by Meg Cabot
‘No,’ Rosemary said. ‘Patrick Day. And Cheyenne asked him if he would go with her, and he said yes. And now they’re going together. For real.’
We all looked at each other again. Then Erica asked, ‘What does going together mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rosemary said with a shrug. ‘I just thought I should tell you. I have to get back to the game. Bye.’
She ran back to the baseball diamond.
Caroline, Sophie, Erica and I stared at each other some more. Then we looked around the playground for Cheyenne. We saw her standing over by the swings with Dominique and Marianne and a few other girls. Cheyenne was talking in an animated way to them. She didn’t seem any different though, now that she was going with a boy.
Next, we glanced around for Patrick. He was playing kickball with Rosemary and Prince Peter and the other boys, including my brother Mark.
Patrick didn’t appear any different than he had on Friday, before he’d started ‘going with’ Cheyenne.
‘This is weird,’ Caroline said at last.
‘What does it mean?’ Sophie wondered.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of any fourth-graders who were going together,’ Erica said. ‘My brother is in the eighth grade, and he isn’t even going with anyone.’
‘Neither is my Uncle Jay,’ I pointed out. ‘And he’s in college. But,’ I added, ‘he just broke up with someone.’
‘That can’t be the same thing,’ Caroline said. ‘I mean, your Uncle Jay and Harmony are grown-ups and kiss for real.’
‘Why would Cheyenne even want to kiss Patrick?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Considering he picks his nose and eats it.’
All three of the other girls made noises like they were going to throw up, and Sophie said, ‘Thanks, Allie! I had eggs for breakfast!’
‘Well,’ I said in my own defence, ‘I sit in the same row as he does. Do you think I don’t observe these things?’
‘Maybe if you told Cheyenne,’ Caroline suggested.
‘No,’ Erica cried, ‘you can’t! I’m sure he doesn’t mean to!’
‘How can you pick your own nose and eat it by accident?’ Sophie wanted to know.
‘Come on,’ Erica said. ‘He’s not that bad.’
‘Erica,’ Caroline said, ‘remember in second grade when he—’
‘Hello, girls.’
We all stopped talking as we realized Cheyenne had strolled up behind us, Dominique and Marianne, her human shadows, on either side of her. She stood with her arms folded across her chest, staring at us, a little smile on her lips.
‘So I hear you had a little sleepover of your own on Saturday night,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘we did. And we had a really fun time. We did Dance Party America and staircase surfing, and made microwave brownie soup and a cake, and played bicycle-light hide-and-seek, and told ghost stories and—’
Cheyenne started laughing. Really. She threw back her bunny-ear-muffed head and laughed.
‘You guys are such big babies!’ she cried. ‘That’s the kind of stuff we did at sleepovers back in Grade Three. Right, M and D?’
M and D – which I guess were Marianne’s and Dominique’s new nicknames – both nodded and laughed. I didn’t actually know them in the third grade – what people from Canada called Grade Three – but I was pretty sure they’d never had microwave brownie soup before. That’s an invention only my Uncle Jay had come up with. So M and D were pretty much liars as far as I was concerned. As was Cheyenne.
‘But anyway,’ she said before I could accuse her of being what she was. A big liar. ‘That’s not what I came over to talk to you guys about. I came over to see if you’d heard the news.’
‘If you mean the news about you and Patrick Day,’ Caroline said, ‘we’ve heard. And you have our condolences.’
Even though she claims to be so mature and all, I don’t know if Cheyenne knew what condolences meant. She wasn’t the second runner-up district spelling champ, like Caroline was.
‘Thanks,’ Cheyenne said. She obviously didn’t know what condolences meant. ‘He really likes me. It was just a matter of time before we started going together.’
‘But that’s what I don’t understand,’ Erica said. ‘Where are you going?’
Cheyenne looked at Erica in a surprised sort of way. Then she started laughing. Behind her, Marianne and Dominique started laughing too.
‘Oh, E,’ Cheyenne said. ‘You’re so cute! You don’t go anywhere when you’re going with a boy. You’re just going together. It’s a figure of speech.’
