Girls in Charge Read online

  “Just goes to show,” Kate said. “No matter how well you have people figured out, you never know what’s going on in their real lives.”

  “What a witch,” Piper said.

  “Which one?” I said sarcastically.

  “The bully, of course, Jem,” Kate said.

  “I don’t exactly love Taylor,” Piper said. “Not after what she did to the PLS. But you’ve got to feel bad for her.”

  “Imagine what it would feel like to be flunking eighth grade,” Kate said. “But I was always a little angry that she didn’t get punished for hacking into the PLS site.”

  “I was really angry and still am, if I let myself think about it long enough,” I said.

  “Exactement!” Piper said.

  “If that means ‘exactly’ in French, I agree. Who else completely tears people apart and gets away with it?” I said.

  Taylor had admitted hacking into our site and making rude comments. She said people who wrote in to us were losers—so mean!

  “And now here she is asking us for help,” I said.

  “Kind of ironic, don’t you think?” Kate asked. “Taylor’s famous for messing with other people and now someone is messing with her.”

  “Is it karma, do you think?” Piper asked. “What goes around, comes around?”

  Eighteen

  Sometimes the answer is so obvious, you just whack yourself in the forehead with the back of your hand and say, OK—I get it! I give in. Fine. Whatever.

  That’s how I felt about Jake Austin. Jake had liked me for months—maybe longer. I was more and more sure he was the person who sent me that note-less pink carnation on Valentine’s Day. And he always seemed to find ways to say hi or try and make me laugh. I felt a little like my mother when she tears around the house looking for her reading glasses only to find they are sitting on top of her silly head. Here I was wondering what it was like to have a real boyfriend, someone who truly liked me. I realized I could just say OK and be Jake’s girlfriend.

  My Forrest thoughts were truly fading, so I wasn’t using Jake to get over him. I had gotten myself over Forrest and had been faithful to the goals I set for myself with the soda tab bracelet that was still on my wrist.

  I had kept the promise I made to myself about not thinking about Forrest like I used to. It worked. I did other stuff. I had room for other thoughts. And with all the clutter cleared away, one of those thoughts was now about Jake Austin. Other girls liked him. He wasn’t Mr. Most Popular, but he was Mr. Actually Pays Attention to Me. I didn’t stay up nights writing about him in my journal. And I didn’t stress about what I looked like when I bumped into him. He was my science lab partner and it was no big deal. He was smart and easy to be around.

  So sort of like a science experiment, I started being nice back. I started acting a little more like Piper than myself. “Oh-ho, Jake,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You are too funny.”

  He suddenly stood up straighter. He was shocked. He blushed. Later, he texted me. Out of the blue with some concocted story that he needed something for our science homework about frog anatomy. I didn’t buy it. And when I texted back, I used a winky emoticon.

  That weekend, he liked every status update and photo I added to Facebook. It was almost too easy. I was making myself pretty sick, but I decided to keep on with it. If I could spend years liking Forrest, surely I could convince myself to like someone who actually liked me.

  The next day, Jake came up to our lunch table, his empty tray in hand.

  “Hey,” he said to the entire group.

  He received heys in return and then he said, “Jemma, do you want to go outside?”

  “Oh-la-la,” Piper said.

  “Um, sure,” I said, and stood up and pushed in my chair.

  My heart was beating, but not like it did when I used to go on dates with Forrest. They weren’t real dates, of course, because I was his pretend girlfriend. But still, we sat together at movies, held hands, and kissed in Clem Caritas’s backyard. My heart pounded because I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into. Outside, we sat on the wall by the basketball court. I kept my hands in my jeans pockets, even though it was late April, sunny and warm.

  “You should come to the baseball game after school. Lots of people go,” Jake said.

  “Um, sure. That would be fun. I could stop by after cross-country.”

  I wondered what I was supposed to do. Cheer for him? Smile and wave? I hadn’t ever been anyone’s real girlfriend before.

  “Can I ask you something, Jake?”

  He nodded and I had to ask.

  “Did you send me a carnation on Valentine’s Day?”

  “Do you think I did?” Jake said, giving me a smile.

  “Yeah, I think you did.”

  “Well, maybe I did,” he said.

  And that, in my mind, was the end of that.

  I went to the baseball game, dragging Kate along with me, even though that meant she had to wait around after dance practice for me to be done running. We walked down the big hill together. The sun was getting low on the horizon, but it was still warm, hinting at the summer to come. The team’s uniforms blazed white against the green grass and the red dirt of the base paths. Someone was playing “before the game” music over the scratchy PA system. A wafty popcorn and hot dog smell floated through the air.

  We took seats on the bleachers amid parents and other fans there to watch the boys. When Jake got up to bat, we did cheer: “C’mon, Austin!” and “Let’s go, Patriots!” since we were the Margaret Simon Middle School Patriots.

  I cheered for everyone equally so it wouldn’t seem too obvious. When Forrest came up to bat, I didn’t know what to do. But, to be consistent, I cheered for him, too. Kate joined in, being an equal opportunity cheerer anyway. “Let’s go Forrest!” I yelled. And it was at that moment that Jake looked over from second base, which he had stolen. I wondered what Jake knew or assumed about me and Forrest. I could tell Jake how I didn’t think of Forrest at all anymore. Well, hardly at all. But it seemed better just to ignore the whole matter.

