The Secret Language of Girls

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  Marylin leaned her head against the cool, gray row of lockers outside Mr. Kertzner’s classroom. No matter what she did, she just couldn’t win with these people.

  Mr. Kertzner walked out into the hallway. “Are you feeling sick, Marylin?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “You could take me to Paris,” Marylin said, her head still resting against the lockers.

  Mr. Kertzner laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a great field trip?

  Field trip, shmield trip. Marylin was talking honeymoon.

  But all she said was, “Yes, it really would. I think it would be particularly nice to be around all those people who don’t speak English.”

  That way, Marylin thought, she could ignore all of them.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but Flannery went to Ashley’s house,” Flannery’s mom told Marylin that afternoon. “Ashley’s mom just picked her up about three minutes ago.”

  “Oh, right, she mentioned that to me on the bus,” Marylin lied. “I guess I just forgot.”

  “I’ll tell her you stopped by, sweetie,” Flannery’s mom said, smiling her nice-mom smile.

  Walking back home, Marylin wondered how someone like Flannery ended up with such a pleasant mother. It didn’t make any sense. Marylin was beginning to think that the world just didn’t add up when you looked at the big picture.

  “You look like you need some chocolate,” Aunt Tish said when Marylin walked into the kitchen and slumped in a chair.

  “It smells too much like onions in here to eat chocolate,” Marylin said. “Onions and chocolate don’t mix.”

  “Well, I hope it smells good,” Aunt Tish said, stirring a big pot on the stove. “Because this is the tomato sauce for my famous lasagna. Tonight’s the big night, after all. Are you excited about Mr. Kertzner coming over?”

  Marylin shrugged. She had been more excited a few days ago, when her life had had a nice, even flow to it.

  “You know, Aunt Tish,” Marylin said, staring up at the ceiling, “sometimes everything in my life is just impossible.”

  Aunt Tish nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  At least one thing never changed, Marylin thought. You could always count on Aunt Tish to know exactly what you meant.

  And then a horrifying thought occurred to her. Mr. Kertzner was coming over tonight, and she had forgotten to learn everything there was to know about the stars.

  “What am I going to do?” Marylin asked Aunt Tish, her voice escalating into a wail.

  Aunt Tish turned down the heat on the stove.

  “Come on,” she said, taking Marylin by the hand. “Some things are less impossible than others.”

  A handful of stars was pinned against the evening sky when Marylin, Aunt Tish, and Mr. Kertzner walked out to the backyard. Petey followed behind them, humming his favorite songs from The Lion King. Petey’s humming always drove Marylin crazy, but tonight she was trying to make a good impression on Mr. Kertzner, so she didn’t yell at Petey to shut up the way she normally would.

  “That was terrific lasagna,” Mr. Kertzner said for about the fortieth time. “You’re really a great cook, Tish.”

  “Marylin helped,” Aunt Tish told him. “I couldn’t have done it without her.”

  Marylin had thrown the mozzarella cheese on top right before Aunt Tish put the lasagna in the oven. She didn’t think she should take credit for the lasagna’s overall success. Still, if terrific lasagna was the key to Mr. Kertzner’s heart, who was Marylin to inform him she had played a less than major role in this particular lasagna’s creation?

  The telescope stood in the middle of the backyard, its eye aimed at the Sussmans’ house next door.

  “Petey’s been playing with the telescope again,” Marylin said. Ever since Aunt Tish had set up her telescope, Petey had been practically glued to it. Some days he played astronomer, other days he played FBI agent.

  “I think Farley Sussman is plotting to overthrow the government,” Petey said. Farley, another third grader, was Petey’s arch-enemy.

  “Farley Sussman couldn’t overthrow a hot dog stand,” Marylin said.

  Aunt Tish and Mr. Kertzner laughed. All night Marylin had noticed that they laughed at exactly the same things. Also, they finished each other’s sentences a lot. Marylin was glad they got along so well; it would make things go more smoothly when Marylin and Mr. Kertzner got married. Maybe Aunt Tish could be Marylin’s maid of honor.

  “Okay, so who’s going to show me how to use this thing?” Mr. Kertzner said, nodding toward the telescope. “I’m ready to do some stargazing.”

