The Secret Language of Girls (10 page)

Kate was against the whole idea.

“You’ll become the sort of person who only cares about her hair,” Kate warned, standing on one foot in the middle of the kitchen and balancing a stack of her sister’s
Seventeen
magazines on top of her head in an effort to improve her posture. “I’ve seen it happen a million times.”

“You’re only eleven,” Marylin said. “You’re too young to have seen anything a million times.”

“I’ll be twelve in two months,” Kate reminded Marylin. “Which means I’m older than you are, and therefore wiser. And I know what being a cheerleader does to people, believe me.”

Marylin began crumbling a chocolate-chip cookie into little pieces on the kitchen table. It was true that Kate had some experience with cheerleaders. Kate’s sister, Tracie, had enjoyed a brief cheerleading career in seventh grade before she made a D in world history and her parents yanked her off the squad. Still, Tracie and Marylin were two completely different people. Marylin had never gotten a D in anything in her life.

“Besides,” Kate added, collecting the magazines, which had spilled off her head onto the floor, “do you really think Mr. Kertzner is the type of person who would marry a cheerleader? He’s a man of science and reason, don’t forget.”

Kate was the second and only other person besides Aunt Tish to whom Marylin had told about her feelings for Mr. Kertzner. For all of Kate’s drawbacks, like her refusal to pierce her ears, or the way she was always hanging
around with little kids like Courtney, Marylin knew she could trust Kate with a secret.

“You don’t know, though,” Marylin argued with Kate. “Maybe Mr. Kertzner’s favorite sister was a cheerleader. Maybe he’s crazy about people who are cheerleaders.”

Kate shook her head. “All I’m saying is you’re taking a big risk. But,” she concluded, popping a cookie into her mouth, “it’s your life, so go ahead and ruin it if you want to.”

All of a sudden Marylin felt like changing the subject. “Hey, let’s go sneak into Tracie’s room and check out her clothes,” she suggested. Tracie had very grown-up taste in clothes, Marylin thought. Most days she looked at least eighteen. Plus sometimes she dated football players. Although Marylin would never admit it to Kate, Tracie was one of her idols.

Kate stared at her, her mouth falling open. “Are you nuts? For one thing, she’d kill us if she caught us. For another thing, the hairspray
and cologne perfumes will automatically suffocate you the minute you walk through the door. And for even another thing, who wants to look at Tracie’s clothes? Could you have an even more boring idea?”

“It was just a suggestion,” Marylin mumbled. She stood up. “I guess I should go home anyway.”

“No offense,” Kate called after her. “About Tracie’s clothes and everything.”

Marylin walked home from Kate’s the back way, cutting through Mrs. Larch’s backyard and following a leafy path through the woods to her house. Flannery’s house was smack in the middle between Kate’s and Marylin’s, and Marylin wasn’t in the mood to run into Flannery that afternoon. She’d probably want to practice cheerleading, and right now Marylin’s heart just wasn’t in it.

It wasn’t that Marylin agreed with Kate that she had to choose between cheerleading and
Mr. Kertzner. By the time Marylin was old enough to marry Mr. Kertzner, her cheerleading days would be a thing of the past. By then she’d probably be a world-famous expert on the gypsy moth and Mr. Kertzner would be too stunned by the shining constellation of Marylin’s brilliance to care whether or not she’d ever pushed a pom-pom.

But Marylin knew that if she tried out for middle school cheerleading and made it, she might have to choose between Kate and Flannery. Sometimes Marylin felt like a rope being pulled in a tug of war. She didn’t know how to get out of the middle, or how to change things.

Marylin didn’t even know if she wanted to change things. She was very particular about her life. She liked to know how things were going to be from one day to the next. That’s why it drove her crazy when her mother told her in the morning she would make meat loaf
for dinner and then her dad decided at five thirty to make spaghetti. It changed the whole tone of Marylin’s day.

Aunt Tish was standing at the kitchen sink and peeling potatoes for potato salad when Marylin got home. Marylin hopped up onto the counter next to her to watch.

“You were a cheerleader once, right?” she asked Aunt Tish. Marylin had decided she needed to get the real scoop on cheerleading before she committed herself to something that might completely upset her lifestyle and cause her to care too much about her hair.

Aunt Tish raised her arms into a V and jumped high in the air, yelling, “Rah! Go! Cougars!”

Then she resumed her potato peeling.

“Is that a yes?” Marylin asked.

“T. R. Little High School, the junior varsity squad,” Aunt Tish confirmed, nodding. “I did a mean handstand.”

Marylin leaned over and pulled a potato peel from Aunt Tish’s hair. “Did it change your life? Cheerleading, I mean?”

Aunt Tish thought for a moment. “A little, I guess. It made me more popular and gave me the opportunity to hang out with some pretty snooty girls. But you know what really changed my life?” Aunt Tish’s voice grew light and airy, as though she were describing a dream. “The men on the moon.”

“You mean the man in the moon, don’t you?” Marylin wondered if the potatoes were leaking fumes that were going to Aunt Tish’s head.

Aunt Tish laughed. “No, I really mean the men on the moon. I was supposed to go to this horseback-riding camp right before I started tenth grade, but then the astronauts walked on the moon and I was hooked! I watched everything on TV, and instead of begging for a saddle, I begged for a telescope.

“Did you want to become an astronaut too?”
Marylin tried to imagine Aunt Tish in one of those big white astronaut suits, but it was hard to picture. Aunt Tish was more the tailored jacket and jeans type.

