Great. Just what I’ve always wanted, to be stuffed back into a dress and stuck in front of a camera with Becca Chadwick. My teammates will never let me live this down.
“Becca and I should be going,” says Mrs. Chadwick, glancing at her watch. “It is a school night, after all.”
“But you haven’t finished your cheesecake,” Mrs. Wong replies, disappointed.
“I need to go soon too,” says my mother. “Phoebe, can you drive Cassidy home?”
I look over at her in surprise.
“Let me guess—prep work for tomorrow’s show?” asks Mrs. Hawthorne.
My mother blushes slightly. “Um, no. Actually I, uh, have a date.”
Becca’s mother frowns. She opens her mouth to say something disapproving, but before she can, Mrs. Delaney leans over and pops a brownie into it.
“You really must try one of Clementine’s brownies,” she says sweetly. “They’ll be featured on the show next week.”
“Mmmph mmph,” says Mrs. Chadwick.
I put my plate down. First Becca, and now this. What a way to spoil a perfectly good evening! I wish my mother could see that our family is just fine the way it is. We don’t need anybody—especially not Stanley Kinkaid—butting in where they don’t belong.
She just doesn’t get it.
Final score: Clementine—1. Cassidy—0.
Emma
“ ‘Josie is a Pye,’ said Marilla sharply, ‘so she can’t help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles.’ ”
—Anne of Green Gables
“Mom, do you think I’m fat?”
My mother sets her hairbrush down on the sink. “Emma Jane Hawthorne! Where on earth did you get that idea?”
The two of us are upstairs in her bathroom, getting ready to go over to Cassidy’s. We’re filming the Mother-Daughter Book Club tea party this afternoon, and my mother insisted on fussing with my hair. Not that there’s much a person can do with hair as curly as mine.
She pulls me close to her for a hug, leaning her chin on top of my head and smiling at me in the mirror. “Don’t you know I think you’re perfect just the way you are?”
I give her a rueful smile. We’re dressed in matching skirts and holiday sweaters—the producers decided to put a festive spin on the tea party—and I can already imagine what Becca Chadwick will have to say about this. I don’t bring it up, though. Becca Chadwick is still a sore spot for my mother and me. I know she meant well and everything, inviting the Chadwicks to join our book club, but it still hurts that she didn’t discuss it with me first. Especially since she knows how mean Becca has been to me. How mean Becca still is to me.
My mother hasn’t answered my question. “I know you think I’m perfect, but you’re my mother,” I tell her. “It’s your job to think I’m perfect.”
She laughs. “Oh, it is, is it? Well, please be informed that I am highly aware of the areas where you need improvement.” Kissing the top of my head she adds in a more serious tone, “Come on now, honey, where did you get that ridiculous notion?”
I pull away. “I don’t know.”
She waits, watching me in the mirror.
I sigh. “Well, for one thing, I was over at Jess’s last month, right after school started, and I couldn’t fit into any of her T-shirts. It was really embarrassing.”
“For Pete’s sake, Emma, Jess is just a wisp of a thing! You have a completely different body type, honey.”
I know she’s trying to be encouraging, but somehow this doesn’t make me feel any better. “I wish I was a wisp of a thing,” I mutter.
My mother picks up the hairbrush and pulls it through my curls again. “Emma, this world is a bit like a garden,” she says. “Each flower is unique, just like each person is unique. There are daisies, and lilacs, and roses, and peonies—all sorts of lovely flowers. Now, wouldn’t it be silly for a tulip to mope around wishing it were an iris?”
“I guess it would depend on how fat the tulip was.”
She pokes me with the hairbrush. “Be serious. You get my point, right?”
I lift a shoulder.
“You’re beautiful, Emma, and so are Jess, and Megan, and Cassidy! You need to try and appreciate your own uniqueness, instead of worrying so much about comparing yourself to others.”
That would be a lot easier if my own uniqueness wasn’t quite so round, I think, eyeing myself in the mirror. But I keep this thought to myself.
My mother is quiet for a moment, then asks, “So, is there any other reason you’re bringing this up now?”
