“Yes, and they had great stories,” added Katie.
“And the cool fashion show!”
Smiles stole across our faces and I got that feeling you get when you’ve laughed too much and your cheeks hurt.
“My favorite part was getting friendship bracelets,” I said.
Katie moved over to her dresser where she opened a bright blue box. It kind of creaked when she opened it, then she reached in and pulled something out.
My eyes grew bright. It was our friendship bracelets. Katie still had them!
“Here’s yours,” she said, reaching out to tie mine onto my wrist. “You might recall we took them off at the beginning of fifth grade when we thought we were much too old to still wear friendship bracelets.”
“Oh yeah,” I sighed, wishing we had never taken them off. That’s when Katie and I had first started growing apart.
I tied Katie’s friendship bracelet on her. I thought about that night with the Secret Keeper Girl Tour team.
“Remember,” I said, “that one teacher told us that in just a few years we’d really, really need our true friends to help us make good choices … and that it wouldn’t be easy.”
“Yeah,” said Katie. “And that we needed a little circle of friends to share our deepest secrets with.”
“I think we’re in those years, Katie,” I announced.
“Definitely,” Katie agreed. “And, by the way, now that we’re in those years, could you just call me Kate? I’m so over being called Katie!”
“Done,” I said to my new—but at the same time old—best friend, Kate Harding.
“Pinky promise!” said Kate.
We linked pinkies and shook our hands up and down. I had no idea that my promise of friendship would be tested the very next day.
CHAPTER 4
Detention Deficit Disorder
Maybe Laney knows more about the pageant, I thought to myself. I’ve got to know.
I hadn’t been in the cafeteria since I’d thrown the terribly imperfect Purple Flurp curve on Friday. I’d taken advantage of my school’s outside lunch court passes, where basically all the kids trying to avoid someone in the cafeteria gather during warm, sunny days. I’d spent my last few lunch periods hanging out with people Laney could call losers. I could just see her making an “L” with her left hand and putting it up to her forehead.
But suddenly I couldn’t stay out of the cafeteria. My desire to sit at the popular table completely took over. I felt like a moth flying toward one of those blue bug-zappers. I gave myself a quick pep talk on the way over to the table.
Maybe Laney would love Kate. Yep, I’m doing this for Kate. I’ll bring her name up at the table and tell them how great she is. We’ll take a vote and invite her to sit with us.
I took bold, deliberate steps toward the table.
“I’m back,” I announced as I sat down.
No one said a word to me. Everyone looked at Laney.
“Hey,” she finally said. “I hear the judges are still undecided.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, ready to dig for the gold of more information.
Suddenly, Kate walked by. She didn’t seem to notice me, but Riley saw her.
“That girl is boy crazy,” said Riley, pointing shamelessly to Kate. “She even helped Toni Diaz sneak into the boys’ locker room this week. I heard she likes every boy in sixth grade!”
“Oh, she doesn’t like any of the sixth graders.” I started to defend Kate. “She likes a twelfth grader. She even wrote his name …”
I stopped in mid-sentence, biting my lip. What have I done?
“She was the one who wrote Zachary Donaldson’s name on the wall in the girls’ bathroom!” said Laney, slamming her carton of milk down.
After it sank in, the whole table started laughing.
I was dreading my first detention because I didn’t want to see Kate. What would she think if she knew I’d told her secret?
“Good afternoon, Danika,” said Mrs. Velasquez as I walked into her art room to report for my first day of punishment. She’s the absolute best. She lets us call her Mrs. V. I handed her my pink slip. She signed it and gave it back to me. “That clay pot you made in class on Monday is ready to be fired. Maybe you can help me load the kiln this afternoon.”
“I’d love to,” I answered. This was not what I thought detention would be like.
Kate was already seated, so I slipped in next to her and smiled weakly.
Next, a total tomboy-chick came in.
Oh yeah, I thought to myself. She’s probably the girl who dressed like a guy to try out for football last week.
