“Anybody here?” Scott called as he walked in, depositing his schoolbooks and jacket on the nearest table.
His mother immediately came in from the kitchen. “Hello, dear. Oh, I see you’ve brought a friend home with you. How nice!”
“Mom, this is Charlie Pratt. He’s the cousin of some girls I know at school. He’s visiting from Chicago, just for the week.”
“Hello, Mrs. Stevens,” Chris-as-Charlie said politely. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, too, Charlie. Would you boys like a snack? I just baked some cookies—”
“What kind?” Scott interrupted her.
“Chocolate chip.”
“Aw, Mom, not again! You always make that kind!” Scott, Chris was astonished to see, was practically pouting.
“I’d love a cookie, Mrs. Stevens,” Charlie ventured. “My mother hardly ever finds the time to bake.”
She was about to add, “My sister and I love to whip up a batch of cookies or a cake on a rainy Saturday afternoon,” but stopped herself. She had forgotten, for a moment, who she was supposed to be. And while a comment like that would have passed virtually unnoticed if Chris said it, having Charlie, a seventeen-year-old boy, say the exact same thing was practically guaranteed to attract a lot of attention.
“Are Paul and Ted home yet?” asked Scott as he headed for the kitchen. “They’re my younger brothers,” he explained to Charlie.
“I just picked them up at the junior high. Paul had a Boy Scout meeting to go to, and so I dropped Ted off in the same neighborhood, at his friend Larry’s house. Oh, I also picked up your suit at the dry cleaners, Scott.”
Mrs. Stevens accompanied her son and his guest into the kitchen. Even though it was apparent from the pile of vegetables on the wooden cutting board near the sink that she had been busy preparing dinner, she proceeded to fill two glasses with milk and arrange some of the cookies, still warm from the oven, on a plate.
She was getting some paper napkins down from a shelf when Chris said, “That’s okay, Mrs. Stevens. You don’t have to do all this. We can just help ourselves.”
Scott looked at his new friend strangely.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Mrs. Stevens said cheerfully. “You boys have put in a long day at school. You deserve a break.”
Just then, the telephone rang. “Excuse me a minute, boys. I’ll just answer that upstairs. Then I’ll be out of your way...”
When she was gone, Chris observed, “Gee, Scott, it’s awfully nice that your mother bakes homemade cookies for your family.”
“Well, why not? She’s got nothing else to do all day! I mean, she doesn’t work or anything.”
Chris was astonished. Mrs. Stevens, not work?
How on earth could Scott ever come up with a comment like that? It was obvious she had just spent the entire day cleaning the house, running errands, picking up Scott’s two younger brothers and driving them to their friends’ houses, starting dinner, setting the table ... not to mention baking cookies!
And yet Scott didn’t notice any of that at all. It was as if he just expected all those things to get done, without ever taking the time to realize that someone had to spend time and energy doing them! And that someone was his mother.
A minute later Mrs. Stevens stuck her head through the kitchen doorway. “Are you boys all right in here?” she asked. “Is there anything else you need?”
“We’re fine, Mom,” Scott said, scowling.
“Aren’t you going to sit down and have a snack with us, Mrs. Stevens?” Chris asked.
This time, the look that Scott cast in her direction was one of disbelief.
“Why, thank you, Charlie! That’s very nice of you. But Scott doesn’t want his mother around while he’s talking to his friends!” And she was gone.
Chris was bewildered. It was growing increasingly obvious to her that Mrs. Stevens wasn’t treated very well in her own home. In fact, it even appeared that she didn’t expect to! Everything she did for her family was taken for granted—at least by her oldest son. She wasn’t even welcome to sit down with him for a few minutes after school, to talk about the day and meet his new friend!
Of course, Chris reminded herself, all teenagers want time away from their parents, especially when their friends are around. Even Sooz and I, who really enjoy spending time with Mom, talking and laughing and introducing our friends to her, are always holing up in our bedrooms to discuss this boy or that teacher ... or our current prank. But Scott is being positively rude!