‘It is?’ Erica threw the rest of us a puzzled look. I don’t know about Sophie or Caroline, but I didn’t understand it any better than Erica.
‘Yes,’ Cheyenne said. ‘All it means is that Patrick and I are an exclusive couple, and he can’t go with anyone else while he’s with me.’
Erica threw us another look, which very clearly stated, Who else would Patrick go with?
But again, none of us had an answer.
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you all about,’ Cheyenne said conversationally. ‘Sophie, I know for a fact that you like Peter Jacobs. He really is cute. The truth of the matter is, if you don’t snatch him up, some other girl is going to. So you better ask him to go with you soon, or you’ll lose him.’
I whipped my head around to stare at Sophie. I was just in time to see all the blood drain from her face. It was pretty cold out, so seeing her go from having such rosy cheeks to suddenly being white as paper was really quite dramatic.
‘But,’ Sophie said, her voice sounding faint, ‘I don’t want to go with Peter.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Cheyenne said. ‘Of course you do. Just go up to him and ask him. That’s what I did with Patrick. Well, I did it over the phone. But it’s the same thing, really.’
‘I . . . I . . .’ Sophie looked as if someone had just told her she’d contracted a flesh-eating virus. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Cheyenne said. ‘You have to.’
‘She doesn’t have to do anything,’ Caroline said, taking a step forward. ‘You can’t tell her what to do.’
‘Uh,’ Cheyenne said, flicking a bored glance over at Caroline, ‘yes, I can, actually. Because if she doesn’t ask Peter to go with her, I’ll tell him that Sophie likes him.’
Sophie gasped.
It was the gasp of a girl who had just found out there were even worse things than flesh-eating viruses.
Even Caroline looked confused.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘So what if Cheyenne tells him you like him? If you ask him to go with you, he’ll know you like him—’
‘No, he won’t,’ Cheyenne said, looking scornful. ‘He’ll just know you want to go with him. But if you don’t ask him and I tell him you like him, then he’ll know for sure.’
This was so confusing, it was giving me a little bit of a headache, like when I ate ice cream down at the Dairy Queen too fast.
‘Why would you do that?’ Caroline demanded. ‘Why would you do something so mean?’
Cheyenne looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Because I’m trying to help. Help you guys not be so immature.’ To Sophie she said, ‘You have until morning recess to decide what you want to do. Come, M and D.’
Then she and her posse took off, Cheyenne’s high-heeled boots crunching in the snow.
‘Well, I don’t care what she says,’ Caroline said when they were gone. ‘You’re not going to do it, are you, Sophie?’
But when we looked at Sophie, we all knew.
She was going to do it.
‘Of course I am,’ she said miserably. ‘I have to. Because the worst thing that can happen is for your secret crush to know your secret, and for it not to be a secret any more.’
‘What?’ Caroline looked stunned. ‘That’s not true. That’s not the worst thing that can happen at all. The worst thing that can happen is that your parents could be killed in a car crash. Or that you g
et that thing you keep talking about . . . that flesh-eating virus. Who cares if Prince Peter knows if you like him? I mean, you do. So. So what?’
‘Oh!’ Sophie said, sucking in her breath like she was about to cry. That’s because she was. ‘You would say that, Caroline Wu! Because it doesn’t affect you, does it? This is all your fault anyway! You’re the one who told Cheyenne about Prince Peter in the first place!’
Caroline shook her head, looking as upset as Sophie. ‘What? My fault? But . . . I didn’t mean—’
‘Shut up!’ Sophie shouted just as the bell rang. ‘Just shut up!’
Then she ran off crying.
That’s really when it all became clear to me. That everything had changed. Not just in Mrs Hunter’s fourth-grade class, but among the four of us queens as well.
And all because of a single sleepover.
Rule #9
Sometimes It’s Better Just to Say Things Will Be OK
(Even If You Know This Isn’t True)
Sophie asked Peter Jacobs to go with her during morning recess.
And he said yes.
But this didn’t cheer her up, like you might have thought. We found her sitting on one of the swings, very depressed. Almost as depressed as Joey Fields had looked, pretending to read his Boxcar Children books, back in the simple days of the Kissing Game, when none of the girls would chase him.
