The Secret Language of Girls (11 page)

And then a horrifying thought occurred to her. Mr. Kertzner was coming over tonight, and she had forgotten to learn everything there was to know about the stars.

“What am I going to do?” Marylin asked Aunt Tish, her voice escalating into a wail.

Aunt Tish turned down the heat on the stove.

“Come on,” she said, taking Marylin by the hand. “Some things are less impossible than others.”

A handful of stars was pinned against the evening sky when Marylin, Aunt Tish, and Mr. Kertzner walked out to the backyard. Petey followed behind them, humming his favorite songs from
The Lion King.
Petey’s humming always drove Marylin crazy, but tonight she was trying to make a good impression on Mr. Kertzner, so she didn’t yell at Petey to shut up the way she normally would.

“That was terrific lasagna,” Mr. Kertzner said for about the fortieth time. “You’re really a great cook, Tish.”

“Marylin helped,” Aunt Tish told him. “I couldn’t have done it without her.”

Marylin had thrown the mozzarella cheese on top right before Aunt Tish put the lasagna in the oven. She didn’t think she should take
credit for the lasagna’s overall success. Still, if terrific lasagna was the key to Mr. Kertzner’s heart, who was Marylin to inform him she had played a less than major role in this particular lasagna’s creation?

The telescope stood in the middle of the backyard, its eye aimed at the Sussmans’ house next door.

“Petey’s been playing with the telescope again,” Marylin said. Ever since Aunt Tish had set up her telescope, Petey had been practically glued to it. Some days he played astronomer, other days he played FBI agent.

“I think Farley Sussman is plotting to overthrow the government,” Petey said. Farley, another third grader, was Petey’s arch-enemy.

“Farley Sussman couldn’t overthrow a hot dog stand,” Marylin said.

Aunt Tish and Mr. Kertzner laughed. All night Marylin had noticed that they laughed at exactly the same things. Also, they finished
each other’s sentences a lot. Marylin was glad they got along so well; it would make things go more smoothly when Marylin and Mr. Kertzner got married. Maybe Aunt Tish could be Marylin’s maid of honor.

“Okay, so who’s going to show me how to use this thing?” Mr. Kertzner said, nodding toward the telescope. “I’m ready to do some stargazing.”

Marylin barely beat Petey to the middle of the backyard. She put her eye to the telescope’s viewfinder and searched out the Big Dipper among the crowd of stars that had begun to blossom in the darkening sky. Think soup ladle, Aunt Tish had told her.

“Come look,” Marylin called to Mr. Kertzner. “Here’s the Big Dipper, which is a part of Ursa Major.”

“I had no idea you knew so much about the stars,” Mr. Kertzner said, leaning down so he could peer through the telescope.

“Oh, sure,” Marylin said casually. “As a matter of fact, the Big Dipper is one of my favorite constellations, along with Cassiopeia, Centaurus, Perseus, and Ursa Minor. I really like all of those a lot.”

“I’m impressed,” Mr. Kertzner said. “You have the makings of an astronomer.”

Marylin beamed. Aunt Tish’s advice had worked. Memorize five constellations, Aunt Tish had told her. Most people know only one or two. If you can name five, everyone will think you’re an expert.

“Oh, Marylin, look at that moon,” Aunt Tish said. “Isn’t it beautiful? I love a full moon, even if it is supposed to make people do crazy things.”

“What crazy things have you done?” Petey asked Aunt Tish. He sounded as though he were hoping for some helpful hints.

Aunt Tish laughed. “Lots of stuff. Dyed my hair red. Fell in love.”

That made Mr. Kertzner laugh too, and his laughter mingled with Aunt Tish’s in the cool air and made a kind of song. That was when Marylin saw it, the light of the moon falling over her aunt and her teacher and pulling them together into their own constellation.

Marylin walked over to the telescope and looked through it to the sky filled with stars, so many stars you could never count them all, according to Aunt Tish. If Aunt Tish married Mr. Kertzner, then Mr. Kertzner would be Marylin’s uncle, Marylin suddenly realized. If he were her uncle, maybe he wouldn’t make Marylin do her gypsy moth project with Jason Frey. Of course, if Mr. Kertzner became her uncle, then Marylin couldn’t marry him. She would have to find someone else to fall in love with.

Marylin pointed the telescope toward the moon. It was perfectly round, without any ragged edges or weird bumps. Most things in
life were full of ragged edges and weird bumps, Marylin thought, no matter how perfect they looked from a distance. Even love. Even your best friends.

“You know, I was thinking about trying out for cheerleading,” Marylin said, as much to the moon as to anyone else. She combed her fingers through her hair. She would have to be careful not to care about her hair too much, or else Kate would never let her hear the end of it.

“That’s great!” Aunt Tish exclaimed. “I’ll come to your tryouts. I know you’ll make it.”

“I was a cheerleader in college,” Mr. Kertzner said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Petey started laughing. “Boys can’t be cheerleaders!” he yelled.

Mr. Kertzner picked Petey up and held him upside down. “Boys can be anything they want!”

“Me too,” Marylin said to the moon. “What do you think about that?”