“Hello, Toni,” said Mrs. V.
Toni Diaz! She’s the girl Riley said was in the boys’ locker room with Kate. That made perfect sense. Kate must have been helping her try out. That’s so like Kate!
She said “hey” and took a seat.
Right behind her came that girl from Africa … Yuzi.
I’d heard that she was the one who pulled the fire alarm on Monday and created mass chaos. I smiled at her and waved like we were old friends.
Mrs. V encouraged us to read or work quietly. I pulled out my math homework because I had a ton of it. I’d started it in my study hall earlier in the afternoon.
“I hate math,” I said, leaning over to Kate, trying to soothe my guilty conscience by just talking to her.
“You’re great at math, Danika,” Kate argued. “How can you hate it?”
“My homework is just totally messy.”
“You need a sweet pencil,” she answered.
“What?”
“I’ll get you one,” she said, reaching into her bag. “Sweet pencils make math sweet.”
“Really? Thanks!” I said as I took the funky mechanical pencil with the bright pink pig topper on it.
Kate was right. Math did seem sweeter. Before I knew it, I had finished the last of my pre-algebraic challenges. As I pulled my three-ring binder open to insert my paper, I realized that I’d gotten so wrapped up in my math homework that I didn’t notice that Kate had gone up to talk to Mrs. V.
“Hey, Danika! Come up and tell Mrs. V about the Secret Keeper Girl Club!”
Snapping my binder shut, I stood, then walked up to Mrs. V’s desk.
“I don’t really have it figured out,” I said as Kate brushed past me with a notebook and a smile on her face.
“Well, let’s see if I can help,” she suggested gently. “What do you have?”
“A pretty messed-up life,” I answered. A confession about Mrs. Hefty’s Purple Flurp face mask dripped from my lips. Next, I told Mrs. V how Kate and I had made a pinky promise to be friends. Then I started to whisper. I told her how I’d sat with Laney today and told Kate’s number one secret. She could tell I felt really bad.
“So, I have this idea for a club,” I said, finally getting to the point of the conversation. “It’d be a club for girls where we could tell our deepest secrets. That’s why we’d call it the Secret Keeper Girl Club.”
“Sounds like a good idea, Danika,” she said, sitting down behind her desk. “I have something I want to give to you.”
Her metal school desk creaked when she opened a side drawer. She reached into it, then placed a super fancy pen in front of me. It was made of pinkish-colored marble and had a frilly, white feathery thing on top.
“It’s the sweetest of all sweet pens,” she said, mimicking Kate’s super cool voice. Then she continued in her regular voice. “It’s a fountain pen. I got it when I was crowned Miss Teeny Pop.”
My mouth dropped open. “You were Miss Teeny Pop?”
“Thirteen years ago,” said Mrs. V.
“Wow!” I said, picking the pen up for a closer look. “Thanks!” The desire to be Miss Teeny Pop grew to gargantuan proportions at that very moment. I wanted it more than ever. No wonder Mrs. V was considered the coolest teacher at Rutherford B. Hayes.
“You need club rules,” explained Mrs. V. “I’m giving you my pen to write them all down.�
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She pulled out a large sheet of bright yellow paper, folded it in half, opened it, and pushed it across the table to me. “You can write them here.”
“How do I know what to write?”
“You find out what it takes to be a true friend, Danika.”
I just looked at her blankly. So she continued.
“Can I risk sounding like a teacher?”
I nodded.
“There’s an old proverb about friendship that I like a lot. It says, ‘Become wise by walking with the wise, but hang out with fools and watch your life fall to pieces!’”
Between detention and watching my dream to be Miss Teeny Pop teetering on the brink of disaster, I was pretty sure my life was falling to pieces.
“You want friends who are wise or, well … smart, but not in an ‘I got an A in algebra’ kind of way. Friends who think with you to make good decisions! And that makes you a good friend, because you are wise enough to help them think, too.”
This was making sense. Kate and I had talked about helping each other not to write on bathroom walls and throw Purple Flurp!
