“That’s not true!” Emma protests. “I do like you.” Her gaze falters, though.
“Like I said,” says Becca bitterly.
“To be honest,” I tell her, “my gifts were weird too, and I figured it must have been you, because you’re mad about Zach.”
Becca’s face flushes. “How’s this for honesty?” she snaps. “Emma doesn’t like me because I’m more popular at school than she is. And maybe because I’m a cheerleader and everybody loves to hate cheerleaders, right?”
“I think maybe you’re forgetting middle school,” Emma says in a tight voice.
“Middle school?” Becca’s voice rises dangerously, and I start to worry that we’re in for another meltdown. “That was ages ago, Emma! Give me a little credit for maybe growing up a little since then.” She glares at her, then turns to Jess. “Jess, you don’t like me because you’re Emma’s friend, and you’re loyal.”
“And loyalty’s a bad thing?” I can’t help pointing out.
Becca whips around to face me. “And you—you don’t like me because I’ve had a crush on your boyfriend since kindergarten, and because you know that I think if you’d just tell him you’re not interested, maybe he’d finally be interested in me.”
I’m speechless. She pretty much nailed it. Well, except for that last bit about Zach. The thing is, I finally figured out that maybe I am interested, and maybe I do like him back. But I’m not about to tell her that. At least not now. She doesn’t give me a chance to anyway, because she’s already moved on.
“And Megan,” she continues. “Well, Megan—”
“I don’t like you because of Philippe,” says Megan coldly.
“I did you a favor,” Becca retorts.
“That wasn’t for you to decide!” Megan leaps to her feet. “He liked me, Becca—me, not you! And you couldn’t stand that, so you went and ruined it.”
“I knew it!” I say triumphantly, turning to Emma and Jess. “Didn’t I tell you guys something was up between these two?”
“Who’s Philippe?” asks Jess.
“That cute guy in the picture on the cruise ship, right?” says Emma, and Megan nods.
“So what happened?” I ask, and our heads all swivel toward Becca, who stares stonily out the window.
“Rebecca is what happened,” says Megan bitterly. “Becca decided she needed an alter ego. Someone with more la de da. Someone who turned out to be a big traitor.”
“It was your idea!” Becca tells her.
“It was not!” Megan retorts.
“Let’s get back to Philippe,” says Emma. “What was the deal?”
“On Christmas Eve,” Megan continues, “I left Miss La de da Rebecca with Philippe for just a few minutes, and when I came back she was draped all over him.”
“It wasn’t a big deal!” Becca protests. “It was an accident. I wasn’t trying to steal him or anything.”
“You mean unlike Bonnie Andrews?” I tell her, and she blinks at me. Score! “Oh yeah, I read the book.”
“You knew how much it meant to me to have someone pay me a little attention, after my breakup with Simon,” Megan tells her. “I told you that very same day, remember? What you did really hurt.”
“Like I said, it was an accident,” Becca repeats. “The boat lurched and I fell and—oh, what’s the point? You’re determined not to believe me anyway. But you were the one who told me to use some la de da, remember? The whole Rebecca thing was a game we made up, that day we were in the spa.”
“You made it up,” says Megan shortly.
“Fine. I made it up. Look, I’m sorry. I never should have used Philippe as my guinea pig. And I certainly never meant for things to end up the way they did.”
Megan regards Becca for a few seconds. “Well,” she says, not sounding completely convinced, “it still hurt my feelings.”
“And that’s exactly the problem,” says Emma, leaning forward. “Sometimes you don’t think about our feelings when you do stuff and say stuff, Becca.”
Becca inspects her fingernails.
“And sometimes you still do mean things,” I add.
She looks up sharply. “Name one.”
“How about trying to sabotage me at the ugly sweater party?” I reply.
Becca shrugs. “That was so not a big deal.”
“It was to me, though, and that’s Emma’s whole point. You deliberately tried to embarrass me on national TV!”
Becca gives me an icy look. “Let’s not even go there,” she retorts. “Or have you forgotten about Carson Dawson?”
