The Kitty Committee

by Kathryn Berla

  I believe we actually strutted through the doors that day, although Jane in her natural gainliness appeared to lope. Class schedules were passed out alphabetically in the gym. We’d meet up afterward to compare. Classes were shortened accordingly that first day to make up for the special first period.

  Students began to form groups, nervously scanning schedules side by side with best friends or boyfriends, eyes darting back and forth. I was with Carly for PE but nothing else. Still, if I had to choose one class, that’s where I wanted to have Carly watching my back. Maggie had two classes with me. Carly and Jane had three in common, all AP classes that Maggie and I weren’t eligible for. But when it came to lunch, Maggie, Jane, and I had first lunch and only Carly had second. It was only a small cloud that slightly darkened our high spirits—after all, the odds of us all being in the same lunch were minimal. Overall, everyone seemed satisfied with the cards they’d been dealt.

  We continued to meet in the parking lot every morning, beginning our day with the pinky salute, but lunches took on a different feel. Without Carly, Jane became our de facto leader, although it was more a matter of Maggie and I acceding to her rather than any inclination on Jane’s part to lead. After only a few days, two other girls from Jane’s PE class joined us at the table that we’d claimed outside under an eave. Meant for eight people, it seemed more comfortable now that we were five. Maggie brought out wet paper towels and cleaned the benches each day before we sat down. That would become her unofficial duty for the rest of the year. Our trays made cleaning the actual table unnecessary.

  By the end of the week, a boy sat with us, clearly smitten by Jane. He was sandy-haired and starry-eyed with a slight lisp and an even slighter limp. He was a drama kid, Jane informed us. She was too. Her ethereal quality was beyond physical beauty, which I wasn’t convinced she possessed. It was an unnamable thing, irresistible to those who came close enough to its winsome appeal. I watched her speak to the boy, who I soon learned was named Kyle. I watched the way his eyes consumed her, hair so blonde as to be white, eyes so blue as to be clear, skin so pale and milky it made me think of candle wax. I watched Kyle that day and thought what a wonderful thing to be Jane—to be so admired, perhaps even desired by someone, and yet so oblivious to their esteem.

  Although she was a modest person, Jane regaled us with tales of her travels. She had done modeling for a major agency when they lived in Chicago but dropped out when it began to interfere too much with reading and family time. She became scuba certified when they lived on the Gulf Coast and spent every weekend exploring those warm waters, once coming face-to-face with a bull shark that inexplicably turned on its tail and fled. Her passion was skiing, which she hoped to pursue extensively come winter at the family cabin at Lake Tahoe, only three hours away. She loved anything by Jane Austen or Emily Brontë, neither of whom I’d read but was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to do so. Her family always spent Thanksgiving in New York City, where the girls would shop with their mother until they couldn’t take another step.

  Jane took a great interest in my travels as well. She hoped to travel the world one day, and I opened up to her questions, which would have embarrassed me in the past. Before, the exotic nature of my former life only set me apart and added to the insecurity I felt when I moved to Indian Springs. But Jane made me proud of this side of myself, and I realized with regret that I hadn’t fully appreciated the experiences at the time they were happening. I’d experienced them in the reflexive way of children—the way that is our life, not to be questioned or examined too closely. I never stood outside of myself to marvel at the worlds I saw, so vastly different in nature from anything I would ever experience after moving back to the states. I decided if I was ever given another chance, I would do it differently. I’d experience the water from under the surface where life was really happening. The way Jane did.

  Maggie and I dutifully reported these stories to Carly when we were all together.

  “Did you know that Jane used to be a model?”

  “Did you know Jane’s family owns a place in Tahoe and she’s going to invite us all to go up there for Labor Day weekend?”

  “Did you know that Jane is scuba certified?”

  Carly didn’t react with the same breathless enthusiasm, but then again, it probably wasn’t the same hearing the story secondhand. Whenever we repeated one of her stories, Jane would only smile wanly and not add anything of her own. She usually found a way to change the subject, asking Carly about a chemistry assignment or a book they were both reading for English. It was still one for all and all for one, and Jane had no desire to make it about herself.

