by Meg Cabot
“So the thing is,” I said to Erica, Sophie, and Caroline on our way to school the next morning, “I can’t go to Missy’s Little Miss Majorette Baton Twirling Twirltacular.”
“What?” Erica looked crestfallen, which means really sad.
“Why not?” Caroline asked. “Wouldn’t your mother let you skip your ballet lesson?”
“Ballet isn’t really that good for girls,” Sophie said. “Toe shoes are a leading cause of twisted ankles.”
“Not if you’re properly trained,” I said. Sophie was always reading about new ways you could get sick or hurt yourself. If you ask me, she was a little overly concerned about her own health, which is unhealthy. That should be a rule, actually. “And anyway, Madame Linda doesn’t let us go on toe shoes until we’re twelve.”
“But stress fractures can occur in regular ballet shoes,” Sophie went on.
“The point,” I said — sometimes it’s very hard to get to the point with my friends, because they are always going off in other directions conversationally, especially Sophie — “is that I can’t go to Missy’s event, because my mom says I have to go to Brittany Hauser’s stupid birthday party instead.”
Erica, Caroline, and Sophie gasped. Kevin, who was walking between us on our way to school, sucked in his breath, too.
But that was because I was pretty sure he was going to tell them about Glitterati. So I poked him in the back of the head. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to remind him about the deal we’d made at breakfast: He wouldn’t say anything about Brittany’s party, and I would give him all my dessert for the rest of the week. This was part of the plan I’d come up with the night before.
“That’s terrible!” Erica cried. “Brittany Hauser?”
“Who’s Brittany Hauser?” Caroline asked.
“You remember, Caroline,” Erica said. “She’s that horrible girl from Allie’s old school who likes to put cats in suitcases and then shake them around.”
“She sounds just like someone else we know,” Sophie said. “Whose initials start with C and O.”
She meant Cheyenne O’Malley. Only I had never known Cheyenne O’Malley to be cruel to animals. Just other girls.
“Brittany Hauser is rich,” Kevin said, because he couldn’t control himself. “You should see her house. It’s practically a mansion. They have real marble floors and a swimming pool. With a slide!”
I squeezed the back of Kevin’s neck as a warning sign that he better not say anything else.
“Oh, I remember you telling us about her,” Caroline said. “She’s horrible! Why would you go to her party when you could come with us to see Missy twirl?”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “What about Missy’s terrible self-esteem problem? I’m afraid this will be another blow to her, from which she may never recover.”
I sort of doubted that. I sort of doubted Missy had any self-esteem problems at all. But I didn’t say so out loud. Instead, I said, “I know. And I’m really sorry.”
This was the part where I had to tell the big lie. I had been practicing it all morning in the mirror, and I was ready. At least, I was pretty sure I was ready.
“The thing is, I don’t want to go to Brittany’s party,” I said. “But you know Brittany’s dad owns the BMW dealership in town, and he pays for a lot of the ads on my mom’s show, Good News!”
“Yeah?” Caroline already sounded like she didn’t approve of what she was hearing.
But I went on, anyway. This was probably one of the biggest lies I had ever told.
But it wasn’t exactly untrue. It was just slightly exaggerated.
“And my mom said if I didn’t go to Brittany’s party, Mr. Hauser might be mad and pull his advertisements from the show. And then Good News! could lose a lot of money.”
Of course my mom had never said any such thing. But I had seen this sort of thing happen on an episode of a TV show. It definitely could happen.
Just not to me. Or my mom. Or Good News!
Sophie gasped. “Oh, my goodness!” she cried. “Allie, that’s horrible!”
“That…that is so mean!” Erica looked completely flabbergasted. “It’s…it’s like…it’s like he’s buying friends for Brittany!”
“It really is,” Caroline agreed soberly. “I’ve never heard of something so sad. It almost makes me feel sorry for poor Brittany Hauser. Talk about self-esteem issues.”
“Uh,” I said. “You don’t have to feel sorry for Brittany. Remember the suitcase thing?”
