Leighton eyed her steadily before responding, then lowered her sunglasses. Tricia had no idea what she would say.
“Okay.”
That was it. Just…“Okay.”
“Okay,”Tricia responded nervously. Now that the Beauty Queen had agreed to come over, what would she do with her? Offer her a pedicure? Dusting off the Easy-Bake Oven seemed totally out of the question.
“Put your skateboard in the back and hop on,” Leighton said.
Tricia tossed a lock of blond hair over her shoulder and followed the instructions. It felt weird to actually be sitting in one of these things. She'd seen them all over the neighborhood. They seemed so silly. Tricia hated any whiff of snobbishness, and golf carts stank to high heaven. Now she was in a snobby golf cart with the snobbiest girl she'd ever met.
Leighton floored the accelerator, and Tricia clutched the bar to keep from tipping onto the street. “Hey!” Tricia yelped. It was hard to play it cool when you felt like hurling.
“Chill!” Leighton demanded. “So which way to your house?”
“Uh… take a right here,” Tricia said, then tightened her grip as Leighton jerked the steering wheel, sending the golf cart screeching down her street.
“Leighton! You're gonna make me barf!” Tricia moaned. By now, coolness was out of the question. Her only priority was getting to her house without leaving body parts strewn in the street.
“Like, get a life, girl!” Leighton said, but she was laughing.
“Who taught you how to drive? Jeff Gordon?”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Just…Hey, watch out for those girls!”
Leighton was hurtling toward two girls walking in their direction. The girls' eyebrows arched in fear. Simultaneously, they pitched their bodies sideways in opposite directions, just in time to avoid being flattened.
“Leighton!” one of them groaned.
Leighton slammed on her brakes. “Like, hel-lo!” she called out. “Are you trying to make me crash?”
The girls approached the golf cart, smoothing their T-shirts.
“Next time, let us know when you'll be driving your golf cart so we can wear body armor,” one of them said.
Leighton leaned toward Tricia. “They are so immature,” she murmured.
“So who's your new friend?” the redhead asked.
“I'm Tricia. I just moved here three days ago.”
“Three days and Leighton hasn't flattened you yet with her new golf cart?” The girls laughed lightly. “I'm Hope, and this is Mei.”
Hope eyed Leighton knowingly. “You were supposed to be at my house an hour ago for tutoring.”
Leighton yawned dramatically. “Oh, that. Forgot. Hate it.”
“Your mom's gonna hate it if you keep blowing me off,” Hope said.
“Oooooo,” Leighton said, tossing Hope a sneer. “I'm terrified.”
“You wanna come over now?” Hope asked, underwhelmed by the thought but feeling too responsible not to ask.
“Can't. We're on our way to Tricia's house,” Leighton said in a tone suggesting no one else was invited. Hope and Mei exchanged glances.
“Why don't you come, too?” Tricia blurted out. “Not that there's anything exciting to do at my house. In fact, I have a totally obnoxious little sister. But you can come if you want.”
Hope's eyes danced with subversive delight at the thought of Leighton's being stuck with her. “Sure,” she said. “We'd love to.”
Leighton threw her hands in the air. “Whatever.”
Hope and Mei hopped onto the rear seats of Leighton's golf cart. “Go easy, Leighton,” Hope said. “I don't want to die young.”
Leighton floored it and seemed to go out of her way to make the trip as jerky as possible. Thankfully, Tricia's house was right down the street. She sighed with relief as Leighton screeched into her driveway. As Mei and Hope tumbled out of their seats, Leighton whispered, “Why did you invite them?” Mei and Hope once again exchanged the look that was already becoming familiar to Tricia. They seemed to have a long history with Leighton.
Tricia stepped out of the golf cart. “Wanna watch music videos?” she suggested tentatively, hoping the activity sounded halfway sophisticated. In her old crowd, she had always been the last one to catch on to a new trend or abandon some kiddy interest. It wasn't that she was babyish; she just never seemed quite ready to move up a step when her friends did. It always made her feel a little out of the loop. It was time to shed that reputation.
