Dear Pen Pal

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  Our mothers all kiss us good night, and promise to be back after breakfast to pick us up. After they leave, we change into our pajamas and follow Jess upstairs to the bathroom on her hall. It’s almost as big as a locker room, but a lot fancier. This is Colonial Academy, after all.

  I’m brushing my teeth when I look in the mirror and spot Savannah Sinclair sauntering in behind me.

  “Well, if it isn’t the book club girls. Did y’all have fun?”

  “Put a sock in it, would you?” I tell her.

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “That’s not very polite. You Yankees need to learn better manners.”

  “Who’s calling who a Yankee?” I ask her. “We’re Red Sox fans.”

  Savannah’s mouth drops open, then she starts to laugh. “You’re as dumb as you are ugly, aren’t you? I wasn’t talking about baseball.”

  I feel my face flush with anger and I take a step toward her. Emma puts her hand on my shoulder. Across the room, Peyton tugs on Savannah’s arm.

  “Don’t start anything tonight,” she says. “We’ve got to finish packing. The limo’s picking us up at six.”

  I put my hand on my hip, striking a pose. “The limo’s picking us up at six!” I echo, mincing around the bathroom as if wearing high heels.

  Savannah shoots me a look of pure spite as Peyton tows her out the door.

  “Please tell me I was never like that,” says Becca, watching her go.

  “She’s worse than you ever were,” Emma assures her.

  “Much worse,” adds Jess.

  “Yeah, she’s like Becca 2.0 or something,” I say.

  From the look on her face, I don’t think we’re making Becca feel all that much better. But she’s the one who asked.

  As Jess leads us back downstairs, we pass Savannah heading back up. She flutters her fingers at us. “Sweet dreams, girls!”

  “She’s up to something,” Jess mutters when she’s out of range, and we race to the living room. Everything looks normal, but we circle the room anyway, scouring it for anything suspicious. My eyes wander to one of the walls, where there are framed photographs of Colonial Academy students over the decades. Some of them are in graduation gowns, some in regular clothes, some in sports uniforms. A picture of a field hockey team catches my eye and I look more closely at it.

  “Hey, is that you, Becca?” I ask in surprise.

  “Huh?” she replies.

  “It sure looks like you.”

  Everybody crowds around the photo, which shows a group of girls in kilts holding wooden sticks. I point to one of the players in the back row.

  “Wow, you’re right, Cassidy—she could be Becca’s twin sister,” says Emma.

  “She’s not, though.” Megan points to the date on the frame. “Check it out.”

  Beside me, Becca shifts uncomfortably. “Actually,” she tells us, “it’s my mother.”

  “What?!” says Jess. “How come you never told us she went here?”

  Becca shrugs. “Mom doesn’t talk about it much. I think she’s really disappointed that I didn’t want to go.”

  Couldn’t get in is more like it, I think.

  Becca tosses her head. “Not that I care,” she adds. “Anyway, can you picture me at an all-girls’ school? No way.”

  I’m the first one into my sleeping bag. It’s been a long day and I’m beat. As Jess goes to turn out the light, I flop back onto my pillow with a sigh, then start to turn over. My hair doesn’t turn with me. It’s stuck. I give it a yank and nearly pull a handful out. With a shriek, I sit up. The pillow comes with me.

  “Don’t lie down!” I holler, and everybody freezes. “The pillows are booby-trapped!”

  Jess turns on the light and my friends all examine their pillowcases.

  “Taffy,” Megan says in disgust. “Savannah smeared them with taffy.”

  Sure enough, the taffy plate is empty, and all of our pillowcases have been hit.

  Emma crawls over and inspects the back of my head. “Uh, I don’t know how we’re going to get you unstuck.”

  “You’ll have to cut me out,” I snap. “Find some scissors.”

  Becca rummages through the drawer of a nearby desk. “Got ’em!” she says triumphantly, waving them in the air.

  “Bring them over here and get this thing off me,” I order.

  Becca pauses, hand poised over my head. She smiles. “Are you sure you trust me?”