  It didn’t take long for the reality of my parents’ decision to skip me ahead a grade to make itself known in an unfortunate way: beyond just the physical development, in which I was always lagging; the emotional maturity; and the social milestones, such as receiving my driver’s license long after it had ceased to be a source of pride and excitement for the others. I was smart, sure enough—especially in a small expat school of twenty to thirty students. But at Indian Springs, more than a year younger than my classmates, I was decidedly average, especially in math and science. Compared to Carly or even Jane, schoolwork was time-consuming and difficult.

  Keeping afloat became my overwhelming obsession, as my greatest fear was to have my parents realize their mistake and request to have me repeat my sophomore year. As a result, when I wasn’t with the girls, I spent every spare minute cramming for tests and puzzling out homework with my dad’s help. It was doable. It just meant there was no kickback time for watching TV or being alone in my room with nothing but Bob’s company and my own lazy thoughts. I didn’t share this struggle with the others. I didn’t want them to be reminded of my relative youth.

  Maggie, a struggling student herself, would have understood, but it was different with Maggie. Nobody expected her to be school smart, although we all knew she was smart in the ways of the world. I was supposed to be a smart kid, although it had to be obvious to Carly that I wasn’t.

  Two weeks after school began, Carly called us with the good news. She had conferred with Mr. Sutherland, a school counselor who was also her private SAT tutor, and he’d agreed to rejigger her schedule. She was no longer in the same PE class as me, and she was in one less class with Jane, but the exciting news was that she was now in first lunch with the rest of us.

  After that, the Kitty Committee closed ranks. The two girls and the starry-eyed boy who had shared our table soon drifted off to other tables with other groups. Jane’s orbit was eclipsed by Carly’s.

  Chapter Nine

  Labor Day weekend, I learned, was a bittersweet holiday. Marking the end of summer and reinforcing the beginning of the school year, it served two purposes. Piled into the minivan of Jane’s family, I was thrilled to be setting out on my very first excursion without my family. We were all in high spirits, still under the fading spell of hot August nights. Heading for Lake Tahoe, which I’d heard about but never seen, this was perhaps the happiest day of my life before or since.

  Jane’s parents were a study in contrasts, as were Jane and her sister, Leann. Her father, Mr. Swanson, was pale and lanky like Jane. He sported round spectacles and was slim everywhere except the round paunch hanging over his belt. Jane’s mom, who insisted we call her Rita, was a short, stocky, dark-haired brunette. Her eyes were small and dark, darting from person to person when she talked, which was often. Whereas Jane’s father spoke softly and slowly and usually not much at all, Rita was a whirlwind of conversation, steering the discussion amongst us girls for the entire three-hour drive.

  Jane and Leann were different in the same way—as though each parent had been granted a version of themselves. Leann was short and compact and sturdy like her mom. Quick-witted to Jane’s languid. Bossy to Jane’s laid-back. Only ten months apart in age, they seemed like great friends.

  “They were supposed to be twins, you know?” Rita said
over her shoulder from the front passenger seat. “But Leann was late like she always is, so she had to wait until round two.”

  In the rear-view mirror, I could see the smile spreading across her husband’s face. He reached over and squeezed Rita’s knee, then ran his hand up to very near the top of her thigh. I’d never seen my dad do anything like that, even though I knew he and Mom were completely devoted to each other. I’d never seen them just being playful with each other.

  “No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” Leann said, her booming voice reverberating throughout the closed car. “I actually was in there too, Ma, but I got one look at Jane’s knobby knees, and I knew she’d take up all the room so I swam back to your ovary where I could wait until I had the place to myself.”

  “Oh my God,” Maggie brought her open palm up to her mouth, her eyes creased with stifled laughter. “You guys are crazy.”