Leighton was craning her neck, peering into Tricia's backyard. “What's that?” she asked, pointing to a tree house.
Tricia's heart sank. Why had Troy insisted on building her that stupid tree house? Talk about kid stuff. “Oh, that,” she replied quickly. “It's … my sister's. She's only two, but my folks figured she'll grow into it. My dad…my stepdad… moved into the house about a month before the rest of us so I could finish seventh grade in my old school. He wanted to have the tree house ready for me…I mean, for my little sister… when we moved in.”
“Cool,” Mei said, leaning to one side for a better view.
Cool? Tricia sighed in relief. “We can check it out if you want,” she said, trying to sound indifferent.
“Definitely!” Hope said. Tricia walked to the gate and unlatched it. The girls followed her into the backyard, which was already landscaped with plush grass that was damp from the automatic sprinklers. The ground squished beneath the girls' flip-flops.
“This is awesome!” Mei said as they approached the tree house. Troy had chosen the largest, sturdiest oak tree for the project. A spiral wood-plank stairway led about six feet up to the base of the cedar tree house. Like the steps, the house itself wrapped around the tree, with supporting planks of wood extending from the periphery of the house to the base of the tree. The girls unlatched a door held in place by a metal hook to get inside. Troy had built two windows into the façade for light, and Tricia's mom had scattered area rugs on the floor. The girls settled onto the rugs and inhaled the sweet cedar scent.
“We could sleep in here!” Hope said enthusiastically.
“It's okay,” Leighton agreed grudgingly. “But what do you do in here?”
Tricia shrugged. “It would be a good place for a clubhouse.” Again, she regretted the words as soon as she'd uttered them. A clubhouse? Very mature.
“A clubhouse!” Hope squealed, and Mei leaned in excitedly. Tricia made a mental note to stop trying to second-guess her new friends.
Leighton leaned back on the heels of her hands. “A clubhouse,” she repeated, then glanced disapprovingly at Hope. “But that would require a club. And it's not like we all have a lot in common.” Hope and Mei exchanged “the look” once again.
“Oh, don't we, Leighton?” Hope said sarcastically. “My goal in life is to find that perfect shade of fuchsia lipstick for my complexion. That's right up your alley, right?”
Leighton sneered, but then brightened. “Hey, you could give me a couple of math tips during our club meetings, which would get my mom off my back.”
Hope clutched her heart. “Oh, Leighton. I'm…I'm…” She sighed, then feigned a choked-up whisper. “I'm touched.”
Mei laughed. It might be worth joining a club just to see these two go at it on a regular basis, she thought.
“Okay, so we'll have a club,” Leighton said definitively. “But what kind of club will it be?”
“Well,” Tricia said, “I've just met all three of you. Why don't we spend a few minutes telling each other about ourselves?”
Leighton's eyes sparkled as she warmed immediately to the idea. “Okay, I'll start,” she said authoritatively. “Here's the 411 on me: Leighton Lockwood, five foot seven, a hundred and ten pounds …”
“Fascinating,” Hope murmured.
Leighton cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow. “As I was saying: okay, my hobbies are cheerleading, dancing and gymnastics….I hate school, I love cute guys and I want to move to Hollywood after high school and do ma
keup for movie stars. Or be a movie star. And someone can do my makeup.” She smiled coyly and held up her palms. “That's me.”
“Okay,” said Tricia. “Hope, how about you?”
Hope sat up straighter and cleared her throat. “My dream is to be Miss America.”
Leighton's jaw dropped and Mei giggled.
“Okay, maybe not,” Hope said. “Let's try again. My name is Hope Mitchell, I'm going into eighth grade, my favorite subject is science, I want to be a paleontologist….”
“Digging up dead things?” Leighton interjected with a sneer.
“Yes, Leighton,” Hope said earnestly. “Sometimes I find dead things preferable to living things.” Mei stifled another giggle.
“How about you, Mei?” Tricia asked. “Where are you from?”
“Two streets over,” Mei responded, sounding more snappish than she intended.
Tricia blushed.
“Sorry,” Mei said softly. “I get asked that a lot.”