“Yes,” Caroline said. “But now we know why she did that. What kind of parents does she have?”
Well, the truth was, Brittany’s parents had actually been really mad at her when they’d found out about Brittany putting Lady Serena Archibald in the suitcase. Her mom had grounded her for a really long time…
“Oh, Allie!” Erica flung her arms around me. “I’m so sorry! I can’t believe you have to go to that horrible girl’s birthday party. It’s going to be so terrible. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have fun while I’m watching Missy, thinking about you at that awful birthday party.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Erica was practically strangling me, she was hugging me so hard. “You can still have a good time watching Missy. I’ll be all right. I’m a very strong person.”
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “What are they going to be making you do at Brittany’s party, anyway? Please don’t say it’s going to be one of those awful grown-up parties where they make you dress up in a scratchy party dress and shiny shoes and go to the country club with all the adults.”
“Oh, I went to one of those once for my cousin,” Caroline said, making a face. “It was terrible! Is it going to be like that, Allie?”
“It’s not going to be like that at all,” Kevin burst out, because he just couldn’t help it anymore.
“Uh, never mind him,” I said, escaping Erica’s grip and moving toward Kevin to lay a hand on the back of his neck so I could squeeze it a little again. “Kevin, why don’t you go play on the jungle gym?”
“Allie gets to ride in a limo,” Kevin said, his voice sounding strangled, because I was squeezing slightly more tightly with his every word. “To Glitterati! And then to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner, and then to the luxury Hilton Hotel downtown, where they’re going to watch pay-per-view movies and order room service all night, then have brunch in the open-air atrium by the glass elevators near the waterfall!”
I gave Kevin a tiny push toward the jungle gym, where the other kindergartners were gathered doing their little kmdergartner business.
“Good-bye, Kevin,” I said. “Have a fun day at school.”
“Bye,” he said, staggering away, even though I really hadn’t pushed him that hard. Much.
“Wow,” Caroline said, watching Kevin go. “That’s some birthday party.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Erica said, brightening. “Glitterati! That seems like a fun birthday party. Why do you look so sad about it, Allie?”
“Well,” I said, “because I’d rather spend the day with you guys, of course, at Missy’s Twirltacular.”
This was a lie. But it wasn’t entirely a lie. I would rather have spent the day with them. In a limo, and at Glitterati.
“Aw,” Erica said, moving in to hug me again. “Allie, that’s so sweet! But I’m happy you get to do all those fun things. It’s such a relief. I thought you were going to have a terrible time with that Brittany girl. But it sounds like you’re going to have a great time.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “I’ve never even gotten to do one of those things during a birthday party. Let alone all of them at one birthday party.”
“Well,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable. Not just because I’d lied to them, but because Erica was still hugging me really hard. “Like Kevin said. Brittany Hauser is very rich.”
“I feel sorry for her,” Erica said, finally letting me go. “Look what she did to that cat. That’s a sign of an unhappy person, no matter how much
money she has.”
“And you can see where she gets it from. Her dad, threatening to pull his advertising money if Allie doesn’t come to his daughter’s party?” Caroline shook her head. “That’s messed up.”
“It’s like the evil warlord,” Erica said, talking about our made-up game of queens, “trying to pour hot oil on us all because Sophie won’t marry him.”
“Really,” Sophie agreed. “I can’t believe your mom is putting up with it, Allie.”
“Well,” I said. My lie was getting to be a little bit bigger than I had meant it to be. “It’s not like she has a choice. She could lose her job.”
Sophie gasped. “And then your parents won’t have enough money to pay your bills! Like your medical bills, if someone gets sick.”
I didn’t want to admit that my mom wasn’t even getting paid for being on Good News! That made her seem like less of a celebrity. Whoever heard of someone who was on TV but didn’t even get paid for it?
“My mom would still have her other job,” I pointed out. “She works as an adviser at the same college where my dad teaches computer classes. Remember?”
“Right,” Erica said. “Hey, you guys. In a way, Allie is just like Sophie, torn between the warlord and Prince Peter. Allie’s torn between us and her mom and Mr. Hauser!”
