“I wish I could,” said Claudia.
“Me too,” said Stacey.
Automatically, I reached for the book where I keep our baby-sitting jobs listed. But Stacey stopped me. “We know, we know, Mary Anne. We’re sitting that night.”
“I’ll take notes,” said Kristy. “Maybe even pictures. Mary Anne, why don’t you come over to my house for dinner tonight and we can think of ways to make Cokie say she’s sorry.”
“I think being Cokie means never having to say you’re sorry,” I said.
I spent the rest of the evening at Kristy’s in a much better mood. We’d already discussed party wear at the BSC meeting (and would again, I knew, at the meeting on Friday), so that left us free to think of outrageous schemes for making Cokie look dumb. Kristy worried that we might be walking into a trap, but I convinced her that Cokie was too focused on trying to win votes with the party.
“I mean, this is a big party,” I said. “Plus, Cokie was shocked when I told her I’d show up.”
“True. And Cokie’s not subtle. If she was going to go after you in a big way, she’d already be dropping hints,” Kristy agreed. “Speaking of going after Cokie, have you talked to Cary again?”
“No. And I haven’t mailed the subscription cards either. Although if Cokie goes too far, she could be reading Popular Mechanics in triplicate very soon.”
We laughed. We also agreed that we needed to do some party planning of the sneaky, Cary Retlin–mischief kind.
And then I realized what time it was.
I gasped. “Oh, no. I’m late. Way past curfew. I can’t believe they haven’t called yet.”
“I’ll get Charlie. He’ll drive you,” said Kristy, efficient as always. (Charlie is Kristy’s oldest brother.) In no time, I’d been whisked into Charlie’s car and ferried to my house.
My father opened the door as Charlie pulled up. I didn’t like the way he stood there, unmoving, unspeaking, as I got out of the car and thanked Charlie and Kristy for the ride.
I didn’t like the way he still didn’t speak as I ran up the walk.
“I’m sorry,” I panted. “Kristy and I totally lost track of time.”
My father stepped to one side to let me in. He closed the door behind me with a little too much emphasis. “I’m aware of that.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” I was trying to edge away. “Uh, so where’s Sharon?”
“Out.”
“Past curfew too, huh?” I tried to make a joke.
Big mistake.
“Sharon’s an adult. She called earlier to tell me she was running late. You are not an adult and apparently not responsible enough to be treated like one, since you didn’t call.”
Uh-oh.
“You knew where I was,” I said feebly. “You could have called me.”
“That’s not the point. How could you worry me like that?” My father had reverted to his protective-father mode. And it was too much.
“If you were so worried,” I said, “why didn’t you just call Kristy’s house? It’s not like I was anywhere dangerous. I was at Kristy’s.”
“I don’t appreciate that tone of voice from you.”
“And I don’t appreciate being set up in some kind of, some kind of, well, curfew trap. It wasn’t like I was out drinking and smoking.”
“That’s it. I’ve had it.”
“You’ve had it? I’ve had it. I said I was sorry. It’s never happened before. It won’t happen again. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to stay right here for the next two weeks. You’re grounded.”
I didn’t answer. I turned and marched to my room. And I didn’t close my door a little bit harder than necessary.
I slammed it.
I had been wrong when I’d told Kristy that Cokie’s party was going to be a big one. It wasn’t. It was extra-giant size. Majorly, extravagantly enormous.
This became apparent by the fact that Cokie spent all day Thursday handing out invitations. She invited the entire eighth grade.
“I’m doomed,” I said at lunch. “Doomed. If I don’t go to the party, it will look like I’m afraid of Cokie. And if I do, I’ll have to sneak out of the house and lie to my father and Sharon.”
“A curfew. Wow. Bummer,” said Abby. Abby and her twin sister, Anna, don’t really have a curfew or a lot of rules. Her father died a few years ago and she and her sister had to grow up fast. Now her mother works long hours so Abby and Anna have learned to be independent. I considered pointing out to my father that Abby didn’t have a curfew and that she was the least likely person in the world to stay out late and do dumb things. But I knew what my father would say: “You’re not Abby Stevenson.”