  I didn’t plan to ask Jake about Francine DeBusey, the cute seventh-grader he had been going out with before Christmas. I wasn’t even a tiny smidge jealous. It didn’t seem like a great sign, but maybe Jake and I could be a couple in a new, super-mature way. I couldn’t imagine Jake ever making me cry. Maybe we could just pass on the drama. We’d have no silly fights about who was supposed to text whom. We’d also skip the jealous moments just because he talked to a girl who happened to be a friend or vice versa for me with a guy friend. I had never seen it done before, but there was always a first time.

  Nineteen

  Jemma Colwin, please report to the office.

  “Piper Pinsky, please report to the office.

  “Kate Parker, please report to the office.”

  Our heads popped up one by one from the Spanish quiz we were taking.

  We looked around, nervous as kindergartners not knowing what to do next.

  “Finish your quizzes,” Señora Parra said.

  I sped through the verb conjugations, forgetting more than I knew before I heard that distressing call over the PA system. We handed in our quizzes and gathered our stuff.

  “This can’t be good,” I said.

  “We already lost the class trip,” Piper said. “What else could happen?”

  “Maybe it’s not so bad,” Kate said.

  “I think we’re going to get in trouble because the PLS site is still up and running,” I said.

  We walked briskly to the office, expecting to be hustled into Principal Finklestein’s office. Instead, Mrs. Percy greeted us from across the big front desk.

  “Hello, girls. Let’s go in the conference room.”

  Ms. Russo was already there. As we took our seats, Mrs. Percy told us that the principal was away at a conference.

  “So it seemed like a good time to check in and check up,” she said.

  “I was hoping you were going to say
we could go on the class trip. Maybe Principal F. changed his mind?” Piper said.

  “I wish we had that kind of news,” Ms. Russo said.

  “What kind of news do you have?” Kate asked.

  “We wanted to encourage you to keep the PLS Web site running, as you have been,” Mrs. Percy said. “Though things look dark now, we still have hope that the PLS can continue next year at Margaret Simon Middle School.”

  “Yes, we need to appoint seventh-graders who can take over for you next year,” Ms. Russo said. “So let us know if you have any nominations.”

  That was weird to think about. I wasn’t ready to let go of the PLS yet, and I was nervous. I wanted to keep it running for the rest of the school year. (We didn’t want to let all those girls down.) But we had to seriously cross our fingers that Principal F. would never actually go to www.pinklockersociety.org and see we had completely ignored his orders. Again.

  “But we also wanted you to know that it’s especially important for you to lay low right now,” Ms. Russo said.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to risk getting suspended,” Mrs. Percy said. “And I fear that’s what Principal Finklestein would do if he caught you red-handed, or should I say pink-handed?”

  “Très amusante,” Piper said.

  I was not so amused.

  “Do you think he suspects anything?” I asked Mrs. Percy.

  “I don’t know. All he would tell me was the official reason he listed for banning you from the class trip.”

  “Because we restarted the PLS when he told us not to, right?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. The official school rule you broke was operating a student club without being officially sanctioned.”

  “Sanctioned?” Kate asked.

  “Sanctioned is another way of saying ‘approved.’ All school clubs are officially approved at one point or another,” Mrs. Percy said. “Many have been sanctioned for decades, like le club Francais, a club Piper is probably well acquainted with.”

  “Oui,” said Piper. French for yes pronounced “we.”

  A sanctioned club has a charter (a document that explains the rules), a designated teacher-advisor, and signed permission forms from parents to let their kids be in it, Mrs. Percy explained. “I guess the PLS has always been a secret group without official approval.”

  “Can we get sanctioned? Ms. Russo has been our teacher-advisor. And we could write a charter,” Kate asked.

  “I’m afraid it would be difficult now. Principal Finklestein and the school board would have to recommend it for sanctioning. It’s hard to get a new club sanctioned or an old club unsanctioned,” Mrs. Percy said. “Lots of paperwork.”

  “Couldn’t we at least try?” Piper said.

  Ms. Russo and Mrs. Percy exchanged glances but neither said anything. Which in a way did answer Piper’s question, and that answer was “No.”

  Twenty

  After school, I nearly dove into my running clothes and sprinted out to the track to start my run. I didn’t want to talk to my teammates or my coach or take the long way around to catch a glimpse of the baseball team.

  “Want to run together?” Mimi Caritas asked me. Clem’s younger sister looked up to me, I knew. She joined the track team when I told her, “If I can distance run, you can distance run.” She was doing great, actually. But today, I just didn’t want the company.

  “I’m sorry, Mimi. I’m upset about something and I wouldn’t be a good partner.”

  I felt like if I could run, I could erase the noise and worries filling my head. At mile one, the anxiety had lifted only slightly. All thoughts kept leading me back to our troubling situation—no class trip and a grim future for the PLS.