  What is Jess’s new nickname for Becca? Chad-wicky something? “Yeah,” I tell her. “Because you know what I’ll do to you if you mess up.”

  The smile vanishes. “Hold still,” she barks, sounding like her mother.

  Becca starts to snip. And snip, and snip, and snip. “It’s the best I could do,” she tells me, when I’m finally unstuck.

  I turn and look at my pillowcase, which is covered with long strands of red hair and taffy. I reach up and feel the back of my head. There’s a giant bald spot right in the middle. I groan. “My mother is going to kill me.”

  “Not if we cut the rest of it to match,” says Megan. She takes the scissors from Becca’s hand and steers me over to the coffee table.

  “Since when are you a hairdresser?” I ask, perching on the edge.

  “I’m a fashion designer,” she replies. “I’m good with scissors. That has to count for something.”

  And actually, it does.

  “You look cute, Cassidy,” Jess tells me when Megan is done. There’s a mirror behind the piano, and she steers me over to it. “See for yourself.”

  I inspect myself, turning this way and that. My hair, which had grown back out to shoulder-length after I got it cut in New York a couple of years ago, is cropped close against my head now, a lot like Emma’s but not curly, of course. Jess is right. It’s not bad at all. It doesn’t look like her twin brothers did it and it actually has a sort of style. Not that I care much about that, of course.

  “This is going to be even better for sports,” I say, running my fingers through it. “Thanks, Megan.” I would have cut my hair off a long time ago, actually, but my mother always talks me out of it. She keeps saying some part of me has to look like a girl.

  “You know, if you spike it up with some gel, you’d look kind of like Mrs. Chadwick,” says Emma, grinning at me.

  “Shut up, Emma,” snaps Becca.

  “C’mon, Bec, you have to admit it’s true,” Megan tells her, laughing. “What is it with your mom these days, anyway?”

  Becca gives us a rueful smile and shrugs. “I don’t know. My dad says it’s just a phase she’s going through. He says a lot of people try to reinvent themselves when they get to be her age. She’s been talking about going back to school, and maybe getting a master’s degree or something. I guess she just wants a change.” She looks over at Jess. “You know, kind of like your mom back when we were in sixth grade.”

  Jess nods sympathetically.

  “Well, at least neither of your moms decided to go and have a baby!” I tell them. “Talk about a midlife crisis!”

  Laughing, we get busy cleaning up the mess. After we’re done, we huddle up in a circle on our sleeping bags.

  “So what’s the plan?” I demand. “We’ve got to get Savannah back.”

  “I could go tell Mrs. Crandall,” suggests Jess. “I’m sure she’d talk to her or something.”

  “Forget it,” I say. “Nobody’s going to do anything to a senator’s daughter. And besides, she’s leaving in the morning, remember?” I pitch my voice high, like Becca’s when she’s talking to Zach. “Six o’clock limo to catch.”

  “We could short-sheet her bed,” says Emma.

  “Gimme a break,” I tell her. “What are you, ten? She deserves something a whole lot worse. This calls for something drastic. I want to make her life miserable. So miserable, in fact,” I say, looking over at Jess as an inspiration dawns, “that she’s going to beg for a new roommate.”

  “Like in Just Patty, when Patty and Constance and Priscilla plotted to get rid of Irene
and Keren and Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale?” she replies, catching my drift.

  “Exactly. We’re talking Operation New Roommate here.”

  “How about we cut her hair while she’s sleeping?” says Megan, holding up the scissors.

  “That’s more like it,” I reply. “Other ideas?”

  We brainstorm for a while. Stuff horse apples in her riding boots. Take all her underwear and hang it up in Monument Square. Put blue food coloring in her shampoo bottle. I stare out the window, thinking. The full moon stares back at me. All of a sudden I sit bolt upright. “I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?” says Emma.

  I point out the window. “The moon!”

  My friends stare at me, puzzled.

  “I’m thinking maybe we should give Savannah a present to take along with her to Switzerland,” I continue. “You know, like maybe that extra-stinky cheese Jess’s mom and dad invented?”

  “Blue Moon?” Jess replies.

  “That’s the one.”