‘But,’ Erica said, confused. Caroline wasn’t with us. Caroline had decided to give Sophie some ‘breathing room’ to ‘cool off’, and was playing kickball with Rosemary and the boys, ‘I don’t understand. If he said yes, why do you still look so sad?’
‘Don’t you get it?’ Sophie seemed like she was about to cry. ‘He only said yes to be polite. He didn’t want to upset me by saying no. He didn’t want to be rude.’
‘Oh, no,’ Erica said, sending me a desperate glance over the top of Sophie’s woolly hatted head, ‘I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure Prince Peter wouldn’t do something like that.’
Sophie shot Erica a dirty look from her perch on the swing. ‘Of course he would,’ she said. ‘He’s a prince.’
‘He’s not a real prince,’ I thought it was important to remind her.
But it turned out this was the wrong thing to say, since Sophie responded to it by bursting into tears.
‘Oh dear,’ Erica said, taking my arm and walking me a few feet away so we could talk without Sophie overhearing us. Not that there was any danger of this happening, since she was sobbing so loudly. ‘What are we going to do? This is awful. Sophie is miserable, and I don’t think, the way things are going, she’s ever going to forgive Caroline!’
‘I know,’ I said. I was sort of wishing I was Rosemary. Because if I was, I’d have just walked up to Cheyenne and punched her in the face.
But I wasn’t Rosemary. I was just me, Allie. And I’m not the type of girl who walks up to people and punches them in the face. I’m more of a non-violent-conflict-resolution kind of girl.
By lunchtime, Caroline and Sophie were in a full on fight. It started out as Caroline was apologizing (again) for telling Cheyenne about Prince Peter as we were picking up Kevin from the kindergarten classroom on our way home for lunch.
But Sophie wouldn’t say anything back to Caroline. She just took Kevin’s mittened hand, looked straight ahead and started walking.
‘Did you hear me, Sophie?’ Caroline said. ‘I said I’m really, really, really, really sorry.’
Sophie didn’t say anything. At least, not to Caroline.
Kevin, not understanding what was going on, went, ‘Sophie? Did you hear what Caroline said? She said she was really, really, really, really sorry.’
‘I heard her,’ Sophie said to Kevin. ‘My, isn’t it cold out today?’
Kevin looked at me. We had to walk pretty slowly down the sidewalk because Mom had put Kevin in his snowsuit again, and he was waddling. ‘Is everything OK?’ he wanted to know.
‘Everything is fine,’ Erica told Kevin in a nervous voice. ‘Isn’t everything fine, girls?’
But of course everything wasn’t fine. Everything was falling apart.
‘Sophie,’ Caroline said. You could tell she was getting mad now. Caroline doesn’t get mad very often, but when she does, watch out. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do. I said I was sorry.’
Sophie just kept walking like she hadn’t heard anything. Erica and I, behind them, glanced at each other. Erica looked like she was going to throw up, she was so upset about the whole thing. Erica hates fights.
‘I mean, I admit I should never have said anything to Cheyenne about Peter –’ Caroline said.
Kevin gasped. ‘Caroline told Cheyenne about Prince Peter?’
‘Kevin,’ I said, ‘stay out of it.’
‘But—’ Kevin said.
‘Stay out of it,’ I warned him.
‘See,’ Sophie said. By then we’d reached the stop sign where Caroline and Sophie turn to go to their houses, ‘even Kevin knows that was a stupid thing to do! And he’s four!’
‘Five,’ Kevin corrected her.
‘Whatever,’ Sophie said. She’d started to cry again. ‘You just don’t know. You don’t realize what you’ve done!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Caroline said, rolling her eyes. ‘Do you have to be such a drama queen all the time, Sophie?’
Sophie sucked in her breath again. Then she let out a wail, turned around and ran down the street to her own house.
Caroline, realizing what she’d said, cried, ‘Sophie!’ Then she ran off after her.
But ever since Sophie’s broken toe has gotten a bit less tender, she’s been walking and running without her limp. So I doubted Caroline would catch her.
