Sixth grade
13
The summer before the girls were to enter sixth grade, a new middle school was completed and the students in the Glendale subdivisions had to be split between the old and the new. Perri and Josie remained in the district for the original school, Hammond Springs, but Kat wound up on the other side of an invisible line and was assigned to Deerfield.
No one liked this idea, of course. Kat was terrified at the idea of being alone-separated not only from Perri and Josie but from virtually every classmate she had known since kindergarten, with the exception of Binnie Snyder. Perri had become so enamored of the idea of the three of them that she viewed the new school as a specific plot to break them up. Josie didn’t care so much if they were two or three, but if there were going to be just two, she would prefer it to be Kat and her. While she and Perri sometimes spent time alone-and even had fun that way, for Josie rather liked Perri’s cruel wit, as long as it was directed at others-she was nervous she wouldn’t be able to meet Perri’s standards, day to day. Kat was their anchor, the one who kept them steady.
“We’re a triangle,” Perri said. “And a triangle that loses one of its points is nothing but a line.”
“Wouldn’t we be two lines?” Geometry was not Josie’s best subject.
“No, just two points, a single line. It takes three points to make a shape.” Perri, like Kat, was in gifted-and-talented math.
“It won’t be so bad for you,” Kat said. “You’ll have each other, while I’ll be alone. What am I supposed to do, ride the bus with Binnie?”
“The new school is prettier, though,” Josie said, thinking that might be a consolation.
“You’re not going,” Perri assured Kat, but even her agile mind failed to concoct a plan. It was the beginning of summer, but the season’s normal joys were small consolation to them as they contemplated summer’s end.
Yet the girls had an unexpected ally in Kat’s father, who believed that Deerfield, despite its newness, was not as desirable as Hammond Springs. “Teachers are what make schools good,” he said. “Not buildings.” (Perhaps this was a lesson that he had learned from the high school, whose physical problems were manifest now that it was three years old.) Meetings were held, phone calls were made, and somehow, midway through August, the invisible line jumped over the Hartigans’ house and it came back into the Hammond district, along with the Snyder and Muhly farms.
So it was with giddy relief that the girls met at the Ka-pe-jos’ old campsite, the ceremonial grounds, although the tribal name had fallen into disuse over the last year. No one had said they should stop speaking of the Ka-pe-jos or relinquish their vows. A day just came when it seemed natural to stop doing those things. Josie assumed that a new game or ritual might replace the old, and she had waited hopefully to see where Perri’s imagination might lead them. But so far the abandoned campfire was a place to meet and talk, nothing more.
It was the last Sunday in August, and they had not seen each other for almost a month. Kat’s family had gone to Rehoboth, while Perri’s folks had taken her to New York City, where, as she kept telling them, she saw five plays in seven days. Josie hadn’t gone anywhere, except to a dreary day camp. Her parents had spoken of a long weekend in West Virginia, but something had fallen through, Josie wasn’t quite sure what, and her parents had bought her a trampoline instead, much to the neighbors’ disgust. “They’re not safe, you know,” Mrs. Patterson told Josie’s mother. “About the only more dangerous thing you can have on your property is a pool.” Josie’s mother just shrugged and said Mrs. Patterson’s children didn’t have to play on it.
In mid-August, Josie’s grandparents had arrived from Chicago, and that was fun, although their foreignness had embarrassed Josie when they went to places like the mall or Moxley’s ice cream. She didn’t know what was worse, her grandmother’s sari or her bindi. Still, it was nice to have such a rapt audience for her trampoline tricks, although Grammy Patel seemed a little shocked by some of the things Josie did. “Is it safe? Is it nice?” she had asked Josie’s mom, who had assured her that Josie was trained to do these amazing things and no one cared if an eleven-year-old girl’s limbs were exposed. Josie had flown into the summer sky, tucking and turning and twisting, and her grandparents had clapped their cautious, bewildered approval.
But now, with school beginning, Kat and Perri were finally back. In acknowledgment of the reunion’s importance, Josie’s mother had provided cupcakes-extremely fancy ones, from Bonaparte’s in the city-and helped Josie pack them in a wicker basket lined with a napkin. There were six cupcakes in all: two with pink frosting, two with white, two with orange. The white-frosted ones had devil’s food bases, while the others were plain vanilla cake.
“Everyone should choose one first,” Josie said. “And then we’ll go in reverse order to choose the second, so it’s fair.”
“It’s not fair to the one in the middle,” Perri objected. “The one in the middle always goes second, while the other two both get to go first at least once.”
“But my way, if there’s one kind you really want, you’ll get it. And the middle person has a choice between the last two, while the one who goes last has to take what’s left.”
“But what if the last two are the same kind? That’s not a real choice.”
“I’ll go second,” Kat said, ending the disagreement, as she so often did.
Perri nodded, picking a devil’s food with white icing. Josie wanted to point out that Kat’s going second did not mean Perri necessarily got to go first, but she had provided the cupcakes, so she should act as the hostess. Her mother was big on those kinds of manners.
Kat took an orange one. Josie picked a devil’s food, then a pink, leaving a pink and an orange. Kat began to reach for the pink one, but after a quick glance at Perri, whose gaze was fixed on the pink with an almost unsettling ferocity, Kat chose the remaining orange instead.
“I didn’t know you liked orange that much,” Josie said. “Not enough to pick it twice.”
Kat shrugged, glancing sideways at Perri, as if seeking her permission for something. Perri was already licking the pink frosting from the top of her cake, so there was no going back, or trading.
“Your mother should have gotten two kinds, not three,” Perri said. “Then we all would have had the same.”
At least my mother buys cupcakes, Josie wanted to say. Perri’s mother was big on healthy foods-fruit, yogurt, granola bars, and not even the good ones but dry, dusty things that stuck in the throat.
But Josie did not want to risk ruining this moment of reunion and celebration. She lifted her cupcake as if it were a goblet, the kind of gesture that Perri usually thought to make. “A toast! A toast to…Kat not having to go to Deerfield!”
“To Kat!” Perri echoed. “To middle school! To Seth Raskin!”
They giggled at that. Seth Raskin was now the best-looking boy in their grade. Perhaps he had always been, but that information had begun to interest them only in the past year. They were all too aware that girls in middle school, the advanced ones, went with boys. And while they swore to each other that this was not something they wanted to do, if one were to have a boyfriend, Seth Raskin would be the one to have.
“To me!” Kat said, raising her orange-topped cupcake, her laugh spilling out.
“No, like this,” Perri said, changing the game, taking charge. She took her second cupcake, the devil’s food one, and smashed it into her face, so her nose was covered with white icing. Josie did the same thing with her white-frosted cupcake. Kat, however, hesitated.