  Marylin barely beat Petey to the middle of the backyard. She put her eye to the telescope’s viewfinder and searched out the Big Dipper among the crowd of stars that had begun to blossom in the darkening sky. Think soup ladle, Aunt Tish had told her.

  “Come look,” Marylin called to Mr. Kertzner. “Here’s the Big Dipper, which is a part of Ursa Major.”

  “I had no idea you knew so much about the stars,” Mr. Kertzner said, leaning down so he could peer through the telescope.

  “Oh, sure,” Marylin said casually. “As a matter of fact, the Big Dipper is one of my favorite constellations, along with Cassiopeia, Centaurus, Perseus, and Ursa Minor. I really like all of those a lot.”

  “I’m impressed,” Mr. Kertzner said. “You have the makings of an astronomer.”

  Marylin beamed. Aunt Tish’s advice had worked. Memorize five constellations, Aunt Tish had told her. Most people know only one or two. If you can name five, everyone will think you’re an expert.

  “Oh, Marylin, look at that moon,” Aunt Tish said. “Isn’t it beautiful? I love a full moon, even if it is supposed to make people do crazy things.”

  “What crazy things have you done?” Petey asked Aunt Tish. He sounded as though he were hoping for some helpful hints.

  Aunt Tish laughed. “Lots of stuff. Dyed my hair red. Fell in love.”

  That made Mr. Kertzner laugh too, and his laughter mingled with Aunt Tish’s in the cool air and made a kind of song. That was when Marylin saw it, the light of the moon falling over her aunt and her teacher and pulling them together into their own constellation.

  Marylin walked over to the telescope and looked through it to the sky filled with stars, so many stars you could never count them all, according to Aunt Tish. If Aunt Tish married Mr. Kertzner, then Mr. Kertzner would be Marylin’s uncle, Marylin suddenly realized. If he were her uncle, maybe he wouldn’t make Marylin do her gypsy moth project with Jason Frey. Of course, if Mr. Kertzner became her uncle, then Marylin couldn’t marry him. She would have to find someone else to fall in love with.

  Marylin pointed the telescope toward the moon. It was perfectly round, without any ragged edges or weird bumps. Most things in life were full of ragged edges and weird bumps, Marylin thought, no matter how perfect they looked from a distance. Even love. Even your best friends.

  “You know, I was thinking about trying out for cheerleading,” Marylin said, as much to the moon as to anyone else. She combed her fingers through her hair. She would have to be careful not to care about her hair too much, or else Kate would never let her hear the end of it.

  “That’s great!” Aunt Tish exclaimed. “I’ll come to your tryouts. I know you’ll make it.”

  “I was a cheerleader in college,” Mr. Kertzner said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

  Petey started laughing. “Boys can’t be cheerleaders!” he yelled.

  Mr. Kertzner picked Petey up and held him upside down. “Boys can be anything they want!”

  “Me too,” Marylin said to the moon. “What do you think about that?”

  The moon didn’t answer. It just kept on its slow orbit around the earth, the way it had for millions of years. It would always be there, Marylin knew, watching over her, covering her with its shimmering light.

  the magic kingdom

  To be honest, Kate wasn’t all that sorry her parents had unplugged the TV. She was getting t
ired of seeing all those perfect people parading across the screen every night. It was the perfect kids who bugged her the most—those gaggles of sisters with moonbeam-blond hair that bounced and flounced all over the place. A person with bone-straight, plain-brown hair really had no business tuning in.

  For a person with bone-straight, plain-brown hair and a stomach that looked a little bit like she’d stuck an upside-down cereal bowl beneath her shirt, TV was not a good idea at all. None of the moonbeam-blond sisters ever had cereal-bowl stomachs. The sisters under twelve were as skinny as lizards, and the sisters over twelve had mountain-range curves that made all the boys on the shows go bug-eyed and yell, “Whoa!”

  On the whole, Kate preferred books.

  “Are you at least allowed to watch videos?” Marcie Grossman asked at lunch on Tuesday when Kate had announced her parents’ no-more-TV rule. Marcie’s voice trembled a bit, as though Kate’s parents were ax murderers who might come after her next.