“Oh, you know,” I tell her. “People say stuff.”
“What people?”
“Kids at school.”
“What kids?”
I fidget with the cuff of my sweater. “Becca Chadwick,” I admit reluctantly.
My mother sets the hairbrush down again and sighs. “I might have known.”
“I still can’t believe that you guys invited Becca and Mrs. Chadwick to join our book club!”
“Sweetheart, we’ve been over this before,” my mother replies. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And besides, being around the four of you girls can only be good for Becca. You’ll help set an example for her.”
“But I don’t want to set an example!” I protest. “Especially not at book club!”
Our mother-daughter book club is special. It’s one of the few places where I can completely be myself, and not worry that anybody’s going to tease me about writing poetry or about the way I look or make fun of my clothes, which sometimes are hand-me-downs. Now that Becca’s there, everything’s changed. “It’s like I can’t get away from her,” I moan. “She’s in half of my classes, plus now we’re working on the school newspaper together. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without having stupid Becca Chadwick in my face.”
And on my case as well. Like on Thursday, after school, when we had our first meeting for the newspaper. Becca’s older brother Stewart is a volunteer editor. He’s a freshman in high school, like my brother Darcy, but he gets some sort of community service credit for helping us out. The regular editor is an eighth grader named Katie Malone, and there are two other reporters besides me, plus Zach, who is covering sports, and Becca. Becca’s been going around telling everyone she’s a “columnist,” but really she’ll just be writing up the social calendar. She’s supposed to report on what’s happening around school, what the team schedules are and when the clubs meet and when the band concerts and dances and plays will be and stuff like that.
Becca spent most of the meeting sucking up to Katie. Her voice got all high and chirpy, and she kept saying things like, “Oh, your haircut is soooo cute, Katie!” and “That nail polish is soooo pretty, Katie!” and “Where did you get those adorable shoes, Katie?” I was about ready to throw up, listening to her. I could tell that her brother was annoyed too, and even Ms. Nielson looked like she wanted to tell her to be quiet. Finally, Zach and the other reporters left to go home. Ms. Nielson went to the office for a minute to check with the principal about something, and the minute she left the classroom Becca turned to me and said, right in front of Katie and Stewart, who I hardly know at all, “Emma, I just thought of the perfect byline for you: Porky the Poet!”
I could feel my face flame. Katie looked shocked for about half a second, but when Becca started to laugh, she joined in.
“Sheesh, Becca!” Stewart looked embarrassed and disgusted and kind of angry. He’s a dork and a Chadwick to boot, but still, it made me feel a teeny bit better that somebody stuck up for me, even if it was only Stewart.
Cassidy would have laughed it off and dished it right back, calling Becca “Metalmouth” or something, but I’m not Cassidy, plus Becca caught me off guard so I just sat there like a lump not knowing what to say. Becca likes to needle me about my weight and my poetry. Last year, she stole my journal and read this poem I wrote about Zac
h out loud right in front of him and his friends. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. What’s worse is that now she knows I want to be a writer. I don’t like her knowing that about me. It makes me feel like I’m standing in the middle of Monument Square in my underpants.
Ms. Nielson came back before Becca could say anything else, thank goodness. When she caught sight of Becca and Katie snickering, Stewart glowering, and me with my face the color of a stop sign, she must have known instantly that something was going on because she asked, “Is everything okay?”
Katie wiped the smile off her face and started shuffling papers. “Yes, Ms. Nielson.”
“Absolutely, Ms. Nielson,” Becca chimed in, the picture of innocence.
Ms. Nielson looked over at me but I didn’t say a word. I just sat there feeling foolish. And porky.
“Emma,” my mother says, interrupting my remorseful daydream, “unfortunately you’re going to find as you go through life that you will occasionally run into people like Becca. There have always been the Becca Chadwicks of the world, and I suppose there always will be. Last year when we read Little Women it was Jenny Snow, remember her? And now in Anne of Green Gables it’s Gertie and Josie Pye.”
She’s right, of course. My mother usually is. She’s a librarian.