Left alone at the stop sign, Erica and I looked at one another. Kevin was the one who said, ‘If you ask me, they’re both acting like drama queens.’
‘Shut up, Kevin,’ I said, taking his hand.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s true.’
Lunch wasn’t much fun that day. I had grilled cheese at Erica’s house. We tried to figure out what to do about Caroline and Sophie, but couldn’t come up with any solutions that made sense. When it came time to walk back to school, though we waited at the stop sign for both of them, neither showed up. We didn’t know if they’d taken a different route to school to avoid us (or one another), or just hadn’t felt like coming back to school at all.
When we got back to the playground, we looked around, but didn’t see them anywhere.
‘This is awful,’ Erica said, slumping on to the root of a huge tree where we sometimes liked to sit when we came to the school after hours, just us two. ‘What are we going to do? We’re supposed to be best friends, but it seems like we’re all just falling apart.’
‘It’ll be OK,’ I said.
But I was lying. I didn’t really think it was going to be OK. Sometimes it’s better just to say things will be OK (even if you know this isn’t true). That’s a rule.
‘What if Caroline and Sophie never go back to speaking again?’ Erica asked worriedly.
‘They will,’ I said. ‘They have to. They sit next to each other. Mrs Hunter will notice and make them.’
‘She might move them,’ Erica said. ‘The way she did you.’
‘She’d never do that,’ I said. ‘They never get in trouble for chit-chatting, the way we used to.’
Erica sighed. Out on the playground we saw Cheyenne and the other girls in our class, who seemed to have nothing better to do but follow Cheyenne around. They were all clustered around someone. I couldn’t see who that person was, though.
‘I can’t believe just the other night we were all having such a fun time at your slumber party,’ Erica said.
‘I know,’ I said. The memory pained me, like a kick to the chest.
Then the bell rang, and Erica and I both stood up . . . then froze when the cluster of girls we’d been watching broke apart and we realized the person they’d all been gathered around turned out to be Caroline!
‘What’s she doing with them?’ Erica asked in horror.
‘How would I know?’ I was just as shocked as Erica.
We didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going on. Caroline walked slowly over to join us, her head hanging low.
‘Have you seen Sophie?’ Caroline asked when she caught up with us.
‘N-no,’ I stammered. ‘Didn’t you walk back to school with her?’
‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘I took the long way and went around the block. I was . . . I thought maybe she needed some more time alone.’
‘What were you doing with those girls?’ Erica couldn’t wait any longer to ask. ‘And Cheyenne?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Caroline said with a sigh. ‘And I want to tell Sophie first.’
Except Caroline wasn’t the one who got to tell Sophie her story. Cheyenne got to do that too, as we were all taking our coats off and hanging them up back in Room 209.
‘Did you hear the news?’ Cheyenne asked Sophie, who’d gotten back to school late from lunch – probably on purpose to avoid having to walk with us . . . or at least with Caroline, not knowing that Caroline had taken a different route back to school in order to avoid having to walk with her.
‘What news?’ Sophie asked suspiciously.
I didn’t blame Sophie for being suspicious. I’d be suspicious too. Every time Cheyenne talked to any of us, something bad seemed to happen directly afterwards.
‘The news about Caroline, silly,’ Cheyenne said. ‘You and I aren’t the only ones who are going with boys in this class. Caroline is going with someone too.’
I don’t think my head could’ve turned fast enough to look at Caroline. In fact I think I almost got whiplash, which is a type of neck injury, from turning my head to look at her, I turned it so fast.
Caroline’s face turned pink. But otherwise it didn’t change expression.
‘That’s right,’ Caroline said calmly. ‘Lenny Hsu and I are going together.’
My head whipped around in the other direction so I could look at Lenny Hsu. He was the other champion speller of our class. Basically, he was second runner-up to Caroline. If you wanted to think of a boy to go with, you would never think of Lenny Hsu. That’s because Lenny Hsu never talks or does anything at all except read books about space and dinosaurs. Which was what he was doing just then, not even realizing half the class was staring at him. In fact it almost seemed like if he and Caroline were going together, he didn’t know anything about it.