“Anyway,” she continued with a smile, “all you need to worry about now is finding the path to true friendship. So, you are going to need to take a few walks like the proverb says. After each walk, you’ll know what the next rule of the Secret Keeper Girl Club is going to be.”
“OK,” I said. “I think I get it. Who do I walk with first?” “You might think about where your feet took you today at lunch,” she answered. “You seem to be feeling pretty bad for telling Kate’s secret. What did that teach you?”
I didn’t have to think long. I leaned over on her desk and wrote:
RULE #1: Always keep each other’s secrets!
Mrs. V was smiling when I looked up.
“You have your first rule!” she said, offering me a high five. We slapped hands.
Mrs. V talked to me about how important it is to keep each other’s secrets, but told me all about how I needed to talk to my mom if a secret seemed to be dangerous for me or my friend. I rolled my eyes a little bit because she sounded just like my mom. Mom is always telling me all that “stranger-danger” kind of stuff.
That’s when I realized that Mrs. V might be the coolest teacher on the planet, but she’s still a teacher. We sat there just looking at each other and I knew she loved me kind of like my mom does. It was a little weird so I had to break the silence!
“But it’s just Kate and me, and that’s not much of a club,” I said.
We sat there for just a moment. Then, Mrs. V leaned over her table and started to whisper. Her eyes were bright and she looked like a sixth grader herself.
“You know, there are four girls in this room. I bet you and Kate aren’t the only ones who wished they had a club of friends.”
I looked back and Toni and Yuzi had their eyes locked in a gaze that was aimed our way. Even so, they looked like they hadn’t understood that Mrs. V was talking about them. I reflexively averted my gaze from them, pretending like I wasn’t looking at them. I just hate it when people do that!
“Danika,” whispered Mrs. V again, “Yuzi is new to town. I can only imagine how much she must need friends right now. I hear her family is African, she was born in Texas, and she just moved here from London. What stories she must have to tell!”
I looked back again. Yuzi had a bright-eyed innocence about her. She smiled at me. I smiled back. At that moment, I just wanted to go hug her.
I excitedly motioned for Kate to come back up, and the three of us whispered for a while.
“Toni is in a tough place, too,” offered Kate. “She told me she’d dreamed of playing football since as long as she can remember walking! But her mom and dad have said ‘no way’ and she’s in a lot of trouble for trying out anyway. She’s lost her dream.”
I knew how that felt.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s ask Toni and Yuzi to be in the club, too!”
Kate didn’t actually answer, but her squeal of delight told me she was in agreement with Mrs. V and me.
We walked right over to Toni and Yuzi and asked if they wanted to be part of our brand-new Secret Keeper Girl Club.
They seemed a little shocked by the invitation.
“Yes,” Yuzi blurted. Then louder, “Yes. I’ll do it.”
“I’m in,” said Toni.
Everyone smiled so big I thought their faces might burst.
“You can meet in my room on Wednesdays,” said Mrs. V.
Excited chatter exploded among the girls, and Mrs. V pulled me aside.
“You’ll know who to walk with next,” she said. “It’ll be pretty clear to you when you figure out what you need to do to protect rule number one.”
I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew exactly who I was supposed to “walk with” next, but I was totally terrified.
CHAPTER 5
No Boys Allowed
“Dani.” My dad’s voice woke me. He’s the only one who’s never called me Danika. It’s always been Dani. “Wake up, Beauty Queen!” He’s the only one who calls me that, too.
“There’s something interesting in the paper,” he said in a teasing tone, and I could feel him flop down on my bed. I heard the paper rattling around on top of the covers.
“Oh, Daddy,” I complained, stuffing my head under my puffy lime-green comforter. “Since when do I read the paper?”
“When it’s about the Teeny Pop contest,” he said.