And he was right. I wasn’t. I was Mary Anne Spier. The overprotected.
I envied Abby’s easygoing, make-the-rules-as-we-go family for a moment. I sighed.
“Can’t you try talking to your father?” asked Claudia. “Explain the situation.”
“He’s still pretty angry at me,” I answered. “I talked to Sharon and she said I should give him some time. Time! I don’t have any time. The party is this Saturday. I have to be there. But I can’t…. At least, I don’t think I can.”
“Sneaking out isn’t hard,” said Kristy. “I don’t recommend it as the usual way to leave the house, but in an emergency, it might be unavoidable.”
“You sneak out of your house at night?” Claudia asked Kristy.
“Not all the time,” said Kristy, looking pained. “But I did once for that stupid initiation thing for the softball team. I was dumb to do it and I almost got into big trouble, but my point is, sneaking out isn’t hard. Especially when your parents don’t expect you to sneak out.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t imagine myself creeping out of the house.
Stacey said, “Well, even if you don’t go, Kristy and Abby will be there to represent us. And to do a few party activities of their own.”
“Of the Cary Retlin kind.” Kristy caught on immediately.
“Right,” said Stacey.
“Where is Cary?” Claudia asked. “Have you talked to him about any of this?”
“No,” I said. “Every time I see him, he seems to be going around a corner. I haven’t been able to catch up with him.”
“Typical Cary,” remarked Kristy. “Well, we don’t need him. We can make some party problems on our own, if we want to.”
“Even if we don’t want to, and I’m not sure I do,” I said, “I don’t mind thinking about it.”
“Good.” Kristy pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. “Let’s get to work.”
“We could have thirty-seven pizzas delivered to her house during the party,” Claudia suggested.
Kristy wrote it down.
“Locking the bathroom doors from the inside is a good way to jam up a crowd,” observed Stacey.
“Excellent,” Kristy said, her pen flying.
“Lights out. Temporary but effective,” said Abby.
“We’d have to find the fuse box,” Kristy pointed out.
“It’s probably in the basement,” Abby said. “I’ll bring a flashlight, just in case.”
“Salt,” said Claudia.
We looked at her. “In the food,” she explained. “In the punch. Whatever.”
“Possible,” Kristy said.
I said, “There’s always that lame one, you know, shaking up the soda cans.”
“If Cokie’s smart, she won’t have cans of soda, just those big bottles,” said Kristy.
“Who said Cokie was smart?” I muttered. I was on my way to deciding that it was all Cokie’s fault I’d been grounded. After all, I wouldn’t have been late if I hadn’t had to spend so much time talking about her and her stupid party.
And I wouldn’t even have had to consider going to her stupid party if she hadn’t fixed the election and started all those rumors about me.
But if Cokie were so dumb, how come
I was the one who was grounded?
I said more loudly, “In that movie The Parent Trap they have all kinds of great sabotage stuff.”
Stacey said, “You’re right. And in the old version, there’s a scene where one of the girls cuts the back out of another girl’s skirt, remember?”
“I don’t think that’s going to work on Cokie,” Claudia said. “Even if you could manage it, her skirts are already pretty small.”
“Fake vomit?” said Abby.
“That’s something Alan Gray would do,” Kristy answered.
“Hey!” Claudia exclaimed, wounded. She and Alan recently went to a dance together, much to Kristy’s surprise. None of us is sure what will happen next with them.
“Well, still,” said Abby. “A few of those little fake ants in the food, a spare rubber cockroach or two — I don’t care how childish it is, it’s still effective.”
“This is true,” I said. “Write it down, Kristy.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Cary was right about one thing, I thought. Planning ahead, even if you weren’t going to follow through with something, gives you a real boost.