“For a little while I did,” Aunt Tish said as she started cutting the potatoes into cubes. “But then I realized I didn’t really want to walk on the moon; I just wanted to look at it. It captivated me.”

“What’s captivating about the moon?” Marylin asked, hopping off the counter. This conversation was not teaching her much about cheerleading, she had decided.

Aunt Tish put down her paring knife. “The moon is captivating because it is always changing, but it’s always there.” She smiled. “Unlike your uncle Nick, who was just always changing.”

“Here,” Kate said on the bus the next morning, dropping a book onto Marylin’s lap before she
took her usual seat behind Marylin and Flannery. It was a copy of
A Tale of Two Cities.

“What are you giving me this for?” Marylin asked.

“Because it’s more important to care about your brain than to care about your hair,” Kate said. “That’s my new motto.”

Flannery rolled her eyes. “She is so weird,” she said to Marylin in a loud whisper. “I really think we should just ignore her.”

Marylin reached down and stuck the book in her backpack next to her nature studies binder and her math homework. “Why should we ignore her?” she whispered back without looking at Flannery. “It’s no big deal.”

“I can hear every word you’re saying,” Kate said from behind them.

“That’s why we should ignore her,” Flannery said.

Marylin really didn’t think ignoring Kate was necessary, but you had to be careful about
rejecting Flannery’s ideas. “I’ll think about it, okay?” she said, smiling her most diplomatic smile.

Flannery turned away so that she was facing the aisle. “You can do whatever you want,” she said. “I couldn’t care less.”

It was going to be one of those days, Marylin could tell already.

She was sure of it when Mr. Kertzner assigned Marylin and Jason Frey to be partners for their gypsy moth project. Jason Frey was a toothpick of a boy who barely spoke above a raspy whisper when he was called on in class. Also he always had thin crescents of dirt beneath his fingernails. Marylin was very picky about fingernails. She thought they said a lot about a person.

Marylin scooted her desk next to Jason’s. “I guess we should start brainstorming for project ideas,” she told him, taking charge. The one nice thing about doing projects with
people like Jason Frey was that Marylin got to boss someone else around for a change.

Jason nodded, red splotches blooming along his neck. He looked like he was coming down with an emergency case of the measles.

Suddenly Marylin’s left ear was attacked by a wadded-up piece of notebook paper. She looked around as she unfolded it, but no one looked back at her.

Dear Marylin,
the note read.
I think you and Jason make a very cute couple. How long have you two been an item? Signed, A Curious Person.

The writing looked suspiciously like Ashley Greer’s when she wrote with her left hand instead of her right.

“How about we brainstorm in silence for a few minutes,” Marylin said to Jason, taking a piece of paper out of her nature studies binder.

Jason nodded again. He looked relieved, as though brainstorming out loud with Marylin might have caused him to internally combust
right there in the middle of the classroom.

Marylin picked up her pen and began to write.
Dear Ashley,
her note began,
Good luck with cheerleading tryouts! I really mean it a lot!

Marylin underlined “really” four times. It was clear she needed to do something to get on Ashley’s good side, or else Ashley would probably start spreading rumors that Marylin and Jason were planning to elope to Tijuana after social studies.

“Meet me at my house after school,” Flannery said as she brushed past Marylin on her way to the playground at morning break. “And whatever you do, don’t bring Kate.”

“Okay,” Marylin said, smiling her biggest, cheeriest smile, the one that showed all her teeth.

“You look like a weasel, smiling that way,” Kate said, walking past Marylin on her way to the library.

Marylin leaned her head against the cool,
gray row of lockers outside Mr. Kertzner’s classroom. No matter what she did, she just couldn’t win with these people.

Mr. Kertzner walked out into the hallway. “Are you feeling sick, Marylin?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You could take me to Paris,” Marylin said, her head still resting against the lockers.

Mr. Kertzner laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a great field trip?

Field trip, shmield trip. Marylin was talking honeymoon.

But all she said was, “Yes, it really would. I think it would be particularly nice to be around all those people who don’t speak English.”

That way, Marylin thought, she could ignore all of them.

“I’m sorry, honey, but Flannery went to Ashley’s house,” Flannery’s mom told Marylin
that afternoon. “Ashley’s mom just picked her up about three minutes ago.”

“Oh, right, she mentioned that to me on the bus,” Marylin lied. “I guess I just forgot.”

“I’ll tell her you stopped by, sweetie,” Flannery’s mom said, smiling her nice-mom smile.

Walking back home, Marylin wondered how someone like Flannery ended up with such a pleasant mother. It didn’t make any sense. Marylin was beginning to think that the world just didn’t add up when you looked at the big picture.

“You look like you need some chocolate,” Aunt Tish said when Marylin walked into the kitchen and slumped in a chair.

“It smells too much like onions in here to eat chocolate,” Marylin said. “Onions and chocolate don’t mix.”

“Well, I hope it smells good,” Aunt Tish said, stirring a big pot on the stove. “Because this
is the tomato sauce for my famous lasagna. Tonight’s the big night, after all. Are you excited about Mr. Kertzner coming over?”

Marylin shrugged. She had been more excited a few days ago, when her life had had a nice, even flow to it.

“You know, Aunt Tish,” Marylin said, staring up at the ceiling, “sometimes everything in my life is just impossible.”

Aunt Tish nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

At least one thing never changed, Marylin thought. You could always count on Aunt Tish to know exactly what you meant.