The Secret Cookie Club

by Martha Freeman

  I hadn’t quite finished reading when Shoshi said, “I drew some pictures, too. Want to see?”

  She got to her feet, and we went to look at what was on the table.

  “Shoshi,” I said after a minute, “those are amazing!”

  “Told you I’m a good artist,” she said.

  Instead of regular pictures of animals standing and staring, Shoshi had painted them in action, which made each picture exciting and alive. “I should’ve let you do all the images,” I said. “You were right.”

  Those words popped out because they were true, not because I wanted to say them. I hate being wrong.

  Shoshi laughed. “It’s okay. You were right too. I was being bossy. It’s a problem I have.”

  “Did you get in trouble with your parents for the detention?” I asked.

  “My parents didn’t even say anything,” she said.

  “Seriously?”

  Shoshi shrugged. “My sister is always in trouble, and my brother plays hockey, which my mom says is practically a full-time job for the parents. Also, they both work. I’m lucky if they remember to go to the grocery store.”

  “Seriously?”

  Shoshi laughed. “You said that already.”

  “I don’t have any pets,” I said, “or brothers or sisters either.”

  “I love my pets,” Shoshi said, “but you are welcome to my brother and my sister.”

  After that, we got back to work. She needed to add more stuff about bears, and I had more to say about Bronson Alcott, an important thinker and the father of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women.

  We had been working only a few minutes when I heard footsteps in the hall, and then Shoshi’s mom appeared in the doorway. She was tall like Shoshi with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a big gray UMASS sweatshirt. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Maybe she had been working in the yard?

  “Shosh, I need you to help me corral Blimpy—oh!” She spotted me. “Hello, sweetie. I didn’t know we had company.”

  Shoshi rolled her eyes. “Mo-o-om! This is Grace? I told you she was coming over? We are doing that Walden thing?”

  “Right. Of course. Got it,” said Shoshi’s mom. Then she nodded at me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Grace, and I’m sorry to cut this short, but we were due at the vet five minutes ago.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Grace

  Blimpy turned out to be the Rubinsteins’ cat. To avoid being put in his carrier, he had scooted behind the clothes dryer and gotten stuck. Shoshi, being smaller than her mom, was supposed to squeeze back there and pull him out.

  Shoshi argued that she and I had work to do, and besides, Blimpy was Molly’s cat.

  There was more yelling. I realized no one was actually angry. This was just the way the family communicated. Finally, Shoshi said, “Oh, all right, but don’t blame me if I flunk sixth grade.”

  Mrs. Rubinstein’s reply was to hand her daughter gardening gloves in case Blimpy tried to fight back.

  “We can meet Monday after school,” Shoshi told me as she tugged on the gloves and I zipped my backpack.

  “At my house,” I said.

  “Now who’s bossy?” Shoshi put her hands on her hips, but she was smiling.

  I rode my bike home in a very good mood. In the family room, my mother hugged me as if I had returned from jungle exploration. Then she asked me to tell her all about Shoshi’s house.

  I shrugged. “We did homework. Now she has to help her mom take the cat to the vet.”

  “Ah,” said my mom, “so they have a cat as well as that big dog.”

  “Lots of people have pets, Mom. I would like to have a cat.”

  My mother shook her head. “Cats are just a lot of fur and trouble for nothing. If you need something to cuddle, you have your stuffed animals. If you need something to talk to, you have your father and me.”

  I laughed. Truthfully, I was glad I was not at this moment wrestling a cat. “Hey, Mom—when you drove by before, were you checking up on me?”

  “Checking up on you? Of course not. I had to go to . . . uh, the store. We were out of something.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Milk,” my mom said. “Dish soap. Oh—I almost forgot. Something came for you in the mail.”

  The something was a shallow box like a gift box from a fancy store, most of it plastered in silver tape. In two small squares of untaped surface area were written my address and the return address, Lucy Ambrose, Los Angeles, California, 90035.

  My cookies!

  I used the bread knife to cut the tape. As she watched me work, my mother cringed. “Be careful! Please be careful!”

