. Boy, was that a sophisticated observation.

  “Not really,” Sadie said. “I lived in kind of an artsy area but no movie stars or anything like that.”

  Artsy? My Internet search came to mind.

  “You wouldn’t be related to Sadie Mauvais Sinclair, would you?” I asked, trying to sound intellectual. I turned to Doug to explain. “She’s a Tahitian-born artist who deals in neo-primitive island themes.”

  I hadn’t expected Sadie to recognize the artist’s name or even to give a rat’s petootie about her. I had merely thrown it in to show off, but I didn’t pick up any admiring glances from Doug, just a blank stare.

  But Sadie’s face—it was as if she had seen a ghost. Her face drained of the little color it had and her smile faded immediately. Her eyes widened with fear and her brows furrowed.

  “Sadie Sinclair,” Mrs. Williston called, and Sadie turned and went to the stage like a condemned woman walking to the gallows.

  Chapter Four

  WHEN SADIE mounted the steps to the stage, I felt a simultaneous surge of unease and anger. Unease because, obviously, something I said had upset her. Her face was whiter than parchment and her bouncy mood had completely vanished. She now walked slump-shouldered to center stage, awaiting the moment when Williston would give her the signal to begin.