Back in seventh grade, the rest of the book club and I tried to play a little prank on Becca during one of my mom’s TV show filmings, to get even for her reading Emma’s diary. Unfortunately, it backfired, and this famous TV show host was the one we ended up accidentally pranking. We were in trouble for weeks.
“Oh, gimme a break! Talk about dredging up middle school! That was years ago! Are you still mad about that, Rebecca?”
We glare at each other. I sit down and put my head in my hands. We’re not getting anywhere. We’ll be up here all night at this rate. Something’s gotta give, and somebody’s got to be willing to give a little. I guess it might as well be me.
“Look, when I mess up out on the ice, my coach doesn’t pull any punches. If she doesn’t tell me where I’ve gone wrong, how will I ever learn to be a better hockey player? I do the same thing with my Chicks with Sticks girls, you know? So here’s the thing. I have a lot of faults. I’ve got a temper, and I’m not always very patient, and sometimes I make jokes at other people’s expense—including yours. I apologize for that. But I have good points too, and so do you. Here’s the stuff I like about you,” I tell Becca, ticking the list off on my fingers. “You’re really creative. You’re fun, and you’re funny, and you’ve got amazing drive. You know how to get things done.” I pause for a moment, hoping some of that sank in. “Now here’s the stuff that I don’t like about you: You’re snarky, you gossip, and you can be manipulative.”
Becca is still quiet. She’s listening, though, I can tell.
“And the whole name-change thing? Dude. Stupid, if you ask me.”
“Which I didn’t,” snaps Becca.
I sigh. “Anyway, like Emma said, I shouldn’t have leaped to the conclusion that I did, either, about the Secret Santa gifts. I should have figured there’d been some sort of mix-up. You all know me too well for any one of you to buy me a sparkly headband and pink underpants.”
Jess starts to giggle. “Those were for Megan,” she says. “I was her Secret Santa. They’re French underpants, by the way. From Josephine’s. I thought she’d like them.”
“I would have!” Megan cries.
I grin at her. “You still can. I was going to give them to Courtney when we were out in California, but I forgot. They’re in my suitcase, down in my room. And by the way,” I tell Jess, poking her in the arm, “I don’t care if they’re French. I still hate them.”
Emma looks around at us all. “So if Megan was my real Secret Santa, then who got the gifts she bought for me?”
Megan ticks them off on her fingers. “Let’s see, for starters there was that word calendar thing, and a cute dish for Pip that I found at the Concord Pet Shoppe, and some of those great hand and foot warmers for you to use when you go skating. I think they’re called Downhill Buddies?”
Emma and Jess exchange a glance. “Duh,” says Emma. “Why didn’t we figure that out? Okay, so Jess got my stuff. Who was supposed to get the ab workout DVD and the sports bottle and little pedometer and stuff that I got?”
“Cassidy,” says Becca. “I was her Secret Santa.”
“Man, what a mess,” I say, shaking my head
“And who got the gifts I meant for you to have, Becca?” says Emma. “Let’s see, there was Motor Mouth lip gloss, some cute earrings, bubble bath—”
“I did,” says Megan, turning to Becca. “I’ve used the lip gloss already, but you can have the bubble bath and the earrings.
Which were nice, by the way, Emma—thanks.”
“I’m confused,” says Becca in a low voice. “Who gave me the goat picture?”
I hold up my hand. “I did—except it was supposed to be for Jess! It’s a picture of Sundance. I took it for my photography class this fall.”
“Aww,” says Jess. “I would have liked to have seen it.”
“I’ll print you another one.” All of a sudden I slap my forehead. “Ladies, we have completely overlooked something here!” My friends look at me expectantly. “We’ve been sabotaged! Blindsided! Checked into the boards!”
Nothing but blank stares.
“Somebody needs time in the penalty box,” I tell them. “We’ve been pranked. This wasn’t random—someone switched our Secret Santa gifts!”
Light dawns as my friends get what I’m saying.
“But who?” says Emma. “I suppose Stewart might have thought it would be funny, but it’s not really his type of thing.”