“Only Prince Peter is way nicer than Brittany Hauser,” Sophie pointed out, glancing at the boy she’d had a crush on since forever, Peter Jacobs, who was playing kick ball over on the baseball diamond with Rosemary and my brother Mark and a bunch of other people. Today Peter was wearing a bright yellow sweater. He looked very handsome in it, as usual.
“Um,” I said. “Yeah. I guess.” I couldn’t believe how easily they’d believed my lie. I’d gotten out of having to go to Missy’s Twirltacular, and Erica and Caroline and Sophie weren’t mad at me. They even felt sorry for me!
And I was the one who was getting to go to the Glitterati store in a limo, and stay overnight in the city in a hotel…
This was turning out to be the best lie ever.
And okay…I did feel a little bit guilty. But…
It’s okay to lie if no one finds out you’re lying, and the lie doesn’t hurt anyone, and it isn’t that big of a lie, and it’s partially based on something true. Sort of. That’s a rule.
Of course, I still wanted to go to Missy’s Little Miss Majorette Baton Twirling Twirltacular.
On the other hand…Missy herself would probably rather be riding in a limo into the city to do all the fun things I was going to get to be doing. I mean, let’s face it…it wasn’t every day you got to go to Glitterati or to eat in a fancy restaurant like The Cheesecake Factory or stay overnight in a place like the Hilton Hotel downtown.
Missy, I was sure, would understand. Anyone would.
So my lie was perfectly understandable. It barely even counted as a lie. It was practically the truth.
Sort of.
RULE #4
In My House, Nothing Will Get You in Bigger Trouble than Lying
It started raining hard that morning, which meant we had to stay inside Room 209 for recess, which I sometimes like because it means Mrs. Hunter gets out her old board games from when she was a kid and lets us play with them.
Her games are very old-fashioned and make us laugh, such as the Game of Life, which is Erica’s favorite, which has little cars for game pieces. The cars move along a board with a wheel you spin that tells you how many spaces you can move your car. Inside your car are little holes you can fill up with pink and blue pegs — the Mom and Dad and their babies, as Erica calls them.
All Erica wants to do is fill up her car with as many pegs as she can, even though that’s not the point of the game (having a career and making money is).
But Erica just wants to have a car full of little pink and blue pegs.
The game I like is Clue. It’s a murder mystery game. It’s my favorite, but the only other person in our class who likes it is Joey Fields.
Sophie says Clue is morbid. Sophie’s favorite game is Monopoly. That’s a game where you try to own as much property as you can, and if someone’s game piece lands on your property, they have to pay you. I hate this game more than any game ever invented, even more than I hate Boggle, which is a word search game of Mrs. Hunter’s that no one likes but Caroline.
The only game that all of my friends will agree to play together is the Game of Life (even though Erica won’t play it right).
We were playing the Game of Life — even Rosemary agreed to play, though usually she plays indoor finger football with the boys — when Cheyenne O’Malley walked up to us with her good friends Marianne and Dominique (or M and D as she likes to call them) behind her and said, “So, Allie. I understand that you’re taking a limo to Glitterati.”
I was busy achieving great things in the Game of Life, so I didn’t really have time to talk to Cheyenne.
“Yeah, so?” I said, spinning the wheel.
“So, I just think you should know,” Cheyenne said. “Glitterati is for babies.”
“No, it’s not,” Rosemary said, not looking up from the game board. “I heard a girl in fifth grade went there for her birthday party last month. So you’re wrong, Cheyenne.”
“And for someone who is super concerned about acting mature,” Caroline added, “you’re sure not acting like it at the moment, Cheyenne.”
Cheyenne’s face turned a delicate shade of pink that matched the pegs in Erica’s car.
“Well,” she said, “I guess you think you’re so great, don’t you, Allie, because you get to ride in a limo, and eat at The Cheesecake Factory, and stay in a fancy hotel this weekend.”