Anything could happen at the party. The worst could happen. It could be a disaster.
I smiled, visualizing it. Then I sighed, thinking that I would miss it.
I spent the rest of the day considering this. But it wasn’t until I ran into Cary before last period that I realized just how hard and how seriously I had been entertaining the idea of sneaking out of the house.
“Still on for the party?” he asked.
“We have big plans for it,” I said.
“So do I.” He smiled. “I like the way Cokie is being lulled into thinking that everything is okay, don’t you?”
I looked at Cary. Hard. But his face gave nothing away.
“Yes,” I said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be some party. I can hardly wait.”
And that’s when I knew that I, Mary Anne Spier, formerly the incredible shrinking girl, was going to sneak out of the house on Saturday night.
At 8:00 on Saturday night I yawned. “I’m tired,” I said.
“So early?” Sharon asked.
I shrugged. I felt guilty about what I was planning to do. But I was also angry because I felt as if, somehow, it wasn’t entirely my fault. Not logical, but there you have it.
My father said, “Stay up. There’s a great old movie coming on at nine.” He and Sharon had been engaged in an endless game of Scrabble in the den. Sharon kept beating my dad. I’d been pretending to read.
“No,” I said. “Thanks anyway. I’ve had about all the Saturday night excitement I can stand.”
My father frowned. Before the fire, I’d been sarcastic about once in my life. Now guilt was making me sarcastic. Cokie was making me sarcastic. My father was making me sarcastic.
The new Mary Anne was making me sarcastic. The old Mary Anne wanted to apologize. The new Mary Anne said, “Good night. See you tomorrow.”
I gave my father a good-night peck on the cheek, gave the same to Sharon, and headed for my room.
I waited a few minutes. Then I got dressed. I opened the door to go to the bathroom to brush my teeth — and heard Sharon’s footsteps in the hall.
Quickly I closed the door. If Sharon had seen me, she would have known something was up. I had no good explanation for changing out of sweatpants and one of her ratty old work shirts into my best new jeans and new favorite striped shirt.
I took off my jeans, grabbed my bathrobe, and wrapped it around me.
Sharon passed me on my way into the bathroom.
“Sleep well,” she said.
“You too.”
I brushed my teeth and put on my makeup. I opened the bathroom door — to find my father standing there.
“Dad!” I squeaked.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I was about to knock. Just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”
Could he see the makeup? Smell the perfume? “I’m fine. Really,” I said stiffly. “ ’Night.”
“ ’Night, Mary Anne.”
I practically dove back into my room. Then I collapsed onto my bed and thought.
I had two choices: I could go out the window — and climb down the maple tree outside it. Or I could sneak down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, then into the kitchen and out the kitchen door without being heard or seen.
Be sneaky, I told myself. Think like a spy.
After several minutes of deliberation, I slid my window open and dropped my shoes and socks out of it, trying to make sure they landed away from the rosebushes directly below.
Then I rolled up the legs of my jeans, tightened the sash of my bathrobe, and picked up the water glass by my bed. If Sharon or my father caught me, I’d say I was going to the kitchen for some water.
I walked boldly downstairs and through the living room. I hovered outside the den door. I heard the murmur of voices and then I heard Sharon say, “Oops. I dropped one.”
“I’ll get it for you,” my father said.
Sharon snorted. “And see what letter it is? I’ll get it.”
I heard the laughter in my father’s voice as he said, “No. I insist.”
Deciding that both Sharon and my father were looking down at the floor for a Scrabble piece instead of toward the door, I took a giant step across the den entrance.
I stopped and held my breath.
“Got it!” Sharon was triumphant.
“Yes, but it’s my turn,” my father answered.
I tiptoed into the kitchen, clutching the glass so tightly it’s a wonder it didn’t break.
I slipped the extra set of house keys off the key rack and cautiously unlocked the door.
Footsteps sounded in the hall.
