by Meg Cabot
“Well, girls,” Mrs. Hauser said, as she guided me to my seat, “I’m afraid Allie isn’t feeling well and is going to have to go home early.”
“Awww,” Brittany and her friends said, in very fakey voices. They didn’t care that I was sick. They were just disappointed that they weren’t going to have me around to play their mean pranks on later.
All except Courtney. She actually seemed upset.
She knew I wasn’t really sick, though. She didn’t want me to leave her alone with Brittany and her friends.
I felt bad for her, but what could I do? I had to get out of there.
When we got to the hotel and Mrs. Hauser picked up the keys to the rooms where she and the girls were going to stay, Brittany and Mary Kay and Paige and Lauren made a big deal out of saying good-bye to me in the lobby. Brittany especially. She gave me this big hug and said in a really fake voice, “I’m so sorry you got sick, Allie. I hope you feel better soon.”
Mrs. Hauser poked her, and Brittany went, “Oh, yeah. And thanks for the book.”
Mary Kay, Paige, and Lauren all snickered.
You could tell Brittany didn’t like the book I’d given her, and that she had no intention of ever opening it up to read it. Any more than she cared that I was sick (even though I wasn’t) and leaving her party early.
She was such a stuck-up snob. All she cared about was getting up to the hotel room. In the back of the limo on the way from the restaurant, she and Mary Kay and those guys couldn’t stop talking about the pranks they were going to play when they got there, such as calling other rooms and asking them if they would like a prank call played on them (and then when the caller said no, they were going to scream, “Well, you just did!” and hang up), and sneaking out of the room and pouring water over the atrium railing onto the unsuspecting heads of passersby in the lobby many stories below.
These sorts of pranks were, I knew, illegal. Or, if not illegal, probably very much frowned upon by the hotel staff. I felt sorry for Courtney, who was going to have to go along with them, or be cruelly shunned by the group if she didn’t. I was more glad than ever that my parents had forced me to move from the Walnut Knolls school district, even though I hadn’t liked it at the time, to the Pine Heights school district, where there was a higher quality of student.
Courtney said a very sad good-bye to me in the lobby, even though she couldn’t express her true emotions in front of Brittany and the others, because then they’d suspect something. She went, “Bye, Allie.”
And I said, “Bye.”
But our eyes spoke eloquently of our true emotions.
So now I was sitting on an elegant brown suede bench in the lobby of the luxury Hilton Hotel, waiting for Harmony to come rescue me, while Mrs. Hauser talked to the concierge…whatever that was…about how the room Brittany and those guys were staying in wasn’t right next door to hers, and that was unacceptable. How was Mrs. Hauser going to keep an eye on them if her room wasn’t right next door? Yes, she realized they were just little girls and couldn’t get up to much trouble, but it was her responsibility.
Meanwhile, the bellman had all the luggage from the limo piled up on a big cart and was about to take it upstairs. The book Harmony had given me, A Wrinkle in Time, was sticking out of the Glitterati bag where Brittany had thrown it (Mrs. Hauser had let Brittany buy her urban fairy outfit from Glitterati. I had no idea where Brittany thought she was going to wear a pair of skintight jeans and a sparkle halter top. School? Knowing Brittany, probably so).
I don’t know what came over me, really. I was supposed to be sitting there, not moving (according to Mrs. Hauser), until Harmony came.
But instead, quick as I could, I got up and ran over to the luggage cart and grabbed the copy of A Wrinkle in Time, then darted back to my seat and stuffed the book into my backpack.
I looked over to see if Mrs. Hauser had noticed.
But she hadn’t.
I’d done it! I’d gotten my book back! My heart was beating really fast. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I’d stolen back my gift to Brittany.
I wasn’t sorry, either. Brittany didn’t deserve such a nice gift. A present should come from the heart, Uncle Jay had said.
Well, Harmony had given me this present, from her heart. I was not giving it to Brittany. Not anymore. Not after I’d seen how she’d treated it. It was too nice a gift for Brittany. Let my mom go out and get Brittany some gift certificate or something. That was all she deserved.
