My Forever Friends (9 page)

Stacey snorts.

“Besides, Jenna,” Tom adds, twisting all the way around. “Ten-second rule.”

“Yep,” Randi chimes in. “Quinn got to the puff in three. So no germs.”

Meeka and Jolene nod.

Jenna sits back hard and tosses her floss onto the floor. “Idiots,” she grumbles.

I sit back too and wish I had thought to bring along my own bag of cheese puffs. They would fill up the empty spot in my stomach that got left behind when Stacey took her bag away.

Jenna pulls out a pencil and a puzzle book and starts rearranging jumbled letters to make words.

Randi and Rusty huddle over a handheld.

Meeka and Jolene sing pioneer songs.

Brooke and Stacey stick yellow Starbursts between their teeth and talk like pirates to Tom and Quinn.

I watch Stacey's tiara bounce as she laughs and butt hops with Brooke.

I look out my window and watch cars and cows and trees zip by. “At least I used to be,” I say.

 

 

“Let's go over a few rules,” Mr. Crow says when we arrive at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.

Jenna sits up. She's a big fan of rules.

“No pushing, no shoving, no shouting.” Mr. Crow counts off on his fingers.

“Same old, same old,” Brooke mumbles.

“Buddies stick together,” he continues, “in the museum and on our walk to Lake Pepin afterward.”

Jenna grabs my hand.

“I don't think he means
glued
together,” I whisper, squirming my hand like a little fish caught in a net.

Jenna squeezes tighter. “Better safe than sorry.”

The museum is small, so it doesn't take us very long to look at everything: old farm tools. Furniture. Pioneer clothes. Real sun bonnets made out of cloth, not tagboard. We gather around a glass display case. The museum lady shows us old photographs of Laura and her family. Then she takes out a copy of a letter that Laura wrote to some schoolchildren after she grew up and became a famous author.

“Major antique,” Tom whispers. “Totally unique.”

“You said it,” Jenna whispers back.

I see a smile pass between them.

“Dear Children,”
the museum lady reads from the letter,
“I was born in the ‘Little House in the Big Woods' of Wisconsin on February 7 in the year 1867. I lived everything that happened in my books. It was a long story, filled with sunshine and shadows . . .”

Brooke flips open the top on a ring she's wearing and dabs at the lip gloss inside. She runs her finger over her lips. Then she nudges Stacey and glances at the museum lady.
“Borrring,”
she whispers, and holds the ring out to Stacey.

Stacey dabs the gloss.

I can smell the strawberries from over here.

The museum lady pauses and looks at us over the top of her glasses like Mr. Crow does when he wants to make sure we're all paying attention. Her eyes land on Brooke and stay there until everyone else is looking at Brooke too.

Stacey gives Brooke a nudge.

Brooke glances up from whispering to Meeka.

“Oops,” Brooke says, snapping her ring shut and giving the museum lady a sweet strawberry smile.

The museum lady clears her throat and starts reading again.
“But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.”

She looks right at me when she reads that last part.
Have courage when things go wrong.
I glance around at the other girls and think about how wrong things have been between us lately. All because Brooke and Jenna are too stubborn to apologize and be friends again.

Then I look at Stacey. I know I should talk to her. But sometimes it's hard to do the things you know you should do.

“That's all she wrote,” the museum lady says, placing the letter back in the display case.

“Hurray,” Brooke says, straightening her tiara. She grabs Stacey's arm and pulls her away.

 

 

“That was hardly boring at all!” Stacey says as we leave the museum and get ready to cross a busy road on our way to Lake Pepin. Mr. Crow put my mom and Jolene's mom in charge of us girls, which means we have to stay in a group so no one gets run over.

At first, we try to keep an invisible dividing line between us—me, Jenna, and Randi on one side; Stacey, Brooke, Meeka, and Jolene on the other—but the line gets tangled up in our sandals and sneakers as we tear across the road. Then it seems to disappear completely as we trip and scream-laugh down a steep hill that leads to the lake. By the time we reach the bottom, we're so jumbled together you can hardly tell we're fighting at all.

“Did you see that quilt at the museum?” Jolene asks, breathless from running. “The one with all the names sewn on it?”

Meeka nods, untangling her hair from her tiara. “An old-fashioned friendship quilt, just like Mrs. Eddy told us about.”

“I'm just glad to finally be out of there,” Brooke says, throwing back her arms and knocking my tagboard bonnet off my head. It dangles down my back. Brooke's crown glitters in the sun. “I need my space.”

“Looks like you need mine too,” I mumble, putting my bonnet back on my head.

“Whoa, big lake,” Randi says as we step onto the rocky beach of Lake Pepin. A truck with a boat trailer rumbles past us. People laugh and shout from the docks that stretch like giant fingers into the choppy water.

Jenna huffs. “Lake Superior is way bigger. My family goes there every summer.”

“Lake Superior is a
bathtub
compared to the ocean,” Brooke sasses back. “Has your
family
been to the ocean, Jenna?” She does quote marks with her fingers when she says the word
family
. Then she smiles sweetly. “
My
family has. Tons of times.”

Jenna gives Brooke a scowl and turns away.

We scramble around on the beach for a while. Rock skipping. Stick throwing. Bug poking. I think about Laura and Mary coming here when they were little. And how they threw rocks into Lake Pepin just like we are. I bet they thought it looked big too.

“How about a picture, girls?” Mom asks, walking up to us with her camera.

“I thought you'd never ask,” Brooke says, draping her arms around Stacey's neck like they're posing for the cover of a magazine.

Mom clicks a few shots. Stacey and Brooke. Meeka and Jolene. Me and Jenna. Randi and Rusty. Then she gets us all huddled together.

“Girls
only,
” Brooke says, shoving Rusty away.