  Though I kept hoping for some miracle to occur, it was now clear that nothing would change. I’d have to tell my parents that I wouldn’t be going to New York. Class trips can’t be replaced, I thought. There are very few of them and hardly any are overnight, stay-at-hotel trips. When else are you going to get to go somewhere fun with your close friends and the entire eighth grade? And when else would I get to visit New York City, the city that never sleeps? Fashion, art, theater, hot dogs on every street corner—it was all there for the taking.

  Missing the class trip meant missing our chance to make a presentation at the Tomorrow’s Leaders Today conference, too. Someone would have to tell Forrest. Would he go on without me? It was hard to imagine him making the presentation alone. I wondered how many Blue Locker Society meetings had been held on the roof since he took me up there.

  Then there was the larger problem of the Pink Locker Society’s future. Should we keep putting ourselves at risk by running the Web site until we graduated eighth grade? At first, I couldn’t imagine giving up on our work or passing along our positions and our offices to unknown seventh-grade girls. But the idea was growing on me.

  I think that’s when I started to understand what the word bittersweet meant. It was sad (bitter) to think about leaving the PLS behind, but somehow happy (sweet) to think about this great tradition continuing. To quote Mrs. Percy, it was a chance to actually be “a link in a pink chain.”

  But right now, everything seemed uncertain.

  Working through all these thoughts, I lost track of how many times I had run our circuit. I’d gone up hills and by the baseball fields I don’t know how many times. My legs were aching and I suddenly wanted to stop running. The sky had darkened when I made it to the doors of the gym. Mimi was already dressed and walking out to the parking lot.

  “Jemma, how far did you go today? No one could catch you and it was like you didn’t even notice.”

  “Sorry, I’m in my own world today.”

  “Well, if you need someone to talk to, you can ask me. I’m a good listener,” Mimi said. “Just yesterday, my sister was telling me about this boy, Shane, who she really likes, but who is majorly into Tayor Mayweather.”

  “I know you’re a good listener, Mimi,” I said. “We’ll run together tomorrow.”

  Twenty-one

  As I watched my large-bellied mom make breakfast, I thought about how I didn’t know much about pregnancy before. Now, with the due date edging closer, I knew plenty. I knew my mom was having trouble sleeping at this late stage. I knew that she had heartburn when she ate pizza. I learned that women don’t get a period while they’re pregnant (who knew?). And I found out that you didn’t want the babies to be born too early because their lungs were still developing. It was seven weeks and counting for the Colwin Twins.

  My mind drifted again, like it had all of yesterday, to my own twin worries: the PLS’s future and having to tell my parents about the lost school trip. If you threw in Jake, you could have called them my triplet dilemmas. Toss in my period, which still hadn’t come, and we’d have quadruplet troubles.

  I thought for a moment about saying something to Mom about what was on my mind, but I just couldn’t do it. She looked happy, humming something as she scrambled my cooking eggs in the nonstick pan. She was probably thinking about what else she needed to buy before the babies were born. It was an activity that was taking up most of our weekends.

  “I heard about the New York City problem, by the way,” she said, still stirring the eggs.

  “What?”

  “Ms. Russo called. She just feels terrible. And I feel terrible that you girls are going to miss out.”

  “It’s completely unfair,” I said, relieved she didn’t seem too angry.

  “Well, it’s better than a suspension, I guess. You’re learning the tough lesson of what it means to go out on a limb for something.”

  “The limb crashed to the ground, with me on it,” I said. “We don’t know what to do, actually.”

  “Ms. Russo said not to lose hope. She and Mrs. P. are still working on the principal. He might change his mind.”

  “Sure,” I said, not really believing it.

  “I could come in and talk to him,” she said.

  “Please don’t.”
>
  “Well, I would have, but Ms. Russo said it probably wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You know, your father and I could always take you to New York at some future point.”

  I pictured the three of us in Times Square with two adorable but screaming babies.

  “Right,” I said again.

  I finished my eggs and orange juice and headed for the bus stop. When I arrived at school, Bet was waiting for me at my locker.

  “What’s the latest?” she said.

  “Nothing good, I’m afraid,” I said.

  “So I heard,” Bet said. “I’m planning on interviewing Principal F., you know.”

  “Ask him why I can’t go to New York City. On second thought, don’t.”

  “I have to interview him because he’s celebrating forty years of working at Margaret Simon Middle School,” Bet said.

  “Oh, joy.”

  “Yes, it’s a dull reason, I know,” Bet said. “But I’m going to ambush him with some other topics. I have been digging around in the school records and I may have something that will help the PLS.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I don’t want to say until I get more info—and talk to the big guy.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  “Hey, Jemma.” It was Forrest, pulling open his locker next to mine, like he did every morning.

  I smiled at him and turned back to continue my talk with Bet. Then I heard another voice over my shoulder.

  “Jemma, hey.” It was Jake.

  He hugged me hello, which was kind of a normal thing at my school. It didn’t exactly mark us as boyfriend and girlfriend, but it was an awfully warm greeting for an ordinary Wednesday.

  “Oh, hey. Hi, Jake,” I said, returning the hug, but only briefly. I thought I could feel Forrest looking at us, but it could have been my imagination.

  “Coming to my game on Friday?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah, sure. I guess,” I said.