I sat up straight as an arrow, looked down at my lap, and grabbed the Marion Star. The front-page headline read, “Pageant Plans Popped!” I started to read out loud as fast as possible:
In a controversial turn of events, the Teeny Pop Pageant was postponed last Friday night, making Popcorn Festival history. An unnamed contestant was disqualified due to what is being termed a public disturbance.
“Public disturbance!? Oh, brother!” I whined, but quickly got back to my reading.
After the young woman had been disqualified, a member of the Festival committee came forward to protest and the contest was delayed. The name of the committee member is still being withheld, but based on the person’s testimony it is believed that the incident involving the young woman in question was overblown.
I sure wanted to know who said that! It must’ve been Dad. I started skimming down to the paragraph with the contestants’ names. I read them out loud:
Abbey Anderson
Kylie Burger
Autumn Clouderton
Laney Douglas
Julia Donaldson
Morgan Gray
Lindsay Hermana
Shannon Latchman
Lexi Livingstone
Kimberly Marion
Danika McAllister
“Danika McAllister!” I screeched out a second time and bounced my body up and down on the bed. “Wait! Dad, there’s one more name.”
Riley Peterson
“Riley Peterson!?” I repeated, looking at my dad like the world had just turned upside down.
But I decided quickly that it was my new best-day-ever and I didn’t complain. In no time at all, I was headed out the door to enjoy the pleasure of walking the halls of Rutherford B. Hayes as an un-disqualified Teeny Pop contestant.
“No need soup today,” called Nai Nai behind me as I walked to the bus stop.
Having recently just had a no-good, awful day complete with Purple Flurp fiasco, my best-day-ever felt really perfect. I even had the courage to face what I needed to do to protect Secret Keeper Girl Club rule number one: Always keep each other’s secrets.
I sat under the big maple tree in the front of the school waiting for Kate, who’d agreed to meet me for lunch. We had both requested outside lunch court passes for today! Secretly, I think Mrs. V told Principal Butter that Kate and I needed to talk. How else would two girls who just got pink slips have gotten lunch court passes? My mini cucumber on rye sandwiches were stacked into a tall tower on my books. I was concentrating on balancing a green
grape on top of the magnificent work of art when someone covered my eyes. I felt the sandwiches scatter.
“Sorry,” Kate said. “I’ve got …” She fumbled around in her brown sack. “… egg salad by the smell of it. Trade?”
“Sure!” I said. “You can have my orange crème soda, too.”
“Whoa!” Kate bellowed. “Call in the paramedics! Do you have a fever?” She touched my forehead and looked at me with exaggerated concern. “Nothing … no nothing ever comes between Danika McAllister and her orange crème sodas. ’Sup?”
She crunched down on the first bite of her cucumber sandwich and waited for me to answer. There was no easy way to say it, so I just went for it.
“Yesterday at lunch, I told Laney Douglas and her whole stupid fan club that you like a twelfth grader,” I confessed as fast as possible.
Kate’s mouth gaped open and her mash of rye, cream cheese, and cukes looked like it might spill out of her mouth. “I did not tell her who!” I said defensively. Then I realized I had nothing to defend and I added softly, “I think they figured it out, though.”
Kate started chewing again real fast. “No big deal!” she said. But I knew she didn’t mean it. She got those red blotches on her neck that she gets when she’s real mad, like when her cat Sharkey wouldn’t come down out of the tree for six hours. She was definitely, 100%, over-the-top ticked. And she should be.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I’m the worst best friend ever and the last person on earth who should start the Secret Keeper Girl Club. I don’t even know how to be a good friend.”
“No, it really is OK,” said Kate. “I mean, it’s not cool … what you did, but it’s totally cool that you told me. I forgive you.”
I sighed in relief.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” I asked.
“Well, you do owe me,” she said. We both leaned back into the grass to think, looking up at the huge orange leaves on the maple tree.
“I know,” she said, sitting up. “The first club rule is really about what you need to be a good friend. I mean, no offense, but you could have used that rule yesterday at lunch. Anyway, I totally have a rule to propose for our club that’ll help me. I’m really trying to sort out something about boys.”
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