“You can’t listen to the Pyes of the world,” she tells me.
We’re both quiet for a moment, contemplating the Pyes of the world.
“Maybe I should talk to Becca’s mother at the tea party this afternoon,” my mother says finally.
I spin around. “No!” I beg her, horrified. “Please don’t! Promise me you won’t!”
She holds up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I promise! But only if you promise you’ll try not to let her bug you.”
Anything is better than my mother making a scene with Mrs. Chadwick. Becca would never let me hear the end of that. “I’ll try,” I mutter.
“Good,” says my mother. “Now let’s get a move on here and finish up.” She leans closer to the mirror and starts putting on her mascara. My mother doesn’t wear much makeup. Just lipstick, usually, and maybe a little blush. Eye makeup is too big a deal and takes too much time, she always says. But she’s making an exception for the TV taping today. She says she wants to do Mrs. Sloane proud. She fixed her hair different too. It’s loose, instead of in its usual ponytail, and she fluffed up her bangs a bit. I like it.
“Cassidy says I just need to get more exercise,” I tell her.
My mother’s mascara wand halts in midair. “Excuse me?”
“What we were talking about earlier. You know, the weight thing. Cassidy says more exercise would help.”
My mother frowns. “Oh she does, does she?”
“She says I spend too much time sitting around reading.”
“Well, from what Clementine tells me about Cassidy’s grades, it sounds as if she could do with a little more sitting around reading.” My mother slants me a glance. “So what do you think about her advice?”
I shrug.
“Do you want to take up a sport? You love to swim—you could join the swim team, maybe, or play water polo.”
I make a face. I’ve never liked team sports.
“Well, maybe you could ride your bike a little more often. Heaven knows we could all do with a little more exercise, myself included.” She pats her tummy. My mom’s not as slender as Mrs. Delaney and Mrs. Sloane, and definitely not as thin as Mrs. Wong, who my dad says practically disappears when she turns sideways, but she’s still in pretty good shape. My mom and my dad like to go for long walks. They call it “clearing the cobwebs.” Sometimes they loop over the Old North Bridge and around back through town, and other times they go farther away, like to the trails around Walden Pond and through Estabrook Woods.
“Could we get a dog?” I ask. Instantly feeling disloyal, I reach down and pat Melville, our cat, who’s wandered in to join us and is twining himself around my ankles.
“I doubt I could sell your father on that idea,” my mother replies, dabbing on her lipstick. “He says two children and one cat are plenty.”
“Cassidy says I should try skating.”
“Hockey? Really?” My mother’s brow furrows.
“Not hockey—figure skating. Cassidy thinks I’d really like it. She says it’s kind of like swimming.”
“Hmmm,” says my mother.
“Well, not exactly like swimming,” I reply, trying to explain. “Just the same feeling. She says it’s sort of like flying, too.”
My mother laughs. “Swimming and flying. I see. Sounds pretty good.” She puts her makeup away and turns around. “I can certainly give Eva Bergson a call and check into figure-skating lessons if you want me to, Emma.”
Eva Bergson is about eighty. She was an Olympic skater ages ago, and now she runs a skating school in Concord. “But I thought skating lessons were really expensive,” I say. My family is on kind of a tight budget. My dad works at home. He’s a freelance writer and what my mother calls “an aspiring novelist,” and he doesn’t make a whole lot of money.
“Well, I get a small consulting fee from Clementine’s show”—Mrs. Sloane hired my mom as a research assistant—“and it’s looking like the tax levy will pass too. If it does, there’s a raise budgeted for yours truly at the library, and I can think of nothing I’d rather spend it on than my darling daughter.” My mother plants another kiss on top of my head, and I smile up at her.
The doorbell rings.
“That’s probably Shannon and Jess,” says my mother. The four of us are going to drive over to the Sloanes’ together.
“Look what Shannon brought us!” crows my dad as my mother and I come downstairs to the front hall. He waves an apple pie under our noses. “She says the Macouns are finally ripe.”