  “You mean put it in her suitcase?” asks Megan, and I nod.

  My friends get real quiet, and then they all start to giggle. Pretty soon we’re rolling on the floor, stuffing our pillows—now without their sticky pillowcases—over our faces to keep from waking everybody in the dorm.

  “That—is—just—PERFECT!” hiccups Becca, who is laughing so hard that tears are rolling down her cheeks.

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, though, even if it’s funny,” Emma cautions. “Remember what happened last time—with Carson Dawson, I mean.”

  Last year’s Hello Boston! TV show disaster is something we still don’t dare talk about when our mothers are around. We were in trouble for weeks.

  “Dude, quit being such a wuss,” I tell her. “This is different. We have to stick up for ourselves. We can’t let Savannah walk all over us. It’s time somebody taught her a lesson.”

  “But she’s going to know it’s us!” Emma protests. “It’s not exactly subtle.”

  “Subtle is not what we’re aiming for here,” I tell her. “We’re trying to send a message loud and clear that she can’t push Jess or any of the rest of us around. Besides, we can just say it was a present for her family—who wouldn’t like to get some nice homemade cheese from New England? And if it happens to be a particularly stinky kind of cheese, well, maybe we just forgot about that little detail.”

  “I’m in,” says Jess.

  “Me too,” says Megan.

  “Me three,” says Becca.

  Emma sighs. “So how are we going to get the cheese?”

  “Leave that to me,” I reply. “You and Megan and Becca stay here and cover for Jess and me. Savannah’s going to be sneaking down soon to check on the results of her prank, I promise you.”

  Jess and I pull our clothes on over our pajamas, and then we stuff our pillows into our sleeping bags to make it look like someone’s in them.

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” I whisper to the others. “Leave the back door unlocked.”

  Jess and I slip outside. The full moon is shining on the snow, so we stick to the shadows as we make our way out toward Main Street.

  “The gates are locked!” I say in dismay.

  “Never mind,” says Jess. “There’s another way.” She leads me down the back road to the stables, and we cut across a field to the street, our boots crunching in the snow.

  “Let’s jog,” I tell her.

  It’s over a mile to Jess’s farm, and the streets are completely deserted. The air is cold in my lungs, skating-rink cold. I’m used to it, but Jess is huffing and puffing by the time we get within spitting distance of her front yard. I grin at her. “Guess the track team isn’t in your future, huh?”

  She shakes her head. “No way.”

  We make a wide circle around her house, careful not to wake Sugar and Spice, and creep into the barn through the back door. Jess grabs a flashlight off the shelf and motions to me to stay quiet. “If the chickens hear us, we’re done for,” she whispers.

  I follow her into the creamery. She crosses to the big stainless steel fridge and opens it, then plucks a log of goat cheese from the shelf marked BLUE MOON. I give it a sniff to make sure.

  “P-U, that’s nasty! I can smell it through the wrapper.” I grin at her. “It’s perfect.”

  We close the barn up tight, and giving the Delaney’s house a wide berth once again we make our way back out to the street. The return jog to Colonial Academy seems to take a lot longer. I glance at my watch as we finally pass the stables. Nearly two a.m.

  “Savannah came down to check on us, just like you said,” whispers Emma once we’re safely back in Witherspoon’s living room. “We played possum until she left.”

  “Good work. Where are those scissors, Megan?” I ask, and she hands them to me.

  “Here, we found this in the desk, too,” says Becca, holding up a length of ribbon. “To make it look like a real present.”

  I tie the ribbon around the log of goat cheese, then use the scissors to poke a hole in one end of the plastic wrapping. Just a small one, to make it look like something might have accidentally punctured it in the suitcase. Instantly, the odor of blue cheese leaks out. Gagging, I make a face and hand it to Jess, who squeezes it until it oozes a tiny bit of cheese.

  Stifling our giggles, Jess and I creep upstairs, freezing in place when one of the treads emits a squawk as loud as a chicken. Nobody stirs, though, and we tiptoe on to the top, then down the hallway to her bedroom. I crack open the door. Savannah is sound asleep, her breathing deep and even. Her luggage is stacked by the door for morning. I can see by the moonlight that it all matches, of course. It even has her monogram on it. I shake my head in disgust. What a princess.