“And I don’t think Darcy . . . oh.” Jess’s voice trails off. “Those weasels!”
“What weasels?” asks Megan.
“Dylan and Ryan, who else? Remember how they were all wild and giggly that morning at the bon voyage party, and my mother thought they’d been up to something? They switched the tags on our gift bags.”
“Oh, man! Of course!” I shake my head, disgust mixed with admiration. You’ve gotta admire a good prank. “They are so going down! What we need is a plan, girls. But first, I have something for all of you.”
I creep down the stairs, but nobody is standing guard. I hear laughter coming from the living room. My stomach rumbles hungrily. Soup and a few appetizers is not enough fuel for all six feet of me. I dash into my room and grab the pile on my desk, then race back upstairs to the turret.
“Sorry, Jess, yours is in the trash incinerator of the Calypso Star,” I tell her as I hand the packages around the room.
“You mean the environmentally friendly, state-of-the-art green incinerator of the Calypso Star,” says Megan, smiling slyly at Becca.
Becca smiles back. “I told you I did you a favor! You have to admit it too. Philippe was kind of a Phil Brandish, don’t you think?”
For the second time in the same day, I actually get a literary reference. I finally finished Betsy in Spite of Herself while we were on the plane back to Boston, and Phil Brandish is this rich, good-looking, but completely brainless and car-crazy guy Betsy convinces herself that she likes for a while.
Megan nods. “Only instead of a red sports car, he had an entire cruise ship to brag about.”
“Dreaming, dreaming, of your big cruise ship I’m dreaming . . . ,” sings Jess.
“Knock it off,” Megan tells her, but she’s smiling. She opens her package. It’s a fun shot of her with her mother and Gigi at Pies & Prejudice on the day that it opened. The three of them are standing out front, arms linked. Gigi is in the middle, and they’re all wearing white aprons and ruffled hats like the woman in the sign over the shop.
“I love it!” she tells me. “Thank you!”
Emma opens hers next. It’s a black-and-white photo I took of her and Mrs. Bergson last year, when she was home for spring break before Mrs. Bergson died. They’re at the rink, and they’re both laughing at something one of them said.
“Oh, Cassidy,” says Emma, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s beautiful. I know right where I’m going to put it too.”
“In the cabinet with her skates?”
Emma nods. She leans over and gives me a hug. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I turn to Becca and hand her the last package. “I’ve got one for you, too, believe it or not.”
Inside is a picture I took of her at the Thanksgiving Day game. I was using my telephoto lens, and she didn’t see me take it. It’s a great shot. I was kneeling on the ground looking up, and I caught her in midleap with her knees bent back, her pom-poms flying in the air, and her arms flung high. The best part is the look on her face, though—just sheer joy. She’s totally in the moment. I know the feeling; every athlete does. It’s why we love sports.
Becca stares at the picture. Then she looks up at me and smiles, the same joy-filled smile that I captured in the picture. “Thank you, Cassidy.”
“You’re welcome,” I reply.
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small box. “Here,” she says, shoving it into my hands. “I wasn’t going to give it to you, but I just changed my mind.”
I open it and start to laugh. It’s a glass ornament with sparkles on it. A banana split. The tag reads: For Betsy Ray, our best customer. It’s signed Heinz’s Restaurant.
Becca grins. “I picked it because you eat like a horse, just like Betsy and Tacy and Tib and their friends,” she says. “And you never gain weight, either.”
“Speaking of which, let’s go get something to eat,” I reply. “I’m—”
“STARVING!” my friends all shout.
Final score: The Mother-Daughter Book Club—one zillion points.
Jess
“There were presents for everyone, beautiful presents, and joke presents too.”
—Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
“I’m so glad you sorted things out, sweetheart,” says my mother, smiling as she arranges a platter of twice-baked potatoes. “There’s no point carrying old grudges into the new year. Much better to start off with a clean slate, isn’t it?”
I nod.
“Did you check on Mrs. Hawthorne’s, um, ornament?” she asks, lowering her voice and glancing over her shoulder. Not that anyone can hear her. The party’s reached a fever pitch, and everyone is talking and laughing in excited anticipation as they hunt for their name cards at the tables we’ve set up in the dining room.