Hope squeezed Mei's knee protectively. “Mei's an amazing artist,” she said.
Mei smiled shyly. “Not really. Art's just the only thing I'm even halfway good at.”
“Not true,” Hope said. “She's good at lots of things, but especially art.”
“Hmmmm…,” Tricia said. “Paleontology, makeup, art… you're right. We're all over the map.”
“How about you?” Hope said. “The three of us have known each other forever. You're the one we don't know anything about. Spill it.”
“So you haven't seen my biography on the A&E channel?” Tricia teased.
Leighton rolled her eyes.
“Actually, my life is spectacularly boring,” Tricia said. “My dad is really cool…he's a guitarist in a band, not that you've ever heard of the band… but still, he's totally awesome. Not that it matters, considering I hardly ever see him.”
“Why not?” Mei asked.
Tricia shrugged. “My mom is so uptight. She thinks she can form an instant family with her new husband … you know, just add water and stir… and Dad doesn't fit into the new family. The problem is, neither do I.”
“I feel your pain,” Mei said. “And I can't even get away from my stepdad at school. He's the principal.”
Tricia gasped in sympathy.
“I can top you all,” Leighton said. “My stepbrother is the biggest dweeb at Clearview Middle School.”
“I like Kyle,” Mei said quietly.
“Hel-lo!” Hope said. “I've got you all beat with my evil stepmother. Think Cinderella.”
Tricia smiled. Umberella. The day was coming full circle. “So we've all got steps,” she said, then nodded smartly. “That's it. We've all got steps.”
“Your point?” Leighton asked.
“That's what we have in common. We all know what it feels like to be a leftover.”
“A what?” Hope said.
“A leftover. Like the meat loaf somebody puts in the back of the refrigerator, then forgets about until it turns all stinky. That's what happens to kids when their parents divorce and start new families. They turn into leftovers.”
The girls murmured knowingly, and a somber silence overtook the tree house.
“We're leftovers, even though we're right under their noses,” Mei finally said.
Hope laughed, breaking the tension. “Leftovers who are right under their noses,” she repeated. “Left… over. Right… under. Left, right. Over, under. Get it?”
Tricia grinned. “Girls, I think we've discovered our identity.” She slapped her palms against her thighs. “Welcome to the Right-Under Club.”
… … …
Tricia allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief as she settled into bed that night. She'd gotten over a major hurdle: finding friends in her new neighborhood. True, she had just met them, but she could call them friends, right? After all, they'd formed a club. Fellow club members definitely qualified as friends. Leighton was over-the-top snobby, but Hope and Mei seemed cool. Maybe this new neighborhood would turn out okay after all. There were a few things Tricia was starting to like about it. She wrote them down in her journal:
My own room … duh.
A funny friend (Hope).
An exotic friend (Mei). (My bad for asking where she's from.) A friend with a golf cart.
A new club!
Did I mention the friend with the golf cart?
Tricia laid her journal aside, turned off her lamp, pulled her covers up to her chin and drifted off to sleep.
4
Tricia was in the tree house fifteen minutes early for the first meeting of the Right-Under Club. She brought several small spiral-bound notebooks, pencils, a bag of potato chips, a large plastic bowl and a small cooler filled with soft drinks on ice. No club was official, she reasoned, without notebooks and snacks.
An unexpected pang of panic nagged at her as she settled into the tree house with her supplies. What if the girls didn't show? Her friends in the old neighborhood were notorious for coming up with huge plans that never made it past the idea stage. Maybe the Right-Under Club had already fizzled. After all, Leighton, Hope and Mei actually had lives. They weren't desperate for friends like Tricia was. Maybe they were all together now, giggling about what a loser Tricia was for actually thinking they were serious. Maybe…maybe…
“You up there?”
Tricia jumped at the sound of the voice. It was Hope, calling from below. Tricia sighed in relief. “Yeah,” she called down. “Come on up.” She heard the soft padding of tennis shoes on the wooden planks. The door to the tree house creaked open. Hope came in first, then Mei, then…
“Hi,” Tricia said to a girl she didn't recognize.