  “Sometimes on weekends we can,” Kate said. “But only ones my parents approve of.”

  “No one’s going to want to come over to your house anymore, that’s for sure,” Marcie said, biting into her tomato sandwich.

  “Life does not revolve around TV,” Kate said, repeating her parents’ latest motto. “Anyway, who cares?”

  “I’d come over to your house,” Paisley Clark offered matter-of-factly from where she sat by herself at the far end of the cafeteria table. “My mother doesn’t let me watch TV either. Not even videos on weekends.”

  A single, skinny bean sprout danced at the corner of Paisley’s mouth as she spoke. In the three weeks that Paisley had been at their school, Kate had noticed she was the sort of person who often had things stuck to her. Once she came to school with three raisins stuck to the back of her sweater; another time she had a stamp stuck to her elbow. But Paisley never seemed embarrassed when these things were pointed out to her. She just laughed. Sometimes she didn’t even bother unsticking what was stuck.

  “I guess you probably read a lot,” Kate said as off-handedly as she could. It was a simple statement, but beneath it ran the dot and dash of a secret code.

  “All the time,” Paisley answered. She held up a copy of Number the Stars. “Even at lunch.”

  Kate and Paisley looked at each other for several seconds, then nodded almost imperceptibly, as though something had been agreed upon between them. Which was why Kate was not the least bit surprised when Paisley saved her a seat on the bus that afternoon, even though Paisley did not normally ride Kate’s bus home.

  “I’ll call my mom when we get to your house,” Paisley said. “She can pick me up after work. Did you ever read Tuck Everlasting?”

  Kate slid down in the seat and propped her knees against the seat in front of her. “Read it?” she asked Paisley, raising her eyebrows as high as they would go. “I’ve practically memorized it.”

  At the very beginning of spring, weeks before anyone even knew Paisley Clark existed, everything about sixth grade changed. It was as if a mysterious force had taken over. The sixth grade had gotten shuffled like a deck of cards and been dealt into entirely new groups. At lunchtime kids walked to their tables as though an invisible hand were guiding them to where they were supposed to be. The weird thing to Kate was that no one ever tried to switch tables or join a new group. Everyone just seemed to accept the decisions the mysterious force had made.

  The mysterious force had thrown Kate in with Marcie Grossman, Amber Colbaugh, and Timma Phipps. There was a certain logic to it, Kate had to admit. They certainly were not a group of perfect TV people. Marcie had blond, bouncy hair, but usually it bounced in the wrong direction. None of them ever said snazzy, smart-alecky things to Mrs. Watson in class. Boys teased them, but not the cute boys, and not in a way that made their hearts open up like windows in springtime.

  Every day at lunch Kate, Marcie, Amber, and Timma gathered at the last table in the second row by the “Olympic Dreams of the Sports Superstars” mural and unwrapped their sandwiches. From where she sat, Kate had a perfect view of the second table in the first row by the emergency exit door. That was where Marylin sat with Mazie Calloway and the other middle school cheerleaders. That was where Marylin sat acting like Kate was some person she might have known a long time ago but whose name she couldn’t quite remember.

  “So what was it like to spend the night at Marylin’s?” Amber or Timma might ask, gazing at Marylin and the cheerleaders. They asked these questions as if Marylin were a movie star. “What’s her room like?” Marcie might ask. “Is her mom nice?”

  Sometimes Kate answered their questions with a bored sort of authority. “Up until third grade Marylin wore footie pajamas,” Kate would tell them, practically yawning, as if to say, So what? Who cares? It’s just Marylin. No big deal.

  Other times Kate leaned back in her chair, her arms folded over her chest, her mouth set into a scowl, and said, “You know, just because someone is popular doesn’t mean they’re a great person or anything. Just because someone’s popular doesn’t mean everything about them is interesting.”

  On those occasions Marcie, Timma, and Amber just stared at her. Marcie in particular looked like she thought maybe she should take Kate’s temperature.

  Paisley hadn’t watched TV in five years. She had been too busy backpacking all over the world with her mother, whom Paisley referred to as Phoebe.