There was something else troubling Chris. The way Scott acted toward his mother seemed to have something to do with the comment he’d made earlier that afternoon about the girls’ gym classes. Saying that the girls probably spent the period ... What was it? “Practicing giving tea parties.” They both reflected the same attitude.
And, Chris was realizing, it was an attitude she didn’t like very much at all.
Come on, Chris, you’re being too critical, she argued with herself. Scott’s just showing off. Don’t be in such a hurry to find fault with him! After all, this is your big chance to find out what he’s really like!
Even so, Chris couldn’t help feeling more and more uncomfortable. Maybe this was what Scott Stevens was “really like.”
“So, Charlie, how do you like Whittington High so far?”
“Well, it’s okay, I guess. It’s, uh, a lot different from my school.”
“Yeah, I bet. Coming from a big city like Chicago and all.” Scott had already wolfed down at least a dozen cookies. Chris was just about to bite into her second.
Uh-oh. I’d better start gobbling these cookies down, she thought ruefully. Otherwise, Scott might get suspicious.
She stuck the whole cookie into her mouth, all at once, wondering if she would ever fit into her favorite pair of jeans again.
“I guess the kids in Chicago must be pretty different from the way they are in a small town like Whittington,” Scott went on.
“No, not really.” Chris recognized this as an opportunity to steer the conversation toward the topic of girls. And once they started talking about girls, she could bring up the subject of Charlie’s cousin Chris once again. “What are the girls like at Whittington High?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Most of them are okay. A lot of them are much too independent, though.”
Chris blinked. “Independent?”
“Yeah, you know. Trying too hard to ... well, to be like boys.”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Oh, signing up for Shop class, or even Mechanical Drawing, instead of sticking to Cooking and Sewing, the way they should. Insisting upon using the gym for stupid sports like girls’ basketball, when we guys could be using it.
“You know, some of them have even started asking guys out! There’s this one girl I know, Katy Johnson. A couple of weeks ago, she actually called up this boy named Wayne and invited him to the Halloween Dance!”
“Gee,” Chris-as-Charlie said meekly, “what’s wrong with that?”
Scott looked at his new friend Charlie as if he had just sprouted three more heads. “Girls just aren’t supposed to do things like that, that’s all!”
Chris was debating whether she should continue to try to find out more about Scott’s way of thinking or just drop the whole subject before he became suspicious when Scott said, “Hey, why don’t we go up to my room? I’ll show you my basketball trophy. I won it last year, for being the most outstanding player in the county’s high school basketball league.”
She tried to look impressed. “Wow. Sure.”
While Chris wasn’t particularly interested in looking at some boring old trophy, she was looking forward to seeing Scott’s room. Hopefully, it would help her get an even clearer glimpse of what Scott Stevens was really like.
Scott’s room was a mess. While someone had made an effort to decorate it nicely at one point, painting it a pleasant shade of light blue, putting up attractive blue and yellow plai
d curtains made out of the same fabric as the bedspread, and choosing two or three scatter rugs that picked up the colors in the fabric, there was so much clutter that those efforts had been in vain.
There were clothes everywhere, draped across the chair, rolled up in balls and stashed on the dresser, even lying on the floor. Books were stuck on shelves haphazardly, and sporting equipment was strewn around randomly. There were even a few candy wrappers and an empty soda can sitting on the desk, forgotten.
“Gee,” Chris gulped. “This is ... quite a room.”
“Yeah, my folks let me keep it the way I want it.” Scott sounded almost proud. “My mom doesn’t even come in here anymore, except to change the sheets.” He plopped down on the bed without taking off his sneakers.
“Hey, there’s the trophy I was telling you about.” He gestured toward the bookcase in one corner of the room. Sure enough, it was displayed proudly on the very top shelf. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Great.” Chris no longer knew what she was doing here. She had hoped to find out what Scott Stevens was really like. Yet from what she’d learned in just the past few minutes, she was beginning to wonder why she had ever even cared in the first place!