Rusty stumbles back. “But Brookey,” he says, all pouty. “You're breaking my heart!”

“I'll break your
nose
if you don't go away,” Brooke says, giving Rusty another shove.

“Surprise, surprise,” I hear Jenna mumble.

We smile at the camera.

The boys make faces behind us.

“Good one,” Mom says, looking up. “You girls make such a cute group of friends.”

We fidget and glance at each other, remembering that we're not supposed to be friends. Cute or otherwise. We're supposed to be fighting.

Stacey, Brooke, Meeka, and Jolene wander off in one direction.

Me, Jenna, and Randi wander off in the other.

“Don't go too far!” Mom calls to us. “The bus will be here any minute. Then we'll go see the Little House.”

I look across the lake again. Motor boats purr by. Buildings poke up through the trees along the opposite shore. It must look a lot different now than it did when Laura and Mary were here more than a hundred years ago.

I pick up a rock and think about what Laura wrote in that letter the museum lady read. How so many things change over the years, but the real things stay the same.

“Rocks don't change much,” I say to myself. “Even after a hundred years. Even after a hundred
more
years.”

I look around at the other girls.

“And I bet running down a hill with your friends felt just as good back then as it does today. And fighting with them felt just as bad.”

“C'mon, Ida!” Jenna calls to me. “The bus is here.”

“I'll be right there,” I call back.

I hunt along the shore, looking for the oldest rock I can find. One that will stay the same forever.

The school bus rumbles into the parking lot, but I keep hunting.

“Hurry, Ida, or we'll lose our seat!” Jenna shouts.

“Coming!”

I snatch up a rock that looks older than all the rest.

Then I grab a few more and stuff them into my pockets as I run to the bus.

Seven rocks altogether.

“Hysterical marker?” Brooke reads as we drive past a sign along the road that leads to the Little House in the Big Woods. “I don't see anything funny about trees and fields and tractors.”

“
Historical
marker,” Jenna corrects her, leaning over the back of Brooke and Stacey's seat. “As in history? Ever heard of it?”

“Oh,” Brooke says, slouching. “Historical. As in boring.”

“Boredom must be popular,” Tom replies, looking up from a pamphlet he got at the museum. “It says here hundreds of people visit the Little House in the Big Woods every year.”

“Hundreds of
bored
people,” Brooke mumbles.

“Look!” Stacey says, pointing out her window. “There it is! Laura's cabin!”

“Where?” Brooke says, gawking. “Ohmygosh! Look, Jenna. It's almost as tiny as your tree—”

“House,” Jenna cuts in. She glares at Brooke, then turns to Stacey. “It's a little
house,
Stacey. Not a
cabin
.”

“Same difference,” Tom says, tucking the pamphlet into his pocket.

“Oops,” Brooke says, glancing away from Jenna. “That's what I meant. It's as dinky as Jenna's . . .
house
. Don't ask me how they're going to fit another kid in there.”

Jenna's jaw goes tight. She looks past Brooke at Tom. “Tom,” she says loudly, “do me a favor and tell Brooke that we'll have plenty of room for the baby now that
she's
not hanging around all the time.”

Tom does a puzzled frown. “I'm sure she heard you loud and clear,” he says to Jenna.

Jenna gives Tom a squint. “Thanks for being so helpful.”

“I'm very helpful,” Tom replies. “Just not useable.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jenna asks.

“It means he's not your little messenger boy.” Brooke whips a look at Jenna. “If you have something to say to me, then say it yourself. Don't make your
boyfriend
do your dirty work.”

Jenna's eyes go wide. “He's
not
my boyfriend.”

Brooke laughs. “Your
crush
then. What
ev
er. You
do
still like him, don't you? Ever since third grade?”

Jenna sits back, her eyes bright and her cheeks burning.

I look at Tom. He turns away quickly. His ears are as red as Jenna's face.

The bus jerks to a stop near the little log house and everyone starts scrambling off. There are only a few trees around it, but they're tall and old and I wonder if maybe they're left over from the Big Woods. Maybe Laura and Mary even planted the seeds they grew from, just like Rachel and her sandbox seeds.

My mom and the other chaperones carry the picnic stuff to a shelter.

Mr. Crow leads the rest of us into the quiet little house. We're the only ones there.

The main room has a window, a fireplace, a table, and that's all. Still, we're squished because it's so small. Two tinier rooms are off to one side. Upstairs there's a loft where Mr. Crow says Laura's family would have stored their food for the winter.

“Imagine what it would be like to live in this small space with your whole family,” Mr. Crow says.

“Nuts,” Randi replies.

“Murder,” Rusty chimes in.

“Look!” Joey shouts, pointing to the cobwebcovered window. An enormous spider is crawling across the four panes of glass. Brown and hairy. Like the ones you see on nature shows.

“Ta-
ranch
-u-la!”Joey says, wiggling his fingers.

“Common barn spider,” Tom puts in. “Big, but harmless to humans.”

A hand clamps around my wrist. Strawberry-scented breath blows in my face. “Somebody kill it!” Brooke cries.

“Anything for you, Brookey,” Rusty says, picking up a stick that's lying near the fireplace. He tiptoes toward the window. “
Herrrre
. . . spidey!” he calls.

“Rusty.” Mr. Crow frowns from across the tiny room. “Drop the stick. Step away from the spider.
Now
.”

“Spiders are good luck,” Meeka says. “Remember? That's what Mrs. Eddy said when she showed us that quilt with a spider sewn on it. You'd be crazy to kill it.”

Jenna huffs. “I've killed hundreds.”

“Yeah, but that sucker's
huge,
” Randi says, stepping closer to Rusty. “You'd be doomed.”

“Rusty,” Mr. Crow says again. “The stick. Drop it.”

Rusty sighs. He gives the windowsill a sharp tap, then flicks the stick away.