  Motioning to Jess to keep an eye on Savannah, I carefully move the smaller suitcases aside and open the largest one, wincing at the scrape of the zipper. Savannah stirs, and I pause, holding my breath. After a moment she rolls over and starts snoring lightly. Shaking with silent laughter, Jess hands me the goat cheese and I shove it down beneath the clothes at the bottom of Savannah’s suitcase, tucking some socks and underwear around it to hold it in place. Then I zip the bag up again and pile the smaller ones on top, just like they were before.

  With one last look around the room to make sure we didn’t leave anything that might look suspicious, we tiptoe back downstairs to our waiting friends.

  “Mission accomplished,” I whisper. “Operation New Roommate is officially launched! She is so going to regret messing with the Mother-Daughter Book Club.”

  I climb back into my sleeping bag, and for the first time since book club started this year, I’m glad I have a pen pal. I can’t wait to write to Winky Parker and tell her about this prank. I’m still laughing as I drift off to sleep. Tonight almost makes up for losing the hockey game earlier today.

  Final score: Cassidy, Jess, Emma, Megan, and Becca: a gazillion. Savannah Sinclair: a big fat zero.

  SPRING

  “Character is a plant of slow growth, and the seeds must be planted early.”

  —When Patty Went to College

  Cassidy

  “I seem to have a genius for discovering enemies!”

  —Dear Enemy

  I can’t believe I’m back in Dr. Weisman’s office again.

  Senator Sinclair called my mother. From Switzerland. He was furious—I guess the Blue Moon cheese did its job big-time. They ended up having to throw away Savannah’s suitcase, it stunk so bad. And it completely ruined all of her clothes, too.

  I told my mother Savannah deserved it, considering what she did to my hair, on top of everything she’s done to Jess, but she was in no mood to listen. Especially not after Senator Sinclair’s call. I could only hear the conversation from our end, but I could tell he was really worked up because my mom kept wincing and holding the phone away from her ear. He must have threatened to sue or call in the FBI or something, because my mother finally pulled out her Queen Clementine voice.

 
; “Lawsuit?” she said icily. “You want to talk lawsuits?” And then she told him that despite what his precious daughter might have told him, she was the one who had started it, and the stunt Savannah had pulled with the molasses taffy had cost me my hair in the process. “And I have the before-and-after pictures to prove it,” she added triumphantly. “One foolish prank was compounded by another, Senator Sinclair, and that’s hardly worth calling in the Feds about.” And then she told him that she’d take care of it, and that she expected him to do the same, and she hung up.

  The conversation that took place afterward between the two of us wasn’t pretty. My mother hauled Stanley into the argument and of course he took her side, so I was outnumbered. Stanley kept going on about how disappointed they were with me, and how selfish it was of me to get my mother all upset, especially in her condition. Like having this baby was my idea! Then the two of them marched me down here to our family therapist’s office so fast I hardly had time to catch my breath.

  They went in to see Dr. Weisman first. Even though the door was closed, I could still hear my mother crying. That made me feel pretty low. I honestly never mean to get into trouble and worry her, this kind of stuff just seems to happen. Like at recess a couple of weeks ago, when I thought it would be fun to try that experiment I’d heard about, the one with the bottle of diet soda and a roll of mints. How was I supposed to know it would erupt all over Mr. Keller? While I’m brooding about the injustice of everything, my mother and Stanley reappear and it’s my turn.

  “So,” says Dr. Weisman cheerfully, as I take a seat across from him, “do you want to talk about it?”

  One thing about Dr. Weisman, he’s pretty cool. Nothing much rattles him, not even stinky blue cheese in a suitcase shipped to Switzerland.

  “Not really,” I reply, just as cheerfully.

  He nods toward the closed door, and the waiting room beyond where my mother and Stanley are now sitting. “Well, perhaps we’d better at least go through the motions,” he suggests, lowering his voice. “We wouldn’t want to derail your trip to D.C., after all.”