Not something as nice as my favorite book of all time.
It was right then that I heard a familiar voice say, “Allie?” and I looked up, and there was Harmony, wearing a bright green raincoat and walking toward me through the hotel’s atrium, looking fresh and pretty and confused and basically like the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my whole entire life.
In fact, I was so happy to see her, I jumped up from the bench I was sitting on and ran to her, throwing my arms around her waist and hugging her as hard as I could.
A sick person probably wouldn’t act like this, but I didn’t care anymore.
My tesseract had come through for me.
“Oh, my goodness, Allie,” Harmony said, hugging me back. “Are you all right? Jay said you — ”
“Oh, hello,” Mrs. Hauser said, coming over with her right hand outstretched. “You must be Harmony?”
“I am,” Harmony said, and shook Mrs. Hauser’s hand.
“Allie’s not feeling well,” Mrs. Hauser said. “I’m so glad you could come pick her up. I’m sure she must be disappointed to have to leave the party so early, but she felt so feverish. I hope it isn’t that flu that’s going around. I really didn’t want her to give it to the rest of the girls…”
I let go of Harmony and stood there, trying to look feverish. For a person with my vast amount of acting experience, this wasn’t hard.
“Uh,” Harmony said. “I understand. Thanks a lot for looking out for her.”
“Oh, it wasn’t any problem,” Mrs. Hauser said. “Allie’s such a joy to have around.”
Another person who thought I was a joy to have around! Mrs. Hunter wasn’t the only one!
And I didn’t think Mrs. Hauser was only saying that because she wanted to make sure she didn’t get in trouble with my mom, who is a local celebrity, for letting me get sick while she was watching me. Mrs. Hauser and I do share a special bond, since we’re both cat lovers.
“Okay, then,” Harmony said to Mrs. Hauser. “I won’t keep you from your daughter’s party. I guess we should go. Allie, do you have all your stuff?”
I had my backpack — with the birthday gift I’d stolen back safely hidden in it — and my wheelie bag. I nodded, and Harmony said, “Let’s go. Nice meeting you, Mrs. Hauser.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Hauser,” I said, one last time. “I’m sorry to have been such a bother.”
“Oh, Allie,” Mrs. Hauser said, cupping my face in her hands and smiling down at me. “Don’t even think twice about it.”
Harmony took hold of the handle of my wheelie bag and the two of us walked through the hotel lobby, past the huge waterfall that Kevin loved so much, and past the glass elevators that led up to the floor where I knew Brittany and her friends were staying. When I turned my head to look back at Mrs. Hauser, still feeling a bit bad about lying to her, I actually thought I saw five little heads peering down at me from one of the glass elevator cars as it shot smoothly up toward the big glass ceiling.
But that had to have been my imagination. Mrs. Hauser had told the girls to stay in their room, and not to go creeping around the hotel while she was downstairs.
Surely, Brittany wouldn’t have disobeyed her mother now, when Mrs. Hauser wasn’t even asleep yet…
Oh. Right. Of course she had.
“So,” Harmony said as we walked through the automatic doors to the parking lot, where she’d left her car. “What’s going on? Why am I here? You’re not really sick, are you?”
“Well,” I said. It was cold
outside. Also, it was lightly raining, and it had gotten dark. “Not really…”
And as we began the long drive home, I told Harmony everything that had happened.
We drove along the highway very fast (though of course obeying the speed limit), with Harmony’s music playing on the CD player (she liked to listen to female folk rock), and I told her what had happened, starting at the beginning, about how I’d wanted to go to Missy’s Little Miss Majorette Baton Twirling Twirltacular, but how I’d chosen instead to go to Brittany’s birthday party.
I didn’t mention the part about how I’d lied to them about my mom forcing me to go to Brittany’s party or Good News! would lose all its advertising money. I had the feeling Harmony would be pretty upset if she heard about that, and might make me do something stupid like confess to Erica and those guys that I’d been lying…not to mention to my mom.