  Leann, who was technically the pesky little sister, was actually older than me by a few months. I called upon the most mature version of myself to be worthy of the big girls. To not be lumped in with the little sister. I couldn’t imagine joking like this in front of my parents. In front of Luke. Sex wasn’t a taboo subject in the Swanson family like it was in ours, and I loved it despite the blush I felt creep into my face.

  “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” Carly whispered in my ear, the hot breath passing through her lips to tickle tiny, sensitive hairs deep in my canal. I blushed even more and hoped no one else noticed.

  I’d been on road trips before with my family. Plunging deep into an emerald-green forest in a four-wheel drive, closing in on two hundred thousand miles, over trails that didn’t even begin to qualify as roads, unnamed and unmarked on any map as they were. Through brittle, hot deserts even, where a mechanical breakdown would be much more than an inconvenience like ants at the picnic. Where it could be a dangerous, and even deadly, occurrence for anyone not equipped to piece together a car’s engine with paper clips, if necessary, the way Dad and Luke could. But I’d never been on a road trip that was designated for pure fun like this one. I’d never been in a car for three hours where the chatter and laughter never ended. Whenever one of us grew breathless with giggling or excitement, there was always someone ready to step in and take over. And then when I caught my first glimpse of a lake so spectacularly blue it would put a cloudless sky to shame any day of the week, I was finally speechless for the first time that day.

  We traversed a series of paved roads until finally turning onto a gravel path where we slowly bumped and crunched our way to a cabin with a log-face exterior. But to call it a log cabin would be to shortchange it. It was a splendid home on the shore of the lake that, by that midday hour, was vibrating with the sparkle of dappled sunbeams.

  We poured out of the minivan, our legs aching to tackle three hours of pent-up energy. I stretched my arms and heard my spine crack. I breathed deeply, feeling the sting in my nose of the high mountain air, dusty and thin, dry and scented with a subtle spice of pine. I was young and strong and what felt like free. I had friends that I never could have imagined only six months earlier.

  For a very brief moment, I thought of Mom and Dad alone in our humble house in Indian Springs. Dad mourning the loss of his best friend, his son, who was off to start his own life. Mom sitting at the kitchen table, poring over medical and household bills, wondering how we were going to make ends meet in this new life of ours. The TV, a constant background white noise—the content and spoken words no longer important or even meaningful except for the distraction it provided to my father’s wounded body and soul. For a brief moment, I wished Mom and Dad could be there with me to see what I was seeing. Experience what I was feeling. But I’m ashamed to say, it was only a brief moment, and then Carly took me by the hand and tugged me toward the front door.

  This must be Heaven, I thought. I must be in Heaven.

  Our first day at the lake house was a half-day. Everyone was tired and wanted to shower and unpack and settle in for the next two days. Carly and Maggie shared one room. Jane and I shared the other, with Leann sleeping in a cot between us. Rita whipped up sandwiches for lunch, and we all went down to the beach for a picnic. Afterward, we slipped off our shoes and walked as far down the beach as we could before reaching a jetty of steep, sharp boulders. At the jetty, Rita supervised our re-slathering of sunscreen since the air was thin at that altitude and sunburns were more severe and came on quickly. Then we turned and walked in the other direction, all the way to a marina with a pier where a number of small boats were moored.

  Carly walked to the end of the pier while the rest of us rested on the sand in an area shaded by trees. From where I was sitting, I watched Carly carefully studying the boats tied up below her, taking her time to inspect each and every one. When she came back and joined us, she sat close to Maggie, whispering and giggling to the exclusion of everyone else. I worried that Rita and Mr. Swanson would find her behavior odd and even rude. It didn’t seem appropriate to be so secretive within our larger group. But no one else appeared to notice or be bothered by it except for me, so I chalked it up to my hypersensitivity whenever it came to Carly doing something with someone that didn’t include me.

  After dinner, board games, and watching a movie, everyone was ready for bed. I was exhausted after the drive, the two-hour walk in the sand, and the combination of bright sun and thin air. The night was cool, and I heard an owl calling to its mate right outside our window. I must have fallen asleep within seconds of crawling under the covers because that’s the last thing I remember.