“She doesn’t even want to go,” Erica said, looking up from her little car crammed full of passengers. “She wants to go to my sister Missy’s Twirltacular. Her mom is making her go to Brittany Hauser’s birthday party. If Allie doesn’t go, her mom could get fired from Good News!”
Hmmm. This wasn’t going quite the way I’d planned. Soon a lot more people than I’d thought were going to know about my lie.
“Well,” Cheyenne said. “Just so you know, if you’re going to a party where the girl’s parents are taking you out to dinner and to Glitterati and all that, you better make sure the cost of the gift you’re giving her is equal to or more than the amount her parents are spending on you. I’m only telling you this,” Cheyenne added, “because you’re so immature, I’m sure you don’t know it already, Allie. I’m trying to help you.”
Rosemary slammed her fist down onto the Game of Life game board, making everyone’s game pieces jump. Then she stood up slowly.
“None of us,” she said, looking Cheyenne straight in the eye, “needs ‘help’ like yours, Cheyenne.”
“Speak softly to your neighbors, please,” Mrs. Hunter called from her desk, where she was sitting preparing a lesson. We all looked over and saw that Mrs. Hunter was staring at us with her green eyes crackling…
…which is exactly what you didn’t want from Mrs. Hunter, who was the prettiest, nicest teacher I’d ever had, and who’d once told my grandma that I was a joy to have around the classroom.
But Mrs. Hunter could be very scary when she got angry.
We lowered our voices immediately.
Cheyenne, who had to tilt her head a little to look Rosemary in the eye because Rosemary was so much taller than she was, seemed a bit scared. And not of Mrs. Hunter.
“Whatever,” Cheyenne whispered. “I was only trying to be a friend. That’s all. Geez.”
Cheyenne and her two pals M and D slunk back to their desks, where they were busy doing what they usually did on rainy days: drawing fairies with Mrs. Hunter’s collection of glitter gel pens (which I did, too, sometimes, when I wasn’t busy drawing zombies to show Stuart Maxwell that I could, or playing the Game of Life).
“Don’t listen to her, Allie,” Caroline said after Cheyenne had left. “You don’t have to get Brittany a huge, expensive gift, no matter how much her parents are paying for her
party.”
“Right,” Sophie said. “Remember for your birthdays last year, Caroline and Erica, I made you each photo albums of pictures of us together?”
“I loved that!” Erica smiled. “You scrapbooked that cover for it using funny things we used to say last summer.”
“‘Hey, you in the yellow swim trunks,’” Caroline said.
“‘I’ll have another doughnut, please. No, I’ll have two!’” Sophie cried.
Caroline dissolved into giggles — which was unusual for her, since Caroline wasn’t a giggler. “Remember Little Hiawatha?”
Sophie screamed politely.
“I was so sure we were going to get caught!” Erica said.
“Girls!” Mrs. Hunter said. “Please keep it down. We don’t want Mrs. Danielson coming in here, now do we?”
“No, ma’am,” Rosemary said. She glared at Erica, Caroline, and Sophie, who were crying, they were laughing so hard. “You guys,” Rosemary said. “Shut up. It isn’t that funny.”
Seriously. It wasn’t that funny. Rosemary and I had no idea who Little Hiawatha was, or why the mention of him — or the boy in yellow swim trunks, or the thing with the doughnuts — should make Erica, Sophie, and Caroline laugh so hard.
To tell the truth, it sort of made me feel left out. This made me worry about other things I was going to feel left out of. Like Missy’s Twirltacular. Were they going to come home from that with all sorts of private jokes, like the Little Hiawatha one, that I wasn’t going to understand?
Maybe I’d made a mistake choosing to go to Brittany’s birthday party instead.
And that was the other thing: I couldn’t make a lovely photo album (because I didn’t even have any photos of myself with her) to give to Brittany Hauser on her birthday. I didn’t even have any private jokes with Brittany Hauser (unless you counted the fact that she’d put her mom’s cat in a suitcase and shook it around and I’d told on her and she’d tortured me about it for weeks afterward by calling me Allie Stinkle).