Instead, I went on to tell Harmony how I’d then been forced to lie to Mrs. Hauser that I was sick in order to get out of having to spend the night with Brittany and her friends, and how mean they’d been to me (all except Courtney), and what had happened at Glitterati, and then at The Cheesecake Factory, and how Brittany had said I’d looked dumb and then denied it, and how Courtney had said they were going to put my hand in warm water and then draw dots on my face, and how I’d had to fake being sick to get out of there.
The only thing I didn’t tell Harmony (besides the lie about Mom) was about the book, because I didn’t want Harmony to know that I’d almost given the book she’d given to me away as a gift to someone else.
When I was done telling her why I’d called Uncle Jay and asked him to come pick me up — and why he’d called her and asked her to do it for him — Harmony just stared thoughtfully out the windshield at the highway in front of us.
“So,” she said finally. “You ended up at a birthday party full of mean girls.”
“Yes,” I said.
“When you could,” she said, “have spent the day at a baton-twirling competition with your real, nice friends.”
“Yes,” I said. It was embarrassing but true.
“So, you made some very bad choices,” Harmony said.
“Yes,” I said. “But I realized it. Just in time.”
“Not really in time,” Harmony said. “Because you greatly inconvenienced me by taking two hours out of my life to have to drive to the city to get you and then drive you back.”
I swallowed hard. There was a very big lump in my throat.
“I’m really, really sorry about that,” I said.
“And,” Harmony went on, “you still got to do the things you wanted to do — ride in a limo and go to Glitterati. And you still probably disappointed your friend Erica by not being there for her sister, Missy.”
Now that Harmony had pointed it out, I realized again how really, truly selfish I had been.
“Yes,” I said for a fourth time. “I’m a really bad friend.”
“Well,” Harmony said. “The good thing is, you know it. So maybe there’s still time for you to fix it.”
“I don’t see how,” I sobbed.
“Why don’t you give your friend Erica a call,” Harmony said, “when you get home, and see how her sister did in her competition today?”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. It was hard to talk with my nose running so badly from all the crying.
But Harmony had made an excellent point. Maybe there was still time to fix things with Erica.
Harmony was mad about having to take two hours out of her own time to come pick me up in the city and drive me back…but not so mad that she didn’t pull into a McDonald’s and buy us both dinner. She said all girls made mistakes sometimes, and that it was lucky for me I had a cool uncle who had a cool girlfriend to bail me out of this one.
She was right. I was pretty sure if it had been my mom I’d called, she’d have made me stay at the birthday party, to learn from my mistake. Like I hadn’t learned from it already. A lot.
I really did have the coolest uncle — who had the coolest girlfriend — in the world. Harmony didn’t even say anything when I made the McDonald’s people special-order my burger so it didn’t have ketchup on it, and it took an extra seven minutes to be ready.
As soon as Harmony parked in our driveway, I got out of her car, grabbed my wheelie bag and backpack, and went inside, more glad than I could ever remember feeling to be home.
“I’m home!” I yelled as soon as I got into the mudroom.
“We’re in here!” I heard Kevin and Mark scream. I put my stuff down and followed the sound of their voices to the living room. There I met with the sight of our family tent, bathed in the glow of a roaring fire in our fireplace, and Uncle Jay, Mark, and Kevin, each dressed in cowboy gear, roasting marshmallows over the open flames.
“Oh,” Harmony said, when she saw that the mantel Mom had carefully restored was singed black from the flames. “You are going to get it when your brother and sister-in-law come home.”
“Yeah,” Uncle Jay said. “Well, the flames really weren’t hot enough to cook hot dogs over, so I added some charcoal and lighter fluid, and things got a little out of hand. But I’ll scrape all that off after it cools down, and they’ll never know the difference. Hi, Allie!”
“Hi,” I said. “You guys look like you’re having a good time.”
“The best time ever,” Mark said.