She was trying to think up an excuse to getting out of there when she heard Mrs. Stevens call upstairs, “Scott! Hank is here! Shall I send him up?”
“Hey, terrific! Do you know Hank Griffith?”
Chris shook her head. Actually, she and Hank had been in school together ever since kindergarten. But, of course, that was Chris and Hank, not Charlie and Hank.
A few seconds later Hank came bounding into Scott’s room.
“Hey, Scott! How’s it going?” Hank greeted his friend energetically. He noticed Charlie then, sitting on the floor. He nodded over in his direction.
“Hiya, Hank. Listen, this is Charlie Pratt. He’s Chris and Susan Pratt’s cousin, visiting from Chicago.”
Like Scott, Hank was on Whittington High’s basketball team. As she shook hands with him, her heart sank. Mike Anderson’s suggestion that the two of them shoot some baskets together suddenly came back to her. What if the same idea occurred to these two basketball heroes?
Fortunately, Scott and Hank felt more like listening to music than playing basketball today. Hank turned it on and plopped down on the floor beside Charlie.
“So, you’re Susan Pratt’s cousin, huh?” he asked congenially.
“Yup.”
“You know, I’ve always thought that Susan was pretty cool. Yeah, I might even ask her out one of these days. Who knows? Maybe I’ll ask her to the Homecoming Dance.”
Chris opened her mouth to protest ... but remembered that Charlie Pratt would have no way of knowing that Hank was supposedly going out with Holly Anderson. That Holly, in fact, was hoping— expecting, even—that Hank would invite her to the Homecoming Dance!
Well, it’s now or never, thought Chris. If I want to find out what these boys really think of the girls I know, I’d better start asking some direct questions.
“Gee, isn’t that Homecoming Dance this weekend?” Charlie asked innocently. “I’m surprised you haven’t already asked somebody, Hank. You’re not ... going out with anybody right now?”
“Well, sort “of. I mean, there’s this one girl, Holly Anderson.... In fact, I think she’s friends with your cousin Chris. We went out a couple of weeks ago....”
“So why don’t you go to the dance with her?” Charlie suggested bravely. She could tell that Hank was more than eager to talk about his social life, so any hesitation she might have felt about discussing it with him vanished.
“Maybe she told him to get lost after the first date!” Scott joked. He was still lounging on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head.
“So your date with—what’s her name, Holly?— didn’t go too well, huh?” asked Charlie.
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, it was okay. But, well, I’m not sure if she really likes me.”
Of course she likes you! Chris was tempted to scream. But she couldn’t. So, instead, she said calmly, “How come?”
Hank shrugged. “She was acting kind of ... distant. On our date, I mean.”
Scott laughed. “You mean she didn’t want to kiss you!”
Hank was turning pink. Even though Scott was teasing him, however, he remained eager to tell Charlie all about his date with Holly.
Probably because he doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, Chris thought. Especially if all his friends are like Scott!
“Yeah, well, that’s kind of what happened.”
“But that’s crazy!” Chris cried. This time, she forgot all about the fact that she was supposed to be Charlie. “Just because she didn’t want to kiss you doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you! Maybe she just doesn’t like to kiss boys she doesn’t really know!”
Hank looked startled. “Hey, you know I never thought of that,” he said. He was quiet for a few seconds, as if he was pondering this new idea.
“Oh, why don’t you call her and ask her to the dance,” Chris said offhandedly, once again remembering who she was. “What have you got to lose?”
“What has he got to lose?” Scott demanded with a snort. “Well, she might turn him down, for one thing!”
What would be so terrible about that? Chris wondered.
But she thought for a second. If she were a boy, she decided, she would also find it a little scary to call up a girl and ask her out—especially if it was hard to tell what the girl’s feelings were. The idea of calling a boy always seemed so terrifying to her ... and she realized, for the first time, that it probably wasn’t very much easier for boys to call girls! So what if it was much more acceptable? They still ran the risk of being rejected. And no one, boys or girls, wanted to go through that!