  Chapter Ten

  When I woke with a soft hand pressed tightly over my mouth, the house was dark and silent, save for the sleeping sighs of Leann in her cot only a few feet away. Carly leaned over me, her loose hair streaked by moonlight diffused through the lace curtains. With her free hand, she brought a finger to her lips as a warning to keep quiet. I sat upright and saw Maggie doing the same with Jane.

  Carly gestured us toward the door, creeping catlike on bare feet, holding her sandals in one hand. Carly and Maggie were fully dressed but ushered Jane and I out of the room wearing only our PJs and slippers. Jane reached for a bathrobe hanging from the door.

  “What the fuck are you guys doing?” Jane whispered hoarsely once we were downstairs.

  “Time for an adventure!” Maggie’s eyes gleamed.

  “A Kitty Committee adventure,” Carly added as though that should explain everything.

  “Let me get some clothes on,” I insisted. “I look like an idiot, and you guys are dressed.”

  “It’s three in the morning,” Carly said. “No one’s going to see you except the racoons Maggie and I just saw outside. C’mon, let’s go.”

  My first thought was, how did Carly convince Maggie to do this? My second thought was for Jane, who would be breaking her own family’s rules.

  “What kind of adventure?” Jane asked warily, although she didn’t seem entirely opposed to the idea.

  Once we got to the beach, the need to keep our voices low was no longer necessary. Carly guided us with a flashlight she’d found in the kitchen, but the three-fourths moon, amplified by its mirror image on the lake, made it easy to find our way without the aid of artificial light.

  “Kitty Committee rule number one,” Maggie was deliriously happy, and I wondered if she and Carly had been drinking. “Party on!”

  “I don’t remember that rule,” I said.

  “What are the rules?” Jane asked. “Maggie, you were supposed to tell me but you never did—except the ‘no drug’ thing.”

  “Rule number three: no drugs, but alcohol is cool so drink up.” Carly pulled a flask from the pocket of her jacket, and I knew my intuition was right. Carly and Maggie had a head start, well on their way to being tipsy.

  I knew that Carly and Maggie drank on occasion, but I hadn’t joined in. Jane said she’d gotten high once with some kids at her old schoo
l in Chicago, but she didn’t like it so she was okay with the Kitty Committee rule about no drugs. I was okay with it too because it was the furthest thing from my mind. In some of the countries where I’d grown up, taking or selling drugs was an offense punishable by a long jail sentence or possibly death. I’d never considered it even after moving to the US with its much more relaxed attitude. I didn’t think about drinking either because my parents didn’t do it, so it was never around our house.

  “You brought that in the car with you?” Jane asked. I couldn’t tell if she was more horrified or amused, but I decided the latter.

  “We brought the flask—” Maggie started.

  “But the vodka was courtesy of your folks,” Carly finished. She tilted a swig into her mouth and passed it to me. Without taking a sip, I handed it to Jane who pressed it to her lips and swallowed. “C’mon, lil’ sis,” Carly poked me in the ribs. “It’s time for you to lose your cherry.”

  “Your alcohol cherry,” Maggie giggled wildly. “Don’t worry, Jane,” she stage-whispered behind her cupped hand. “We refilled your dad’s vodka bottle with water. We were busy little beavers while your lazy butts were sleeping. And, by the way, are you aware that you snore?”

  “Beavers! Maggie, watch your mouth,” Carly yelped.

  “I do not!” Jane tipped the flask for another dainty swallow. “Leann does—you must’ve heard her.”

  “No . . . It. Was. You.” Maggie put her finger right onto the tip of Jane’s nose, and they both laughed.

  “Don’t call me that,” I said firmly, soberly considering the company. “I hate it.”

  Jane wrestled Maggie’s finger from her nose, then they both collapsed on the sand in a heap of giggles. But Carly heard me. She heard everything, even when she’d been drinking.