Without thinking, I threw myself into the tiny space between the refrigerator and the wall, wedging myself in with the mop and broom. The broom slid forward. I grabbed it and yanked it back just as the kitchen light went on.
“Diet Coke or regular Coke?” my father’s voice said.
“Regular,” I heard Sharon call back.
I sucked in my breath and stood, panicked, holding the broom in one hand and the glass in the other. How would I ever explain what I was doing folded between the fridge and the wall?
Cabinet doors opened. Kitchen glasses clunked against the countertop. The refrigerator door swung back and I saw my father’s foot beneath the bottom edge of it.
He took out ice trays and bottles and closed the door. I listened to the clink of ice against glass and the fizz of soda being poured over it. I heard him run water into the ice tray. Then he opened the door again, reloaded the ice tray, and put the bottles back inside.
It took forever and a day.
At last he walked out of the kitchen. I was about to leap out to safety when he muttered, “Uh-oh.” Footsteps came back and then the light flicked off.
Then my father left the kitchen.
I waited a long, long time to make sure he wasn’t coming back.
Finally, cautiously, I peered out. When I didn’t see anybody, I bolted out (making sure the broom and mop didn’t bolt with me), put my glass on the counter, opened the back door, and made my escape.
My heart was still pounding like the heart of a prisoner escaping from jail when I met Kristy and Abby a few minutes later on the corner of Cokie’s block.
“You made it,” Kristy said.
“Of course,” I replied with a calm I didn’t feel. I’d had trouble finding one of my socks and finally had to go sockless. My bathrobe was hidden in the rosebushes. I hoped I could disentangle it when I got home.
Maybe I could wait until daylight….
“Flashlight, salt, and plastic ants,” said Abby, holding up her pack. “I do not come unprepared.”
“Plastic vomit,” Kristy said, looking sheepish. “Also, Vaseline. I have plans for the toilet seats, if we decide action is necessary.”
“Great.” I was forgetting about my Gr
eat Escape. “But not unless I say so.”
“It’s your party,” said Kristy.
“Yeah. Only Cokie doesn’t know it yet,” Abby added.
“Then, let’s go.” I boldly led the way into the house of the enemy.
Cokie opened the door. “Mary Anne! How nice that you could get out.”
I froze. Had Cokie found out I was grounded?
But I realized she was just being generally nasty as she smiled the same phony smile at Kristy and Abby. “And your faithful friends too!”
The way she said it, Abby and Kristy might have been dogs.
“We thought your little party would need all the help it could get,” Abby said. She walked past Cokie into the house. “How do you do?”
I became aware of Cokie’s parents hovering nearby. Somehow that reassured me. There were limits to what Cokie could do with her parents somewhere in the house. Weren’t there?
Following Abby’s lead, Kristy and I nodded and smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Mason. They seemed perfectly nice. I wondered if they had considered the possibility that Cokie and their real baby had been switched in the hospital. Those things did happen, after all.
We walked for several miles down carpeted halls, past mirrors and vases of fresh flowers.
“Wow,” I said. “This house is almost as big as yours, Kristy.”
I said it loudly. I knew Cokie heard me and I knew it bothered her. But what could she say? It was her problem for thinking that the size of someone’s house mattered.
By the time we entered the living room I realized that most of the rest of the SMS eighth grade was, in fact, at Cokie’s house. It took me about two and a half seconds to spot Logan and Dorianne together by the CD player, sorting through the tunes.
My heart skipped and lurched. Seeing them together wasn’t going to be as easy as I had hoped.
Kristy saw them too. She moved between them and me and said, “Let’s go get something to drink.”
“Yeah,” Abby said. “I could do a Dew.”
We passed Emily, Woody, and Woody’s friend Trevor Sandbourne deep in conversation near one end of the refreshment table. Emily turned to us to grin and gesture. “Check it out,” she said. “Martha Stewart meets wicked excess.”