My dear twin Susan, she thought with a sigh, you’ve hit it on the head once again.
But for the moment, she wanted to help Hank out. It was funny; up until now, she had been annoyed with him for “ignoring” Holly. And now she was seeing things from his side, finding out that he had been thinking the exact same thing as her girlfriend: that Holly didn’t really like him!
“So call her,” Chris-as-Charlie suggested one more time.
“Maybe I will,” said Hank. “Yeah, now that I think about it, I guess it’s not such a bad idea, after all.”
While they were on the subject of the girls they knew, Chris decided to push things just a little bit further. “Hey, do either of you guys know Beth Thompson? She’s a friend of my cousin Susan’s. I was, uh, thinking of asking her out.”
“Are you kidding?” Scott whooped. “You want to ask ‘Princess Beth’ out? Hah! She’s so stuck-up, she probably wouldn’t even lower herself to talk to you!”
Beth isn’t stuck-up! Chris thought with surprise. She’s just shy!
But she realized immediately that Beth’s inability to relax with boys, to chat with them and joke with them, was interpreted by them as snobbery. When she ran away from them because she was so self-conscious around boys, they just assumed she thought she was “too good for them.”
Wow, wait until I talk to Beth, thought Chris.
But then she realized that she couldn’t just go up to her and say, “Guess what I found out, Beth!”
Yet there had to be some way of letting her know what boys really thought of her, that they were put off not because of her shyness but because they thought she didn’t like them....
More miscommunication! Chris shook her head slowly as she pondered all the situations she had already run into in which great misunderstandings arose between boys and girls just because it was so difficult for them both just to be themselves around each other. They were always trying to figure each other out, to second-guess every word and action. There was so much emphasis on the differences between them that sometimes the similarities got lost!
By that point, it was getting late. Chris was surprised when she glanced at the clock on Scott’s desk, almost hidden by a candy wrapper, and saw that it was
getting close to dinnertime. In a way, she didn’t want to tear herself away from this conversation with Hank and Scott. She was learning so much! Not only about them and her friends ... but also the way boys thought. About themselves and about girls. There was so much she wanted to discuss with Susan that she felt as if she were about to burst.
“Listen, guys, I’d better get going,” Chris said, standing up and heading toward the door. “I promised my, uh, aunt that I’d help her with some things.”
“Okay, Charlie. See you around school,” said Hank with a wave.
“Yeah, Charlie,” Scott added. “See you. Hey, and thanks for coming over. We’ll have to do it again sometime soon. You know, I really enjoyed getting to know you a little better.”
“Yeah,” Chris agreed, smiling to herself as she walked out the door of Scott’s bedroom. “I really enjoyed getting to know you better, too.”
Chapter Nine
“Christine Pratt! What on earth are you doing?”
It was Tuesday evening, just before dinner, and Susan had just come into her sister’s room, anxious to hear all the details of day two of the Marshmallow Masquerade. She expected to find Chris sitting at her desk, doing her homework, or sprawled across her bed, reading or listening to music.
Instead, she was flat on the floor, dressed in an old Whittington High T-shirt and a pair of turquoise sweat pants, doing push-ups. All around her were pieces of gym equipment—barbells, dumbbells, even a stopwatch—that had undoubtedly been retrieved from the attic. Chris’s face was flushed bright red from exertion, and little beads of perspiration had collected on her forehead.
It was obvious to Susan that her twin had just undertaken a body-building program. And, as in the case of everything else, Chris was throwing herself into it wholeheartedly.
After her initial surprise, it occurred to Susan that Chris’s sudden determination to become physically fit had to have something to do with the Marshmallow Masquerade.
“Oh, I know,” she said, answering her own question. “You’ve decided that you can make a much more convincing boy if you’re more muscular ... right?”
Marshmallow Masquerade Page 7