  “Phoebe really liked Tunisia, but I liked Italy the best,” Paisley told Kate one afternoon as they sat under the beech tree by the kickball field and braided friendship bracelets for each other. “I know that’s what everyone says and it’s a totally boring choice, but I can’t help it. Italy is where the best food is. Much better than in New Zealand or Pakistan.”

  Kate nodded, as though she had some idea of what the food tasted like in New Zealand or Pakistan.

  “I liked the bread in Germany, but once I got really sick on a piece of wienerschnitzel I ate in Freiberg,” Paisley continued. “I mean, I threw up all over this lady on the train. So Germany is definitely not on my top-ten-best-food-countries list.”

  Paisley, it turned out, had lists for everything. She had a list of all the books she had read, and one of her favorite restaurants, and one of the birds she had spotted while hiking in the Pyrenees. She even had a list of all the boys she had kissed. So far there was only one name on that list: James. Paisley had met James at a travelers’ hostel in England. All she really remembered about him was that he had been very polite.

  “He kissed me and then he shook my hand,” Paisley said as she handed Kate her finished friendship bracelet. “It was a very English thing for him to do.”

  Kate examined the bracelet’s blue-and-green weave and then held out her arm so Paisley could tie the bracelet around her wrist. She felt like a princess receiving a present from a good fairy. Kate was beginning to think there was something magic about Paisley. For one thing, the mysterious force seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. In fact, when Paisley was around, the mysterious force seemed to loosen its grip on everyone.

  Kate had first noticed this the week before when, in front of everyone, Andrew O’Shea had walked over to their table right before the end of lunch. Andrew usually sat with Trevor Parlier and Jason Frey. They were the sort of boys who were always dropping their lunch trays by accident and tripping over cracks in the sidewalk. Trevor Parlier had something wrong with his feet and had to wear special shoes, and Jason’s sweaters always smelled kind of funny, like maybe he let his dog sleep on them.

  “Hey, Paisley,” Andrew said brightly, adjusting his glasses, “you think you could look over my social studies paper on Greece for me? I figured since you’ve been there and everything, you might be able to tell me if my report is any good or not.”

  “Sure,” Paisley answered with a smile. “Bring it on over.”

  Kate looked around the table to see if Marcie, Amber, and Timma were making gagging faces or rolling their eyes. But no one seemed the least bit concerned
, even when Trevor and Jason followed Andrew back to their table. They all actually laughed when Trevor said, “I tried reading Andrew’s paper, but it was Greek to me.”

  “I read this book last summer about this girl who lived in ancient Greece,” Paisley said as she took Andrew’s paper from him. “It was really cool. See, her parents were slaves. . . .”

  Everyone leaned toward Paisley as she told the story. Jason Frey reached over and gently plucked a piece of lettuce off of her collar. Amber smiled at Trevor.

  There was no doubt about it. Paisley was magic.

  Kate’s parents had unplugged the TV after they caught Tracie watching an R-rated movie on a cable channel. Mr. and Mrs. Faber were against young girls watching R-rated movies. There will be time enough for that later, they told their daughters. There will be plenty of time when you girls are grown up to fill your brains with junk.

  Paisley’s mom had a bumper sticker on her VW bug that read KILL YOUR TELEVISION. Kate saw it the day Phoebe came to pick up Paisley after lunch to take her to the orthodontist. Paisley was going to get braces.

  “Purple ones,” Paisley had told Kate on the phone the night before. “I’ll be the only kid I know with purple teeth.”

  After Kate got off the phone, she picked up her copy of Bridge to Terabithia and plopped down on the couch in the living room. The TV stared blankly at her from the corner. That was another thing about TV, Kate thought. It never had any kids on it with purple braces. All the moonbeam-blond sisters had perfect teeth. So did Kate, for that matter, but just then she wished her bicuspids had been a little bit crooked. Kate would choose blue braces, to go with her eyes.

  “Hey, it’s Purple Paisley!”

  Robbie Ballard leaned over from his desk at the beginning of social studies and made a face in Paisley’s direction. Robbie Ballard was one of the cute boys who said nice things only to the middle school cheerleaders.

  “I know,” Paisley said laughing, her purple braces flashing beneath the classroom’s fluorescent lights. “Phoebe says I look like a petunia.”