Jess’s mother thinks Macouns are the perfect kind of apple for making pies. She should know—she makes a ton of them for their farm stand. Jess and I help her bake sometimes. We gather eggs and pick fruit for her too—whatever’s in season—and vegetables from the garden, and herbs from the greenhouse. Plus, I learned how to milk a goat last year when Jess got Sundance, and Mr. Delaney says we’re such a help to him that he’s going to make us official apprentice cheesemakers next summer.
“Wow, Shannon, thank you!” says my mother. “What a treat! Heaven knows baking is not my strong suit.”
Jess looks at me and smiles. She’s sampled plenty of my mom’s fiascos. In our house, my dad does all the cooking.
The front door swings open and Darcy bursts in, all sweaty from football practice. Like Cassidy, my older brother is a jock. “Hi, guys!”
Jess smiles shyly at him. She kind of has a crush on my brother. Not that I’ve told Darcy about it. I would never betray my best friend’s secret.
“Phew, Darcy, go get in the shower!” says my mother, waving her hand in front of her nose. “And leave those grubby cleats outside, would you?”
Darcy dutifully unties his shoes and tosses them out back onto the front steps. “Yum,” he says, spotting the pie. “Can I have a piece?”
“After you’re odor-free,” my dad tells him, and Darcy peels off his dirty socks and waves them around his head.
Jess and I shriek, and my dad grabs an umbrella from the coat stand and raises it in front of him like a fencing sword.
“Be off, you scurvy dog!” he cries, advancing across the front hall. Darcy grins and thunders upstairs, whistling.
“Boys are so gross!” I say in disgust.
“You won’t think that way forever,” says my mother lightly. She whisks the pie away from my father and heads for the kitchen. We follow her. “I’ll leave this here for Darcy,” she tells my dad, cutting a piece of pie and putting it on a plate. “But I think you’d better hide the rest of it in your office, where it’ll be safe from marauding football players. Otherwise none of the rest of us will ever get a bite.”
Mrs. Delaney smiles ruefully. “I can only imagine what our food bill will be like whe
n the twins get to be teenagers.”
“No kidding!” says my father. “I keep telling Phoebe we’re going to have to take out a second mortgage just to feed Darcy.”
Jess’s mother grows quiet. My father gets a funny look on his face, and he and my mother exchange a worried glance.
“Well, I, uh, guess I’ll head back to work here,” my dad says. “I, uh, have a review to finish up before quitting time. Thanks again for the pie, Shannon.”
He disappears down the hall with it, and my mother turns to Mrs. Delaney.
“So any more word on, um, things?” she asks.
Mrs. Delaney shakes her head. My mother takes the kettle from the stove and starts to fill it with water. “We don’t have to be over to Clementine’s for half an hour,” she says. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.” She turns to Jess and me. “You girls go on up to Emma’s room now and play until I call you.”
“Mom!” I protest, exasperated. “We’re in seventh grade! We don’t ‘play’ anymore!”
“Then go hang out, or whatever it is you call it.”
I can tell she’s trying to get rid of us. I can also tell something’s up with the Delaneys. I want to stay and listen and find out what it is, but my mother makes shooing motions at us. Reluctantly, Jess and I trudge out of the kitchen. Melville is right behind us.
“What’s going on?” I ask Jess a minute later, closing my bedroom door.
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. My parents have been whispering a lot lately.”
“Your mother’s not going to leave again, is she?”
A panicked look appears on Jess’s face and I instantly regret my words.
“I don’t know,” she says unhappily. “I hope not.”
“I’m sure that’s not it,” I tell her, wishing I felt more certain. It wouldn’t make sense, though—her mom’s been really happy since she came home from New York. At least up until recently.
About twenty minutes later my mom calls us back downstairs again and the four of us pile into our car for the short drive to Cassidy’s. The Sloanes’ house is bustling with activity. Mr. Goldberg, the producer, is there, along with a couple of cameramen and crew. Everybody’s shouting directions and rushing back and forth, trying not to trip over the cables that snake through the hallway and the downstairs rooms. Mrs. Sloane appears, looking frazzled but gorgeous.