“I’m a pirate cowboy,” Kevin said. He was, indeed, wearing a cowboy hat with the rest of his pirate outfit.
“Wow,” I said. “That reminds me. I have something to show you later. But I have to go call someone first.”
I left them enjoying their cowboy booty and went to the kitchen phone. I have to admit, my heart was beating kind of fast. What if Erica didn’t want to talk to me? What if she hung up when she heard it was me, because I’d chosen Glitterati over her sister’s twirling meet?
I had to take the risk.
I pressed the button that speed-dialed the Harringtons’ house. It was late to be calling, it was true, but only a little after nine. Hopefully, no one would be too mad.
“Hello?” a boy’s voice said. It was John.
“Hello,” I said. “This is Allie Finkle. May I please speak to Erica?”
“I don’t know, Allie Finkle,” John said. “Erica’s pretty mad at you for not coming to Missy’s Twirltacular today.”
Oh, no! This was awful! My heart started beating faster than ever.
“Really?” My hand that was clutching the phone started to feel really sweaty.
“Yeah,” John said. “I heard her and her friends saying they never wanted to speak to you again.”
Oh! This was exactly what I’d been afraid would happen.
“I — ” I didn’t know what to say. “I — I’m calling to say I’m sorry,” I said. “I — ”
Then I heard Erica yell, “John!” and in the background, someone started yelling. I thought it was Erica. John started laughing and saying, “Get off me!” and then there were a lot of breathing and grunting sounds like the phone was being wrestled away from him.
Finally, I heard Erica yell, “Mom! The phone is for me, and John won’t give it to me!”
And Mrs. Harrington said, “John! Do we have to discuss this again?”
And John said, “I was just messing with her,” and then Erica’s voice came on the phone, loud and clear, if slightly breathless, going, “Allie? Allie, is that you?”
“Erica?” I couldn’t believe, after what John had said, that she was actually speaking to me. “Erica, I just called to say I’m so, so sorry about what happened. I made such a mistake going to that girl’s stupid birthday party instead of to your sister’s Twirltacular, and I really, really hope you’ll forgive me and be my friend again someday. Because I learned my lesson. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I would never want to do anything to jeopardize our friendship.”
“Allie!” Erica cried. “What are you talking about? Did you have fun at the party? What was G
litterati like? And riding in the limo? Are you calling from the hotel now?”
“No,” I said, laughing. I was so relieved to hear Erica’s voice, I wanted to cry all over again. But this time with happiness. “It was awful. It was so terrible, I pretended to get sick and I left! I made Uncle Jay send Harmony to pick me up. And, Erica, that thing, about my mom and her job? It was all a misunderstanding.”
“Oh,” Erica said. “Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “And another thing. I realized that what Sophie said was right. Riding in a limo and going to Glitterati and things like that are only fun to do if you do them with your real friends…with people like you.”
“Oh,” Erica said. “Well, I hope I get to do those things with you someday. But I don’t think I’d ever get to do those kinds of things for my birthday, because we aren’t rich, like the Hausers. My mom usually just makes a cake and we have a sleepover and watch a movie and maybe tell scary stories.”
“Me, too,” I said. I was so busy wiping away my tears of happiness that I didn’t even realize I’d wiped too hard and rubbed off my stick-on tear of infinite sorrow.
But when I saw it stuck to my finger, I didn’t put it back on my face. I realized I didn’t need it anymore.
“I’d rather have cake and a sleepover with you than go to Glitterati any day,” I said. “So, how did Missy do at the Little Miss Majorette Baton Twirling Twirltacular?”
“Oh, she did so great,” Erica said. “She made it to the finals! They’re tomorrow. Do you want to come watch?”
My heart, which I didn’t think could have taken much more excitement, seemed to explode with happiness in my chest.
“There are more rounds tomorrow?” I asked. “You mean, I didn’t miss the whole thing?”
“Oh, of course not,” Erica said. “We’re all going back tomorrow to support Missy in the solo and dance finals. It would be great if you could come, Allie. Do you think you can?”