  Finally, I succeeded in making three long slits so I could unfold the top. “Ready?” I asked.

  My mom nodded, and I lifted the flap to reveal what looked like a box full of popcorn with several sheets of paper on top. The top paper read Please compost the popcorn in grown-up handwriting, probably Lucy’s mother’s. One of the other papers looked like the cookie recipe, and there were some crayon drawings. I moved them aside and dug down to see the cookies—so many cookies!—each one wrapped in waxed paper.

  “What kind are they?” my mother asked.

  I pulled one out, unwrapped it, and breathed the delicious smell of chocolate chips, brown sugar, and vanilla.

  “My favorite!” My mother smiled.

  “Hey!” I said. “The box was addressed to me.”

  “I brought you up to be generous,” said my mother.

  “We’ll spoil our dinner,” I said.

  “Not with one cookie,” said my mother, “or possibly two. See? It’s a good thing I went out for milk.”

  * * *

  The cookies were delicious—just the right amount crisp and chewy. Using maximum willpower, my mother and I each ate only one before dinner and two after. My dad doesn’t like nuts, poor guy. He didn’t get any.

  It wasn’t till later in my room that I looked at the drawings Lucy had enclosed. The first one wasn’t really a drawing but more of a sign written in marker. It read: These Cookies Are for Vanquishing the Enemy!

  The other three were crayon drawings by the three kids Lucy babysits. One, titled “Shoshi,” was a black scribbled blob with red eyes and pointy claws. Arlo had signed his name to it in careful block letters.

  The second, also labeled “Shoshi,” showed a stick figure with pink lips and orange flames shooting out of its head. It was signed “Mia.”

  The third, signed “Levi,” showed a tiny, many-legged bug that was about to be squashed by a pink shoe. There was an arrow to the bug labeled “Shoshi,” and an arrow to the shoe labeled “Grace.”

  Looking at the two Shoshi monsters and the Shoshi bug gave me a funny feeling. Things had changed since I wrote to Lucy. Shoshi wasn’t my friend exactly, but she didn’t seem so scary anymore either.

  Still, the drawings were funny, and they reminded me of Lucy. There was extra space on my bulletin board now, so I got thumbtacks out of my desk and put the three of them on display.

  CHAPTER 17

  Grace

  In a thousand years, I never would have predicted what happened on Monday at lunchtime: Shoshi and her minions asked me to eat with them!

  Before I answered, I did some quick thinking. At Nashoba Elementary, only losers buy lunch in the cafeteria, but sometimes my parents run out of time in the morning and the losers include me. Today I had a lunch from home, so that was okay, but it brought up the second question. What kind of sandwich was in it? I like tuna, but it’s stinky. You couldn’t eat it sitting with people you didn’t know that well. Then I remembered: Today’s sandwich was turkey.

  “Okay,” I told Nell. It was a warm day for October, so we went to eat outside at the picnic tables under the shelter. I felt funny sitting down with them. I was pretty sure other kids were looking over and whispering. What is that runt Grace Xi doing with those other girls? She is not supposed to have any friends.

  But mayb
e I was imagining that. Maybe all along when I had thought people were talking behind my back, I was imagining it.

  We unpacked our lunches, and the first thing I noticed was no cookies in mine. Mom must have forgotten about them. The next thing I noticed was that Shoshi had a tuna sandwich! With pickles! And nobody even pinched her nostrils to make fun of her, either.

  We talked about the Walden project—Nell and Deirdre were partners. Then we talked about what we were going to be for Halloween.

  “I’m too old for trick-or-treat,” Nell declared. “That’s for little kids.”

  “I’m not too old!” Deirdre said. “I’m going as a Greek goddess!”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  Shoshi mimicked me, “Seriously? That’s what you always say, Grace.”

  “Seriously?” I repeated, and everybody laughed.

  After that, things were going so well that I asked the question that had bugged me all year. “Do you guys talk every night and plan what you’re going to wear?”

  There was a pause, and I thought, uh-oh, now I’ve done it, lunchtime exile forever. But then Nell said, “We don’t have to.”