“Yup,” I reply. “Ready and waiting.” After the disaster at the Chadwicks’, our moms decided to postpone the rest of the ornament exchange to our house.
She gives me a conspiratorial smile. “This is going to be fun.”
I smile back, hardly able to contain my glee. She has no idea.
Cassidy came up with the plan, of course. She always has the best ideas when it comes to pranks. I’m really, really going to miss her if she moves to California. Our book club just won’t be the same.
“You look like the cat who swallowed the canary,” says my father as I follow my mother into the dining room.
“Something like that,” I reply, setting down the dish I’m carrying and pretending to flap my wings. Across the table from me, Emma and Cassidy explode in giggles.
My mother calls for everyone’s attention. “For your dining pleasure tonight, we have grilled salmon—wild-caught and certified sustainably harvested, of course, Lily,” she adds, before Mrs. Wong even has a chance to open her mouth. “And from our own organic garden, maple-roasted carrots with thyme and twice-baked potatoes.”
“I’ve never had supper this late before,” says Ryan, who is bouncing in his chair with excitement. I glance at the clock on the mantel, surprised to see that it’s almost nine. I don’t think I’ve eaten this late before either.
My father asks us all to hold hands as he says grace, giving thanks for a year full of good things. “I’d also like to give thanks for the fact that our daughters managed not to kill one another tonight,” he adds at the end, and everybody laughs.
“Seriously,” he continues, “there’s so much to be grateful for. Rare indeed are friendships that span a number of years, as ours have. We’ve weathered many changes, and we’ll weather many more as our sons and daughters grow up and fly the coop—”
Megan lets out a snort at this, and I have to bite my lip not to laugh.
“—but hopefully they’ll always fly back again too, especially at the holidays.”
“Dig in, everyone!” says my mother.
As Cassidy happily plows into the mound of food on her plate, Emma gives her a mischievous glance. “Why don’t you tell everybody about the ornament you got?”
“What made
you think of that?” Cassidy retorts.
Emma eyes her plate. “Oh, nothing . . .”
“What Emma is trying to say is that I’m a pig,” Cassidy announces cheerfully. “And Becca gave me a banana split ornament to prove it. It was addressed to Betsy from Heinz’s Restaurant.”
“How perfect!” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “I mean, not perfect that you’re a pig—which you’re not, by the way, just an active girl with a healthy appetite—but perfect because it’s so Betsy-Tacy.”
“The Deep Valley girls do love their ice cream, don’t they?” says Mrs. Chadwick. “I’ll have to swing by tomorrow and take a picture of it, Cassidy. I’m making a scrapbook of this evening’s festivities to share with my mother, and she’s very eager to hear how our ornament exchange turned out.”
“Speaking of which,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, “isn’t it time for Jess’s Big Reveal?”
“Um, sure,” I say, with a quick warning glance at my friends. We decided not to tell anybody yet about the Secret Santa mix-up and our suspicions as to the twins’ involvement, because otherwise it would mess up our plan for revenge.
Cassidy stands up. “It was me!” she says, handing me a small box.
“Really? I never would have guessed.” I smile at Megan.
Opening the box, I take out a graceful silver musical note on a silver cord. There’s a note inside to Julia from Betsy. Dear Julia—Please take this with you as a reminder of home as you begin your adventures in the Great World. We know you’re going to become a famous singer!
“Thanks, Cassidy,” I tell her. I’ve been practicing “Dreaming” ever since we got back from the Edelweiss Inn, but I’m still nervous about next week’s solo audition.
She gives me a thumbs-up. “You’re going to nail that audition, I just know it.”
I smile at her. I wish I had Cassidy’s confidence. That’s another thing I’m going to miss if she moves away—her pep talks.
My mother taps her glass. “While everyone’s finishing up—and please help yourself, there’s plenty more—we’ll keep things moving along here.” She picks up a small box from the pile of presents in the center of the table and passes it to Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid. “This one is for you, Clementine.”