“This is my cousin, Elizabeth,” Hope said. “Our dads are brothers. I forgot to mention she'd be staying with us for a few weeks. She got here last night.” She paused awkwardly, and Elizabeth stared at her shoes. “Can she be in the club?”
All eyes fell on Tricia. She hadn't planned on being in charge, but, well, it was her tree house, and she was the one who had brought the supplies.
“Are you qualified?” she asked Elizabeth with a sudden air of authority.
Elizabeth, a skinny girl with glasses and dark blond hair that tumbled in loose curls onto her shoulders, looked terrified. “What are the qualifications?” she asked in a small voice.
“Good question,” said Tricia, who was itching to fill up her notebook. “I'll write them down.” She turned to the first page. “QUALIFICATIONS,” she wrote at the top. “Okay, first of all, you definitely have to be a girl,” she said. “But you look a little young. How old are you?”
“Eleven,” Elizabeth said, her eyes widening in suspense as she pondered whether the answer was acceptable.
Tricia furrowed her brow and tapped the pencil eraser against her head. “A sixth grader?” she asked.
Elizabeth nodded anxiously. “I'm starting middle school this fall.”
Tricia scribbled in her notebook.
“Now for the most important question,” she said, holding the eraser to her bottom lip as she stared at Elizabeth. “Are you a Right-Under?”
Elizabeth smiled broadly. Her cousin had prepared her for this one. “My parents are getting a divorce!”
Tricia nodded sharply.
“I think you're in,” she said, then scribbled some more and turned the notebook for the girls' inspection:
QUALIFICATIONS:
Must be a girl.
Must be in middle school.
Must have divorced parents.
“Uh-oh,” Mei said as she read the list. “I don't qualify. My parents didn't get a divorce. My dad died.”
“Hmmmm…,” Tricia said. “How did he die?” She wasn't sure why it mattered, but her role as leader was starting to feel as comfortable as a well-worn bathrobe.
“Cancer,” Mei replied, making it sound more like a question.
Tricia nodded. “How long ago?”
“A long time. I was just a baby.”
Tricia tu
rned back to her notebook, erasing and scribbling.
“How's this: instead of ‘must have divorced parents,’ I wrote, ‘must have stepparents.’”
Elizabeth's face sank. “Neither of my parents is remarried,” she said glumly.
All heads turned to Tricia. “Okay, here are the qualifications,” she said, scribbling some more. “Qualifications: Must be a girl. Must be in middle school. Must have a complicated family.”
The girls contemplated the list for a minute, then nodded.
“That works,” Hope said cheerfully. “But are you sure you can't think of some way to disqualify Leighton?” She glanced at Mei, who giggled.
“Why do you want to disqualify Leighton?” asked Tricia, who suddenly was taking all Right-Under matters very seriously.
“She won't even give us the time of day at school,” Hope said. “She's A list. Mei and I are definitely B.”
“Maybe even C,” Mei said.
Hope nodded. “I can't believe she's even considering being in the same club with us. Trust me, if it wasn't for the math tutoring, she wouldn't consider breathing the same air as me.”
“She probably won't come,” Mei said.
“Anybody up there?”
The girls all jumped at the voice coming from below.
“Up here!” Tricia called, then leaned toward the girls. “She's got a golf cart,” she said in a lowered voice. “I say she's in.”
That logic won them over. The girls nodded as Leighton climbed the steps.
“I brought T-shirts!” she gushed as she lowered her head to walk through the door. “Every club needs T-shirts.”
She started pulling the pink shirts from a bag and tossing them to the girls. Her lip curled when she saw Elizabeth. “Who are you?”
“This is Elizabeth,” Tricia said protectively. “She's Hope's cousin. We just voted her in.”
Leighton looked dubious. “Well…I don't have a T-shirt for her.”
“That's okay,” Elizabeth said quickly. “Maybe I can have one made after the meeting. They're so cute!”
Leighton, who was wearing her T-shirt, pushed out her already-developing chest to display her handiwork. The shirt was decorated with large letters: R.U
The Right-Under Club Page 2