  And Deirdre shrugged. “Yeah, like I wore jeans on Friday? And I’m going to wear leggings tomorrow? So I have to wear khakis today. There aren’t that many choices of okay clothes to wear, you know? And after a while everybody is on the same schedule. See?”

  “What are you wearing tomorrow, Grace?” Shoshi asked. “Do you want to coordinate with us?”

  “Oh—I didn’t ask because of that,” I said truthfully.

  “So”—Deirdre shrugged—“it’s okay if you do.”

  I thought fast. “I don’t think about what I’m going to wear in advance. I just grab what I grab.”

  This was a fib. I do plan what I’m going to wear. Tomorrow would be skinny jeans and a hoodie. But dressing the same as three other girls in my class? Even if we actually became friends? I don’t know why, but the idea seemed just too strange.

  * * *

  If Shoshi was surprised by my clean room that afternoon, she didn’t say so. What she did say was “thank you” five times to my mom for picking us up and driving us. “It sure beats walking,” she added.

  I didn’t have piano that day, so my mom was working from home. Now I was terrified she’d say something like, “Who would allow their child to walk such a long distance?” Luckily, she just said, “You are very welcome.”

  The project was due Wednesday, and we didn’t have that much left to finish. I moved my old stuffed animals off my armchair, and Shoshi sat at my desk, and we read over each other’s writing. Because I am not a good artist, I had printed out images of each of the Walden thinkers, then put brown construction-paper frames around them. For me, that’s creative, and Shoshi said it looked good.

  I was adding a comma to a run-on sentence when I happened to glance up and notice Shoshi looking at my bulletin board. I looked back down at Shoshi’s sentence, and then it hit me: Oh no!

  Hopelessly, I jumped up as if I could tear down the Shoshi monsters before Shoshi live-and-in-the flesh saw them, but of course it was too late. Shoshi swiveled the desk chair to look at me, her forehead creased in puzzlement. “What are those supposed to mean?”

  CHAPTER 18

  Grace

  I could tell my cheeks were red, and my stomach had started to churn. I forced myself to speak: “Nothing.”

  “Well, obviously that’s not true,” Shoshi said. “Do you think I’m a monster?”

  I sighed. Lying wasn’t going to get me out of this. Neither was being overly polite and apologetic. Probably, my best option was the plain old truth. “Not anymore,” I said.

  “But you used to,” Shoshi said, and the weird part was she didn’t seem that offended. Was it possible she liked herself so much she didn’t need everyone else to like her?

  “So who drew these?” she asked.

  It was a lot to explain—Lucy, the kids she babysits, the cookies, camp—but I tried. Maybe I tried too hard. I was explaining about Hannah and f-l-o-u-r power when Shoshi interrupted: “But why did you think I was a monster?”

  “Because you and Nell and Deirdre laughed at me behind my back.” There. I said it.

  Shoshi shrugged. “Only sometimes. And only because you acted so perfect. You even knew the number one agricultural product of Florida. Also, we thought you were stuck-up.”

  “I’m not!” I said.

  Shoshi tilted her head to one side and looked at me. “Oh?”

  “Not that stuck-up,” I insisted. “And anyway, ‘oranges’ was the obvious answer.”

  Shoshi laughed. “To you. So, the most important thing I’m hearing is that somewhere in this house there are chocolate chip pecan cookies, and you are holding out on me.”

  “You mean you forgive me for thinking you’re a monster?”

  Shoshi said, “I’ve been called way worse than that. You met my sister, right? Now, where are those cookies? Did you say you’ve got some left? Is there milk?”

  CHAPTER 19

  Friday, December 4, Emma

  Usually I empty my spam folder without even looking. But that afternoon Kayden was late meeting me in the school library, and I didn’t feel like starting my homework, so I opened it to weed junk out and there—besides requests from all the organizations my parents belong to—was the e-mail from Grace.

  Dear Emma,

  How are you?

  I am busy.

  Besides everything usual, my ballet school is performing The Nutcracker, and I play a mouse, a snowflake, and a flower. The costumes itch, especially when you get sweaty. You might not think it is possible for a snowflake and a flower to get sweaty. But it is possible. I know this personally.