The moon didn’t answer. It just kept on its slow orbit around the earth, the way it had for millions of years. It would always be there, Marylin knew, watching over her, covering her with its shimmering light.

To be honest, Kate wasn’t all that sorry her parents had unplugged the TV. She was getting tired of seeing all those perfect people parading across the screen every night. It was the perfect kids who bugged her the most—those gaggles of sisters with moonbeam-blond hair that bounced and flounced all over the place. A person with bone-straight, plain-brown hair really had no business tuning in.

For a person with bone-straight, plain-brown hair and a stomach that looked a little bit like she’d stuck an upside-down cereal bowl beneath
her shirt, TV was not a good idea at all. None of the moonbeam-blond sisters ever had cereal-bowl stomachs. The sisters under twelve were as skinny as lizards, and the sisters over twelve had mountain-range curves that made all the boys on the shows go bug-eyed and yell, “Whoa!”

On the whole, Kate preferred books.

“Are you at least allowed to watch videos?” Marcie Grossman asked at lunch on Tuesday when Kate had announced her parents’ no-more-TV rule. Marcie’s voice trembled a bit, as though Kate’s parents were ax murderers who might come after her next.

“Sometimes on weekends we can,” Kate said. “But only ones my parents approve of.”

“No one’s going to want to come over to your house anymore, that’s for sure,” Marcie said, biting into her tomato sandwich.

“Life does not revolve around TV,” Kate said, repeating her parents’ latest motto. “Anyway, who cares?”

“I’d come over to your house,” Paisley Clark offered matter-of-factly from where she sat by herself at the far end of the cafeteria table. “My mother doesn’t let me watch TV either. Not even videos on weekends.”

A single, skinny bean sprout danced at the corner of Paisley’s mouth as she spoke. In the three weeks that Paisley had been at their school, Kate had noticed she was the sort of person who often had things stuck to her. Once she came to school with three raisins stuck to the back of her sweater; another time she had a stamp stuck to her elbow. But Paisley never seemed embarrassed when these things were pointed out to her. She just laughed. Sometimes she didn’t even bother unsticking what was stuck.

“I guess you probably read a lot,” Kate said as off-handedly as she could. It was a simple statement, but beneath it ran the dot and dash of a secret code.

“All the time,” Paisley answered. She held up a copy of
Number the Stars.
“Even at lunch.”

Kate and Paisley looked at each other for several seconds, then nodded almost imperceptibly, as though something had been agreed upon between them. Which was why Kate was not the least bit surprised when Paisley saved her a seat on the bus that afternoon, even though Paisley did not normally ride Kate’s bus home.

“I’ll call my mom when we get to your house,” Paisley said. “She can pick me up after work. Did you ever read
Tuck Everlasting
?”

Kate slid down in the seat and propped her knees against the seat in front of her. “Read it?” she asked Paisley, raising her eyebrows as high as they would go. “I’ve practically memorized it.”

At the very beginning of spring, weeks before anyone even knew Paisley Clark existed,
everything about sixth grade changed. It was as if a mysterious force had taken over. The sixth grade had gotten shuffled like a deck of cards and been dealt into entirely new groups. At lunchtime kids walked to their tables as though an invisible hand were guiding them to where they were supposed to be. The weird thing to Kate was that no one ever tried to switch tables or join a new group. Everyone just seemed to accept the decisions the mysterious force had made.

The mysterious force had thrown Kate in with Marcie Grossman, Amber Colbaugh, and Timma Phipps. There was a certain logic to it, Kate had to admit. They certainly were not a group of perfect TV people. Marcie had blond, bouncy hair, but usually it bounced in the wrong direction. None of them ever said snazzy, smart-alecky things to Mrs. Watson in class. Boys teased them, but not the cute boys, and not in a way that made
their hearts open up like windows in springtime.

Every day at lunch Kate, Marcie, Amber, and Timma gathered at the last table in the second row by the “Olympic Dreams of the Sports Superstars” mural and unwrapped their sandwiches. From where she sat, Kate had a perfect view of the second table in the first row by the emergency exit door. That was where Marylin sat with Mazie Calloway and the other middle school cheerleaders. That was where Marylin sat acting like Kate was some person she might have known a long time ago but whose name she couldn’t quite remember.

“So what was it like to spend the night at Marylin’s?” Amber or Timma might ask, gazing at Marylin and the cheerleaders. They asked these questions as if Marylin were a movie star. “What’s her room like?” Marcie might ask. “Is her mom nice?”

Sometimes Kate answered their questions with a bored sort of authority. “Up until third
grade Marylin wore footie pajamas,” Kate would tell them, practically yawning, as if to say,
So what? Who cares? It’s just Marylin. No big deal.

Other times Kate leaned back in her chair, her arms folded over her chest, her mouth set into a scowl, and said, “You know, just because someone is popular doesn’t mean they’re a great person or anything. Just because someone’s popular doesn’t mean everything about them is interesting.”

On those occasions Marcie, Timma, and Amber just stared at her. Marcie in particular looked like she thought maybe she should take Kate’s temperature.