  At first I did not like school this year very much. Maybe you didn’t know I had to skip a grade, so now I am in sixth. Things are better now. I have a friend in my class, and she has other friends who are good for eating lunch with. My good friend is named Shoshi Rubinstein. She is Jewish like you. Because of her, I know it is Hanukkah starting on Sunday, so happy Hanukkah!

  Her parents have invited me and Lily (she also takes ballet, but she is only in fifth grade) over for so+me special pancakes that you eat for dinner. As long as there is maple syrup, that is okay with me! Also we are going to play a game with a top that starts with a D. It might be called doodle. Do you know about this game?

  Maybe you will be surprised when I tell you that Lucy remembered about the secret cookies, and she sent me excellent ones. Maybe it will sound even more surprising when I tell you that flour power works. I was feeling lonely, and the cookies helped me get to be friends with Shoshi Rubinstein.

  !!!

  So now it is your turn. Write and tell me everything! Do you have any problems? Then I will know what your cookies are supposed to do for you. Also tell me if you are allergic or if you hate any cookie ingredients, like sugar.

  Sincerely,

  Grace Xi

  P.S. That last part was a joke. No one hates sugar. Do they?

  Grace’s e-mail brought back a flood of happy summer camp memories, all of which seemed very far away from school on a gray December day. The e-mail also made me laugh—especially the part about maple syrup and the game of “doodle.” I hit reply, but just then Kayden arrived with Teacher Dustin, the librarian, and I didn’t have time to write anything.

  “Hey, buddy. What’s the matter?” I said when I saw Kayden’s frown.

  Kayden’s mouth stayed stubbornly closed, and I looked up at Teacher Dustin, who shrugged. “He escaped again. The head of school found him heading for the exit and brought him back.”

  “Kayden”—I stuck out my lower lip—“don’t you like me?”

  Kayden never stopped scowling. “You’re okay, but I like other things better.”

  I said, “Like what?”

  “I like video games,” Kayden said. “I like cookies and TV. How come teachers get to watch TV and we don’t?”

  “Teachers don�
��t watch TV at school,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Kayden insisted. “They do in that room they got where kids aren’t allowed.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but Teacher Dustin said, “Ah. You must mean the teachers’ lounge, Kayden. There is a TV in there, practically an antique. I doubt it even works anymore.”

  “I could make it work.” Kayden Haley was a second grader at the Friends Choice School in Philadelphia. I’m a fifth grader. Besides being the librarian, Teacher Dustin coordinates the Little Buddies program, where older kids like me tutor younger ones who need extra help. I’ve been tutoring Kayden twice a week since October. He learns fast but only when he wants to.

  “We better do some dancin’ before we get started then, huh?” I asked.

  Kayden’s frown disappeared. “Can we?”

  “One song only,” I said.

  The dancing idea came to me one afternoon before Thanksgiving when Kayden wouldn’t stop bouncing in his chair. I thought of what my parents told me about Ike, our golden retriever. When he was a puppy they had to take him for a walk or a run to settle him down. It seemed to me puppies and second graders were probably alike.

  Teacher Dustin would have a cow if we danced in the library. So Kayden and I went out in the deserted hallway, and I let him pick a song on my phone, and we danced up a storm!

  I am a terrible dancer, but Kayden thinks that is the best part. Watching me, he laughs and laughs—which makes me laugh too. I think he likes it that he’s better at something than I am, even though I’m older and supposed to be so smart.

  “Ready for some poetry?” I was out of breath.

  “One more song? Please . . .”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “If you do a fantastic job on poetry, then we can do one more before you go home.”

  Kayden is supposed to be memorizing a poem to recite aloud in class. He thinks the memorizing part is easy, but every time he stands up to recite, he gets tongue-tied. That afternoon, we were still trying to find the perfect poem. We had a book by an author named Shel Silverstein. A lot of the poems were funny, and I forgot to look at the clock. It seemed like no time before Kayden’s mom had come up to the library to find us.